I guess one issue is someone offering a money back guarantee, then when Amazon goes to honor it on their behalf, the seller has already been paid and abandoned the account and left Amazon holding the bag.
It will prove interesting to learn whether or not Amazon is willing to provide the list of Third Service Provider TICs (“Testing, Inspection, and Certification”) entities that it has sanctioned to be able to submit TRFs (“Test Request Form”), short of the MYC (“Manage Your Compliance”) Dashboard throwing a flag which opens up access to the ‘Request lab service’ functionality.
Such a list does not appear to be available from the SHC’s (“Seller Help Content”) ‘main’ page on this subject, Dietary Supplements (link), nor - @ least, from what I can tell - by perusing various filters set for drilling down into the SPN (“Service Provider Network”) Dashboard.
I take what is probably Amazon’s point, here, in keeping proprietary information close to its vest - but Amazon’s track record in properly vetting Third Party Service Providers for the SPN is not as spotless as might be hoped…
The inanity posted by ill-informed 3P Sellers, in every single iteration of the ASF
(“Amazon Seller Forums”), has never ceased to amaze me.
The demonstrable rise in such post’s frequency over in NSFE - right from the very first day of the ‘official’ launch on 2Jan`23 - IS, admittedly, astounding - but there’s a reason why the old hands like you spilt so much ink in warnings for the rest of us in the Amazon Seller Community, during the waning weeks of the OSFE, that such an occurrence was likely to prove well-nigh ineluctable, sooner or later.
Unsurprising I find it that sooner was Fate’s choice…
First order of business will be weight loss / sexual health / sports nutrition, and anything else that’s on the FDA’s radar.
Seems as everything is being run through NSF who has been consulting with Amazon for the last year.
Amazon has a new quality person for the industry on staff who is known to not have a clue about what he’s doing.
Seems they want to add pesticide and residual solvent tests to things that would never have the possibility of having those (non-botanicals / uncoated tablets)
Upper limits (in testing) are in scope
If the lab used, even if ISO 17025 certified, is not NSF certified, everything has to be reviewed by NSF.
If the rumors from the water cooler talk are true (will know for sure in an hour), NSF is going to be raking in the $.
Like I have said before, this goes above and beyond industry federal regulations. Pieces of this, if not the whole thing, will be challenged by brands like Now Foods and others just like the last time Amazon tried and failed to implement sweeping changes to the category.
Either way, we aren’t concerned although it will be more expense of course, especially if we need to do worthless pesticide / solvent testing on products with raw materials that have already been certified solvent / pesticide free. Neither of those 2 tests are cheap. It’s unknown at this point how many times a product may have to be certified:
Once
Once per year
Every batch??
Loopholes may exist for bad actors to continue to do their thing but it won’t be as easy.
Sounds like it’s going to be a slow and focused rollout. May be awhile before they get to us.
Anyone selling sport / weight / sexual health, better get prepared though if this doesn’t get struck down by industry pushback.
Hopefully this means they’re not actually taking this thing seriously and will just dump it. It’s not that forcing brands to comply with stuff isn’t a good thing, it’s the fact that Amazon tends to do these things poorly and there’ll be problems for everybody.