We Tested Out Amazon Automation…Why It’s A Scam, or Not?
Last update: 3 November 2023 at 09:48 am
1.00/5With 197 million visitors per month, Amazon has become the number 1 eCommerce platform in the world. Counting such a large customer base, many businesses have decided to sell their products on this multi-billion-grossing platform and join the other 9.7 million vendors already on there.
With a current average of more than 1 million new vendors per year, as a product owner, it has become difficult to distinguish oneself from the rest.
But nevertheless, businesses and individuals try to find ways to make a living off of the leading eCommerce retailer.
One of the most recent trends that caught our eye here at Sortlist was Amazon Automation. The newest form to make big bucks selling on Amazon….
We started to dig into this concept and found ourselves in a sea of “is amazon automation a scam” reports, hesitation, and dreams coming true…So naturally, we had to test it out for ourselves.
What is Amazon Automation Services?
Amazon automation is any business’ dream come true: a turnkey service. You have an idea, hand it over to someone else who takes care of all matters, and you share out the profit whilst you sit back and watch the numbers increase.
The service is said to take care of basic business tasks such as managing inventory negotiations, shipping, map out growth, find investments, plan out marketing strategies…
But how does this work?
With your idea and limited funds, you hand over your business to eCommerce experts who happen to have funds to build your empire for you as amazon sellers.
The dream…right?
The Minds Behind It All
Kevin David and David Arnett are the two masterminds behind this “utopian” Amazon business strategy.
A world-famous eCommerce expert, Kevin has over 400,000 Instagram followers and almost 800,000 subscribers on Facebook.
He regularly posts tips and hacks on how to sell your products online and got the idea for Amazon automation after stumbling upon Amazon FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon), the standard way of selling products on the platform by shipping your product to a designated Amazon store warehouse and let the Amazon do the rest.
David Arnett on the other hand is an Amazon store selling expert and serves as a right hand to Kevin to combine their knowledge into one super eCommerce Amazon brain.
Too Good to Be True?
After reading up on Amazon automation and its do-it-for-you service in various articles, we were curious about how the service really worked because it seemed too good to be true…
We headed over to their main website, www.amzdfy.com, to try and get a better insight. We immediately hit a roadblock and had to decide how dedicated we were to find out more…
After a few careful seconds of thought, we created a fake profile, e-mail and became Amazon automation’s newest potential client: Thomas Skargès.
We Tested Amazon Automation…It Got Weird Very Fast
After entering our e-mail into the spammy box, it felt almost like entering a vault…and if the purple box from the homepage didn’t seem enough like a creepy Disney villain trying to lure you in, once inside the site, a pop up appears to remind you that Kevin David is just a normal guy offering to build you a successful Amazon business empire.
Ironically, none of this seemed like a normal service.
When was the last time someone tried to sell you something and their opening pitch was “I’m a normal person…”
From the very beginning, we are made to feel elite, special, unique, part of the 1% and that our life problems can disappear thanks to Amazon automation.
At this point, we still didn’t have a clear idea WHAT the service would do for us so we opted out of clicking on the obnoxious orange button below to book our call but instead, the small cross top right.
It’s Everything You Ever Dreamed Of…In Your Nightmares
We rejected the initial offer for a call so we are presented with a 30 minutes, “life changing video” to convince us why we should reconsider giving them a call.
The sheer thumbnail of the video made us skeptical and gave us the opposite feeling of wanting to press the play button.
It almost started to feel like a video game with “next step will unlock when timer hits zero”…
But we hit play because we wanted to know more.
If you are at all convinced by this service with the information (or lack of) up until this point, we can save you 15 minutes of time by telling you that the first half of the video still does not give any hints as to how this turnkey service works.
Instead, we watch a PowerPoint presentation of previous client testimonials (who never reveal what they sell) with a voice-over of Kevin David telling us how amazing the Amazon automation service is.
We were even treated to the cliche “are you tired of your 9-5 job” sales pitch to prove to us that it is time to change lifestyle and to start trusting Amazonautomation to turn our lives around.
Finally, after almost giving up on our investigation thinking we would never know how the service actually works, the slide we had been waiting for appeared: “How to sell a $1 cheeseboard for $34.99”.
How Does Amazon Automation Work?
The investors at Amazon Automation bulk buy your product at a very low price, store them in their allocated warehouses (separate from the designated ones provided by Amazon) and sell it at an inflated price on the site.
It seems like a standard business model for selling on any eCommerce site, but Kevin David has managed to make it seem like a revolutionary way of making money where you, their client, don’t have to do anything.
The video continues with a variety of clients showing various graphs and numbers on their phones increasing as so to show their sales going up…it still felt so off.
Finally, we start arriving towards the end of the video where Kevin gives us a few last minute luring pieces of information such as “Myths about Amazon”…
“Why do we have more success stories”…
And “what we are looking for”…
Which took us to the final slide, the final chance for Kevin to grab out attention and convince us that the missing token in our lives in Amazon Automation.
We are back, full circle, to booking a call with them but as we learned from the video, there are many of us looking to take part of this opportunity and there are very limited spaces available.
So we rushed to fill out the form to book our call!
Tell Us Your TOTAL NET WORTH
If it wasn’t enough that we felt annoyed to have provided them with an email address, we had no idea what we were about to get ourselves into…or more like, what Thomas Skargès was getting himself into.
The form we had to fill out before booking our phone call with Kevin got more and more intrusive as we filled them out.
Here are the sorts of things he was looking for before you had to give him your word that you would show up for the extremely exclusive phone call.
Our Exclusive Phone Call…
Remember the “extremely limited space available” from the introductory video? We’re not sure which calendar they were talking about because when we got to the page to choose a time slot for our call, we were spoiled for choice!
We could only book 3 days in advance but there wasn’t a single non-available slot in those 3 days.
Unfortunately, this is where Thomas Skargès’ journey ended. We didn’t book a call with one of the Amazon success managers, but we had already made up our minds on the kind of business Amazon Automation is.
Build Your Own Successful Amazon Business
There’s no denying that creating and maintaining a successful eCommerce business is difficult, and to be a successful Amazon seller has become increasingly difficult recently due to the sheer amount of businesses selling on the Amazon marketplace.
If you are looking to start your own eCommerce business, before turning to an automated service (or even automated software), consider working with a qualified eCommerce agency in London that can not only help you with certain business processes but also leave you in charge of your own brand.
