Power Sellers Unite

jsilver608 · Joined: 01 Mar 2011 Posts: 3

I've been a seller on Amazon for a little over a year now and I ran into some weird technical issues today.

When I close a listing, it's permanently removed from my inventory (I can no longer see it in any of the searches, inactive or active and my total number of inactives+active is decremented by 1).

I also haven't had an order in a little over a week (and I've been consistently getting orders every day for the past 2 months).

This all seems to be happening after amazon made their new interface changes.

Is anyone else running into these issues?

portocall · Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 157

That's just Amazon.

These problems are pretty usual. I've found that the items listed very often is different on the various screens and have lost one, and sometimes 4 or 5 items, into thin air. They show up sometimes weeks later.

Amazon does not like to admit errors or mistakes. If there is a system wide glitch it usually takes a few days for Amazon to admit it and usually longer to fix it. Sellers are pretty much at their mercy. Amazon knows that they're the big man on campus and know that sellers will stick around for the higher prices they can get there.

Like you my sales have stopped as many others have according to the message boards at Amazon. This happens almost every time Amazon makes a big change. It happened a couple of months ago when Amazon's server crashed and I don't think things ever returned to normal.
This latest change in the listing screens have left some of my items out in thin air, I've had to go back and relist and make corrections after the system dropped information or mysteriously changed it, put info in the wrong fields etc.

Also, Amazon steers buyers to the products it wants to sell in a MAJOR way - that's where ebay got the idea for messed batch search. I recently tested some of my listings and could not get ANY of them in a search of key words or even in the categories they were listed in. The searches brought up all new books, most from Amazon - no used or Amazon Marketplace items at all. The only way that I found my items in search was to enter at least three keywords from the title IN EXACT ORDER.

Anyway, yes this has been for me pretty normal Amazon stuff. The IT team there doesn't seem to have it together or something. Glitch City it is.
8)

lifemall · Joined: 07 Jun 2011 Posts: 37

Strange, I thought amazon customer service (for sellers) was pretty good. (better than ebay)

jsilver608 · Joined: 01 Mar 2011 Posts: 3

I finally got a response today.

They confirmed that these have been deleted and told me that I must be clicking the "delete" button instead of the "close listing" one.

I tried a few more items today with mixed results. Some are deleted and some are closed.

Besides this issue, it's a little worrying to me that I still haven't had an order since their new set of changes. It makes no sense to me that I would be getting at least an order a day since January and now they've suddenly all stopped.

I guess it's time to start selling elsewhere...

portocall · Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 157

I haven't had a good experience with Amazon seller service (much different than customer -buyer service)

Also, I'm sorry to say, but just for your info. Amazon has "speed limits" and "speed bumps" for individual sellers. These keep a seller from selling too much too fast - supposedly so the level of service remains high as the seller isn't overwhelmed with orders. According to some sellers on Amazon's message boards, a seller can have these limits adjusted, but you have to ask and nobody seems to know the formula for what "too many sales" are. I suspect it has more to do with getting the most seller fees as possible.

Also, I'm sorry to say, like ebay, Amazon does not show all items to all potential buyers. They rotate the items around to their servers around the country. Some sellers there (according to the message boards) can tell when they've been moved to different server by the increase or decrease in sales. If most (or all) of your sales tend to come from just a few states or just a couple areas of the country, you can kinda tell where your items are being shown.

All this is very hush, hush and secret. Notice you don't know how many views your items get (unless Amazon is on you to improve them with pictures etc) Amazon individual sellers have long wanted this info to improve sales and traffic, but can't get it. Amazon has control over who sees what on their site and they don't want the little sellers interfering with their system (by changing listings that have few views, removing listings with few views etc)

Also, I'm sorry to say, individual sellers on Amazon seem to be at the bottom of the heap, and tend to get the glitches that effect them fixed last (again, this is often posted on Amazon's boards)

Yep, that's just Amazon. For all its problems, it's still one of the few places to make a buck now-adays. But, not much more than a buck!

Schistosomiasis · Joined: 19 Jan 2010 Posts: 192

Hi jsilver608,

If you have too many items to comfortably pick through and relist by hand, I'd suggest wiping your whole inventory and uploading a new file of your current stock. I do this from time to time to sync up my inventory to make sure it's correct.

Good luck, and don't give up on Amazon just yet. These little glithces, and sales ups and downs, are a small price to pay for access to the huge customer base. You can also try another site without giving up Amazon. Just remember to sync up your inventory so you don't stock out.

Good luck!

jsilver608 · Joined: 01 Mar 2011 Posts: 3

I was just ranting.

Amazon is still the best place to sell items in terms of traffic, but I have signed up with a few other sites. Either way, I think it's a good idea to diversify (just in case there are glitches or problems with one site).

I added some new items today and I got a sale within an hour. I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or if the action of adding an item somehow contributed to this.

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

lifemall wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")Strange, I thought amazon customer service (for sellers) was pretty good. (better than ebay)

The customer service is good, yes, but that does not mean the system always works properly.

CS

portocall · Joined: 05 Jun 2009 Posts: 157

As I said above, I think that Amazon is the glitchiest mess out there. And I'm not just talking about selling sights. I just spent over an hour on a few listings - AND THEY'RE STILL NOT RIGHT!!!! because of Amazon's new system - just as shoddy as the last one.

Amazon has the worst design and IT around. It's amazing they can sell anything there.

But, yes the traffic is sort of there - although lately I can't sell a thing AND my items still do not turn up in search a majority of the time.

And of course, you have the "funny" often vicious Amazon sellers who like to blow out other seller's descriptions and photos. They replace them with either nothing of carp. Two great images I put up on Amazon on very nice books are now replaced with photos of trashed, torn, stained books that are barely fit for the trash heap. Why? I think its because some Amazon sellers don't want the competition.

My motto - If you plan to sell on Amazon, be prepared. It ain't no picknick. :)

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

portocall wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")And of course, you have the "funny" often vicious Amazon sellers who like to blow out other seller's descriptions and photos. They replace them with either nothing of carp. Two great images I put up on Amazon on very nice books are now replaced with photos of trashed, torn, stained books that are barely fit for the trash heap. Why? I think its because some Amazon sellers don't want the competition.

78 of the 134 items we have on Amazon have no product description because the have all been deleted by other sellers.

I stopped caring about it/trying to fix these things for the obvious reason that if Amazon doesn't care about their site, why should I?