Lost 180,000 in 1 hour, the seller said: It’s a huge loss!

Did you get a lot of orders on this year’s Membership Day?

"0 Yuan Purchase" is one of the hottest events of the annual promotion. Every time the event starts, sellers frequently make mistakes in discount codes and coupons, causing a large number of sellers to suffer heavy losses, and this year is no exception.

0 yuan purchases frequently occur, and some sellers lose 180,000 yuan in one hour

Recently, a colleague revealed that there were frequent 0-yuan purchases during Amazon's Prime Day . One operator set up a $10,000 coupon during the promotion and lost $180,000 in one hour.

At first, many people thought that the seller's pictures were photoshopped, and that such discounts would be wrong at first glance and must be fake. But some sellers clicked on the link and found that the event was real, and some sellers even received coupons and got a bargain.

A high-value product originally priced at $349.99 was sold for 0 yuan, which caused many peers to discuss: "They probably wanted to set it to 100, but deleted the decimal point", "Isn't there a limit of 50% for coupons?" Some sellers even joked that their boss was going to break their legs.

Coincidentally, the seller Xiao Liu also revealed that he suffered a great loss. The reason was that an Amazon buyer contacted Xiao Liu to buy a large number of his products, but hoped to get a preferential price. Xiao Liu set up a promotional code for the buyer in the background. Because he had never done such an operation, Xiao Liu completed the setting under the guidance of customer service.

However, he never expected that Amazon would charge the buyer for the original 1,000 machines at the cost of one machine, which meant that 999 machines were given to the buyer for free, which was almost the same as buying them for free. Xiao Liu said that he expected the loss to be as high as 21,635 US dollars (estimated to be 160,000 RMB).

Some sellers speculated that the operation department filled the budget into the instant discount amount. Other sellers believed that the promotion code setting error was caused by multiple factors: Xiao Liu who didn’t know anything + poor customer service = buyers who took advantage.

During Member Day, many sellers encountered 0-yuan purchases, which can be regarded as a "mine avoidance" guide: some only offered social media discounts, but were seen and forwarded by Amazon Alliance; some operations said that they could not see the discount information at the front desk, but discounts appeared inexplicably; forgetting to cancel coupons led to the duplication of discounts. All kinds of strange 0-yuan purchase problems once made sellers uncomfortable.

In fact, it is not uncommon to set discounts for promotional activities and end up with purchases for free. In the worst case, one company sold out thousands of stocks in seconds, resulting in a daily loss of over one million yuan, but the reasons were different.

The most common situation is the overlapping of coupons. For example, a seller wants to promote a product outside the site, so he sets up an off-site social discount code. A few hours later, the seller may want to do a promotion on the site, but in the end he forgets to check the priority discount code, so the amount of the two discounts combined exceeds the sales amount. In the end, not only can the seller not cancel the discount, but he also has to pay Amazon for delivery fees. Some sellers have lost 100,000 yuan in vain.

Some operators also said that they were in a hurry and directly superimposed 50% of the coupons and 50% of the social media, resulting in purchases for 0 yuan. 116 orders were directly placed for 60 stocks, causing the company to lose more than 6,200 yuan.

In this regard, experienced sellers give advice: First, quickly switch to FBM (fulfillment by yourself) mode after discovery, increase product prices, and immediately terminate discount settings, which can avoid further losses to a certain extent. Second, contact Amazon customer service and explain the reason for canceling the order (you need to be quick because it is difficult to cancel once it is delivered).

One thing to note is that opening a case may not solve this situation in time, because many customer service staff do not have the authority to cancel orders. Here, the editor recommends that sellers should consider carefully when setting up promotions. If multiple promotions are in effect at the same time, it is recommended to try multiple times at the front desk to test the actual superposition. In addition, there are some software plug-ins that can help sellers check coupon settings and reduce the probability of seller mistakes.

The same 0 yuan purchase situation happens all the time, not just during busy promotional periods.

Many European sites have experienced 0 yuan purchase

There is always a law that something will go wrong during the peak season. Before the Member Day, many sellers reported that many European sites had encountered 0-yuan purchases. According to sellers’ feedback, the Italian site was almost completely 0-yuan purchased, the Turkish site was particularly flooded with 0-yuan purchases, and many sellers on the UK site were also affected.

In the view of most sellers, this 0-yuan purchase was a bug in Amazon's backend, which caused sellers to make errors when synchronizing product prices across sites.

It is reported that there are two restrictions after the Coupon reform, one is the historical selling price limit, and the other is the most recent lowest price limit. When creating a Coupon, the seller ignores the system's prompt about price discrepancies. When the product price is adjusted later, the discount will automatically take effect, and the product will be sold at an ultra-low price.

Soon after the discount link came into effect, it was forwarded crazily by overseas consumers, triggering a large number of consumers to buy. Some consumers placed 10 orders directly on a stool link, and some individual consumers placed more than 100 orders in total, so that some sellers' products were sold out in seconds, which was a heavy loss.

After discovering the situation, some sellers promptly stopped selling, asked their account managers to submit cancellation requests, took screenshots as evidence and other measures to reduce their losses. One seller thankfully said: “I was fortunate to have successfully canceled 103 out of 108 orders.” However, many sellers still said that they were unable to cancel, and some consumers had already successfully received the goods, resulting in a direct loss of 400,000 yuan.

For sellers, the sudden occurrence of this situation is really disturbing. Sellers believe that the zero-yuan purchases were caused by a platform bug and began to claim compensation from the platform, but it is expected that sellers will still need to bear most of the losses.

To avoid the recurrence of the 0 yuan purchase incident, sellers should take precautions: first, check promotional activities regularly to ensure that there are not multiple promotional activities in effect at the same time to prevent discount duplication; limit the purchase quantity, you can set the maximum purchase quantity of the product to 1 or 2, and monitor sales at any time during the promotion period; pay close attention to sales, and immediately cancel coupons or suspend promotional activities if any abnormal orders are found; it is recommended to control the total discount within 70% to avoid potential risks caused by excessive discounts.

At the same time, sellers should also pay attention to which discounts can be stacked and which cannot be stacked, for example: code+coupon/LD/BD/PED/DOTD/outlets can be stacked; any discount codes cannot be stacked, except for no code, to avoid huge losses.

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Member Day

0 yuan purchase