Destroy Black Friday! Amazon.com suffers massive "errors"

During the Black Friday promotion, a large number of sellers found that the estimated delivery time was extended by 4 to 12 days, resulting in a sharp drop in conversion and sales, and they had to suspend all advertising spending. Peers warned: This kind of "mistake" occurred on a large scale during the peak season, destroying Black Friday and may also kill some small businesses.

Estimated delivery time has been extended

The peak season has arrived, but Amazon sellers have encountered widespread delays. Their original shipping time was set at 2-4 days and the processing time was 1 day, but Amazon showed that the shipping time would take 10-12 days. In the case of most sellers, they were delayed an additional 8 days or even longer.

Seller Jack said bluntly: "Amazon is wasting shipping time. Our OTDR standard is much higher than 90%, but the platform shows that the product will take 10-12 days to arrive. According to the dashboard, it should only increase by 0.8 days, but it has increased by 8 days. Because of this problem, we will lose all the buy boxes! "

Seller Neo is in a similar situation. According to him, Amazon has increased its promised extension by more than a week for no reason since a few days ago, even though he has very good shipping metrics, far exceeding the 90% threshold. The dashboard shows a 0.8-day promised extension, but it actually takes more than a week! When he consulted Amazon customer service, they either gave him nonsense or asked him to provide irrelevant information.

“This seems like some kind of revenge from Amazon on sellers, our sales are being destroyed at the most important time of the year and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it … We spend $100k a year on advertising and all we can do this week is pull all our ads !

I also noticed that our account health rating dropped from 500 to 488 with no new violations and no violations that affected our seller rating in the past few months. We have been selling on this platform since 2006 with good reputation and have never had any major issues with Amazon... This week has been terrible! "Neo lamented.

Jack and Neo's experience is shared by many of their peers:

"- There is a gap of about 8-10 days between the date shown to the buyer and the delivery date they asked us to promise, and our OTDR is currently above 92%;

——As a top 100 3P seller on Amazon, we are dealing with the same thing. This will have an extremely negative impact on 3P business, especially at this time of year;

——We have excellent indicators, with daily sales of $50,000, and now we are facing an error in the delivery days, which is cruel;

-Stopped AHT last night and manually set it to 0. We ship same day and offer 3-5 day free shipping, Amazon shows delivery in 10 days from today, sales have become very slow;

——It is estimated to take more than a week to deliver. Sales have been declining, and automatic processing and transportation time have been enabled;

- This is the worst forecast I have ever seen, been on this site for 15 years and now it has taken away all my buy boxes, I will not spend a penny on advertising until Amazon fixes this issue " ...

The extended delivery time will inevitably have a direct impact on sellers, and many accounts with large sales have not been spared. Peers have a direct feeling: Amazon has ruined the sellers' Black Friday promotion. This wave of operations will not have any conversions or orders for sellers. How can sellers compete with other platforms?

Amazon's commitment extended

Regarding the impact on most sellers, Amazon responded to this issue: If the processing and shipping times of the relevant ASINs are determined to be accurate, you may see extensions in the commitments for orders and offers.

A Promise Extension is an additional number of days we may add to a delivery date to account for logistical factors that may delay delivery, such as extreme weather, shipping network limitations, or a seller’s recent history of delivering after the set delivery date.

Sellers are obviously not buying into Amazon's response to the promised extension. One seller said that this has nothing to do with the promised extension and it is clearly a mistake. If someone places an order, the delivery date shown on the platform is completely wrong. Amazon's doing this is a joke and it will only harm the platform's own interests!

It is worth noting that some sellers consulted the Amazon team and were told that if the OTDR exceeds 95%, they can apply for an exemption from the delayed delivery commitment, but their communication with the support team was fruitless.

The commitment extension is designed to move accounts that were at 75% and below OTDR and bring their metrics above 90%. However, Amazon has forced this extension on all accounts, which actually hurts many sellers because it leads to a vicious cycle of lower conversion rates, lower ad sales, lower organic rankings, etc.

In fact, the delay in Amazon's estimated delivery time did not occur last week. As early as about two weeks ago, many sellers reported large-scale delays. For one seller, 14 out of 20 orders suddenly showed delayed delivery risks instead of claim protection and OTDR protection.

Last week, when Amazon launched its Black Friday promotion, the delay problem seemed to break out in a concentrated manner. A large number of delivery delays directly affected the sellers' Black Friday orders. The style of the promotion that they had been looking forward to suddenly changed, sales plummeted, and problems such as lost shopping carts followed one after another. They had to stop advertising and lie low, watching others receive huge orders while they themselves had no orders.

Are robots hunting FBM sellers?

In this situation, a large number of sellers also received many customer complaints that their delivery time was too long.

“ My mornings are spent responding to customer complaints about Amazon’s estimated delivery times. Expedited delivery orders shipped this morning have inaccurate estimated delivery dates shown by Amazon, and one of my products on Amazon shows 3 weeks for Prime Delivery when there are clearly no sales and Amazon can’t point the finger at the seller and say it’s all the seller’s fault.

IMHO Amazon complicates everything and should get rid of the metrics and games with fake delivery dates and just give customers fixed potential delivery dates, do a simple fixed range so the bots don't screw up, and stop trying to track, predict and measure everything. " Seller Wong believes the delays are a problem with Amazon bots and that the sellers shouldn't be held responsible for the mistakes.

Changes Amazon has made over the past few months are the cause of the delays, as a way to eliminate some FBM business during the holiday season without having to take actions such as suspending seller accounts .

Insider claims that in the past two years, 3P sellers with daily sales of more than $20,000 and not using FBA have become targets of attack, including some larger accounts. The reasons for this change are complicated, but ultimately Amazon is encouraging sellers to use FBA so that the platform can make more profits and hold all inventory, increase profits, and thus increase stock prices. Amazon does not care whether the seller has been selling for one year or many years, but if FBA is not used, then the seller cannot guarantee the expected results of delivery.

Meiya

Black Friday