Seller Challenges
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Roberto_Amazon

Seller Challenges

Hello Forums Community,

We would like to understand what challenges you have faced or continue to experience as a Seller.

Is there anything that you consider should be a priority to improve your experience.

Looking forward to hearing from everyone who wants to contribute.

Roberto

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146 replies
Tags:Feedback for Amazon
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146 replies
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Seller_OvL8C4BJWiuS9

Hello Roberto-that is a loaded question, as there are many things' sellers face in their everyday interaction with Amazon. Policy changes, making sellers fit into a mold that is not made for everybody is one of my main points of contention. Unless Amazon walks in the shoes of the sellers on a daily basis, there is no way for Amazon to know the struggles faced every day.

Amazon needs to let sellers run their store, make decisions fit for their business. Also, Amazon needs to overhaul seller support, one can receive 10 different responses to the same question and one of them may be the right one.

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Seller_hDXyye9VvHq85

The fact that 366-day-old invoices are somehow invalid, especially when the product has been sitting at FBA the whole time. Amazon gladly acknowledges the age of inventory in terms of storage fees, but refuses when it matters the most. This puts long-time sellers at a dangerous disadvantage.

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Seller_iobipI6xASRkh

These are the major issues that are happening from my experiences and have been costing both Amazon and sellers a lot of time and money:

  • Unclear and conflicting policies for compliance. We are left appealing again and again until someone looks at it as each listing gets flagged because Amazon's CATALOG NAME for the product ID is a prohibited term. It has stopped us pursuing new listings since we have to do this every time, which is exhausting. No one seems to want to fix that Amazon should not be giving a product ID name a prohibited product name and not the same product, nor give any clear instruction on how to fix our products from consistently being flagged from this issue. I was told "these are permitted, but we cannot tell you what you need to meet compliance" - how is that transparent?
  • Abusive buyers we can't do anything about. As an FBA seller, I am instructed to use the "report abuse" button - but when a buyer switches out products and returns cheap plastic knock-offs of our handmade wood ones I have the only choice of "report abuse not listed here" and then it is immediately rejected as no abuse is found. I am unable to submit any information to be reviewed, including an entire spreadsheet costing Amazon and us thousands upon thousands of dollars. I eventually get help on the forums from mods and then he simply opens a new account. This has been his cycle for a year now and I STILL cannot "report abuse" on a buyer stealing products. (I even found his eBay account where he resells stollen Amazon products)
  • Give brand registry control over their branded listings. This would also eliminate 90% of listing hijacking. I have errors on listings I am updating. Come to find out, Amazon was pulling data from other listings/sellers that are not authorized or even in our marketplace. We are brand registered owners and manufacturers of an international company, yet we cannot get brand registry to stop allowing other sellers to make changes to our listings. They have no permissions to do this, yet we are denied any control over our brand representation. Other companies do not care if they are not following Amazon's policies and our hands are tied on fixing it since they are now the main contributor...how does THAT make sense? We need to start giving brand registry the control we were promised and stop allowing random sellers to make changes on ALL branded listings, just like they did with Generic.
  • Account Health damages accounts more than helps them. Their department needs the same tools catalog does to check for compliance issues. They have consistently given bad information and actually damaged accounts. Account Health told me when they couldn't figure out the issue to admit fault, delete, and relist it. That is a way to get your account shut down! I know better than that but how many sellers don't? Account Health doesn't know Amazon policies? They just guess at what might be the issue and usually send you to seller support because they have absolutely no rights, control, or ability to look at or do anything. They need the ability to give educated answers, not guesses and dangerous resolutions that can permanently damage accounts.
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Seller_35YCctDNERucc

@Roberto_Amazon, just because I'm dealing with this issue to no avail, being able to publicly respond to customer product reviews would be a game changer and a win-win for all. Won't hold my breath :)

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Seller_Kg99qmY88tZ9i

1. Please allow COGS to be bulk uploaded for all ASINs and reported in SKU economics reports.

2. Stop moving product types into (incorrect) gated categories that lock sellers out of their listings.

3. Have an up to date catalog template that already includes all current products and is ready for bulk editing.

4. Make virtual bundle pricing adapt to the price of the bundle components, or at least make virtual bundle pricing able to be a specific % off of total so that automated pricing can be used for all products.

5. Make the required attributes and automatic disclaimers for product types make sense. They are currently too broad and based on large highly variable categories. For example, "sobriety coins and chips" is listed under "Health and Household". The required attributes and disclaimers imply that a coin is a vitamin or medicine. We're also required to list "unit count" attribute for single item ASINs. Makes the listing and prices confusing to customers. If we mark something as irrelevant in the template, it should no longer be required.

6. Please stop adding false attributes to our branded product listings. Most recent one was a clasp type was added to a silicone wristband we sell. We didn't put in a clasp type because there is no clasp, and there is nothing in our description or keywords about anything of the sort. We happened to catch it and had to type in "no clasp" to override the false information given to customers. Sometimes we can't override the false info, and have to spend hours or days dealing with support reps who are clueless. Nothing should go onto our product page that we don't provide. We are the sole sellers of our custom products.

Thank you!

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Seller_7iQjFTabKHqyC

there are lots of issues todays 3 biggest.

1. Price comparisons that are just plain invalid. We sell yarn. We sell yarn. List and competitive prices for single skein and three skein listings are the same price. Repeat time consuming corrections are totally ignored.

2. New screen to update inventory and orices are bad Very BAD. See endless forum input.

3. Tracking info. No reports on what’s stuck somewhere. Amazon issues email to buyer yet not only does alert buyer but does not alert us in advance. Hey this is poor service to your buyers but poor service to your sellers.

I assume that you get input from a group of sellers before you modify screens. It is really time to reconfigure this group.

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Seller_EWPnXa9SdQQ15

Allowing buyers to abuse sellers and we can’t do absolutely anything about it because Amazon won’t stand up for us!

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Seller_nxvyRDZCFduAS

Bots are making critical (usually bad) changes to listings without any warning, including titles, Images, Quantities, and Categories. Sometimes, these changes create listing violations, and sellers are held responsible.

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Seller_Zw8LsZUQSH440
  1. Listing hijackings by Chinese sellers. Not even brand registry offers protection
  2. Return policies need revision, and Amazon has to enforce the current policies
  3. Poor seller support
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Seller_iKDvjr9hWfML4

Hello Roberto,

May we ask you a question? What is the action plan for Amazon to deal with these issues?

Thank you.

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