Amazon routinely keeps the BB when they run out of stock of an item. Usually they do this on listings they intend to restock. Of course they also keep the price ridiculously low, even when they are out of stock, so everyone else trying to sell at a normal price gets high-botted.
However, there are some items where Amazon has been out of stock for over 3 years and they have kept the BB. Of course, this means they are still keeping the BB at a price that was too low 3 years ago, and now is just preposterous in its entirety. Just for kicks I tried listing the cost of the item for the price, and that was too high. Amazon is now the only seller on these items because they have kept the BB, and therefore the “acceptable” price, so artificially low that their bot enforced price is impossible to meet.
For the record, the manufacturers have these items in stock, Amazon has just decided not to restock them, but won’t give up the BB.
I dunno. I haven’t tried to order anything that was out of stock before, sorta defeats the whole purpose of shopping on Amazon, which I try not to do much anyway. But the end result is that this ASIN (and plenty of others with it) have been locked down by Amazon, even though they have no intention of stocking it or selling it.
I suppose it’s possible that if someone places an order they might actually get some from the manufacturer, but I don’t know. If they do, they will be in for a rude awakening when they find out how much the cost of the item has gone up in the last 3 years.
I’m guessing your on the same asin, do you get orders for the asin? I’m guessing there are others on the asin also.
Overall that is very strange, I’ve seen it for out of stock for a week or so, but 3 years sounds like something is stuck, and no way will Amazon admit it/fix it.
I just found another item that Amazon has held the BB on since before Covid started. This item has been discontinued by the manufacturer since the start of 2022, so Amazon can’t get more. I still have some sitting on my shelf that I can’t even list for what I paid 3-4 years ago because of the price bot pinned to Amazon’s years old BB price.
A friend who is a former Seller (and not here) had evidence that when he (FBA) and Amazon were the only two offers on an item that became discontinued. He knew that his last batch from the manufacturer was the last batch. Amazon would have the BB yet say OOS, sell his stock, and then claim that his were “lost”. They would reimburse him at item cost or lowest retail (I can’t recall but it didn’t cover FBA storage fees and he was mad), while Amazon took the sales and the better profit, until his stock sold out.
Amazon looked OOS, until someone placed a “future” order. Then they would pull it from his FBA inventory, is what I’m saying.
So if you do somehow list your offer, stick to FBM.
My issue is that Amazon keeps the BB when they go out OOS, and then use their low idiotic price to pricebot me to death. If this were happening on FBA orders, my FBA inventory would get priced out and I would have to recall it.
The scenario you are describing is still scary and worth keeping an eye on, should I find such a case. However, I tend to avoid selling anything FBA if Amazon is on a listing.
I found a product today that Amazon jumped on last night. They are out of stock, have the BB, are undercharging, and I’m kicked off for high price while charging the same price I have been listed at for the last 8 months.
That is less mystifying than the long term out of stock situation.
They may have decided to carry the item. The manufacturer may have committed significant Market Development Funds which allow them to sell at a low price. And the product may not have arrived.
Many, many of the items Amazon carries have significant MDF associated with them.
A vendor posted on the OSFE that they were pressured to offer 14.5% MDF to sell their product on Amazon. This is legal under anti-trust laws, because it is tied to some activity by Amazon to justify the invoice credit.
It occurred to me that Amazon may have added this item in preparation of selling it themselves at some point, which I’m not happy about (this wasn’t a great selling item to begin with). However, what I’m seeing is that Amazon is increasingly holding the BB with out of stock listings for extended periods, and pushing other sellers off with high price bots.
Now, if this is in preparation to sell all these items in the near future, that makes. On the other hand, as long as Amazon is not selling these items, not only are they not making any sales they are also killing the listing for anyone else. This means no referral fees, no FBA fees, no helping themselves to my money when they delight their customers from my pocket… Since some of these listings are essentially locked out for years, it seems that they are damaging themselves due to what looks to me like stupid coding, where they keep take the BB even when they have no plans to stock or restock the item.
I don’t know what the story is with any individual item, but this is an accelerating trend on my listings, and it just hurts everyone, including Amazon.
I strongly suspect that when Amazon drops a product, they and their vendor cease doing anything to the catalog page, and do not remove the manual assignment they may have made of the Buy Box.
Cheap delight is an Amazon specialty. No point in believing anything they say, because it is unlikely that whoever makes a statement is making it based on any actual knowledge.
I keep harping on the fact that Amazon is too big to manage, too lacking in knowledgeable people, and too enamored with bots.
The problem is almost never coding. The problem is lack of competent management or commitment to invest in competent humans.
We have had something similar with items when we bought a company that was a vendor account. According to the rep for the account when we closed it (5+ years ago) this can happen when Amazon has open PO’s for vendors.
We bought the company and absorbed its inventory and brand, but its relationships were closed. Amazon kept showing exactly what you demonstrate, despite never getting another unit again.
We ended up making new listings under the new brand so we could make variations, and we also did FBA for that product, so we would not have seen the issue the same way you are.
It seems fairly clear that this is at least part of the problem.
When I say the problem is stupid coding, I mean that the code doesn’t work as intended, I mean that the people coding it don’t understand the extent and ramifications of the decisions they are making. Nobody with selling experience or a fundamental understanding of marketplace is making or overseeing design decisions. Hence the stupid code.
I wish I could do this, but we don’t own the brand, we just sell their stuff. And I am very hesitant to send any of this stuff in to FBA under the current circumstances.
