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Just as the coronavirus pandemic is exposing cracks in society — everything from sick leave for gig workers to Internet inequality for digital learning — it’s also highlighting the shortcomings of Amazon’s limited vetting of sellers on its platform, said Juozas Kaziukėnas, chief executive of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse. The company requires sellers to submit business documents, among other items, to get on the platform. But the ability to obtain those can vary by country, and that’s allowed some dubious international sellers on Amazon’s U.S. e-commerce site, Kaziukėnas said.

“The coronavirus has resurfaced a bunch of issues we’ve seen about Amazon in the last several years,” Kaziukėnas said.

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Ecommerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse estimates that Amazon typically saw more than 10 million orders per day before the coronavirus pandemic drove a “surge in demand from people relying on Amazon’s service during this stressful time,” according to the ecommerce giant.

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But Amazon has over 2.5 million active sellers on its platform worldwide, according to the data firm Marketplace Pulse. Together, they accounted for 58 percent of gross merchandise sales on Amazon in 2018.

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Tens of millions of products on Amazon sold by approximately 250,000 merchants won’t be available to many Amazon shoppers until late April at the earliest, said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of the New York research firm Marketplace Pulse that monitors the site. “This is the biggest disruption Amazon has ever seen, and it will see sales decrease as customers turn to shop elsewhere, looking for faster delivery,” he said. “The impact on sellers is going to be heartbreaking.”

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“This has to be the biggest disruption to Amazon’s operations since they started,” said Joe Kaziukenas, CEO of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse. “And, unfortunately, it will have a big impact on sellers and ultimately customers, too.”

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“It’s obvious that Amazon thinks the risks have skyrocketed,” said Joe Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, which tracks data on e-commerce platforms.

“Sellers are worried about their cash flow, and Amazon lending was one of the ways to support that. And now as we’ve seen in some cases, it’s gone,” Kaziukenas said.

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When looking at the top search terms on Amazon.com, the majority of the top 50 fall in the household products/personal care categories, such as toilet paper, hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes, according to data from Marketplace Pulse, a company that tracks data on marketplaces. Toilet paper is the No. 1 search term the week of March 8–14, up from No. 37 the week of Feb. 23-29. “Toilet paper bulk” is No. 4 during the week of March 8 week, up from 2,647 during the week of Feb. 23.

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“Face masks and hand sanitizers are the number one and number two most searched terms on Amazon. That's attracting many sellers who are pulling every trick they can think of to get into search results,” says Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of the ecommerce data firm Marketplace Pulse, who first alerted WIRED to the face mask listings.

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“Even deliveries from Amazon Prime are not being delivered anywhere close to one or two days because not only is Amazon overwhelmed, but UPS, FedEx and all the last-mile delivery companies also are overwhelmed,” said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of the research firm Marketplace Pulse.

“The whole supply chain in the country is being pushed to the limit because no one was expecting such an explosion of demand in the first quarter, because it never happens,” Kaziukenas said.

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FBA also enables sellers to take advantage of Amazon’s two-day Prime shipping, making it a useful service for sellers. Of the top 10,000 sellers on Amazon’s marketplace, 87% of them use FBA services, while 13% ship products on their own, according to research firm Marketplace Pulse.

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