GS1’s entire website was just down (for a while too) – Amazon security alert

This is scary. As we well know, GS1 is the only source that Amazon allows to sell and manage UPCs for Sellers. This is a massive security flaw. Amazon is effectively placing the entirety of their business on one, single, fragile organization.

Hopefully this is a wakeup call to Amazon to stop forcing sellers to purchase from a single entity for UPCs; relying on this single organization means GS1 effectively holds a monopoly on UPCs—forcing Sellers to pay annual fees so GS1 won’t terminate their UPCs.

And when GS1 goes down (as evidenced by what happened literally 30 minutes ago), there goes all of Amazon’s Seller’s abilities to create new products or manage existing UPCs. Like I was just trying to do.

Sure, I get that websites go down. It happens to the best. But who at Amazon made the decision to put all their eggs in one basket and solely on ONE organization for UPCs?

Side note: For a nonprofit organization, GS1 must publicly release their Form 990. I’d be curious to see what that forms says about how much of a salary they’re paying their CEO with the fees this “nonprofit” extorts from Amazon Sellers. I know I pay $200-250/year to stop GS1 from terminating my UPCs. That’s got to add up to a healthy salary.