Trying to understand this process… First some background…

I formed my business by filing online with the CA Sec of State. It was granted and I was issued an entity number. I was never sent a magical PDF with my ‘license’. (Ironically, I think the Franchise Tax Board will generate at-will Seller’s Permits as PDFs. I had to go through that process with Dell.)

A few months ago, I created an Amazon store. To verify the account, I submitted a screenshot from my SoS website account and copy/pasted my entity number into the web form. It was approved. I believe I had to submit my EIN from the IRS as well.

As the business is starting to ramp, I’ve needed to add a user to the seller account. That required upgrading from Individual to Professional. Apparently, that process triggers a requirement to ‘resubmit’ my credentials.

I resubmitted the screenshot from the SoS account. Denied. I’m told that I need to submit the business license as a PDF. It was never issued. It doesn’t exist. I’ve had to pay the SoS for a PDF doc that’s a ‘Certificate of Status’. Will that work? Does it have some magical forensic watermarking that no one can see? I guess we’ll find out.

And they’ll gladly tell you that you can submit a utility bill with the company name on it. How many people running home businesses put their utilities under their company? Practically zero.

So why was a screenshot and entity number acceptable the first time but not now? Why can’t this verification team run the entity number against the SoS database (like they presumably did the first time) and match it to, say, the credit card that I have on file (which shares the same billing address that’s on the SoS website)? If your goal is to verify something, those are the actual pieces that are needed. Otherwise, any monkey can whip up a PDF business license.

It seems like Amazon had a lot of pieces figured out. But they need to put their brains on this one.