Selling Lego on Amazon.com

[landphieran]

Shipments are taking 2 weeks to be received by Amazon. Hope they get their stuff together. The volume is only going to get worse.

[Sauromosis]

(WSJ) - United Parcel Service Inc. plans to impose hefty fees on large shippers during the holiday season, reflecting the added complexity and cost of an expected crush of online orders amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Edited August 7, 2020 by sauromosis

[Serejai]

That's wonderful. My average shipping costs have already doubled this year because of stupid changes to their dimensional weight billing (seems any smaller box that isn't full of lead gets billed at 2-3x the actual weight these days). Can't wait to see how Amazon passes these new fees onto us.

[cobrakai]

2 minutes ago, Serejai said:

That's wonderful. My average shipping costs have already doubled this year because of stupid changes to their dimensional weight billing (seems any smaller box that isn't full of lead gets billed at 2-3x the actual weight these days). Can't wait to see how Amazon passes these new fees onto us.

It probably won't really impact FBA inbound costs.  I think FedEx & UPS are getting killed on all the small packages that they have to deliver to your front door. Making 1 stop and picking up a bunch of boxes isn't as expensive as walking up to 50 doorsteps to set down 1 small box of something.  They probably do better with 50 packages/1 stop than 50 packages to 50 different doorsteps.

[Serejai]

7 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

It probably won't really impact FBA inbound costs.  I think FedEx & UPS are getting killed on all the small packages that they have to deliver to your front door. Making 1 stop and picking up a bunch of boxes isn't as expensive as walking up to 50 doorsteps to set down 1 small box of something.  They probably do better with 50 packages/1 stop than 50 packages to 50 different doorsteps.

I interpreted "large shippers" to mean companies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. As in when Amazon sells your item it's going to cost them more to ship it to the customer; a cost that will surely be passed on to us sellers. So I'm less worried about the inbound costs and more worried about the pick and pack fees going up to offset any shipping surcharges Amazon gets hit with.

[cobrakai]

1 minute ago, Serejai said:

I interpreted "large shippers" to mean companies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. As in when Amazon sells your item it's going to cost them more to ship it to the customer; a cost that will surely be passed on to us sellers. So I'm less worried about the inbound costs and more worried about the pick and pack fees going up to offset any shipping surcharges Amazon gets hit with.

Is anyone still getting many Amazon orders from UPS, FedEx, or USPS?  99% of my orders come from Amazon vans or flex drivers.  Usually just my removal orders come from UPS.

[Serejai]

Good question. 99% of my orders for the past ~two years have come from flex drivers. Every so often I get a FedEx or UPS but it's extremely rare. On the other hand my parents that live only a few miles away have never gotten a flex driver before; all of theirs come via UPS. I think it is highly dependent on where you live and I'm willing to bet Amazon doesn't deliver in the majority of areas. I know they only deliver here because their distribution center for Prime Now and their Flex hub is just down the street from me, but I guess the extra five miles to my parent's house is too far for them.

[minicoopers11]

4 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

Is anyone still getting many Amazon orders from UPS, FedEx, or USPS?  99% of my orders come from Amazon vans or flex drivers.  Usually just my removal orders come from UPS.

All have been Amazon vans for me except one or two on a Sunday from USPS (which I'm 99% sure were FBA or sold by Amazon.com, but I don't remember). I go for a jog every afternoon and sometimes literally see 3-4 different Amazon vans prowling the neighborhood.

Edited August 7, 2020 by minicoopers11

[cobrakai]

1 minute ago, Serejai said:

Good question. 99% of my orders for the past ~two years have come from flex drivers. Every so often I get a FedEx or UPS but it's extremely rare. On the other hand my parents that live only a few miles away have never gotten a flex driver before; all of theirs come via UPS. I think it is highly dependent on where you live and I'm willing to bet Amazon doesn't deliver in the majority of areas. I know they only deliver here because their distribution center for Prime Now and their Flex hub is just down the street from me, but I guess the extra five miles to my parent's house is too far for them.

They could still increase fulfillment fees to be "in-line" with industry standard shipping rates....or something like that.  I'm more worried about the stuff going on with USPS and late MF/Ebay orders.  Hopefully it is all talk.

[Serejai]

I have a family member that works at a regional USPS distribution hub and they said it's getting really bad. The local drivers are being forced to slow down deliveries right now because they aren't allowing overtime anymore and have cut hours, so any packages that aren't delivered by the time a shift ends are taken back to the hub. This is creating an increasing backlog of packages and now the regional distribution hub is getting backed up because of it. I think it's going to be an absolute mess over the holidays but I hope I'm wrong.

[$20 on joe vs dan]

18 minutes ago, minicoopers11 said:

All have been Amazon vans for me except one or two on a Sunday from USPS (which I'm 99% sure were FBA or sold by Amazon.com, but I don't remember). I go for a jog every afternoon and sometimes literally see 3-4 different Amazon vans prowling the neighborhood.

the proliferation of delivery vehicles is not a good thing...a 10 year old on a bike was killed by a UPS truck in my town of 15K

this has got me thinking about what it means to "run a business" in my residential neighborhood that adds to this problem.

[$20 on joe vs dan]

12 minutes ago, Serejai said:

I have a family member that works at a regional USPS distribution hub and they said it's getting really bad. The local drivers are being forced to slow down deliveries right now because they aren't allowing overtime anymore and have cut hours, so any packages that aren't delivered by the time a shift ends are taken back to the hub. This is creating an increasing backlog of packages and now the regional distribution hub is getting backed up because of it. I think it's going to be an absolute mess over the holidays but I hope I'm wrong.

OT culture is bad...no business should be reliant on habitual OT as it eventually becomes the norm for both owner, managers and workers...expectations become out-of-wack w/ the original business model and financial frame-work which may have been sound once...but becomes out-of-date

[Sauromosis]

6 minutes ago, $20 on joe vs dan said:

the proliferation of delivery vehicles is not a good thing...a 10 year old on a bike was killed by a UPS truck in my town of 15K

this has got me thinking about what it means to "run a business" in my residential neighborhood that adds to this problem.

Some of them really do drive like ****. Racing through our neighborhood, backing up really quickly in driveways and intersections, driving through the grass edges...they haven't been trained in the same way that UPS and FedEx drivers are, that's really obvious.

Edited August 7, 2020 by sauromosis

[jbacunn]

1 minute ago, $20 on joe vs dan said:

OT culture is bad...no business should be reliant on habitual OT as it eventually becomes the norm for both owner, managers and workers...expectations become out-of-wack w/ the original business model and financial frame-work which may have been sound once...but becomes out-of-date

Agreed but the answer to the problem is not to just cutoff OT. The answer is to determine what’s causing the OT and make changes to the processes/personnel so that OT isn’t necessary any longer. Just cutting off OT solves nothing and actually makes the problems worse as was documented by the employee. 

[cobrakai]

19 minutes ago, Serejai said:

I have a family member that works at a regional USPS distribution hub and they said it's getting really bad. The local drivers are being forced to slow down deliveries right now because they aren't allowing overtime anymore and have cut hours, so any packages that aren't delivered by the time a shift ends are taken back to the hub. This is creating an increasing backlog of packages and now the regional distribution hub is getting backed up because of it. I think it's going to be an absolute mess over the holidays but I hope I'm wrong.

A lot of sellers are excited to do MF during the holidays this year with the storage limits & check-in delays.  This is the other side of it that could be problematic.  Amazon (& Ebay) need to preemptively figure something out ahead of time so that sellers aren't punished for late deliveries out of their control.  They both did this during April/May and they are probably going to have to stop tracking these metrics in Q4 also.

[Shortbus311]

OT culture is bad...no business should be reliant on habitual OT as it eventually becomes the norm for both owner, managers and workers...expectations become out-of-wack w/ the original business model and financial frame-work which may have been sound once...but becomes out-of-date

I'm guessing that it is probably cheaper for USPS to just pay overtime to their drivers rather than to hire the extra personnel they would need after you factor in benefits for the new people.

[Serejai]

8 minutes ago, Shortbus311 said:

17 minutes ago, $20 on joe vs dan said:

OT culture is bad...no business should be reliant on habitual OT as it eventually becomes the norm for both owner, managers and workers...expectations become out-of-wack w/ the original business model and financial frame-work which may have been sound once...but becomes out-of-date

I'm guessing that it is probably cheaper for USPS to just pay overtime to their drivers rather than to hire the extra personnel they would need after you factor in benefits for the new people.

This is pretty much it. Because of the really stupid law requiring USPS to pre-fund retirement accounts it is infinitely more expensive to hire a new body than it is to pay OT to existing ones. I agree that OT is not a healthy business model but the blame for this lies with the Bush administration and the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

[Darth_Raichu]

1 minute ago, cobrakai said:

A lot of sellers are excited to do MF during the holidays this year with the storage limits & check-in delays.  This is the other side of it that could be problematic.  Amazon (& Ebay) need to preemptively figure something out ahead of time so that sellers aren't punished for late deliveries out of their control.  They both did this during April/May and they are probably going to have to stop tracking these metrics in Q4 also.

Yup, I saw both sides of the FBM/FBA coin. I am getting too tired with trying to maneuver around all of these sh*t 

[Sauromosis]

 

[cobrakai]

4 minutes ago, sauromosis said:

 

I noticed that last night when I went to request my pickup.  The mobile app request worked and I got an e-mail confirmation.

[minicoopers11]

Right, I got the same error on the laptop. Tried a few times, hours apart. Never worked (this is first long outage that I remember in a while). However, the app worked flawlessly. Got an e-mail confirmation immediately.

Edit: I don't know how long they've been trying, but I scheduled all of my pickups last week (about 3 I think) on the laptop successfully.

Edited August 10, 2020 by minicoopers11

[DadsAFOL]

Does anyone know how to get to the details of a refund?   We have a FBM order that was shipped to Mexico and tracking shows stuck in transit, likely due to COVID.  A full refund was just posted to the order, but there is nothing in Manage Returns, and no details on the order or in the transaction history.   I'm assuming this was something initiated by Amazon customer service for the buyer, but there was no communication to us.  Probably not worth the time to try to fight it, but worth a shot.

PS. Yes, I disabled orders to Mexico.   Never should have enabled that in the first place.

[Serejai]

41 minutes ago, DadsAFOL said:

Does anyone know how to get to the details of a refund?   We have a FBM order that was shipped to Mexico and tracking shows stuck in transit, likely due to COVID.  A full refund was just posted to the order, but there is nothing in Manage Returns, and no details on the order or in the transaction history.   I'm assuming this was something initiated by Amazon customer service for the buyer, but there was no communication to us.  Probably not worth the time to try to fight it, but worth a shot.

PS. Yes, I disabled orders to Mexico.   Never should have enabled that in the first place.

If you're on the professional plan you should have something in your Reports tab specifically for that. Just generate a date range support for all returns, or search a transaction report by ASIN.

If you don't have professional, I have no idea.

[Phil B]

2 hours ago, DadsAFOL said:

Does anyone know how to get to the details of a refund?   We have a FBM order that was shipped to Mexico and tracking shows stuck in transit, likely due to COVID.  A full refund was just posted to the order, but there is nothing in Manage Returns, and no details on the order or in the transaction history.   I'm assuming this was something initiated by Amazon customer service for the buyer, but there was no communication to us.  Probably not worth the time to try to fight it, but worth a shot.

PS. Yes, I disabled orders to Mexico.   Never should have enabled that in the first place.

I had an FBA return the other day that didn't show anything in any of the return reports. But 24hrs later I got the return notification and the reversal transaction started showing up. So maybe you just need to wait?

In a similar vain ... I have two purchases that show up as $0.00 sell price (I think I mentioned this before). Likely substitutions for lost or severely damaged items, but they were on 7/22 and 7/25 and I still haven't been reimbursed. When I raised a case for one of them I was told I had to wait 45 days because that's how long the customer had to return the item ... weird but I guess past Labor Day I need to open up cases for these.

[Serejai]

2 minutes ago, Phil B said:

I had an FBA return the other day that didn't show anything in any of the return reports. But 24hrs later I got the return notification and the reversal transaction started showing up. So maybe you just need to wait?

In a similar vain ... I have two purchases that show up as $0.00 sell price (I think I mentioned this before). Likely substitutions for lost or severely damaged items, but they were on 7/22 and 7/25 and I still haven't been reimbursed. When I raised a case for one of them I was told I had to wait 45 days because that's how long the customer had to return the item ... weird but I guess past Labor Day I need to open up cases for these.

Currently have a 43 day old $600 return that hasn't been sent back by the customer yet. I'm hoping Amazon just pays me automatically in two days but I have a feeling I'm gonna have to fight them for it