Very interested topic… I want to hear what others think about this. I will post my thoughts on this soon.

Is it possible that AMZN is giving the buy box to FBA sellers as a way to keep them from losing faith in the FBA concept?

Of course it’s possible. For that reason, or any other.

Even though it is providing an inferior buying experience to the customer?

Of course. The Buy Box is the LEAST fair thing I’ve ever come across. It’s nothing but control and manipulation and I wish they’d get rid of it entirely. Stop trying to make people’s decisions for them Amazon. Present all the options and let people decide for themselves. SHEESH.

To say I’m NOT a fan of the idiotic Buy Box is an understatement.

The Buy Box is not there to give the “Buyer” the best option. It’s there to give Amazon the best option (as they see it) for Amazon. And who gives a flying fig what’s good for the buyer? Certainly not Amazon.

Things have cycled back and forth since COVID started and they’ll cycle back and forth again. In normal times, Amazon promotes (ie shoves down the buyer’s throats) FBA offers, and once FBA couldn’t fulfill orders on time, Amazon had no good choice but to shift to promoting FBM’ers. Now that FBA is catching back up, they’re switching again. But they’re doing it selectively, so there’s still FBM opportunity to be had.

Although I have seen (and AMAZON if you’re listening - are you FREAKING KIDDING ME???) Amazon give themselves the Buy Box with a ‘Temporarily out of stock, order now and we’ll let you know when it’s available’ message over MY offer of an in-stock item that would arrive within a few days.

You think the Buy Box is anything but outright manipulation to benefit Amazon??? What a bunch of baloney.

What you haven’t told us is if anything changed in your account. Did your ODR change? Are your responses to messages longer lately? Do you have less inventory? Did your on time delivery change?

It could be you are not qualifying as much as you did. It could be those in FBA are qualifying more.

it’s true about FBA warehouses catching up
First they started allowing some inventory in some categories to send shipping plans to warehouses. Now if you look at your fba inventory from ship dates they no longer have a 3-4 week window ( at least not mine anymore ) My items have a 9 day ship date, so slowly they are catching up.

I would think that Amazon Fresh and their groceries are slightly slowing as well, as supermarkets are now getting stocked. ( I’ve noticed this on my weekly shopping trips )

I also believe that the storage fees will return because they must be losing a ton of money on that angle. So they need to do something ( back promoting fba ) to justify bringing back those fees.

@OneandDunn, I think that @Caan was just asking troubleshooting questions–not declaring a philosophical stance in the FBA v FBM religious wars.

Funny!! SO we offer both FBA & FBM, since the breakout of COVid our FBM was crazy like never before and we were not sending stock to FBA because of the issues, since a couple days ago our FBM has slowed still steady but has dramatically slowed and now we are working on FBA again hey whatever works to make a buck

I didn’t know “nerf” could be a verb.

Learned something today.

Good, I can knock off now.

Of course! They will never admit to it but of course they are. It only makes sense. But at the end of the day there is nothing you can do about it - if it’s happening on purpose or not.

Adapt and overcome, focus on other marketplaces and not amazon?

The FBM’s have fulfilled their purpose. Back to keeping those warehouse fees coming.

Just try to look at the bigger picture, their algorithm affects millions of offers across many categories and products in addition to many sellers offers within, I would imagine its complex task to implement a logic that makes sense for everyone, They might be implementing a set of rules and code that may not make sense, but eventually with testing (which requires time) they will get their intended effect eventually and at that time it make sense.

FBA centers were so behind in the past few weeks so they try to favor FBM, when things are getting better and they are catching up, they are starting to restore the balance back. in between those transitions you will go through phases that don’t make sense.

Also, are you checking on a clean browser? with all cookies and cashes cleared?

Are you checking with a signed-in account? or guest account? with prime ? or without prime?

All these variables will show you different result, hope this makes sense!