Selling Lego on Amazon.com

[Bold-Arrow]

6 minutes ago, redcell said:

I really wonder what genius at Amazon woke up one day and thought "You know what's really missing from the internet these days?  Lack of anonymity...maybe we should do something about that.  I think people really want others to know who they are when they're acting like complete a-holes."

part of me believes they know what they are doing. The NSFE (new seller form experience ), has added a lot of limitations whether  it be limited DMs, lack of tagging capabilities, and what can and cant be posted about information gathered from CS rep which is now considered confidential.  

[smittypop2]

1 minute ago, Bold-Arrow said:

part of me believes they know what they are doing. The NSFE (new seller form experience ), has added a lot of limitations whether  it be limited DMs, lack of tagging capabilities, and what can and cant be posted about information gathered from CS rep which is now considered confidential.  

I wholeheartedly agree. I think they are doing everything they can to get rid of most of us. They want a few super high volume sellers that only sell brand new stuff for msrp a teeny bit above or below that. That is how it is going to end up as the catalog has and continues to be decimated from Price Alerts and Compliance Documents. I would say at least 50% of my 4k++ Skus I had listed over a year ago are obsolete now. I fear the end is nigh. 

[redcell]

Just now, Bold-Arrow said:

part of me believes they know what they are doing. The NSFE (new seller form experience ), has added a lot of limitations whether  it be limited DMs, lack of tagging capabilities, and what can and cant be posted about information gathered from CS rep which is now considered confidential.  

I don't follow the forums super closely, but it definitely occurred to me that Amazon might have wanted to elicit the exact response that it did in the event that it viewed the forums as being dominated by trolling a-holes who might not be as willing to be a-holes if they knew light was shining on them.  It seems like every time I drop in on a thread, there is always some group of people basically telling the original poster that Amazon isn't for them, their business model doesn't work on Amazon, they're stupid, or something of the sort.  That's definitely one of the reasons why I rarely go there.

I made my last post here mostly because I found the idea of eliminating anonymity on an internet forum pretty funny.  It's kind of like selling a car without the windshield...sure it will work, but it's going to be a whole less pleasant. 

[redcell]

1 minute ago, smittypop2 said:

I wholeheartedly agree. I think they are doing everything they can to get rid of most of us. They want a few super high volume sellers that only sell brand new stuff for msrp a teeny bit above or below that. That is how it is going to end up as the catalog has and continues to be decimated from Price Alerts and Compliance Documents. I would say at least 50% of my 4k++ Skus I had listed over a year ago are obsolete now. I fear the end is nigh. 

I don't think that they're actively trying to get rid of sellers, but are becoming more and more focused on making the system run as efficiently as possible.  Putting aside the compliance document requests, so much of what they've done over the last few years seems designed to creates incentives or disincentives for seller behaviors that cost them money.  For example, I imagine that the process of having their staff sticker inventory as it comes into a FC is pretty inefficient and that their throughput would increase dramatically if sellers did more of it...so they jack the sticker charge up.  They don't want to have a ton of their storage capacity eaten up with stale inventory just sitting around so they impose restock limits and jack up long-term storage fees.  Etc., etc.  I'm just guessing and have no inside knowledge, but that's what's made sense to me over the past few years.

[cobrakai]

5 minutes ago, smittypop2 said:

I wholeheartedly agree. I think they are doing everything they can to get rid of most of us. They want a few super high volume sellers that only sell brand new stuff for msrp a teeny bit above or below that. That is how it is going to end up as the catalog has and continues to be decimated from Price Alerts and Compliance Documents. I would say at least 50% of my 4k++ Skus I had listed over a year ago are obsolete now. I fear the end is nigh. 

Makes me sad to think about how good Amazon used to be.  I used to spend almost every day shopping in stores doing retail arbitrage in the toy aisles. I only been out shopping like that maybe 5 or 10 times since Feb. 2020. On the bright side, Walmart is getting a little better.  My last Walmart payout was actually 30% higher than my Amazon payout (almost 100% Walmart fulfilled items.)

[Bricklectic]

17 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

On the bright side, Walmart is getting a little better.  My last Walmart payout was actually 30% higher than my Amazon payout (almost 100% Walmart fulfilled items.)

Thats counter to everything Ive been hearing.

Is that with equal inventory at both amazon and walmart

[cobrakai]

9 minutes ago, Bricklectic said:

Thats counter to everything Ive been hearing.

Is that with equal inventory at both amazon and walmart

No, my Amazon inventory is probably 4x my Walmart inventory.  I haven't done much Lego on Walmart so this is just other misc. toys.  It is a delicate balance because because Amazon = higher volume/lower prices and Walmart =lower volume/higher prices.  So many things are selling for 50-100% higher price on Walmart, but you could sell 20 a day on Amazon and maybe 1 or 2 a day on Walmart. Lots of bad buys that I can sell for a profit on Walmart and would sell for a loss on Amazon right now.

[Darth_Raichu]

49 minutes ago, redcell said:

I don't follow the forums super closely, but it definitely occurred to me that Amazon might have wanted to elicit the exact response that it did in the event that it viewed the forums as being dominated by trolling a-holes who might not be as willing to be a-holes if they knew light was shining on them.  It seems like every time I drop in on a thread, there is always some group of people basically telling the original poster that Amazon isn't for them, their business model doesn't work on Amazon, they're stupid, or something of the sort.  That's definitely one of the reasons why I rarely go there.

I made my last post here mostly because I found the idea of eliminating anonymity on an internet forum pretty funny.  It's kind of like selling a car without the windshield...sure it will work, but it's going to be a whole less pleasant. 

There is a group of veteran users there who have been very efficient at helping people providing those people understand the basic rules for selling on Amazon.  They do mock the dropshippers mercilessly since dropshipping is not allowed on Amazon.  There is a good percentage of problems / complaints on that forum which root causes can be traced to dropshippers getting caught by Amazon.

I am curious how the mods are going to handle these posts in NSFE, or how many of these questions / complaints are going to be answered until the mods give up

[brickology101]

There is a group of veteran users there who have been very efficient at helping people providing those people understand the basic rules for selling on Amazon.  They do mock the dropshippers mercilessly since dropshipping is not allowed on Amazon.  There is a good percentage of problems / complaints on that forum which root causes can be traced to dropshippers getting caught by Amazon.
I am curious how the mods are going to handle these posts in NSFE, or how many of these questions / complaints are going to be answered until the mods give up

They also have low esteem for retail arbitrage in general.


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[Mark Twain]

There is a group of veteran users there who have been very efficient at helping people providing those people understand the basic rules for selling on Amazon.  They do mock the dropshippers mercilessly since dropshipping is not allowed on Amazon.  There is a good percentage of problems / complaints on that forum which root causes can be traced to dropshippers getting caught by Amazon.
I am curious how the mods are going to handle these posts in NSFE, or how many of these questions / complaints are going to be answered until the mods give up

I have a feeling we’re going to see a higher shift toward AI chatbots operating on the forums and in CS in general. Looking at what Google and OpenAI are working on with language models now and it isn’t too much of a stretch to say the majority of these interactions will be synthetic. Heck, I’d bet they will replace CS with AI chatbots much quicker than replace workers with AI robots like Musk wants to.


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[Darth_Raichu]

1 hour ago, smittypop2 said:

I wholeheartedly agree. I think they are doing everything they can to get rid of most of us. They want a few super high volume sellers that only sell brand new stuff for msrp a teeny bit above or below that. That is how it is going to end up as the catalog has and continues to be decimated from Price Alerts and Compliance Documents. I would say at least 50% of my 4k++ Skus I had listed over a year ago are obsolete now. I fear the end is nigh. 

I think it is more about controlling the information.  They still want the sales commissions from 3PS, but they won't tolerate any b*tching and moaning on their own platform (that forum is still a part of Amazon).

8 minutes ago, brickology101 said:

They also have low esteem for retail arbitrage in general.


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Unfortunately correct

[Darth_Raichu]

9 minutes ago, Mark Twain said:

I have a feeling we’re going to see a higher shift toward AI chatbots operating on the forums and in CS in general. Looking at what Google and OpenAI are working on with language models now and it isn’t too much of a stretch to say the majority of these interactions will be synthetic. Heck, I’d bet they will replace CS with AI chatbots much quicker than replace workers with AI robots like Musk wants to.


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Most likely.  Kind of related, Elon is also pushing for pay for blue-check model, meaning no anonymity on Twitter

[landphieran]

Are people sending normal inventory to the frustration free listing in Amazon? I can't imagine all of these sellers have individual cartons on their sets.

[vasp]

3 hours ago, landphieran said:

Are people sending normal inventory to the frustration free listing in Amazon? I can't imagine all of these sellers have individual cartons on their sets.

I sent some last year. Had no issues.

[Bricklectic]

1 hour ago, vasp said:

I sent some last year. Had no issues.

same here. even when amazon themself sells FF it varies...

[donbee]

Are people sending normal inventory to the frustration free listing in Amazon? I can't imagine all of these sellers have individual cartons on their sets.

I don’t.
Feels like a gamble. As a shopper, I’d be super pissed if I ordered FF and got a damaged regular shipping box.


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[Bricklectic]

19 minutes ago, donbee said:

I don’t.
Feels like a gamble. As a shopper, I’d be super pissed if I ordered FF and got a damaged regular shipping box.


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If I felt that was the expectation of the buyer, I would not do it. However, imo, people buy the FF variety indiscriminately, mostly based on whatever the default link sends them to. Why do I think that? Because in many cases the FF variety is as much as 3-10% higher and people still buy. I highly doubt people are paying that sort of premium for a (maybe) better box. Plus, I've never had a complaint. 

[Darth_Raichu]

For sets with 2 (or more) ASINs on Amazon.  Would Amazon have any problem if I use my FBA inventory from 1st ASIN to fulfill FBM order from the secondary ASIN ?  Does anyone know if this break any Amazon's rule?

[pharmjod]

How would you even do that? You'd have to place an order and do a new shipping address for the customer right? You'd be incurring a double whammy of fees.

[Darth_Raichu]

50 minutes ago, pharmjod said:

How would you even do that? You'd have to place an order and do a new shipping address for the customer right? You'd be incurring a double whammy of fees.

Thanks for reminding me about the fees. I thought I could save on shipping costs, but the P&P fee would be more than the difference in postage costs.   

[landphieran]

1 hour ago, Darth_Raichu said:

Thanks for reminding me about the fees. I thought I could save on shipping costs, but the P&P fee would be more than the difference in postage costs.   

You can create a fulfillment order and is something I do time to time if I accidentally sent in sets that i had listed as FBM

[pharmjod]

11 minutes ago, landphieran said:

You can create a fulfillment order and is something I do time to time if I accidentally sent in sets that i had listed as FBM

Can you explain this or point me to somewhere that does? I'm ignorant on this.

[landphieran]

4 minutes ago, pharmjod said:

Can you explain this or point me to somewhere that does? I'm ignorant on this.

Assuming you have inventory available at Amazon:

Manage Inventory -> Find the item you are looking for -> edit -> Create Fulfillment order

 

[pharmjod]

5 minutes ago, landphieran said:

Assuming you have inventory available at Amazon:

Manage Inventory -> Find the item you are looking for -> edit -> Create Fulfillment order

 

Thanks! How do the fees work on that if it's originally an FBM purchase? I guess it is still better than taking a hit on metrics. 

[landphieran]

9 minutes ago, pharmjod said:

Thanks! How do the fees work on that if it's originally an FBM purchase? I guess it is still better than taking a hit on metrics. 

You pay the fee's for the fbm order, then the cost of the shipping fulfillment from Amazon. I recently did it for a large set and shipping was 10.95 which was 8$ cheaper than it would of cost me + cost of box and labor (minus the cost of sending the inventory to Amazon).

Fulfillment orders for large sets are generally cheaper (due to the shipping savings), smaller items usually cost more to ship through fulfillment.