ASGTG Summary: March 24, 2017

1. Here are my thoughts regarding the email Amazon sent using 3rd party software for returns. These are simply my observations and investigate yourselves before you make a decision.

a) The main point of the email was wasteful cases. I had mentioned this recently in a chat about Amazon not liking cases being opened and being wrong. The major refund services have over 90% “success rate”. A wasteful case is when you submit a case and there is nothing recovered.

b) Most refund companies are doing the following. Downloading various reports and doing calculations offline to reconcile your inventory. If they identify a discrepancy, a human manually opens a case and submits the case, I am unsure what makes this a 3RD part “tool” any different than a spreadsheet, calculator or a pencil. No software is interacting with Amazon as far as I can tell. If you reconcile “internally”, I’m unsure what makes you any different as the process is the same. Furthermore, if the calculations are not done efficiently, your likely not having an over 90% success rate.

c) The email did not come from Seller Performance.

d) It likely was targeting services that interact with Amazon via software and open automated cases. These cases may have a lower success rate.

e) This line is what makes me nervous “However, we will automatically close any existing cases that were created on your behalf by third-party services. In addition, we will automatically close any new cases that are created by third-party services.”. They didn’t say “by these third-party services”. Amazon may want to try to stop accurate reconciliations and then try to figure out why it’s against TOS.

Summary. You can go back 18 months when doing reconciliation so if you pause for a few weeks, you can “catch up” later. I think a clarification will be coming from Amazon. I will make sure to post here if anything changes.

2. I really have no words of thanks and appreciation to the 100s of friends and colleagues that came over to say HI at the prosper show. I had the honor of moderating Jeff Cohen’s amazing session on Product Reviews. Jeff pointed out that refunding a buyer out of the platform is clearly Black Hat tactic and maybe even worse than just breaking TOS.

3. Kevin Rizer, host of the world famous Private Label Podcast, will be keynote speaker #2 at the event April 27th.

Reserve Your Place Today:

The speakers are a collection of masterminds in the Amazon Sellers community.

4. This was interesting “Whilst we do appreciate efforts made to resolve specific issues with orders, all remedies you are proposing should prevent future complaints and be relevant to the issues on an account-level. If your pan of action includes implementing or updating processes, please provide specific details regarding….” – I think this comes when you make grandiose promises on listing details.