Amazon has another bug? One seller claims to have lost $30,000 in 5 minutes

In 2022, Amazon's global buyers reached 300 million, with an average global monthly visit volume of 2.7 billion times, and 66% of consumers chose Amazon as their preferred shopping search platform. As for the 2 million small and medium-sized sellers on Amazon , 89% of them achieved profitability in 2022, and 37% of them achieved full-year profit growth.

Amazon's huge buyer base and traffic are coveted by many sellers. Therefore, even though many sellers are complaining about its harsh treatment of sellers, they have no choice but to succumb to its huge market.

As a technology-based company, Amazon has made its e-commerce business flourish by relying on its powerful algorithm technology, and has also attached increasing importance to technological research and development.

Not long ago, ChatGPT became a global hit. Jassy also said, " Large companies like us with strong technical capabilities have been developing technologies like ChatGPT a long time ago. " However, this statement was ridiculed by sellers, " Let's first figure out the platform system . "

As we all know, Amazon's various system bugs are not uncommon, so it is often ridiculed as "using feet to make the system." A few days ago, sellers complained about system bugs again, but this time it was different.

Seller claims Amazon lost $30,000 due to 5 minutes of system maintenance

Recently, a seller left a message on the Amazon forum saying that he was forced to purchase for “0 yuan” due to a bug in the Amazon system.

The seller said that due to a malfunction in the Amazon system, his products had a lot of orders during the BUG period, but 500 orders were purchased for 0 yuan , which caused him to lose $30,000 in just 5 minutes . (Using two promotions, superimposed, 500 orders were purchased for 0 yuan. The 2023/02/15 coupon is a one-time purchase discount and a coupon).

According to the Amazon system maintenance announcement, Amazon has previously announced: Please note that Amazon will conduct scheduled maintenance at 12:00 noon Pacific Standard Time on February 10 (Asia Pacific), February 17 (Europe), and February 18 (Americas). We will conduct scheduled maintenance on the system, which will take about 3 hours. During this period, you will not be able to use coupon-related functions. Please plan the update of coupons .

Like this seller, other sellers in the comment section also said that Amazon has never notified sellers of such announcements.

Of course, there are more different opinions. Most sellers said that this is not a system bug of Amazon , but a work error of the sellers themselves . Because Amazon's regular system maintenance happens frequently, and such announcements will be displayed on the seller's page even if no email is received. As a seller selling on the platform, you should always pay attention to the platform's trends.

Another seller said that this was because the seller in question did not set up the coupons correctly and did not understand the rules of the platform discounts and coupons. It is not feasible to blame Amazon for the losses suffered, so he should learn a lesson.

Amazon has not responded to the complaint yet, but the seller said he has applied to Amazon for order compensation .

All in all, the seller’s loss was more like a mistake at work. Most sellers joked that Amazon could now say “there are no bugs in the system” because the seller ignored the platform rules and Amazon’s system bugs were not to blame.

Although this bug was a mistake, there have been many other times when Amazon's system bugs have disrupted sellers' sales rhythm. Even if the loopholes were quickly fixed, they still caused losses to many sellers. In the past few years, although Amazon has been constantly upgrading and improving its system, such accidents have occurred from time to time.

Frequent system bugs make sellers feel like a roller coaster

For Amazon sellers, various bugs on the platform emerge in an endless stream, and now they are no longer surprising. Some sellers said that when Amazon suddenly has a conscience, it will compensate and cancel some abnormal orders. If it is in a bad mood, then just consider it bad luck and do some charity work.

In January this year , many Amazon sellers encountered mismatches in order volume, ranking, and traffic. Specifically, there are two situations: 1. Order volume surges, but the category ranking is still very low, with little difference between 100 orders and 500 orders ; 2. Natural traffic surges, order volume remains unchanged, and traffic surges from the usual 400+ to 1000+, but it does not help sales at all.

Many sellers attributed it to the Amazon system "going haywire" again, and this BUG caused the store conversion rates of most sellers to decline to varying degrees, ranging from 10% to 70% .

Some sellers also encountered anomalies in order quantity statistics . Some sellers did not place any orders in a day, while some sellers placed thousands of orders in just one day. However, their order data was inconsistent with the data on the Amazon order page .

The losses caused to sellers by the inconsistent data statistics BUG are still negligible. It is the checkout page BUG that appeared in early January that really caused a significant impact on sellers.

In early January this year , Amazon's checkout page suddenly malfunctioned, and many buyers reported that they were unable to make payments . At the same time, many sellers' transactions were interrupted and the number of orders decreased due to the crash of the webpage , which made the already sluggish sales even worse. One seller said that during the same period, the number of orders in his store dropped by nearly half.

Buyers left messages on social platforms, " After placing an order, Amazon did not show that the order was completed or send a confirmation email, and there was no way to know whether the transaction was successful. " And data from Down Detector showed that more than 14,000 consumers were unable to check out due to this BUG that day .

On the eve of Prime Day 2.0 ( Prime Early Access Sale ) , which was first launched by Amazon last year , Amazon system bugs reappeared , causing sellers to be unable to change prices , unable to change inventory levels , and encounter obstacles in uploading new products .

However, Amazon almost ignores the losses incurred by sellers.

Some sellers said that after the inventory was sold out, the system did not automatically track and update , and the sales status could not be changed, resulting in the seller having no goods to ship. Amazon actually required the seller to fulfill abnormal orders, and the seller could only try to contact the consumer for a refund, which affected the store rating and ranking. Some sellers were unable to change the price, which affected product sales.

Data is delayed, advertising costs are burned, order data and sales are delayed , and sellers have "zero orders" for hours ; the review mechanism has changed drastically, with fewer positive reviews and more negative reviews , and sellers' product review areas are in turmoil; product rankings are in a "golden age", with all employees being Best Sellers and ranking first ; listing searches have no display , products "disappear", and keywords , brand names , and ASINs cannot be searched and displayed ...

Various bugs appear frequently, and sellers suffer greatly from them. Every time this happens, sellers will shout to Amazon technicians " Stop slacking off at work "!

System bugs are beyond the control of sellers, and most of the time they can only pray that Amazon can fix them quickly. In short, Amazon should continue to improve the system and not let sellers experience the "roller coaster" of order volume due to bugs from time to time.

Amazon

Bugs