Am I sure I want to confirm this shipment?

Selling on Amazon
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Sometimes I wonder if Amazon thinks we’re all 3 years old. :roll_eyes:

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Well, let’s see. The order was shipped. So I go to Amazon to confirm that. I see the buyer has asked to cancel. Bummer for him, since the order was already shipped.

Does Amazon think I’m going to say - ok, since the buyer wants to cancel, I’m going to just let him keep the thing that’s already on its way to him? Uh… no. :woman_facepalming:

Interesting warning though. It’s my first time running into it. It’s nice that Amazon reassures me that cancelling won’t impact my metrics, but says nothing about the fact that cancelling would give my whatever-it-is to the buyer for free if I cancel the order after it’s been shipped.

This was a legitimate drop-ship order, but it makes me wonder how the less-than-legit drop-shippers deal with it. Anyone doing OA or using one of those third-party sites is bound to get frequent cancellation requests when it takes too long until they get the tracking number.

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I got this same thing the other day - but I hadn’t shipped the order yet.

Looks like Amazon’s top-notch programmers didn’t include code to check the order status. Or maybe they coded it to look for ‘Shipped’ instead of the new ‘Sent.’ :confused:

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As far as Amazon’s concerned, mine was unshipped too. Since it was a drop-ship order, I was having it shipped by my supplier out east, and they were already processing it by the time the Amazon buyer asked to cancel, so it was too late for me to get it cancelled.

I felt bad, but sent him a note that he could return it right away if desired, so we’ll see what happens. Hopefully nothing bad. :grimacing:

I just thought the wording of the warning was funny. Are you sure you want to confirm this instead of cancelling it? Well, yes, I’m sure. Because I wouldn’t be here on the ‘confirm’ page if the order hadn’t already been shipped. So knowing that it’s already been shipped, it’s stupid to ask me if I want to cancel the order instead. Silly Amazon! :upside_down_face:

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Stone her! Stone he-

Sorry. I got carried away.

Honestly, I don’t mind this warning. Especially since they made it harder to see buyer cancellation requests, not every seller will think to check if there are any last minute cancellations, and while such a warning is annoying for a competent seller they are useful for the other 94% and (this is the important part) provides value added for the buyer.

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Amazon posted my business hours on the buy shipping page for one of my orders today. I had never seen that before or since. How does Amazon know what my business hours are and why would they post them on the buy shipping page?

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Especially since they made it harder to see buyer cancellation requests

When did they make it harder?

such a warning is annoying for a competent seller they are useful for the other 94%

I’m not sure I follow. If an incompetent seller has shipped a package, the package is still shipped, so once you reach the point of confirming shipping, cancelling the order is no longer a reasonable option because the package is already in transit.

Or maybe some people confirm their shipments before they actually ship them?

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Amazon posted my business hours on the buy shipping page for one of my orders today. I had never seen that before or since.

Amazon does a lot of wacky things. Maybe there’s alcohol hiding in the BOT break room. :laughing:

Definitely take a screen grab if you see it again. They’re probably trying to convince us there’s some new thing they can take control of, since they can of course (not) do whatever-it-is better than we can.

How does Amazon know what my business hours are and why would they post them on the buy shipping page?

I challenge them to know what my working hours are. :laughing: They can’t know our hours any more than they know how long USPS will take to deliver a first-class package.

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It showed something like this just to the right of where the weight is entered:

Business Hours

Monday: 9AM-5PM
Tuesday: 9AM-5PM
Wednesday: 9AM-5PM
Thursday: 9AM-5PM
Friday: 9AM-5PM
Saturday: 9AM-5PM

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I’ve been seeing this for a couple weeks on and off, and it’s not consistent. Sometimes it shows 9 am to 5pm every day. Sometimes it just shows that for weekdays, and says I’m closed for weekends. Sometimes it says I’m closed every day. I don’t know what the deal is with that.

Cancellation requests used to all show up in the message interface, so check the messages, if nothing is there, I can ship. Now I have to check each order I want to ship before I can ship it, and since I don’t ship directly through Amazon, it is even more annoying to check.

If the package has already shipped as in left the building, then yes. However, I have a daily pickup from USPS and UPS and several hours can pass between the purchase of shipping and a package leaving my possession. If someone buys shipping and then goes immediately to confirm it instead of buying shipping for lots of orders then confirming them all at once later, that warning could allow them to avoid shipping the items.

From Amazon’s point of view, the seller is supposed to confirm the order before it’s shipped. Therefore you can’t have shipped it before confirming it. That’s just silly.

I have long wished that every department in the design and implementation of Seller Central have at least one member who has actually sold something on Amazon. This would be a drastically different place.

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I would not be surprised.

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I wonder if you could be on a different iteration of the platform than some of us? You’ve reported a few things that you see that are different than what I see.

Some time back… maybe a year or so? Orders with cancellation requests started showing up with a yellow background to make it easier to notice them. I don’t have any right now, but maybe someone can share a screen print the next time one of us see it. It’s very obvious on the Manage Orders page (on a desktop, I don’t use mobile or the app), as well as in the individual order.

If someone buys shipping and then goes immediately to confirm it

I’m not sure what you mean by this. If you buy shipping (as in, through Buy Shipping on Amazon), the order is automatically and immediately confirmed. There’s no separate confirmation process.

With the process as it’s visible to me, if I’m going to ship an order myself, from my location, I would go to buy the label on Amazon and see the yellow highlighting and text indicating the buyer wanted to cancel. Then I could cancel before buying the label and shipping the package.

The only time you need to manually confirm shipment is when you have not used Amazon Buy Shipping. The most common reasons that come to mind are if you drive to the post office to ship, and then confirm and enter the tracking when you return, or if you drop-ship, where you send the order’s info to a third-party fulfiller and they do the actual shipping and then send you the tracking number at which time you confirm the order as shipped.

If the buyer sends a cancellation request during this ‘processing’ time (either you’re at the post office, or your third party is prepping the order), it’s too late to stop the order from shipping out. If you cancelled at that point, the buyer would still receive the package, but you wouldn’t get paid.

I have long wished that every department in the design and implementation of Seller Central have at least one member who has actually sold something on Amazon. This would be a drastically different place.

1000% agree!

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Same! And it said I work 9-5, so I took that as a hint and stopped working at 5 today. Ha!

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I was referring to sellers buying shipping separately, then confirming. If a seller uses Shipstation or similar, then imports the tracking to confirm the orders, then takes the packages to the post office or UPS dropoff, such a warning would be useful to them. Basically, if the cancellation request comes in between buying shipping (not through Amazon) and actually shipping the item.

I understand this is sort of a fringe case, but from Amazon’s point of view they lose nothing by doing this and maybe prevent a customer here or there from getting upset over a package that shipped after it was cancel-requested.

This was implemented at the same time that order cancellations stopped showing up as messages. Clicking on the messages and quickly scanning for any cancellation requests takes a few seconds, even if I have 300 orders that need to be shipped. Scrolling through all 300 orders is more annoying, takes much longer, and is prone to mistakes as scrolling too quickly can result in missing one of those pale yellow banners.

Since my Amazon shipping is integrated with a third party API and I don’t buy shipping directly through Seller Central, I am likely never to see those yellow banners. Fortunately, my third party API puts orders with pending cancellation requests in “on hold” status so I can’t ship by accident, but this is only like 97%-98% accurate, so I still get a little neurotic checking cancellations before I ship anything.

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Clicking on the messages and quickly scanning for any cancellation requests takes a few seconds, even if I have 300 orders that need to be shipped. Scrolling through all 300 orders is more annoying, takes much longer

Oh, now I understand what you meant when you said they made it harder. I never have 300 unshipped orders, so now I see what you mean.

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I finally saw this today. I don’t think it’s our business hours, I think it’s the buyers. At least in my case, it was a ‘business buyer’. I suspect it’s supposed to let us know (as if we care, or would/could do anything about it?) the times during which the buyer can receive their package, so we choose a service that will deliver it during those times?

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The reference to the operating hours being in the same time zone as the shipping (buyer’s) address suggests this is more about their hours, than ours. There’s an implication that we will jump through hoops to pick a service that will deliver during those hours, but Amazon never told us this was a new requirement, and I’m not sure I’d bother anyway.

I had another order, where the shipping address is commercial, but the buyer is not a business buyer, and no hours appeared on that one.

Not sure if this is relevant, but some time back (a few months, maybe longer) my mail carrier told me Amazon had changed their contract and started requiring them to deliver packages to business addresses even if the business was closed. :open_mouth: They were supposed to leave them sitting out front of the closed door. :woman_facepalming:

Everyone keep an eye out, and if you see those hours pop up, check to see if the order’s from a business buyer.

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My dear friends, if you do not follow the path of righteousness, you are ignored when new features are created to improve customer satisfaction.

The path to glory means that you purchase your shipping from Amazon. And sellers who confirm shipment are not among the true believers - they are buying their shipping elsewhere or dropshipping.

The limited knowledge that Amazon employees at all levels have about alternative business procedures mean that any beyond the all Amazon solution is not considered in new features.

As for hours, I suspect they are being derived from some other feature you are availing yourself of, like cutoff times.

As for those of you who participate in the Amazon Business Program, I recommend a reevaluation of the costs vs benefits of the program. It is not a program which appeals to large businesses and institutions as was the initial intention, and trying to make it worthwhile for businesses which are smaller than most sellers has been burdensome on the sellers who participate.

Why doesn’t it appeal to most large businesses? The cost of a PO and payment was estimated at $125 for a major co about 5 years ago. A credit card purchase, online carried a fraction of the cost.

That Net 30 requirement for Business Sellers was a sop to tiny cash poor businesses.

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From my research I found that BOT’s do not have the enzyme to break down the alcohol that they consume. So you could be onto something.

Dry sense of humor over|

So different than the issues that you brought up but this one frustrated us immensely.

A school with a business account bought 9 items from us a total of $900. At the start of December. they bought these. It took us 90 days to get paid. Ok, we signed up for it, no problem.

Then on January 30th they submitted a return for 8 of the nine units, “Bought by Mistake” ok, no problem. They did send them back, the remaining units were in good resalable condition. Something we manufacture. Good, no problem.

Then we had to refund them in 10 days or less! It was shorter than 10 days, but I don’t want to think about it.

Amazon and customer, you held our money for 90 days, but I need to do an instant refund?!

Starting in 1989 we did all orders as net 30. The actual terms were net when we feel like it. Many customers did not pay, we used firms, and it worked well but not so well.

So we went to Credit Cards only except for good customers. That works out ok, except for the few, that drag us out for 45+ days, then pay with credit card. That drives me even more nuts! Sorry, wrong thread.

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I wish I could find suppliers who would offer me ‘net whenever I feel like it’ terms. :laughing:

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That was 30 years ago, young hungry and wanting to grow. Yet we did not offer them, that was just how they paid them!

Now we have had some momentous events.

Like the time when the customer refused to pay us, the job was done but they still wanted to pick it up. I told them stop by in 30 minutes and they can have it if they don’t it will be in the road in front of the business. I did put it in the road, many cars drove over it, they actually scooped it up and drove away.

Then when a “designer” had us do a rendering of a very cool prism. She told us the customer did not like it. She did not pay. Two years later I saw it in another shop. It was on some overheads (think pre projectors) for a big financial firm in Boston. I remarked, “That’s our work!” to the owner. He responded, “It is very nice too.”

After I said, yes but we did not get paid for it he made me a copy of it. I sent it to the CEO of the Financial Firm indicating we had a problem. The designer paid us in 24 hours after that. “I will tell everyone about this!” was her parting remark. I said, “Outstanding, we expect to get paid for our work.”

Now we have had many others, but I just had one Friday Morning. “I think your shipping is to high for this product.” A $30 sale, relayed to me while I was laminating a $4K sale. After a quick thought, I said, “Tell them it is discontinued.” They responded through my team member, “But no one else will sell me the part, they want me to buy a new system from them for 10K that price.”

Started the business, after reading a story in a magazine. “Diversify” as in don’t have one customer have thousands. Then you make the decisions.

Off to do some drawings on the farm we are renovating for town approvals…

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The Amazon Business program was designed to draw large customers, As much to compete with companies like Granger.

It did not draw them.

They surveyed the existing buyers in the program and asked what it would take to make them buy more. Answer was Net 30.

It did not make the program meet its goals.

They surveyed the buyers in the program and asked why do you not buy more. Not enough sellers offering Net 30.

Guess what all sellers had to offer Net 30 to business buyers.

After years of having to deal with big companies who treated our invoices as Net pay whenever you felt like, I am extremely sensitive on who we give credit to. And have also profited on some of these companies who slow pay.

One of our customers who was always slow pay, and big enough to get away with it, cut us out and went to our supplier for a product was essential for their business.

Our supplier was noted for placing on credit hold any customer regardless of size who was late in paying. Our customer was back to buying from us at a newly raised price because he could never place two orders in a row with our supplier.

We stopped offering Net terms to small customers, without ever affecting sales. For those who insisted, we had a private label credit card through GE which cost us a little less than Mastercard and Visa. Amazing the number of them GE turned down, businesses who were barely businesses.

As a manufacturer the Amazon business program might work for you, but as a retailer credit to designers, consultants, and other marginal businesses were always too much hassle for me.

Things are worse in some businesses like the music business. Net 180 is typical terms to a CD or LP distributor, with a guaranteed sale or full return after 180 days.

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