Global eCommerce Transactions Expected To Surge by 14% During 2023 Holiday Season, Friendly Fraud Looms as the Biggest Spoiler
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How is this type of fraud… “friendly”?
No kidding. Who coined that term? Trying to make is sound like it’s no big deal and that “no one is getting hurt”.
It’s FRAUD!
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The credit provider industry, in order to differentiate between outright fraud perpetrated by a 3rd party via the use of a compromised credit instrument, and outright fraud perpetrated by the actual holder of a credit instrument.
It’s kind of like date ■■■■, you know the person so it’s “friendly”
Yes I am being very sarcastic
For educational purposes only. Not an endorsement.
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Anyone notice that Amazon reported a tripling of it’s profit in Q3 yesterday?
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That’s so weird. Didn’t see that thread earlier.
My bad
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No worries, just sharing for those interested
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Now I understand. Totally needed that (sarcasm).
Good idea to do an annual (or quarterly) review of refund rates and see if there’s any categories/items where this is a particular problem and adjust accordingly.
As 3P sellers there’s not a lot to be done about this other than to hike prices or discontinue problematic products. Fortunately if you’re FBA you never see or deal with chargebacks, if you’re FBM this can be problematic as you have to spend time to submit documents to fight chargebacks, so you already lost even if you win the chargeback.
The amount I’ve paid in PPC alone this year should’ve kept amazon green 
Too bad it didn’t work like before.
I suffered so others don’t have to.
More $$$ but fewer conversions = Amazon still earning
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It’s a tad weirder than that. For instance, AC badges aren’t getting priority any longer. I outsell a competitor who has all the AC for major kw and yet doesn’t rank. I just stopped spending stupid money to maintain the AC badges because it wasn’t increasing organic sales at all. It’s literally amazon pushing pay to play and not rewarding those who do but now cycling pay to play in an infinite loop and allowing unlimited spend.
PPC as it was, is dead. As of Q2 2023
It’s more than that, competition has skyrocketed. There’s tons of “consolidators” and more and more companies like Pattern (Amazon’s current #1 seller), all of whom specialize in marketing and PPC. The most effective way to increase sales is to outbid your competitors on PPC. You can optimize all you want, but at the end of the day the higher bidder gets the slot.
That’s not how that works - it’s contingent upon conversions and sales velocity - meaning if you’re not making amazon money that slot keeps getting pricier and pricier and then eventually you get placed out. But that’s not even what I was talking about above. I’m saying even with conversions and sales - amazon will just allow you to keep spending without rewarding you with organic sales - even if you’re ranking higher organically, it doesn’t translate to higher sales, weirdly.
Now is this niche dependent and demand dependent? Sure, and there are a whole mess of variables we can’t even account for.
Amazon’s secret jiizz sauce is real.
Sort of like the bidding going on for additional storage capacity and how people with brilliant ideas have super high bids and fuq it up for everyone - only to fuq themselves as well.
Amazon laughing all the way to the bank.
It’s a great racket being the auctioneer in a closed bid environment you control.
The bidders don’t know:
- How many people they are bidding against
- What exact placement they are bidding for (maybe I don’t want to bid for a 2AM EDT slot)
- What the opening bid was
- How the bids progress
- What the winning bid was (if they don’t “win”)
Just “trust us”
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