I noticed Amazon is shown as the buyer and so tried to find out if I enabled something to allow Amazon to buy my products, I can’t find it and don’t remember what the program is called. I assume they are selling them on other marketplaces? I only have US enabled.
I suspect you may be thinking of the “Allow Amazon to buy my products to sell globally” setting, which is enabled by default, and may be adjusted directly here on this Dashboard:
https: //sellercentral.amazon.com/fba/settings/index.html#/agl-settings
Yup it is enabled. I was looking under account settings.
Are there pitfalls or should I leave it on? In your esteemed opinion …
I haven’t heard of any pitfalls.
There can be several, not the least of which is Amazon’s slipshod approach to lining all the ducks up in neat rows, as our friend @ASV_Vites alludes in this 120423 SAS post re: his experience with the very-similar FBA Export Program:
https://test.sellersasksellers.com/t/global-selling-fun/2833/2
Steve’s is hardly the only horror story which has emerged, in regard to that functionality, or to the Remote Fulfillment Program, or to the BIL (‘Amazonese’ for “Build International Listings”) Tool, or to the export setting in question, over the last decade…so I’d think hard before continuing participation.
In your situation - presuming that this circumstance presents a short-term slew of orders, rather than a new discovery of a longer-term trend - and depending upon the characteristics of the goods which are being purchased, I’d likely be inclined to shut it off now, and towards waiting to see how this sudden surge of 93 Order IDs played out before considering whether I’d like to re-enable it - even if I had to wait a full 3 months to be able to crunch the numbers.
There are other possible pitfalls, such as Amazon’s penchant to leave Returns of such Amazon-exported goods in a foreign FC, and then try to charge the U.S.-based 3P Seller for storage, regulatory fees which aren’t applicable to U.S.-domiciled business enterprises, and other unpleasantries, and/or demand said seller create Removal Orders to avoid disposal - thereby incurring costs simply because Amazon policy requires an in-country address for such items to be delivered - something I’ve alluded to myself a time or more before as the “fifth possibility” in such posts as this one from 033124:
https://test.sellersasksellers.com/t/please-help-brazil-added-and-invalid-charge-method/3754/13
There’s no question that catering to a global clientele CAN be profitable - as many 3P Sellers such as our well-missed friend @boardgames4us can probably attest - but I’d caution against depending upon Amazon itself to ensure that everything goes smoothly, and for making sure that I myself understood where the sand traps might lie…
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Some important considerations there. Since I’m increasing my FBA grocery offers, that could add other bad possibilities if any ingredients or labeling should run afoul of foreign laws. Amazon has not sent any those yet but I think it is best to prevent it.
Disable toggled.
Another thing I can think of is if you are selling a brand which is sold world-wide, but by different subsidiaries. Being authorized in to sell in the US may not prevent the Asia subsidiary from complaining about your products being sold there; I’m not sure how this process works and what is visible to buyers, but if it worked its way back to you, might cause issues.
This is on top of the obvious legal issues. I wouldn’t trust Amazon to not ship something to a country that had different rules or requirements (such as your food labeling issue).
Remember that ish with us? Never fully calculated the loss there but it was probably $20K or more…..
Thousands of orders, a lot of them got through, a lot didn’t…
It’s astonishing that Amazon, with all the data they have, and the tons of people, have no idea how things work in other countries, in terms of compliance. The very countries they have a big presence in themselves.
Amazon doesn’t know how things work within Amazon let alone other countries
We had issues with this in regards to the international listings that Amazon made back when the bamboo bot was causing issues. We had issues getting the listings reinstated because they said we also needed to update the international listings, but we didn’t have access to them since we didn’t make them and just have a NA unified account. It made the issues a lot more complicated than it would have been otherwise.
They don’ care enough to, because these problems become our problems and our losses.
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