Selling Lego on Amazon.com

[exciter1]

Has anyone lost selling abilities who were legit ungated for LEGO and not grandfathered?

[gmpirate]

2 hours ago, exciter1 said:

Has anyone lost selling abilities who were legit ungated for LEGO and not grandfathered?

"legit undated"?

[exciter1]

6 hours ago, gmpirate said:

"legit undated"?

Meaning you applied, submitted invoices, and approved to sell LEGO Brand category items.

[gmpirate]

3 hours ago, exciter1 said:

Meaning you applied, submitted invoices, and approved to sell LEGO Brand category items.

Think it was a couple years ago when just about everyone had to submit invoices again.  Was a big topic here.  I had been selling Lego way before it became gated.  At first I was unaffected, but eventually I had to submit as well.  I don't recall ever being shut down but I may have just not been actively selling at the time (small window).

[teamhappyfrog]

I will randomly not be able to list a set, no real pattern to ti it.

[gmpirate]

5 hours ago, teamhappyfrog said:

I will randomly not be able to list a set, no real pattern to ti it.

always been an issue.  usually it frees up eventually 

[landphieran]

Does anyone have a good process or resource for fighting shipment discrepancies from Amazon? It seems every year they receive "empty" boxes from me and fighting them is the most fruitless task in existence. Just denied claims that state counted and confirmed.

Is there any way people found to avoid this from happening? Nearly all of my product is shipped in cases and I still have "empty boxes" or a 400$ item randomly doesn't exist in a case.

[pharmjod]

This isn't helpful in the moment, but personally I would never send anything that expensive to fulfill by Amazon

[Bold-Arrow]

27 minutes ago, landphieran said:

Does anyone have a good process or resource for fighting shipment discrepancies from Amazon? It seems every year they receive "empty" boxes from me and fighting them is the most fruitless task in existence. Just denied claims that state counted and confirmed.

Is there any way people found to avoid this from happening? Nearly all of my product is shipped in cases and I still have "empty boxes" or a 400$ item randomly doesn't exist in a case.

eventually they will find them, whether it is days, weeks, or months. in the past i have have some luck emailing Jeff ( not Mack ), but that was couple of years ago.

[carini26]

24 minutes ago, landphieran said:

Does anyone have a good process or resource for fighting shipment discrepancies from Amazon? It seems every year they receive "empty" boxes from me and fighting them is the most fruitless task in existence. Just denied claims that state counted and confirmed.

Is there any way people found to avoid this from happening? Nearly all of my product is shipped in cases and I still have "empty boxes" or a 400$ item randomly doesn't exist in a case.

I've submitted 10 claims this year and have been reimbursed for all.  Assume you're sending invoices?  In comments, I'll mention confirmed shipping box size & weight.

I've also successfully disputed problems with shipment claims.  I am not going to acknowledge these 'problems'.  Your warehouse guy cannot scan or count.

[landphieran]

15 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

eventually they will find them, whether it is days, weeks, or months. in the past i have have some luck emailing Jeff ( not Mack ), but that was couple of years ago.

Last year I had a lot of inventory go missing. I think it may have been due to my wife, who was running the warehouse at the time, used some questionably thin labels on products or had duplicate listings and confused the label that was in the box. I was doing all the work this time so I know the cases had been labeled and only one listing existed but it makes me wonder how much of it was actually her mistake. 

[Bricklectic]

This is why I always label myself. not only to save money but in case amazon messes up, at least it has idnetifying info that it belongs to me otherwise when they find it later it becomes amazons. 

[cobrakai]

10 minutes ago, Bricklectic said:

This is why I always label myself. not only to save money but in case amazon messes up, at least it has idnetifying info that it belongs to me otherwise when they find it later it becomes amazons. 

I concur.  Most of my problems in the past have been items I was paying Amazon to label.  My shipment discrepancies have decreased by 99% since I stopped doing that. I did just have one of the "empty box" shipments recently though.  I sent in 24 units and they closed it out with 0 received. Luckily, it let me open a case and reconcile it.  I have not seen the "shipment counted and verified....." message in a few months.

[Islego]

Hoping for some advice from the pros here. I accidentally created a FBA listing using the frustration free version in the amazon catalog instead of the standard not frustration free one( I know its stupid its been that kind of month) that I should have because my items do not have the frustration free brown cardboard shipping box associated with frustration free lego. Now I missed this and sent in 4 of said item which is about a $100 set at current market. I'm trying to decide what to do I figure my options are to have them sent back to me(safest) or to discount them enough maybe 20% such that a buyer might be ok if they get mailed with a shipping label on the lego box, or to just sell them at market price and hope for the best(risky). Anyone have any experience making this mistake and what they did or outcome. I really do not want customers to receive the set without a shipping box as that will probably cause issues and returns anyway, but I also worry if I just remove them and have amazon send them back to me I will just get damaged by amazon return shipping boxes anyway so they will all end up as eBay larder either way, which is why I'm considering discounting them and hoping for the best maybe lucky and amazon will ship in a proper box instead of slapping a label on the lego box. Thanks in advance. 

[Bold-Arrow]

I don't think it makes any difference. They will still send it in a box

[Islego]

6 hours ago, landphieran said:

Does anyone have a good process or resource for fighting shipment discrepancies from Amazon? It seems every year they receive "empty" boxes from me and fighting them is the most fruitless task in existence. Just denied claims that state counted and confirmed.

Is there any way people found to avoid this from happening? Nearly all of my product is shipped in cases and I still have "empty boxes" or a 400$ item randomly doesn't exist in a case.

I also have had good luck last year especially submitting a claim, sending invoices(just target, walmart or amazon purchase screenshots) and have always been reimbursed. That said just as Bold_Arrow mentioned the sets have always shown up later and the very fair reimbursment clawed back. Often they show up at the worst time well after holiday selling season. And I concur never let amazon label your items, you care way more about them being labeled properly than amazon warehouse sticker attacher. Now if it was a AI robot doing the stickering I would feel a little better but amazon warehouse folks not so much. 

Edited November 15 by Islego
Added info

[Islego]

2 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

I don't think it makes any difference. They will still send it in a box

Thanks Bold_Arrow as always your expertise and knowledge is most appreciated. I still think I might discount them a little just to help a buyer feel better in case they get a shipping label on lego box. Its only 4 items so not huge but I never seem to get medium sized boxes back from amazon FBA removal in very good condition so they usually end up on eBay with most FBA returns. 

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, Islego said:

Thanks Bold_Arrow as always your expertise and knowledge is most appreciated. I still think I might discount them a little just to help a buyer feel better in case they get a shipping label on lego box. Its only 4 items so not huge but I never seem to get medium sized boxes back from amazon FBA removal in very good condition so they usually end up on eBay with most FBA returns. 

If they do ship them naked, the buyer won't be happy unless it is free, so IMO the discount won't help, but that is just me. if you just want to move them , then go ahead with the discount, not a bad idea to get rid of the problem . 

[Islego]

1 minute ago, Bold-Arrow said:

If they do ship them naked, the buyer won't be happy unless it is free, so IMO the discount won't help, but that is just me. if you just want to move them , then go ahead with the discount, not a bad idea to get rid of the problem . 

I agree some people are just fine with a somewhat damaged box and some seem to think it makes the set worthless.  The divergence between Amazon and eBay prices seems so stark recently I dread having to move small-medium sets on eBay anymore. Has eBay really become yard sale or worse for others here also, and with very few customers. 

[landphieran]

5 hours ago, Bricklectic said:

This is why I always label myself. not only to save money but in case amazon messes up, at least it has idnetifying info that it belongs to me otherwise when they find it later it becomes amazons. 

Everything was labeled by us. We never use Amazon labeling services. I created a bunch of cases so we'll see what happens. I honestly can't believe at this point Amazon doesn't have automated pictures of the packages they receive so they can easily resolve these packaging issues. Part of me believes they don't do it as a way to shirk responsibility but it may be better than paying for seller service representatives.

[Tonka858]

On 11/15/2024 at 11:04 AM, Bold-Arrow said:

I don't think it makes any difference. They will still send it in a box

They will

On 11/15/2024 at 11:15 AM, Islego said:

I agree some people are just fine with a somewhat damaged box and some seem to think it makes the set worthless.  The divergence between Amazon and eBay prices seems so stark recently I dread having to move small-medium sets on eBay anymore. Has eBay really become yard sale or worse for others here also, and with very few customers. 

Amazon and Walmart etc, Have taught people crap shows up in a bag now, Getting damaged items is the new norm.

[Islego]

22 hours ago, Tonka858 said:

They will

Amazon and Walmart etc, Have taught people crap shows up in a bag now, Getting damaged items is the new norm.

Appreciate the incite from those more in the know!

[landphieran]

Amazon's Buy Box Logic and Listings Randomly Losing Buy Boxes - Makes a man want to do some crazy things 💀

Amazon tells me "I have the buy box". I see 2 sales for 7 days, look at the listing and it shows me as having it but 300 sold on the listing. I look at the sellers list and there is people the same price with no prime availability... who must be selling through theirs. These phantom geolocated, buy box wins, when 95% of the u.s. has a different buy box is annoying. The hierarchy of sellers is also annoying. Certain sellers immediately boot you from existence. I miss the days when it would rotated evenly through sellers.

All carefully convoluted and annoying to force prices down...

[tk79]

21 minutes ago, landphieran said:

All carefully convoluted and annoying to force prices down...

This might be well known by now but I find the "discount provided by Amazon" to be very sneaky too. They can move the price down as they want until enough sellers show up that are just matching the discounted BB price without looking into if there's a discount being provided by Amazon, then Amazon can remove the discount to the higher priced sellers. Discount, undercut & repeat.

[landphieran]

What ever Amazon did, FBM was killed this year. There have been years previous where it was a much closer threshold to win the buy box with FBM. People are undercutting by 20% and still not winning. Difficult place for FBM sellers. Maybe I'm missing something..