Selling Lego on Amazon.com

[JosephMali]

FBM. Tracking says out for delivery on Nov 27th and then nothing.

[Emvisawthatswho]

A package got lost and did not arrive. It was shipped UPS. What can I do at this point?
I also recieved this message:  "Reason: Where's My Stuff ? Details: The item has not arrived as scheduled. Please send a status update to the customer as the sender you guys are responsible for issueing the refund." 
Is that true?

This is from an official amazon email? Sounds like spam. Written illiterately. “You guys are responsible”. Did they ask for your sign in info? Seems odd to me, apologies if it’s legit.

[JosephMali]

Official Amazon email. No one is asking for any special information.

[JosephMali]

OK. This is a FBM case. The package is lost. Now what do I do? File a claim with UPS? The forums on this suggest that is is a waste of time and difficult since it was purchased through Amazon. Have the customer file an A to Z claim? Some suggest that this will work and I will not be charged for the lost item since the tracking clearly shows that it was out for delivery but then never finally delivered. What should I do? Suggestions?

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, JosephMali said:

OK. This is a FBM case. The package is lost. Now what do I do? File a claim with UPS? The forums on this suggest that is is a waste of time and difficult since it was purchased through Amazon. Have the customer file an A to Z claim? Some suggest that this will work and I will not be charged for the lost item since the tracking clearly shows that it was out for delivery but then never finally delivered. What should I do? Suggestions?

Unless you can prove that it was delivered, then you will need to refund the customer or at the very least ask them to wait a couple of days while you investigate and hope that they agree to that .

A lost packaged that wasn't delivered is unfortunately on you and the buyer will not be held responsible. You will need to address the issue with UPS .  

[JosephMali]

The tracking shows that it was not delivered.

[amtrak23]

18 minutes ago, JosephMali said:

OK. This is a FBM case. The package is lost. Now what do I do? File a claim with UPS? The forums on this suggest that is is a waste of time and difficult since it was purchased through Amazon. Have the customer file an A to Z claim? Some suggest that this will work and I will not be charged for the lost item since the tracking clearly shows that it was out for delivery but then never finally delivered. What should I do? Suggestions?

If the shipping was purchased via "buy shipping" tell the customer to contact Amazon. 

[Bold-Arrow]

11 minutes ago, amtrak23 said:

If the shipping was purchased via "buy shipping" tell the customer to contact Amazon. 

That only works if shipping shows delivered . 

[Darth_Raichu]

2019 US referral and FBA fee changes summary

As the year draws to a close, we want to thank you for your collaboration in better managing aged inventory, which has helped us improve efficiency across our fulfillment network. While the costs to fulfill, transport, and deliver orders increased this year, our continued investment in supply chain innovation allows us to limit the fee changes for 2019. Certain fulfillment fees will be increasing, while many storage and referral fees will go down. Our goal was to minimize the impact of these adjustments for as many of you as possible, and we expect over 40% of FBA units shipped to experience no change—or even a decrease.

Please review each fee detail page linked below. The storage fee changes will take effect February 15, 2019, and the fulfillment and referral fee changes will take effect February 19, 2019. We are notifying you now so you can plan accordingly.

Fee change detail pages

For fee schedules, definitions, and examples for the 2019 selling fee changes, visit the pages below.

2019 US fulfillment fee changes

2019 US storage fee changes

2019 US referral fee changes

 

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=G201411300

[cladner]

as sales start to wind down, i can say from my experience  that the safety certificate fiasco was 100%  big nothing-burger.

my strategy for the hassle was to recall all items, close all listings.  ask to have my open case about the certificates closed.

waited until the day after the deadline date for removing stuff passed.

the next day created all new listings for all sets that i had that were on the list that i still had stock.

sent them in.

sold them all.

done.

 

[landphieran]

These fee changes are so good ?

Most of my life I have sat through meetings and read news about exploiting user bases for more money. For them to provide tools for users to fit there shipping model then to reward people and pass the savings on to us for following suit is highly unexpected. They must have been murderously profitable.

It's a first step in building seller confidence that they have been losing for quite some time.

[LegoEdison]

5 hours ago, landphieran said:

These fee changes are so good ?

Most of my life I have sat through meetings and read news about exploiting user bases for more money. For them to provide tools for users to fit there shipping model then to reward people and pass the savings on to us for following suit is highly unexpected. They must have been murderously profitable.

It's a first step in building seller confidence that they have been losing for quite some time.

Can you tell me where is the saving for us?

I do not see any real saving TBH

[smittypop2]

16 minutes ago, LegoEdison said:

Can you tell me where is the saving for us?

I do not see any real saving TBH

I don't either. Fees are going up on anything over 10 oz and the long term fees were supposed to revert in February anyways. 

[odysea11]

I was called an "idiot savant" this morning by an endearing Amazon customer......I love people...

[redcell]

14 hours ago, cladner said:

as sales start to wind down, i can say from my experience  that the safety certificate fiasco was 100%  big nothing-burger.

my strategy for the hassle was to recall all items, close all listings.  ask to have my open case about the certificates closed.

waited until the day after the deadline date for removing stuff passed.

the next day created all new listings for all sets that i had that were on the list that i still had stock.

sent them in.

sold them all.

done.

 

I worked through a contact at Amazon to get the issue escalated to the "[email protected]" customer service team.  They looked at it and confirmed that the requirement for providing the actual safety tests wasn't a mistake on their part.  However, I never had any problems with the one listing that I got the request for...I never shut it down, never withdrew the inventory, and had no problem selling through on it.  My guess is that it was a misfire that they didn't feel like cleaning up publicly so just let it go.

[redcell]

6 hours ago, landphieran said:

These fee changes are so good ?

Most of my life I have sat through meetings and read news about exploiting user bases for more money. For them to provide tools for users to fit there shipping model then to reward people and pass the savings on to us for following suit is highly unexpected. They must have been murderously profitable.

It's a first step in building seller confidence that they have been losing for quite some time.

The best news about these fee changes is what they tell us about the success that Amazon has had with their cost- and capacity-control measures.  My contact at Amazon has indicated that two of the biggest problems that they had and focused on over the past few years have been the capacity constraints of their FCs and FBA sellers who operate in a way that increases Amazon's costs.  A lot of what we've seen with the Amazon-imposed brand gates, increased storage costs at the holidays, etc. have largely been designed to weed out sellers and operating practices that interfere with Amazon's throughput or increase their costs.  If they are starting to take steps to slow or reverse some of these measures, it would seem to indicate that they have gotten the issues under control and we may not face as many surprises in the year ahead (at least one can hope).

[Jackson]

2 hours ago, odysea11 said:

I was called an "idiot savant" 

LOL. What was this about?

[odysea11]

1 minute ago, Jackson said:

LOL. What was this about?

Customer bought a Silver Centurion from me not realizing it was a minifigure, not a full set. Contacted me furious with a huge rant. I calmly responded, telling her that the item she received was the actual item in the listing, and that I would have no problem refunding her money if she returned the item. About 20 minutes later, she contacted me back full of apologies calling herself the "biggest idiot savant" because she spoke with her sister and was assured that was the correct item. She couldn't fathom spending $55 on just a minifig!! But all is good now!!

[jeff_14]

4 minutes ago, odysea11 said:

Customer bought a Silver Centurion from me not realizing it was a minifigure, not a full set. Contacted me furious with a huge rant. I calmly responded, telling her that the item she received was the actual item in the listing, and that I would have no problem refunding her money if she returned the item. About 20 minutes later, she contacted me back full of apologies calling herself the "biggest idiot savant" because she spoke with her sister and was assured that was the correct item. She couldn't fathom spending $55 on just a minifig!! But all is good now!!

I had a very similar experience experience with a woman who blew her lid when the 100 or so  piece mountain patrol car she paid $80 arrived and she said she was “ripped off”, etc and demanded a return. I agreed and then 6 hours later she wrote back apologizing and that she had checked that that was the actual item she had ordered and didn’t realize something so small could be worth so much and she ended up keeping it. 

Edited December 20, 2018 by jeff_14

[cobrakai]

9 hours ago, landphieran said:

These fee changes are so good ?

Most of my life I have sat through meetings and read news about exploiting user bases for more money. For them to provide tools for users to fit there shipping model then to reward people and pass the savings on to us for following suit is highly unexpected. They must have been murderously profitable.

It's a first step in building seller confidence that they have been losing for quite some time.

Of all the fees, the October storage fees are the worst.  For those of us with large businesses and no employees, we need to load in our stock in Sept/Oct to sell in November and December.  There aren't enough hours in the day to wait until November to send it all in, not to mention all the new opportunities that start popping up in November.

[Darth_Raichu]

I have a couple of FBM orders that have been pending for a week.  If these go through on Sunday/Monday when it is impossible for the items to arrive before Christmas, should I contact the buyers to see if they still want the items or should I just send the items so I don't get dinged by Amzn (risking return)?

The problem is I cannot contact the buyer when the items are pending on Amzn.  On eBay I would have contacted the buyer right away.

[Phil B]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement

Fascinating read.

 

Quote

 

Last August, Zac Plansky woke to find that the rifle scopes he was selling on Amazon had received 16 five-star reviews overnight. Usually, that would be a good thing, but the reviews were strange. The scope would normally get a single review a day, and many of these referred to a different scope, as if they’d been cut and pasted from elsewhere. “I didn’t know what was going on, whether it was a glitch or whether somebody was trying to mess with us,” Plansky says.

As a precaution, he reported the reviews to Amazon. Most of them vanished days later — problem solved — and Plansky reimmersed himself in the work of running a six-employee, multimillion-dollar weapons accessory business on Amazon. Then, two weeks later, the trap sprang. “You have manipulated product reviews on our site,” an email from Amazon read. “This is against our policies. As a result, you may no longer sell on Amazon.com, and your listings have been removed from our site.”

A rival had framed Plansky for buying five-star reviews, a high crime in the world of Amazon. The funds in his account were immediately frozen, and his listings were shut down. Getting his store back would take him on a surreal weeks-long journey through Amazon’s bureaucracy, one that began with the click of a button at the bottom of his suspension message that read “appeal decision.”

 

EDIT: Interesting statistic:

Quote

It’s an arrangement that suits Amazon, which is able to outsource the costs of managing inventory and vendor relationships. Revenue from seller commissions and other fees is growing far faster than Amazon’s online sales overall, with the company taking in about $19 billion in the first half of this year, a 41 percent increase over the same period the year before and representing about 18 percent of the company’s total revenue.

 

Edited December 20, 2018 by Phil B

[exciter1]

57 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

Of all the fees, the October storage fees are the worst.  For those of us with large businesses and no employees, we need to load in our stock in Sept/Oct to sell in November and December.  There aren't enough hours in the day to wait until November to send it all in, not to mention all the new opportunities that start popping up in November.

Yes, I waited much later to send stuff in this year.

[redcell]

1 hour ago, cobrakai said:

Of all the fees, the October storage fees are the worst.  For those of us with large businesses and no employees, we need to load in our stock in Sept/Oct to sell in November and December.  There aren't enough hours in the day to wait until November to send it all in, not to mention all the new opportunities that start popping up in November.

You need to change your workflow.  I used to send all of my inventory in late-September/early-October in small batches (15-20 boxes at a time), but the storage fees were killing me.  This year, I had a lot more inventory to deal with (~5.5 tons) so I prepped all of the boxes and hired movers to haul them to Fedex.  This worked really well even though I lost a few boxes along the way and allowed me to push my ship date back to late October.  That was still too early so I'll probably push back a few more weeks next year.

[Jackson]

4 hours ago, redcell said:

I worked through a contact at Amazon to get the issue escalated to the "jeff@amazon.com" customer service team.  They looked at it and confirmed that the requirement for providing the actual safety tests wasn't a mistake on their part.  

Were they able to explain why they were asking for safety certificates for items that amazon.com had been previously selling?