BEWARE: FBA destroyed my holiday sales – and it can happen to you
Amazon FBA sank my entire business with some of the most disgusting practices I’ve ever seen from Amazon. Read this whole story to the end, because I guarantee that just when you think you know where it’s going it’ll take an unexpected turn for the worse.
I have a small business that sells a couple of relatively popular products (Top #10-25 in a competitive category) on Amazon and fulfills using FBA. I am the only seller of my products on Amazon.
Whenever FBA misses their fulfillment promise (delivers late, etc.) and the customer returns the item for that reason, Amazon does not charge the seller – i.e. I keep the sale and Amazon refunds the customer, which is fair because it’s FBA’s fault.
But Amazon keeps the returned products. What do they do with them?
In my case, they listed a bunch of them for sale as a “Used - Like New” condition for a significantly lower price on the product listing, delivered Prime, sold by Amazon Warehouse. Fine – it’s their product now, and it’s their right.
But then they did something really nasty, and with even nastier consequences.
They know that most people don’t click the “New & used (X) from $X.XX” and they want to offload the goods fast. So they made their used product have equal position on the listing – meaning the listing lost the buy box and only had the “Available from (X) sellers” link – to force people to click through to that area and see their used item listing.
This is the only instance I’m aware of where a USED item listing can compete for and take away the buy box for a NEW ITEM listing. They did this despite knowing full well that losing the buy box, even for a little bit, does massive damage to the listing and sales rank – and maximally so during the holiday season.
(Again, Amazon elevated their own USED products above any other used listings so their USED returned products compete with listings for NEW PRODUCTS – this is the only time I have ever seen this happen, and I do wonder if this is considered monopolistic behavior.
This resulted not only in the loss of the Buy Box, but also the loss of the Prime logo for the product in the search results, and the product was no longer featured in cross-listing recommendations. Instead of the price the listing now just showed “Available new & used from X sellers from $X.XX (much lower price than my new listing”. This obviously resulted in a massive drop of traffic for the listing.
But it got worse.
Because their lower price for the used listing now became the ‘official’ lowest price for that UPC (available from $X.XX) – other online retailers that carried this product, like Walmart.com algorithmically lowered their price to match. That’s obviously not good.
But it got worse.
Eventually those six used units were bought (the sales rank already tumbled by that point) and I was again the only seller for the product. But I STILL COULD NOT GET THE BUY BOX AND RECOMMENDATIONS – why? Because I no longer had the lowest online price – because Walmart already priced down and did not immediately price match back to my price. So again, the listing lost its Prime logo and price tag in the search results and no longer appeared in cross-listing suggestions.
So this forced me to drop my price down the price of their used products to match Walmart. I had no margins left at all but I was trying to salvage the sales rank. Eventually I raised the price in increments as Walmart matched.
By the time things were returned to normal the damage was already done. I estimate a direct loss of $10-15K in sales but the much greater damage is the loss of sales rank for the product. As everyone knows, holiday sales contribute greatly to the product’s post-holiday rank position. My sales are now down 34% YOY for the product.
I am including a graphs of my holiday sales so you can see for yourselves the damage that was done.
So in short, FBA completely wrecked my business by making me pay for their own failure to meet delivery promise – sabotaging my sales so they could offload their returns – and making my business suffer the cascade of consequences that followed. I just want everyone to know how atrociously miserly and unscrupulous they’ve become in their practices, and to give everyone a heads-up that this can absolutely happen to you as well. I have no suggestions – I don’t know how to mitigate against it. Do you? If so, I would love to hear what I could/should have done. And I’m sure explaining it all to them is pointless as they couldn’t care less.
BEWARE: FBA destroyed my holiday sales – and it can happen to you
Amazon FBA sank my entire business with some of the most disgusting practices I’ve ever seen from Amazon. Read this whole story to the end, because I guarantee that just when you think you know where it’s going it’ll take an unexpected turn for the worse.
I have a small business that sells a couple of relatively popular products (Top #10-25 in a competitive category) on Amazon and fulfills using FBA. I am the only seller of my products on Amazon.
Whenever FBA misses their fulfillment promise (delivers late, etc.) and the customer returns the item for that reason, Amazon does not charge the seller – i.e. I keep the sale and Amazon refunds the customer, which is fair because it’s FBA’s fault.
But Amazon keeps the returned products. What do they do with them?
In my case, they listed a bunch of them for sale as a “Used - Like New” condition for a significantly lower price on the product listing, delivered Prime, sold by Amazon Warehouse. Fine – it’s their product now, and it’s their right.
But then they did something really nasty, and with even nastier consequences.
They know that most people don’t click the “New & used (X) from $X.XX” and they want to offload the goods fast. So they made their used product have equal position on the listing – meaning the listing lost the buy box and only had the “Available from (X) sellers” link – to force people to click through to that area and see their used item listing.
This is the only instance I’m aware of where a USED item listing can compete for and take away the buy box for a NEW ITEM listing. They did this despite knowing full well that losing the buy box, even for a little bit, does massive damage to the listing and sales rank – and maximally so during the holiday season.
(Again, Amazon elevated their own USED products above any other used listings so their USED returned products compete with listings for NEW PRODUCTS – this is the only time I have ever seen this happen, and I do wonder if this is considered monopolistic behavior.
This resulted not only in the loss of the Buy Box, but also the loss of the Prime logo for the product in the search results, and the product was no longer featured in cross-listing recommendations. Instead of the price the listing now just showed “Available new & used from X sellers from $X.XX (much lower price than my new listing”. This obviously resulted in a massive drop of traffic for the listing.
But it got worse.
Because their lower price for the used listing now became the ‘official’ lowest price for that UPC (available from $X.XX) – other online retailers that carried this product, like Walmart.com algorithmically lowered their price to match. That’s obviously not good.
But it got worse.
Eventually those six used units were bought (the sales rank already tumbled by that point) and I was again the only seller for the product. But I STILL COULD NOT GET THE BUY BOX AND RECOMMENDATIONS – why? Because I no longer had the lowest online price – because Walmart already priced down and did not immediately price match back to my price. So again, the listing lost its Prime logo and price tag in the search results and no longer appeared in cross-listing suggestions.
So this forced me to drop my price down the price of their used products to match Walmart. I had no margins left at all but I was trying to salvage the sales rank. Eventually I raised the price in increments as Walmart matched.
By the time things were returned to normal the damage was already done. I estimate a direct loss of $10-15K in sales but the much greater damage is the loss of sales rank for the product. As everyone knows, holiday sales contribute greatly to the product’s post-holiday rank position. My sales are now down 34% YOY for the product.
I am including a graphs of my holiday sales so you can see for yourselves the damage that was done.
So in short, FBA completely wrecked my business by making me pay for their own failure to meet delivery promise – sabotaging my sales so they could offload their returns – and making my business suffer the cascade of consequences that followed. I just want everyone to know how atrociously miserly and unscrupulous they’ve become in their practices, and to give everyone a heads-up that this can absolutely happen to you as well. I have no suggestions – I don’t know how to mitigate against it. Do you? If so, I would love to hear what I could/should have done. And I’m sure explaining it all to them is pointless as they couldn’t care less.
145 replies
Seller_llPYntFtQa1FI
I have similar situation with my product (own brand), except thus far I always seem to win the buy box fight. This in my opinion due to the fact most of my customers don’t want a used product in my line of business.
Amz keeps lowering the price (by machine of course) and there is a sizeable gap between my new price and their used one, but luckily in my situation, I have always come on top, but Im keeping my fingers crossed.
Your situation is complicated by walmart.
Seller_3N7yVnTXPzLkL
It happens for many items in many categories.
Amazon does not have to be a party to the listing.
I have no clue why your sales dropped but I would not conclude the lack of the Buy Box caused it.
If this was my listing, I would be examining whether traffic to my listing had dropped. This would not be dependent on the Buy Box. If the BB was the key factor one would expect the conversion rate to drop with the same amount of traffic until your sales rank dropped.
I propose you consider an alternate scenario for your sales drop, buyers were buying for presents for people, not pets.
Seller_T0I28ZM6o8kU2
I highly doubt it happened for this reason, obviously you are speculating and this seems a bit to conspiracy theory. What I suspect happened is Amazon picked up a lower price, possibly from Walmart and your price was too high so you lost the buybox for price reasons.
If what you say is true then one reason this happened was because there is what I’m sure is a bug in Walmart’s price matching code that price matched a used price. But why don’t you think Walmart had already lowered their price BEFORE the buybox was lost? Maybe Walmart and Amazon both picked up a low price from a different merchant that you didn’t see?
Seller_lYLz1roOGTQRE
Sounds horrible. But why did Amazon have so many returned products that they could do this? They would have to compete with you solely with returned products. Are you saying the reason they had so many returned products was because they delivered late and the customers returned them because of late delivery? That just doesn’t sound right. Amazon is very good at deliveries, plus very few people return products when they’re delivered late. They complain but they don’t send them back.
I’d also like to point out that a graph of my sales would look almost exactly like yours, yet Amazon didn’t have any returned items of mine to sell on warehousedeals. Almost everyone’s sales dropped off between Dec 23 and 31. Your idea that your sales dropped because of a loss in rank just doesn’t fit with reality in my opinion. Your sales dropped because it is the slowest week of the year for everyone.
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the great conspiracy.
Seller_JoMRxyleLs4PS
You lost $10k-$15k in sales?
What would the cost have been of you buying the 6 items from Amazon Warehouse right away?
Seller_AvI9gYccgghZZ
Honestly, those trendlines look close to identical to me. Yes, there’s a gap from the prior year, but the changes in velocity are not unexpected—the holiday rush falls off a cliff somewhere between Dec 14 and Dec 20. It ended early for us this year, too, peaking around Dec 13.
Also, Amazon would need to have resold HUNDREDS of returned goods to have actually cut into your sales, which seems highly unlikely. The culprit is undoubtedly the hidden Buy Box. There have been several threads here about the total disaster this has been for a number of FBA sellers (including us). Amazon made a big, stupid change right at the start of December. It’s still stupid, bad for customers, bad for sellers, and ultimately bad for Amazon. That’s what is worth complaining about.
In your case, you had a solution at hand, implied by Defunct_Books: Just buy up the used ones and clear the path to the Buy Box again.
Seller_Wun3v7a8dXJDQ
Consider purchasing the used items from Amazon to get rid of them. Unfortunately, their automated system probably saw the lower price on the used product and used that to recalculate what the Buy Box should be. Also, if you sell your branded product to stores like Walmart and they lower the price that will cause Amazon to remove the Buy Box option if you don’t match that price (or at least come close). My best guess is that it was a combination of factors which resulted in you losing the Buy Box. Unfortunate for sure but I don’t believe Amazon is targeting you specifically.
This is one of the many risks we all take here by selling our products on Amazon’s marketplace. We really aren’t in control, Amazon is so all you can do is try to mitigate the damages as much as possible through inventory quantity control, diversifying in products offered and platforms used and remaining financially solvent in case a problem like this occurs. I’m not saying you didn’t do all these things, this is just a few suggestions for anyone in a similar circumstance. It does suck when this happens but unfortunately we all have to deal with it. Trust me you are definitely not alone.
Seller_awYU0oH8skccg
AZ operates FBA for their own benefit apparently…?
That may be a violation of IMPLIED “Best Effort” Contractual Rights of FBA Sellers who PAY Dearly for the Privilege of Selling on AZ? Some Things in Contract Law are Implied Even if NOT Stated…
Seller_8kreriHp4aXhE
I’m sorry - I don’t see the lost sales in your graph. They peaked the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas, and then they were steady the following week until Monday the 23rd, the Christmas deadline. And now sales are back to near where they were at the start of December. Quite frankly, the fact that you had decent sales all the way up until the 22nd/23rd is surprising to me.
Seller_hXiz9WEBcgZSC
Did your trendline take into account that Christmas was on Wednesday and orders leading to two business days before December 24 would slow?
For orders to arrive by December 24, they had to ship out on December 19. Amazon puts a notice on product pages a day or two before that to say that orders may not arrive before Christmas even though you have two business days to arrive if shipped on December 19. That means that Amazon put a notice on the product pages that Prime orders may not arrive before Christmas as early as December 17.
At most, you may have lost some sales on December 16. But after the Prime shipping cutoff on December 16, there likely was a notice that SFP orders may not arrive before Christmas.
I don’t know what the day Amazon put as the cutoff for 3P and SFP orders as my product is not Christmas dependent and I did not pay attention.
BEWARE: FBA destroyed my holiday sales – and it can happen to you
Amazon FBA sank my entire business with some of the most disgusting practices I’ve ever seen from Amazon. Read this whole story to the end, because I guarantee that just when you think you know where it’s going it’ll take an unexpected turn for the worse.
I have a small business that sells a couple of relatively popular products (Top #10-25 in a competitive category) on Amazon and fulfills using FBA. I am the only seller of my products on Amazon.
Whenever FBA misses their fulfillment promise (delivers late, etc.) and the customer returns the item for that reason, Amazon does not charge the seller – i.e. I keep the sale and Amazon refunds the customer, which is fair because it’s FBA’s fault.
But Amazon keeps the returned products. What do they do with them?
In my case, they listed a bunch of them for sale as a “Used - Like New” condition for a significantly lower price on the product listing, delivered Prime, sold by Amazon Warehouse. Fine – it’s their product now, and it’s their right.
But then they did something really nasty, and with even nastier consequences.
They know that most people don’t click the “New & used (X) from $X.XX” and they want to offload the goods fast. So they made their used product have equal position on the listing – meaning the listing lost the buy box and only had the “Available from (X) sellers” link – to force people to click through to that area and see their used item listing.
This is the only instance I’m aware of where a USED item listing can compete for and take away the buy box for a NEW ITEM listing. They did this despite knowing full well that losing the buy box, even for a little bit, does massive damage to the listing and sales rank – and maximally so during the holiday season.
(Again, Amazon elevated their own USED products above any other used listings so their USED returned products compete with listings for NEW PRODUCTS – this is the only time I have ever seen this happen, and I do wonder if this is considered monopolistic behavior.
This resulted not only in the loss of the Buy Box, but also the loss of the Prime logo for the product in the search results, and the product was no longer featured in cross-listing recommendations. Instead of the price the listing now just showed “Available new & used from X sellers from $X.XX (much lower price than my new listing”. This obviously resulted in a massive drop of traffic for the listing.
But it got worse.
Because their lower price for the used listing now became the ‘official’ lowest price for that UPC (available from $X.XX) – other online retailers that carried this product, like Walmart.com algorithmically lowered their price to match. That’s obviously not good.
But it got worse.
Eventually those six used units were bought (the sales rank already tumbled by that point) and I was again the only seller for the product. But I STILL COULD NOT GET THE BUY BOX AND RECOMMENDATIONS – why? Because I no longer had the lowest online price – because Walmart already priced down and did not immediately price match back to my price. So again, the listing lost its Prime logo and price tag in the search results and no longer appeared in cross-listing suggestions.
So this forced me to drop my price down the price of their used products to match Walmart. I had no margins left at all but I was trying to salvage the sales rank. Eventually I raised the price in increments as Walmart matched.
By the time things were returned to normal the damage was already done. I estimate a direct loss of $10-15K in sales but the much greater damage is the loss of sales rank for the product. As everyone knows, holiday sales contribute greatly to the product’s post-holiday rank position. My sales are now down 34% YOY for the product.
I am including a graphs of my holiday sales so you can see for yourselves the damage that was done.
So in short, FBA completely wrecked my business by making me pay for their own failure to meet delivery promise – sabotaging my sales so they could offload their returns – and making my business suffer the cascade of consequences that followed. I just want everyone to know how atrociously miserly and unscrupulous they’ve become in their practices, and to give everyone a heads-up that this can absolutely happen to you as well. I have no suggestions – I don’t know how to mitigate against it. Do you? If so, I would love to hear what I could/should have done. And I’m sure explaining it all to them is pointless as they couldn’t care less.
BEWARE: FBA destroyed my holiday sales – and it can happen to you
Amazon FBA sank my entire business with some of the most disgusting practices I’ve ever seen from Amazon. Read this whole story to the end, because I guarantee that just when you think you know where it’s going it’ll take an unexpected turn for the worse.
I have a small business that sells a couple of relatively popular products (Top #10-25 in a competitive category) on Amazon and fulfills using FBA. I am the only seller of my products on Amazon.
Whenever FBA misses their fulfillment promise (delivers late, etc.) and the customer returns the item for that reason, Amazon does not charge the seller – i.e. I keep the sale and Amazon refunds the customer, which is fair because it’s FBA’s fault.
But Amazon keeps the returned products. What do they do with them?
In my case, they listed a bunch of them for sale as a “Used - Like New” condition for a significantly lower price on the product listing, delivered Prime, sold by Amazon Warehouse. Fine – it’s their product now, and it’s their right.
But then they did something really nasty, and with even nastier consequences.
They know that most people don’t click the “New & used (X) from $X.XX” and they want to offload the goods fast. So they made their used product have equal position on the listing – meaning the listing lost the buy box and only had the “Available from (X) sellers” link – to force people to click through to that area and see their used item listing.
This is the only instance I’m aware of where a USED item listing can compete for and take away the buy box for a NEW ITEM listing. They did this despite knowing full well that losing the buy box, even for a little bit, does massive damage to the listing and sales rank – and maximally so during the holiday season.
(Again, Amazon elevated their own USED products above any other used listings so their USED returned products compete with listings for NEW PRODUCTS – this is the only time I have ever seen this happen, and I do wonder if this is considered monopolistic behavior.
This resulted not only in the loss of the Buy Box, but also the loss of the Prime logo for the product in the search results, and the product was no longer featured in cross-listing recommendations. Instead of the price the listing now just showed “Available new & used from X sellers from $X.XX (much lower price than my new listing”. This obviously resulted in a massive drop of traffic for the listing.
But it got worse.
Because their lower price for the used listing now became the ‘official’ lowest price for that UPC (available from $X.XX) – other online retailers that carried this product, like Walmart.com algorithmically lowered their price to match. That’s obviously not good.
But it got worse.
Eventually those six used units were bought (the sales rank already tumbled by that point) and I was again the only seller for the product. But I STILL COULD NOT GET THE BUY BOX AND RECOMMENDATIONS – why? Because I no longer had the lowest online price – because Walmart already priced down and did not immediately price match back to my price. So again, the listing lost its Prime logo and price tag in the search results and no longer appeared in cross-listing suggestions.
So this forced me to drop my price down the price of their used products to match Walmart. I had no margins left at all but I was trying to salvage the sales rank. Eventually I raised the price in increments as Walmart matched.
By the time things were returned to normal the damage was already done. I estimate a direct loss of $10-15K in sales but the much greater damage is the loss of sales rank for the product. As everyone knows, holiday sales contribute greatly to the product’s post-holiday rank position. My sales are now down 34% YOY for the product.
I am including a graphs of my holiday sales so you can see for yourselves the damage that was done.
So in short, FBA completely wrecked my business by making me pay for their own failure to meet delivery promise – sabotaging my sales so they could offload their returns – and making my business suffer the cascade of consequences that followed. I just want everyone to know how atrociously miserly and unscrupulous they’ve become in their practices, and to give everyone a heads-up that this can absolutely happen to you as well. I have no suggestions – I don’t know how to mitigate against it. Do you? If so, I would love to hear what I could/should have done. And I’m sure explaining it all to them is pointless as they couldn’t care less.
BEWARE: FBA destroyed my holiday sales – and it can happen to you
Amazon FBA sank my entire business with some of the most disgusting practices I’ve ever seen from Amazon. Read this whole story to the end, because I guarantee that just when you think you know where it’s going it’ll take an unexpected turn for the worse.
I have a small business that sells a couple of relatively popular products (Top #10-25 in a competitive category) on Amazon and fulfills using FBA. I am the only seller of my products on Amazon.
Whenever FBA misses their fulfillment promise (delivers late, etc.) and the customer returns the item for that reason, Amazon does not charge the seller – i.e. I keep the sale and Amazon refunds the customer, which is fair because it’s FBA’s fault.
But Amazon keeps the returned products. What do they do with them?
In my case, they listed a bunch of them for sale as a “Used - Like New” condition for a significantly lower price on the product listing, delivered Prime, sold by Amazon Warehouse. Fine – it’s their product now, and it’s their right.
But then they did something really nasty, and with even nastier consequences.
They know that most people don’t click the “New & used (X) from $X.XX” and they want to offload the goods fast. So they made their used product have equal position on the listing – meaning the listing lost the buy box and only had the “Available from (X) sellers” link – to force people to click through to that area and see their used item listing.
This is the only instance I’m aware of where a USED item listing can compete for and take away the buy box for a NEW ITEM listing. They did this despite knowing full well that losing the buy box, even for a little bit, does massive damage to the listing and sales rank – and maximally so during the holiday season.
(Again, Amazon elevated their own USED products above any other used listings so their USED returned products compete with listings for NEW PRODUCTS – this is the only time I have ever seen this happen, and I do wonder if this is considered monopolistic behavior.
This resulted not only in the loss of the Buy Box, but also the loss of the Prime logo for the product in the search results, and the product was no longer featured in cross-listing recommendations. Instead of the price the listing now just showed “Available new & used from X sellers from $X.XX (much lower price than my new listing”. This obviously resulted in a massive drop of traffic for the listing.
But it got worse.
Because their lower price for the used listing now became the ‘official’ lowest price for that UPC (available from $X.XX) – other online retailers that carried this product, like Walmart.com algorithmically lowered their price to match. That’s obviously not good.
But it got worse.
Eventually those six used units were bought (the sales rank already tumbled by that point) and I was again the only seller for the product. But I STILL COULD NOT GET THE BUY BOX AND RECOMMENDATIONS – why? Because I no longer had the lowest online price – because Walmart already priced down and did not immediately price match back to my price. So again, the listing lost its Prime logo and price tag in the search results and no longer appeared in cross-listing suggestions.
So this forced me to drop my price down the price of their used products to match Walmart. I had no margins left at all but I was trying to salvage the sales rank. Eventually I raised the price in increments as Walmart matched.
By the time things were returned to normal the damage was already done. I estimate a direct loss of $10-15K in sales but the much greater damage is the loss of sales rank for the product. As everyone knows, holiday sales contribute greatly to the product’s post-holiday rank position. My sales are now down 34% YOY for the product.
I am including a graphs of my holiday sales so you can see for yourselves the damage that was done.
So in short, FBA completely wrecked my business by making me pay for their own failure to meet delivery promise – sabotaging my sales so they could offload their returns – and making my business suffer the cascade of consequences that followed. I just want everyone to know how atrociously miserly and unscrupulous they’ve become in their practices, and to give everyone a heads-up that this can absolutely happen to you as well. I have no suggestions – I don’t know how to mitigate against it. Do you? If so, I would love to hear what I could/should have done. And I’m sure explaining it all to them is pointless as they couldn’t care less.
145 replies
145 replies
Seller_llPYntFtQa1FI
I have similar situation with my product (own brand), except thus far I always seem to win the buy box fight. This in my opinion due to the fact most of my customers don’t want a used product in my line of business.
Amz keeps lowering the price (by machine of course) and there is a sizeable gap between my new price and their used one, but luckily in my situation, I have always come on top, but Im keeping my fingers crossed.
Your situation is complicated by walmart.
Seller_3N7yVnTXPzLkL
It happens for many items in many categories.
Amazon does not have to be a party to the listing.
I have no clue why your sales dropped but I would not conclude the lack of the Buy Box caused it.
If this was my listing, I would be examining whether traffic to my listing had dropped. This would not be dependent on the Buy Box. If the BB was the key factor one would expect the conversion rate to drop with the same amount of traffic until your sales rank dropped.
I propose you consider an alternate scenario for your sales drop, buyers were buying for presents for people, not pets.
Seller_T0I28ZM6o8kU2
I highly doubt it happened for this reason, obviously you are speculating and this seems a bit to conspiracy theory. What I suspect happened is Amazon picked up a lower price, possibly from Walmart and your price was too high so you lost the buybox for price reasons.
If what you say is true then one reason this happened was because there is what I’m sure is a bug in Walmart’s price matching code that price matched a used price. But why don’t you think Walmart had already lowered their price BEFORE the buybox was lost? Maybe Walmart and Amazon both picked up a low price from a different merchant that you didn’t see?
Seller_lYLz1roOGTQRE
Sounds horrible. But why did Amazon have so many returned products that they could do this? They would have to compete with you solely with returned products. Are you saying the reason they had so many returned products was because they delivered late and the customers returned them because of late delivery? That just doesn’t sound right. Amazon is very good at deliveries, plus very few people return products when they’re delivered late. They complain but they don’t send them back.
I’d also like to point out that a graph of my sales would look almost exactly like yours, yet Amazon didn’t have any returned items of mine to sell on warehousedeals. Almost everyone’s sales dropped off between Dec 23 and 31. Your idea that your sales dropped because of a loss in rank just doesn’t fit with reality in my opinion. Your sales dropped because it is the slowest week of the year for everyone.
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the great conspiracy.
Seller_JoMRxyleLs4PS
You lost $10k-$15k in sales?
What would the cost have been of you buying the 6 items from Amazon Warehouse right away?
Seller_AvI9gYccgghZZ
Honestly, those trendlines look close to identical to me. Yes, there’s a gap from the prior year, but the changes in velocity are not unexpected—the holiday rush falls off a cliff somewhere between Dec 14 and Dec 20. It ended early for us this year, too, peaking around Dec 13.
Also, Amazon would need to have resold HUNDREDS of returned goods to have actually cut into your sales, which seems highly unlikely. The culprit is undoubtedly the hidden Buy Box. There have been several threads here about the total disaster this has been for a number of FBA sellers (including us). Amazon made a big, stupid change right at the start of December. It’s still stupid, bad for customers, bad for sellers, and ultimately bad for Amazon. That’s what is worth complaining about.
In your case, you had a solution at hand, implied by Defunct_Books: Just buy up the used ones and clear the path to the Buy Box again.
Seller_Wun3v7a8dXJDQ
Consider purchasing the used items from Amazon to get rid of them. Unfortunately, their automated system probably saw the lower price on the used product and used that to recalculate what the Buy Box should be. Also, if you sell your branded product to stores like Walmart and they lower the price that will cause Amazon to remove the Buy Box option if you don’t match that price (or at least come close). My best guess is that it was a combination of factors which resulted in you losing the Buy Box. Unfortunate for sure but I don’t believe Amazon is targeting you specifically.
This is one of the many risks we all take here by selling our products on Amazon’s marketplace. We really aren’t in control, Amazon is so all you can do is try to mitigate the damages as much as possible through inventory quantity control, diversifying in products offered and platforms used and remaining financially solvent in case a problem like this occurs. I’m not saying you didn’t do all these things, this is just a few suggestions for anyone in a similar circumstance. It does suck when this happens but unfortunately we all have to deal with it. Trust me you are definitely not alone.
Seller_awYU0oH8skccg
AZ operates FBA for their own benefit apparently…?
That may be a violation of IMPLIED “Best Effort” Contractual Rights of FBA Sellers who PAY Dearly for the Privilege of Selling on AZ? Some Things in Contract Law are Implied Even if NOT Stated…
Seller_8kreriHp4aXhE
I’m sorry - I don’t see the lost sales in your graph. They peaked the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas, and then they were steady the following week until Monday the 23rd, the Christmas deadline. And now sales are back to near where they were at the start of December. Quite frankly, the fact that you had decent sales all the way up until the 22nd/23rd is surprising to me.
Seller_hXiz9WEBcgZSC
Did your trendline take into account that Christmas was on Wednesday and orders leading to two business days before December 24 would slow?
For orders to arrive by December 24, they had to ship out on December 19. Amazon puts a notice on product pages a day or two before that to say that orders may not arrive before Christmas even though you have two business days to arrive if shipped on December 19. That means that Amazon put a notice on the product pages that Prime orders may not arrive before Christmas as early as December 17.
At most, you may have lost some sales on December 16. But after the Prime shipping cutoff on December 16, there likely was a notice that SFP orders may not arrive before Christmas.
I don’t know what the day Amazon put as the cutoff for 3P and SFP orders as my product is not Christmas dependent and I did not pay attention.
Seller_llPYntFtQa1FI
I have similar situation with my product (own brand), except thus far I always seem to win the buy box fight. This in my opinion due to the fact most of my customers don’t want a used product in my line of business.
Amz keeps lowering the price (by machine of course) and there is a sizeable gap between my new price and their used one, but luckily in my situation, I have always come on top, but Im keeping my fingers crossed.
Your situation is complicated by walmart.
Seller_llPYntFtQa1FI
I have similar situation with my product (own brand), except thus far I always seem to win the buy box fight. This in my opinion due to the fact most of my customers don’t want a used product in my line of business.
Amz keeps lowering the price (by machine of course) and there is a sizeable gap between my new price and their used one, but luckily in my situation, I have always come on top, but Im keeping my fingers crossed.
Your situation is complicated by walmart.
Seller_3N7yVnTXPzLkL
It happens for many items in many categories.
Amazon does not have to be a party to the listing.
I have no clue why your sales dropped but I would not conclude the lack of the Buy Box caused it.
If this was my listing, I would be examining whether traffic to my listing had dropped. This would not be dependent on the Buy Box. If the BB was the key factor one would expect the conversion rate to drop with the same amount of traffic until your sales rank dropped.
I propose you consider an alternate scenario for your sales drop, buyers were buying for presents for people, not pets.
Seller_3N7yVnTXPzLkL
It happens for many items in many categories.
Amazon does not have to be a party to the listing.
I have no clue why your sales dropped but I would not conclude the lack of the Buy Box caused it.
If this was my listing, I would be examining whether traffic to my listing had dropped. This would not be dependent on the Buy Box. If the BB was the key factor one would expect the conversion rate to drop with the same amount of traffic until your sales rank dropped.
I propose you consider an alternate scenario for your sales drop, buyers were buying for presents for people, not pets.
Seller_T0I28ZM6o8kU2
I highly doubt it happened for this reason, obviously you are speculating and this seems a bit to conspiracy theory. What I suspect happened is Amazon picked up a lower price, possibly from Walmart and your price was too high so you lost the buybox for price reasons.
If what you say is true then one reason this happened was because there is what I’m sure is a bug in Walmart’s price matching code that price matched a used price. But why don’t you think Walmart had already lowered their price BEFORE the buybox was lost? Maybe Walmart and Amazon both picked up a low price from a different merchant that you didn’t see?
Seller_T0I28ZM6o8kU2
I highly doubt it happened for this reason, obviously you are speculating and this seems a bit to conspiracy theory. What I suspect happened is Amazon picked up a lower price, possibly from Walmart and your price was too high so you lost the buybox for price reasons.
If what you say is true then one reason this happened was because there is what I’m sure is a bug in Walmart’s price matching code that price matched a used price. But why don’t you think Walmart had already lowered their price BEFORE the buybox was lost? Maybe Walmart and Amazon both picked up a low price from a different merchant that you didn’t see?
Seller_lYLz1roOGTQRE
Sounds horrible. But why did Amazon have so many returned products that they could do this? They would have to compete with you solely with returned products. Are you saying the reason they had so many returned products was because they delivered late and the customers returned them because of late delivery? That just doesn’t sound right. Amazon is very good at deliveries, plus very few people return products when they’re delivered late. They complain but they don’t send them back.
I’d also like to point out that a graph of my sales would look almost exactly like yours, yet Amazon didn’t have any returned items of mine to sell on warehousedeals. Almost everyone’s sales dropped off between Dec 23 and 31. Your idea that your sales dropped because of a loss in rank just doesn’t fit with reality in my opinion. Your sales dropped because it is the slowest week of the year for everyone.
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the great conspiracy.
Seller_lYLz1roOGTQRE
Sounds horrible. But why did Amazon have so many returned products that they could do this? They would have to compete with you solely with returned products. Are you saying the reason they had so many returned products was because they delivered late and the customers returned them because of late delivery? That just doesn’t sound right. Amazon is very good at deliveries, plus very few people return products when they’re delivered late. They complain but they don’t send them back.
I’d also like to point out that a graph of my sales would look almost exactly like yours, yet Amazon didn’t have any returned items of mine to sell on warehousedeals. Almost everyone’s sales dropped off between Dec 23 and 31. Your idea that your sales dropped because of a loss in rank just doesn’t fit with reality in my opinion. Your sales dropped because it is the slowest week of the year for everyone.
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the great conspiracy.
Seller_JoMRxyleLs4PS
You lost $10k-$15k in sales?
What would the cost have been of you buying the 6 items from Amazon Warehouse right away?
Seller_JoMRxyleLs4PS
You lost $10k-$15k in sales?
What would the cost have been of you buying the 6 items from Amazon Warehouse right away?
Seller_AvI9gYccgghZZ
Honestly, those trendlines look close to identical to me. Yes, there’s a gap from the prior year, but the changes in velocity are not unexpected—the holiday rush falls off a cliff somewhere between Dec 14 and Dec 20. It ended early for us this year, too, peaking around Dec 13.
Also, Amazon would need to have resold HUNDREDS of returned goods to have actually cut into your sales, which seems highly unlikely. The culprit is undoubtedly the hidden Buy Box. There have been several threads here about the total disaster this has been for a number of FBA sellers (including us). Amazon made a big, stupid change right at the start of December. It’s still stupid, bad for customers, bad for sellers, and ultimately bad for Amazon. That’s what is worth complaining about.
In your case, you had a solution at hand, implied by Defunct_Books: Just buy up the used ones and clear the path to the Buy Box again.
Seller_AvI9gYccgghZZ
Honestly, those trendlines look close to identical to me. Yes, there’s a gap from the prior year, but the changes in velocity are not unexpected—the holiday rush falls off a cliff somewhere between Dec 14 and Dec 20. It ended early for us this year, too, peaking around Dec 13.
Also, Amazon would need to have resold HUNDREDS of returned goods to have actually cut into your sales, which seems highly unlikely. The culprit is undoubtedly the hidden Buy Box. There have been several threads here about the total disaster this has been for a number of FBA sellers (including us). Amazon made a big, stupid change right at the start of December. It’s still stupid, bad for customers, bad for sellers, and ultimately bad for Amazon. That’s what is worth complaining about.
In your case, you had a solution at hand, implied by Defunct_Books: Just buy up the used ones and clear the path to the Buy Box again.
Seller_Wun3v7a8dXJDQ
Consider purchasing the used items from Amazon to get rid of them. Unfortunately, their automated system probably saw the lower price on the used product and used that to recalculate what the Buy Box should be. Also, if you sell your branded product to stores like Walmart and they lower the price that will cause Amazon to remove the Buy Box option if you don’t match that price (or at least come close). My best guess is that it was a combination of factors which resulted in you losing the Buy Box. Unfortunate for sure but I don’t believe Amazon is targeting you specifically.
This is one of the many risks we all take here by selling our products on Amazon’s marketplace. We really aren’t in control, Amazon is so all you can do is try to mitigate the damages as much as possible through inventory quantity control, diversifying in products offered and platforms used and remaining financially solvent in case a problem like this occurs. I’m not saying you didn’t do all these things, this is just a few suggestions for anyone in a similar circumstance. It does suck when this happens but unfortunately we all have to deal with it. Trust me you are definitely not alone.
Seller_Wun3v7a8dXJDQ
Consider purchasing the used items from Amazon to get rid of them. Unfortunately, their automated system probably saw the lower price on the used product and used that to recalculate what the Buy Box should be. Also, if you sell your branded product to stores like Walmart and they lower the price that will cause Amazon to remove the Buy Box option if you don’t match that price (or at least come close). My best guess is that it was a combination of factors which resulted in you losing the Buy Box. Unfortunate for sure but I don’t believe Amazon is targeting you specifically.
This is one of the many risks we all take here by selling our products on Amazon’s marketplace. We really aren’t in control, Amazon is so all you can do is try to mitigate the damages as much as possible through inventory quantity control, diversifying in products offered and platforms used and remaining financially solvent in case a problem like this occurs. I’m not saying you didn’t do all these things, this is just a few suggestions for anyone in a similar circumstance. It does suck when this happens but unfortunately we all have to deal with it. Trust me you are definitely not alone.
Seller_awYU0oH8skccg
AZ operates FBA for their own benefit apparently…?
That may be a violation of IMPLIED “Best Effort” Contractual Rights of FBA Sellers who PAY Dearly for the Privilege of Selling on AZ? Some Things in Contract Law are Implied Even if NOT Stated…
Seller_awYU0oH8skccg
AZ operates FBA for their own benefit apparently…?
That may be a violation of IMPLIED “Best Effort” Contractual Rights of FBA Sellers who PAY Dearly for the Privilege of Selling on AZ? Some Things in Contract Law are Implied Even if NOT Stated…
Seller_8kreriHp4aXhE
I’m sorry - I don’t see the lost sales in your graph. They peaked the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas, and then they were steady the following week until Monday the 23rd, the Christmas deadline. And now sales are back to near where they were at the start of December. Quite frankly, the fact that you had decent sales all the way up until the 22nd/23rd is surprising to me.
Seller_8kreriHp4aXhE
I’m sorry - I don’t see the lost sales in your graph. They peaked the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas, and then they were steady the following week until Monday the 23rd, the Christmas deadline. And now sales are back to near where they were at the start of December. Quite frankly, the fact that you had decent sales all the way up until the 22nd/23rd is surprising to me.
Seller_hXiz9WEBcgZSC
Did your trendline take into account that Christmas was on Wednesday and orders leading to two business days before December 24 would slow?
For orders to arrive by December 24, they had to ship out on December 19. Amazon puts a notice on product pages a day or two before that to say that orders may not arrive before Christmas even though you have two business days to arrive if shipped on December 19. That means that Amazon put a notice on the product pages that Prime orders may not arrive before Christmas as early as December 17.
At most, you may have lost some sales on December 16. But after the Prime shipping cutoff on December 16, there likely was a notice that SFP orders may not arrive before Christmas.
I don’t know what the day Amazon put as the cutoff for 3P and SFP orders as my product is not Christmas dependent and I did not pay attention.
Seller_hXiz9WEBcgZSC
Did your trendline take into account that Christmas was on Wednesday and orders leading to two business days before December 24 would slow?
For orders to arrive by December 24, they had to ship out on December 19. Amazon puts a notice on product pages a day or two before that to say that orders may not arrive before Christmas even though you have two business days to arrive if shipped on December 19. That means that Amazon put a notice on the product pages that Prime orders may not arrive before Christmas as early as December 17.
At most, you may have lost some sales on December 16. But after the Prime shipping cutoff on December 16, there likely was a notice that SFP orders may not arrive before Christmas.
I don’t know what the day Amazon put as the cutoff for 3P and SFP orders as my product is not Christmas dependent and I did not pay attention.
