The FBA thing and the seminars are a slow motion train-wreck waiting to happen. You are right in highlighting the folks running seminars. They are running such scams.

A good friend of mine jumped into the "amazing opportunity" he was presented with. He paid them $5,000 for an FBA course. Long story short, he ends-up importing a bunch of kitchen crap from China, dropping tens of thousands of dollars.

As things progressed, many of the people on the same course did exactly the same. Very soon you had page after page on Amazon with poor bastards selling the same products from China under different brand names and packaging. I mean, exactly the same damn product.

Here's an example:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3...

Funny as hell if it weren't so tragic because of how these folks are suffering. People are losing their asses on this stuff. They are killing each other paying incredible amounts for Amazon PPC advertising. Amazon is laughing all the way to the bank and these vendors are bleeding right and left selling the same products, from the same suppliers in China at minimal, if any, profit.

And then you have the Chinese suppliers who got wind of this and are doing two things:

First, they raise their prices. How stupid do you have to be as a supplier not to recognize something is going on when you get call after call from would-be entrepreneurs using exactly the same script to negotiate with you. These suppliers are nailing people for all they are worth.

Second, they are listing their own products on Amazon at the best possible prices because, well, they are the manufacturer!

And then, to make things even more interesting, people following these amazing formulas start importing stuff that runs right smack into intellectual property issues. So, the patent or trademark owner files with Amazon and the listings are suspended. The inventory now can't be sold and, to make matters worst, the vendor has to pay through their teeth to have it shipped out of Amazon. Ship it where? None of these people are real businesses with real warehouses and employees! So now they have a a few pallets full of crap they can't sell almost anywhere in their garage and living room. In some cases IP owners have gone as far as issuing C&D orders to these vendors.

The whole thing is absolutely surreal. Carnage is the first word that comes to mind when I think of the results. Sure, as always there are examples of folks who are just killing it because they got lucky, chose the right product or whatever. I'd say 95% of the folks who enter into these FBA "get rich quick, work from home, travel the world" schemes would have made more money if they took $5,000 and burned it.

As for my friend, some $35,000 later he quit and licked his wounds.

Not mentioned is the damage to consumers. These desperate, low capital, no-experience vendors are importing absolute crap from China. There are stores of phone chargers that go "poof" and other crap product issues right and left. And, if you dig deep enough, it will almost always land on some poor fucker who thought he or she was starting a business that would set them up for life.

Could be the scam of the century. The only people getting rich with consistency are those peddling the courses.