Motivated by the alert-enhanced post entitled ’ Amazon removing 2 day default handling time option’, I checked my buy box elligibility.
All of my inventory is inelligible again. And my default handling has been two days for a long time.)
Has anyone else had this happen?
As you mentioned, there was some discussion about winning the BB at ❗ FBM ALERT: Amazon removing 2 day default handling time option, but this is very interesting about even being BB eligible based on handling time…
I just asked this question on the aforesaid thread.
Our inventory went from Yes to NO yesterday morning between fulfilling 2 early orders.
Since our Account HEALTH is nuthin’ but zeros except in shipping performance where it’s 98.5%, wondered what the issue could be.
Now makes sense-or as much sense as as AMZ programmers ever do…
(Ya’ll are too quick for me… see ya’ll have already addressed this issue on the other thread).
I may be making progress in fixing this.
I started by opening a case with SS. The first reply arrived within minutes and was totally off topic: “After reviewing your e-mail, we have understood that your issue is related to Valid Tracking Rate (VTR).”
No, you stupid piece of silicon, it is not about Valid Tracking. It is about buy box eligibility. Try again.
I received another reply this afternoon: “We understand your concern that none of your books are ineligible for the buy box.”
That is progress. They at least have the correct subject. That is a record for my dealings with seller support: They got the correct subject after only TWO tries. ( It is truly pathetic that we are reduced to such a low bar to measure some progress. )
I assume that Vinay actually means ‘eligible’ when they write ‘inelligible’. The good news herein is that is a very human mistake. So I have probably advanced past Amabot hell and am talking to a real person. ( I’m trying very hard to give SS reps credit for something. I’m in a generous mood today. )
Then Vinay spoils my mood by asking for an ASIN or FSKU.
Vin, you ignorant peasant, you don’t need that. ALL of my inventory is inelligible, not just one ASIN. This is an account-level issue, not an ASIN-level issue.
So I have reached the point that I need advice. I have not yet sent Vinay a message with a particular ASIN. Any advice on which ASIN I should send? Should it be for a new book? Or a used one? Should it be one where I am competing with Amazon, or not?
I want to send one which cannot possibly have any fault about it so that Vinay must acknowledge that there is a mistake.
When I bcome king, Vinay is going on a pike. After several back-and-forths, they finally concluded that my inventory was inelligible, and presented that fact to me as if they had discovered something for me.
Speaking of people on pikes, I hereby issue a virtual get-off-the-pike card to Danny_Amazon. In a NSFE thread, he was discussing the same problem suffered by another seller. I asked him to escalate mine, and apparently he did. I’m 100% elligible again.
I have a new theory regarding buy box eligibility: when a seller suffers any minor problem - such as a bad VOC or an AZ claim - a bot automatically suspends eligibility, and changing that suspension requires a human to review it.
This bot, in my best guess, was loosed upon the world sometime in the first half of 2023.
@TEXASEXILEBOOKS : If my guess is right, all you have to do is go to the new seller forums, tag a mod, and they will escalate it for you. It has happened twice now for me.
Nail, meet hammer.
This so precisely mirrors most of my experience with support. Even before covid when it was at least possible to correct detail pages.
But for any system wide problem, after a couple of rounds where they read nothing, comes the demand for an example. If you do not supply the example – case closed. If you do, they pretend that example is the only problem. And ignore all that you said before.
While support has reached a (so far) all time low, I get annoyed at people who either haven’t been there very long or who have creative memories. Because it’s always been nearly impossible to make support aware of a system problem.
In those early years they tinkered – not quite constantly – but almost. Every tinker broke at least two things. Eventually one of those things would be fixed. A couple of days of stability.Then more tinkering.
After more lessons than anyone should need, I gave up trying to make them aware of what they broke. By the time the two weeks of useless communication had gone by it was either fixed or broken forever.
The main problem with SS is that their scope of responsibility, education, and permissions are so limited that many of the issues that come their way are beyond their abilities to assist, regardless of how much the particular rep may want to. Then once the rep realizes the issue is outside their area of responsibility they don’t have the ability to transfer the case to a department that actually can help, and they aren’t allowed to tell the seller where to direct the case either. All they can do is make something up so they can mark the case closed.
This is an Amazon problem more than a Seller Support issue. When I have a problem which does actually fall under one of their very few areas of responsibility, Seller Support usually is able to help me. Of course, there are still the reps who know nothing at all, but you get those everywhere. I had to mute myself in the middle of a call with my health insurance yesterday because I had started shouting out of frustration.
I haven’t had a positive result from a seller support case in years (not counting issues that the bots resolve w/o involving a human at all, the self-service options do work).
One problem is seller support employees’ primary metric they’re rated on is the number of cases they close. So they pull a random form response out of their azz, send it to you, and close the case.
If the issue isn’t that important, I would avoid involving seller support at all.
Your issue is obviously important, so the best you can do is keep trying and resubmitting the case until you hopefully draw someone who does something useful.
I suspect that this is true. The one thing that we can do to limit this is to leave a strongly worded negative review for the hapless rep.
I am happy to report that I did my worst for Vinay in this regard.
(Bolding mine, because April hit the proverbial nail perfectly with that sentence)
In my most recent exchange, referenced above, I tried to tell Vinay exactly that:
It was like talking to a brick wall. (Actually worse than that, because brick walls do not lie to you.)
I do wonder if that has any impact. I’ve always been afraid to do that in fear of retaliation.
Fear of retaliation by people who don’t have the power to do anything?
Remember, the primary reason that Amazon reps lie and evade is their lack of power. If they could actually do something, they might occasionally try to.
I do not find that to be true for the reasons I used to turn to seller support. Fixing detail pages for books. They do have the power there.
They simply refuse. 100% failure since covid. Various buzz-off templates.
I quit trying.
They have decided there’s no need to ever do ANYTHING. Just let the bots find a refusal template.
I have seen 2 instances on the NSFE in the last month where a seller was retaliated against for speaking the truth about seller support’s incompetence.
I will never speak anything negative about Amazon when it can be linked to my seller account, and that includes any kind of feedback or poll.
I do think if enough people complain loud enough that something will be done, but I won’t take that kind of risk.
No. Nothing will be done. Only if it draws media attention and that is extremely unlikely. Nobody much cares about how Amazon treats sellers. With the exception of a couple of instances where they crossed legal lines in the UK and Europe and had their hands slapped.
assuming a bot suspended buybox eligibility, or did something to mess with the algorithm on my account (1 sale a day vs 30-40.) how do you get this fixed? seller support obviously says your account health is fine. thanks for any input
@Becca do have offers in multiple categories, or just one? And if multiple, is your eligibility affected in all of them?
Still buybox eligible for some. Mostly HBA. It’s like someone flipped a switch. Literally.
I am not given to embracing unfounded conspiracy theories.
That being said, we ourselves have expended enough time and treasure over the last decade of split-testing to convince me that the so-called “Sprinkler Theory” for the A9/A10 Algorithm’s display of Offer-Listings in the Amazon Global Catalog is no mere will of the wisp.
In the US Marketplace, and the others, often enough.