OXFORD, MASS. (WHDH) - Dan Gleason doesn’t typically mind being caught up in a sticky situation because selling stickers is how he’s been making money for nearly a decade.
“It’s a small family business, we sell stickers that people put on the back windows of their cars or pick-up trucks,” Dan says.
Dan first started selling his popular designs at swap meets and trade shows before eventually moving online to eBay. From there, he saw demand for his colorful creations soar. “The more I made, the more people said, ‘Huh, that’s kind of cool. What else do you do?’ And we flourished from there,” says Dan.
Several years ago, Dan expanded to Amazon to sell his stickers. He prints, peels, and mails his stickers ordered through Amazon using flat manila envelopes, and has never had an issue until recently.
“Amazon decided that they wanted to take a look at my business,” says Dan, noting that reviews are common. It’s Amazon’s way of making sure sellers are following the rules. However, when Amazon started to review Dan’s business, they froze his account so he couldn’t access his money.
“I went and looked at my balance and Amazon said ‘No, we’re going to hold your money while we’re reviewing your account,'” explains Dan. He says that there were hundreds of dollars of his money that were inaccessible.
Dan called Amazon to find out why he couldn’t access his money, and the representative told him that his sticker shipping procedure violated the company’s policy by not providing tracking numbers. “We’ve been doing this for years and have never done tracking on them,” says Dan.
Dan needed help dealing with this sticker shock, so he reached out to Solve It 7. We found Amazon’s shipping policy, and it clearly states that tracking numbers are required, but there’s a catch. According to the policy, “small items that are shipped in Standard Mail envelopes or First Class Mail envelopes” are exempt from the rule. This type of envelope is the kind of envelope that Dan uses, meaning that he had been following the rules.
Armed with that information, we called Amazon to get to the bottom of the decal dilemma. The company representative told us they would be looking into Dan’s payment problem.
“I got a message back in less than 24 hours that said ‘Dan we are going to work on this for you,'” Dan tells Solve It 7.
Not only did Amazon release his money, totaling a bit more than $670, they also called Dan to apologize and even reimbursed him an additional $80 to cover his online storefront fees he had to pay while his account was being reviewed.
“I can’t thank Channel 7 enough,” says Dan. “I didn’t know how big of a department you guys were so I didn’t know how much you can take on. I thought, well maybe I will be the little guy there too and I wasn’t the little guy.”
Clinging to a problem that has got you stuck? Perhaps we can peel back the problem and get you on track. Send us an email to solveit7@whdh.com or give us a call at 617-367-7777.
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