Selling through Amazon FBA

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, landphieran said:

I spent a month or so in the winter writing a program to read all of my emails for email confirmations, deliveries etc. Mining out the item information, store, confirmation numbers, tracking and pricing and storing it in a database. Going to try and wrap it into a delivery dashboard of some sorts that keeps track of all your orders, delivery dates, missed deliveries etc. Wondering if people would be interested in something like that?

I was sick of having to manually enter all my orders. Took wayyyyy too long.

Sounds like a good idea. Does it add the sets into a spreadsheet ? Getting tired of the manual entry 

[xeeeej]

13 minutes ago, landphieran said:

I spent a month or so in the winter writing a program to read all of my emails for email confirmations, deliveries etc. Mining out the item information, store, confirmation numbers, tracking and pricing and storing it in a database. Going to try and wrap it into a delivery dashboard of some sorts that keeps track of all your orders, delivery dates, missed deliveries etc. Wondering if people would be interested in something like that?

I was sick of having to manually enter all my orders. Took wayyyyy too long.

Sounds great!

How does it interface with your email? Outlook, Gmail, etc.

[landphieran]

5 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

Sounds like a good idea. Does it add the sets into a spreadsheet ? Getting tired of the manual entry 

For my purposes I hosted a local mongodb database and pushed all of the transactions there. You can pull the data out however you wish. Mongodb has a nice feature to export as excel if you wanted everything.

1 minute ago, xeeeej said:

Sounds great!

How does it interface with your email? Outlook, Gmail, etc.

It uses gmails api to pull the emails.

The process is a bit rudimentary right now and is definitely not user friendly but I was considering polishing it up a bit.

[madisondp]

Anyone see the in-stock rate plummet? I was using hide recommendations to keep it at 100%, now it dropped to 3%. Guessing the hide feature doesn't work anymore?

As a side note, I feel like trying to manage IPI competes directly with profitability.

[Bold-Arrow]

Just got hit with anther warning a listing takedown for collectible condition . Gonna take the rest down while I work on the appeal . 

Have your listings been removed in error?
If you believe there has been an error and that the product is listed under the correct condition, please submit an explanation. Your explanation should include the following information:
-- How your listing has not violated the Condition Guidelines;
-- Supporting documents that show the removed listings have complied with the Conditions Guidelines:
- For items listed under New or Used conditions, please provide an invoice and photos of the exact product, proving item and condition authenticity.
- For items listed under Collectibles condition, please provide photos of the exact product and either a Certificate of Authenticity, a Letter of Authorization, or any other document proving item and condition authenticity.

[biking_tiger]

3 hours ago, madisondp said:

Anyone see the in-stock rate plummet? I was using hide recommendations to keep it at 100%, now it dropped to 3%. Guessing the hide feature doesn't work anymore?

As a side note, I feel like trying to manage IPI competes directly with profitability.

What does IPI mean, please and thank you...

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, biking_tiger said:

What does IPI mean, please and thank you...

inventory performance index for FBA 

[madisondp]

1 minute ago, biking_tiger said:

What does IPI mean, please and thank you...

Inventory Performance Index

[flyingpig1]

On 7/1/2021 at 3:19 PM, redcell said:

I've gotten a few hundred of those "at risk" emails over the years and have yet to have a single product actually be removed for reasons related to the CPCs.  The restock limit is what is most annoying right now...mine has ranged from 4,700 to 9,500 over the past 2 months with no rhyme or reason for why it goes up or down...it's making inventory planning over any time frame longer than a week or two pretty much impossible.

One thing I do take comfort from is the fact that there is no way Amazon is a precusor to Skynet...imagine what the terminator movies would have been like if Amazon's AI had been driving the skynet bus.

 

 

 

Yeah I'm seriously concerned what my limit is going to look like for the holiday period, these restock limits are insane and impossible to plan for.

On 7/8/2021 at 9:16 AM, madisondp said:

Anyone see the in-stock rate plummet? I was using hide recommendations to keep it at 100%, now it dropped to 3%. Guessing the hide feature doesn't work anymore?

As a side note, I feel like trying to manage IPI competes directly with profitability.

IPI is pretty pointless if all it does is limit your storage space... while you cant actually send any items in due to the restock limits. 

[Darth_Raichu]

36 minutes ago, flyingpig1 said:

 

 

 

Yeah I'm seriously concerned what my limit is going to look like for the holiday period, these restock limits are insane and impossible to plan for.

IPI is pretty pointless if all it does is limit your storage space... while you cant actually send any items in due to the restock limits. 

Can't you just fix this by sending a bunch of cheap chinese knock offs and selling them for 50% less than your competitors ?

[Mark Twain]

Out of curiosity, has anyone had a return auto-removed and returned to you to inspect this year? I'm waiting on orders to be shipped to me from March and I think others may have been waiting longer. 

[madisondp]

Out of curiosity, has anyone had a return auto-removed and returned to you to inspect this year? I'm waiting on orders to be shipped to me from March and I think others may have been waiting longer. 

I have some from January that still haven't shipped.

But some from June were returned immediately.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[flyingpig1]

On 7/8/2021 at 12:14 PM, Bold-Arrow said:

Just got hit with anther warning a listing takedown for collectible condition . Gonna take the rest down while I work on the appeal . 

Have your listings been removed in error?
If you believe there has been an error and that the product is listed under the correct condition, please submit an explanation. Your explanation should include the following information:
-- How your listing has not violated the Condition Guidelines;
-- Supporting documents that show the removed listings have complied with the Conditions Guidelines:
- For items listed under New or Used conditions, please provide an invoice and photos of the exact product, proving item and condition authenticity.
- For items listed under Collectibles condition, please provide photos of the exact product and either a Certificate of Authenticity, a Letter of Authorization, or any other document proving item and condition authenticity.

 

 

 

Had a couple of my listings hit.  Looks like they took all the used or collectable listings down for those ASINs.  I guess we gotta sell returned sets on ebay or bricklink now?  Amazon finding new ways to screw everyone over every day.

Edited July 13, 2021 by flyingpig1

[Bold-Arrow]

7 minutes ago, flyingpig1 said:

 

 

 

Had a couple of my listings hit.  Looks like they took all the used or collectable listings down for those ASINs.  I guess we gotta sell returned sets on ebay or bricklink now?  Amazon finding new ways to screw everyone over every day.

They are showing as hits under my  account performance. I shut all of these down as I work on my appeal .  

[flyingpig1]

40 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

They are showing as hits under my  account performance. I shut all of these down as I work on my appeal .  

Yeah its fun how these are hits under account performance.  At lease the loose minifig listings that got taken down for the upc thing didnt count.

 

 

Good luck with the appeal, interested to see what you hear.

[Bold-Arrow]

In the meantime I foresee many  documentation needed in our future :

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016512896/us-consumer-agency-sues-amazon-to-recall-dangerous-products

 

 

[jeff_14]

My first batch of requests from 2 months ago started at about 150 and then just dwindled down to 70 until last week when it jumped back up to 160. Still haven’t had any listings removed yet. 

[smittypop2]

2 hours ago, Bold-Arrow said:

In the meantime I foresee many  documentation needed in our future :

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016512896/us-consumer-agency-sues-amazon-to-recall-dangerous-products

 

 

Yes, this is very bad for business. 

[Darth_Raichu]

11 hours ago, Bold-Arrow said:

In the meantime I foresee many  documentation needed in our future :

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016512896/us-consumer-agency-sues-amazon-to-recall-dangerous-products

 

 

This is why we have been flooded with CPSIA requests.  Not to mention Amzn removal bots gone nuts

[Bold-Arrow]

I received an email from Amazon a bout 2 weeks ago regarding  some older units that they found at FBA that belong to me  . They’ve been slowly adding those to my inventory. Some gems in there but boy have I been slacking on tracking my stuff . 

[grackleflint]

34 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

I received an email from Amazon a bout 2 weeks ago regarding  some older units that they found at FBA that belong to me  . They’ve been slowly adding those to my inventory. Some gems in there but boy have I been slacking on tracking my stuff . 

This same thing is happening to me with inventory from last Christmas (9 months ago) that Amazon received, made available for sale and then immediately lost in a FC transfer. It's interesting to see the current selling prices vs what I originally priced them at (11 are lower, 3 are substantially higher).

I'm constantly refreshing the inventory list every day to try and catch those with old lower prices.

Amazon did reimburse me for the lost inventory so I would hate to have to be charged for them now finally finding what they lost. FBA reimbursements are like "free" money.

I now have an 8-month pending order that is apparently being fulfilled now from one of the found sets. I hope the original buyer is just shocked and returns it since it's one of the sets where the price has now doubled.

What's really interesting is a stranded inventory item from almost 6 years ago (Dec 2015) that Amazon will apparently return to me.

[Darth_Raichu]

39 minutes ago, grackleflint said:

This same thing is happening to me with inventory from last Christmas (9 months ago) that Amazon received, made available for sale and then immediately lost in a FC transfer. It's interesting to see the current selling prices vs what I originally priced them at (11 are lower, 3 are substantially higher).

I'm constantly refreshing the inventory list every day to try and catch those with old lower prices.

Amazon did reimburse me for the lost inventory so I would hate to have to be charged for them now finally finding what they lost. FBA reimbursements are like "free" money.

I now have an 8-month pending order that is apparently being fulfilled now from one of the found sets. I hope the original buyer is just shocked and returns it since it's one of the sets where the price has now doubled.

What's really interesting is a stranded inventory item from almost 6 years ago (Dec 2015) that Amazon will apparently return to me.

Hmm, should I put this newly found item back to FBA inventory or send it back to me so I can inspect it before sending it back to FBA? 

[redcell]

I've had sets from 8 years ago show up in my inventory.

[exciter1]

1 hour ago, redcell said:

I've had sets from 8 years ago show up in my inventory.

Same, crazy

[legorunner]

Looking for a bit of advice: I've been selling FBA since 2016 and have always shipped in my Q4 Inventory 1 box / 1 shipment at a time, starting around now and continuing for the next couple of months. This has several distinct advantages: 

1) If I price too low and stuff starts to sell too early, I can adjust before sending in more inventory

2) Since it is 1 box per shipment, I've never had to deal with the issue where one of the boxes boxes in a shipment fails to get checked in. 

3) When the inevitable mess with "High Pricing Errors" or Documents Requests kicks in, I don't have to recall as much. 

4) Last year, aside from oversized inventory, every shipment went to my local Amazon center. 

The downside of this is approach is it takes a lot of time - time to set up, gather the inventory I want to send in that day, play Tetris to figure out what will actually fit in the box, create the shipment and label the sets then play Tetris a second time to get them back in the box, then clean up. Knowing that I assume the risks addressed in 1-4, I am thinking this year of sending about half of my inventory in at once to save a load of time, but am I missing anything, any other risks with this approach I haven't thought of?

FYI I'm relatively small time, I'll be sending in around 250 sets this year for Q4. I don't have the space / time to fulfill myself either, so no need to weigh in on advice with that. Thanks!