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..Or the new Google..or the new Amazon.

Both of the above companies have nearly 100% automated responses. With Amazon, if you get your selling account put on hold for any reason (even if it's by mistake through their automated bots), you will not be able to talk to anyone on the phone or through email. Your account is also put on hold for 90 days and your money might get transferred back to you when they feel like it.

It happened to me a few years back. A customer was ordering merchandise, stealing it, and filing disputes with Amazon. I wasn't able to block the customer, because it's not possible with their current system. Support was unhelpful (automated copy/paste responses) and they pretty much sided with the customer every time and deemed my account a "threat". Before this, 100% feedback.

It's a good lesson to learn: Don't base your business on one companym because they might just pull it out from under you one day.



Except Google and Amazon's primary customers are consumers. Amazon's customer support is quite good afaik, at least if you're on the buying end.

Stripe is a B2B business it's also a bit 'lower layer'. You would have to rely on them for your business quite heavily.


I guess this is the endpoint of "consumerized" B2B. Slick UI, very easy to use, low pricing, no support.


Many 3rd party sellers rely on Amazon for their business. It also makes up a large percentage of Amazon's profits.

The same with Google. How many people use Adsense, Adwords, Analytics for their business? If you want any sort of tech business these days, it's hard to avoid.




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