30,000 pieces of inventory were suddenly abandoned, the seller said: Save me!

30 million units of inventory were abandoned by Amazon. Even if you clicked the cancel button desperately, you could only save part of it. What's worse, the cancel button was inoperable and you could only watch a large amount of inventory being abandoned. The same situation is not uncommon. For those abandoned inventory, Amazon will partially recycle it for secondary sales, which is equivalent to following the sellers. It's really a bit ugly. What nourishes Amazon is a large number of returns and sellers' inventory backlogs.

Amazon seller's 30,000 stocks suddenly abandoned

"It's the weekend and Amazon suddenly abandoned my 30,000 pieces of inventory. Who can save me?" A seller issued a cry for help on a social platform.

Amazon quietly abandoned the seller's inventory over the weekend. By the time the situation was discovered, 3,000 units had already been abandoned. The seller began to click "Cancel" desperately, but Amazon was still abandoning them. In the end, the seller rescued more than 6,000 units, but Amazon had already abandoned more than 5,000 units. Opening a case and asking customer service to cancel the order did not help.

It is understood that the seller had been operating normally on Amazon, but a turning point occurred on the second day of the Chinese New Year: the product was complained of infringement, and nearly 30,000 inventory had been reserved by Amazon. In order to save the link and inventory, the seller has been looking for service providers to appeal. On Thursday, the appeal was finally successful, and the inventory became unsaleable. The seller thought: "It doesn't matter if the link can't be restored, but it's okay if the inventory can be restored."

However, Amazon started creating abandoned orders over the weekend, and the sellers’ inventory was abandoned. Currently, sellers are still thinking about “cancelling pending inventory”, “is there any way to cancel pending inventory immediately”, “is it possible to get the abandoned products back?”, “will Amazon settle accounts later”, etc.

However, based on feedback from peers, it is a bit difficult for sellers to realize the above ideas.

A seller said bluntly: "Even if you cancel successfully, Amazon will still discard the products that need to be discarded." Amazon's choice to remove inventory is irreversible. Even if the seller cancels the disposal order, some products will continue to be removed because they have been locked, and it is unlikely that the seller will be able to get the products back.

Many sellers have encountered the same situation. In their opinion: "Once the removal order is generated, it cannot be cancelled," and contacting customer service is useless. You can only watch the inventory decrease and your money flow away like water.

The previous case of a seller further proves this fact. At that time, the seller’s product could not be sold due to a complaint about the listing. One month later, the listing was restored, and the customer service also said that the seller did not need to remove the inventory. Just when the seller thought everything would be back to normal, it ushered in the darkest moment.

Amazon began to abandon its inventory, from 40 to 70, and then to 1,700. The seller was unable to click the cancel button, and it was useless to consult customer service or open a case. In the end, he could only watch nearly 2,000 items being abandoned by Amazon and bear all the economic losses himself.

Some sellers believe that some sellers encounter this situation because they have turned on the "automatic removal setting for unsaleable products." When there is a problem with the seller's link and the product cannot be sold, if it exceeds the corresponding time specified by the platform, the Amazon system will automatically abandon these products.

When it comes to inventory disposal, many sellers have fallen into traps. When faced with complaints and other issues, many sellers often ignore the policy that "unsaleable products will be automatically disposed of if not removed within 30 days." As a result, the inventory is abandoned by the platform and the company suffers losses. Of course, some companies will also require operators to bear some of the losses.

Where do all those discarded products come from and where do they go?

Inventory backlog drags down big sellers, nourishes Amazon

It is understood that in Amazon warehouses, you can see a large number of brand new jewelry, accessories, books, and electronic products. Among these products to be processed, half are from buyer returns and half are backlogs of inventory.

As for the backlog of inventory, it is very common for both large and small sellers. Previously, Global Easy Shopping was almost dragged down by a large amount of inventory. The parent company Cross-border Link had a book balance of 5.488 billion yuan in the first half of 2020, and the inventory impairment provision was as high as 2.745 billion yuan, which means that the company's inventory is still waiting to be sold. Because of the unsalable goods, they have depreciated by half.

The popular Aosen is also a big stock holder, with a stock of 200 million yuan in the first half of 2020, and a price drop reserve of about 660,000 yuan. Compared with Cross-border Link, Aosen's goods value is relatively small, and the inventory pressure is not that great.

Not only big sellers, but also small and medium-sized sellers are facing the problem of inventory backlog. Especially before Member Day, sellers generally send a large amount of inventory to Amazon, but if sales decrease in the later period, the risk of sellers' inventory backlog will increase rapidly. Some sellers have a backlog of nearly 100 million yuan in inventory, and they have no choice but to slowly clear the inventory.

When there is a backlog of inventory, some sellers will choose to slowly clear the inventory, but many sellers will choose to "abandon with one click" and let the platform throw it away. In their view, if the backlog of inventory is sold for too long, it will incur long-term storage fees, which are higher than the monthly storage fees. Obviously, the "one-click abandonment" option is more cost-effective for them.

This means Amazon will have more inventory to deal with.

Amazon's way of dealing with these stocks is simple and crude. Throwing them into the trash can and landfilling them as worthless garbage is the most direct way. According to former Amazon employees, the company set a goal for employees to destroy 130,000 products a week. Sometimes, the number of destroyed products can reach 200,000 per week.

Recycling and reselling is also a common way of dealing with it. One seller revealed: "The abandoned defective inventory was sold by Amazon, and now there are problems, and customers are looking for us again."

The seller responded: “This product was about to be out of stock, and I didn’t want to sell it, so I didn’t deal with it. After 30 days, Amazon automatically discarded it.” But he didn’t expect a customer to come to him and say that the product was missing parts and could not be assembled. Only then did he realize that there was no such order at all, but it was indeed the seller’s product.

The order information provided by the customer was sold by a store called "Amazon.com Services LLCd". The seller then discovered that Amazon was selling the seller's abandoned products, and the price Amazon charged was half of the seller's. But what annoyed the seller was that "Amazon was selling its own defective products, which might cause bad reviews from customers. It was really too ugly."

There are many similar situations. Amazon sells products abandoned by sellers as second-hand products. The key is that the price is only one-third or one-half, which is no different from copying the products.

Some sellers have given suggestions: For unsaleable products, they should all be returned to your own return address, and all "Allow Amazon to purchase" and "Repack" should be unchecked to prevent Amazon from recycling defective products and to avoid taking the blame for Amazon.

in stock

Amazon

Disposal