Amazon is briefly refusing to certain stock items in its warehouses, to cope with the overwhelming demand for household basics due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It suggests third-party sellers of non-essential items could find it hard to ship orders to customers.
The move will last till 5 April and cover warehouses in Europe and the US.
Few items – including many types of toilet paper – stay out of stock on Amazon’s UK website.
The decision to limit warehouse stocks to medical supplies and household essentials has been met with disappointment by some sellers of other products.
“My sales just doubled and Amazon stopped all my shipments,” said one in a post on discussion site Reddit.
“This is totally crazy,” wrote another – however, they added they had been “prepared” for disruption.
Third-party sellers can still register and sell items on Amazon but they would have to do packing and shipping of the products themselves.
When asked, Amazon said: “We are temporarily prioritising medical supplies, household staples and other high-demand products coming into our stock centres so we can more rapidly obtain, restock, and transport these products to customers. We comprehend this is a change for our selling partners and realize their understanding.”
Amazon was “doing the correct thing”, said one US-based seller .
“Small businesses will suffer because of it and some will completely go broke if the supply chain disturbance goes beyond a month,” said Samantha suggests, who sells a variety of electrical and computer-related goods through Amazon.
She said it was however important that Amazon remained able to provide vital items to people in a time of need.
Ms Morrison further said that she thought her own business would be slightly impacted as she had enough stockpile to “weather the storm”.
Andrew Helgeson, a seller, living in Lincoln, said he had “no idea” how many lesser orders he would be able to dispatch because he has depended on Amazon’s services for eight years.
Mr Helgeson sells items including Blu-ray discs and said he would have to turn to packaging the products exclusively by himself at home.
“We will get around it, always do, you have to be able to adjust,” he said.
He added that he had already requested for a three-month mortgage holiday from his bank and would be looking for other government help.
