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Selling Lego on Amazon.com


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On 2/11/2018 at 2:03 PM, river41 said:

RI too....

Under a new Rhode Island state law, Amazon is required to disclose to the Rhode Island tax authority the following information about sellers who made sales to Rhode Island customers in 2017:

  • Seller contact information (name and address).

To comply with this obligation, we plan to provide your information to the Rhode Island Department of Revenue by February 15, 2018.

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3 hours ago, marcandre said:

RI too....

Under a new Rhode Island state law, Amazon is required to disclose to the Rhode Island tax authority the following information about sellers who made sales to Rhode Island customers in 2017:

  • Seller contact information (name and address).

To comply with this obligation, we plan to provide your information to the Rhode Island Department of Revenue by February 15, 2018.

Different story for RI:

http://www.tax.ri.gov/Advisory/ADV 2018-03.pdf

You just need to send your customers from RI who spent more than $100 from you in 2017 a reminder notice to pay the use tax (like they are going to lol). Then you need to email RI to tell them you happily did this for them free of charge. Great plan RI lol.

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17 hours ago, asharerin said:

We have been stickering for the past 2 years. We still get "our" items back that Amazon obviously printed our FNSKU sticker and placed over another seller's FNSKU sticker. With Amazon you just need to roll your eyes and keep cashing those large checks until it all comes to an end for 3P selling on the platform.

Our minimum is $4 per item and 50% ROI. Our current average is $10 and %60 ROI. Competition is dwindling on most of our listings (beauty, health and home goods) as sellers leave or get axed and new sellers have an incredibly difficult time dealing with the Amazon craziness. But we know the end will come one day for 3P on Amazon so we continually pull all of our profits out and invest in other passive ventures.

i disagree that 3p sellers would come to a end.It is a increasingly important part of their business. It is now over 50 percent of their sales. It is also the only real way for them to be a everything store.However they seem to be headed in a direction of favoring authorized representatives of the manufacturers .With the constant increase in gating  rules fees etc. it does seem that they are moving away from the smaller sellers heading to larger authorized sellers. 

Edited by river41
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58 minutes ago, river41 said:

i disagree that 3p sellers would come to a end.It is a increasingly important part of their business. It is now over 50 percent of their sales. It is also the only real way for them to be a everything store.However they seem to be headed in a direction of favoring authorized representatives of the manufacturers .With the constant increase in gating  rules fees etc. it does seem that they are moving away from the smaller sellers heading to larger authorized sellers. 

I think things will be drastically different in 10 years or so. The technology that us sellers use to find profitable products (store inventory trackers, scanning, etc) will be more consumer mainstream and make it harder to sell toys above retail. Or God forbid people will have plastic 3D printers and can just order the designs to make toys at home. Toy sellers rely on scarcity or lack of consumer knowledge to make money on most items. There will always be people who are willing to pay more for convenience though. Side note: got another gem (newer Ghostbusters ecto) ordered direct from amazon and not 3P with a WM clearance sticker still on it.  Sometimes when i open boxes, i can't tell the difference between my defective FBA returns and actual amazon orders. 

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2 hours ago, river41 said:

i disagree that 3p sellers would come to a end.It is a increasingly important part of their business. It is now over 50 percent of their sales. It is also the only real way for them to be a everything store.However they seem to be headed in a direction of favoring authorized representatives of the manufacturers .With the constant increase in gating  rules fees etc. it does seem that they are moving away from the smaller sellers heading to larger authorized sellers. 

I agree. I see more and more manufacturers selling directly on Amazon themselves or through the vendor program. Brand becomes gated and restricted. 3P will still have their privately labeled chinese junk that nobody wants. Big brands will be manufacturer only. Distributors and wholesale is coming to an end.

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I did myself the displeasure of looking through my FBA returns today. Nearly 80% of the returns were fraudulent in some manner. Cost of doing business, fine.

What do you do about situations where someone orders some lotion. Claims they received sandals. The items were then returned and validated by Amazon to be returned to my inventory... Do i now have sandals floating around my inventory? Was this person just lying to get a free return?

Some one claims they received the wrong item but it was successfully returned to my inventory? I've never sold the item they received? Do i reimbursed for a lost item? Do they know where the original is?

If anyone has any insight on how these fulfillment mix ups/potentially fraudulently returned items are handled I'd appreciate it.

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On 2/16/2018 at 12:41 PM, landphieran said:

I did myself the displeasure of looking through my FBA returns today. Nearly 80% of the returns were fraudulent in some manner. Cost of doing business, fine.

What do you do about situations where someone orders some lotion. Claims they received sandals. The items were then returned and validated by Amazon to be returned to my inventory... Do i now have sandals floating around my inventory? Was this person just lying to get a free return?

Some one claims they received the wrong item but it was successfully returned to my inventory? I've never sold the item they received? Do i reimbursed for a lost item? Do they know where the original is?

If anyone has any insight on how these fulfillment mix ups/potentially fraudulently returned items are handled I'd appreciate it.

If it were me I would recall all of that ASIN and check them. A fulfillment center will relabel your inventory to another seller's same item to help save on their shipping cost and speed to the customer. Obviously this happens when say a customer's shipping address is on the east coast and your item is on the west coast. You get the sale, Amazon doesn't want to pony up for 2 day across country so they will do a swaparoo at both warehouses. This happens on a massive scale so sometimes a worker will place the wrong label on the wrong item and send.

Alternatively Amazon can relabel an entire shipment on receiving if another seller's is backordered but Amazon oversold and that seller has more coming in. Again in theory it should all work out but when you throw humans into the mix F-Ups happen on a regular basis. That is why I would recall to check to make sure. 

Amazon is not supposed to be doing this type of unauthorized "commingling" but it happens all of the time.

Now when your item is returned to the FC the warehouse worker is supposed to do a quick look to see if the item matches up to the picture on the screen and to make sure the packaging isn't too beat up and can pass as newish enough to sell again without a customer complaint. A worker processing over a thousand per hour is going to make a few mistakes every hour. If you have some info that it may possibly be a wrong item again if it were me I would recall all of them to inspect.

If you get the item's back and they are not what you sent then take plenty of photos, paste into a pdf, and then open a case and upload the PDF. IF you have a good track record and give positive reviews to seller support then they will help you out.

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3 hours ago, Kenxxx said:

Oh crap 1f628.png

Everything on Amazon is run on metrics. Absolutely everything (including hundreds we never see or hear about). 5 star them and write glowing comments everytime. The next agents will bend over backwards to speedily help you out. Just like us they want to keep their metrics high to keep their jobs or advance. I'm guessing 99% of sellers act all pissy and upset with them. Guess which 1% gets the real help and to stick around?

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4 hours ago, asharerin said:

If FBA is an important part of your business and/or you are a shareholder then you may want to see firsthand how alot of their warehouse operation operates:

http://amazonfctours.com/

You may have to stalk the site regularly to get an opening

 

I had no idea this existed, I've got a FC less then an hour from home, thanks for the info.

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Sphero is now a gated brand at Amazon. Got automatic approval though. 
Yes...but be careful. Got an email from Sphero Compliance a while back asking for invoices and such. I deleted listings and recalled my product. I'm sure they won't do that with all sellers, so YMMV.. but I'd be cautious unless you're buying direct.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Brickpicker Forum mobile app

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Just now, LegoBro said:

Yes...but be careful. Got an email from Sphero Compliance a while back asking for invoices and such. I deleted listings and recalled my product. I'm sure they won't do that with all sellers, so YMMV.. but I'd be cautious unless you're buying direct.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Brickpicker Forum mobile app
 

i know some folks got letters for violating MAP pricing , was that the case?

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1 minute ago, LegoBro said:

The email did not state. However..where I was priced..I would not doubt if that was the case. Is that it on avoiding letters of compliance from manufacturers? Just avoid pricing too low?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Brickpicker Forum mobile app
 

I know Sphero is (was?) big on that , however it doesn't apply to all manufactures since not all of them have a MAP policy , some do like to control distribution and limit it to authorized vendors only. 

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I was also instant approved for Sphero products and almost immediately got a letter from them that I would be reported to Amazon. I sent Spehero the invoices as requested and they said I was not approved and had 3 days to remove the products. I was selling them well above MSRP or MAP pricing when it was blazing hot around Xmas and I just pulled everything I didn't sell yet and moved it to Ebay. Sphero is pretty active on there and I would not recommend trying to resell anything from them unless you have a direct account with them. That is, sadly, why I left the McQueen Ultimate Cars from Target earlier this year.  

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6 hours ago, smittypop2 said:

I was also instant approved for Sphero products and almost immediately got a letter from them that I would be reported to Amazon. I sent Spehero the invoices as requested and they said I was not approved and had 3 days to remove the products. I was selling them well above MSRP or MAP pricing when it was blazing hot around Xmas and I just pulled everything I didn't sell yet and moved it to Ebay. Sphero is pretty active on there and I would not recommend trying to resell anything from them unless you have a direct account with them. That is, sadly, why I left the McQueen Ultimate Cars from Target earlier this year.  

you have to appreciate the fact they gave you a warning and didn't just report you

I worry that as the reach and power of amazon grow there will be more and more brands that to protect their brand actively monitor who sells their items on amazon.

Edited by river41
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On 2/18/2018 at 5:12 PM, asharerin said:

Everything on Amazon is run on metrics. Absolutely everything (including hundreds we never see or hear about). 5 star them and write glowing comments everytime. The next agents will bend over backwards to speedily help you out. Just like us they want to keep their metrics high to keep their jobs or advance. I'm guessing 99% of sellers act all pissy and upset with them. Guess which 1% gets the real help and to stick around?

i would think that if you would rate the ones that help you highly AND negative feedback the ones that are unhelpful and just copy and paste sentences that don't make sens/have nothing to do with your issue it should be even more likely to get help.  From a sellers prospective a fear of negative feedback is a more powerful motivator then a desire for positive feedback(also of course that is a motivator)so logically i would think that a combination of the 2 should be the mot likely to get you future results

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