Feel free to call me crazy, delusional or experiencing ‘wishful thinking’ but I have noticed what I THINK is a bit of a tone change in some of the responses from the MODS to certain situations. This one wasn’t quite as ‘direct’ as some others I’ve seen but I interpreted it as a shot across the bow of the OP.
The OP was asking about changes to packaging being a problem and Danika noted that “It does not appear you’re enrolled in Brand Registry as a Brand Owner or an Authorized reseller of any brand. So we cannot validate what you’re asking compared to your trademark.”
THEN went on to say – "From the Selling policies and seller code of conduct, it states that sellers must, “Provide accurate information to Amazon and our customers at all times.”
My interpretation was that this was a DIRECT warning to not IMPLY they were the brand owner when they were not.
It was a lot easier for the mods when the answers were coming from the “veteran sellers” as they could simply come in and say… @“verteran seller” thank you for providing such excellent help. @“OP” if you need additional help, please feel free to come back and ask me.
And then think of all the fires on NSFE with the verification issues … the USPS update threads that all popped up quickly yesterday … mods that show up and respond are on the front lines … it’s bound to get to them … it gets to some of us here from time to time …
So far the few times they have done this with my reply to a poster, it is at least a week later. The OP never has come back to the thread. Gets old after a while. The most I seem to do there now is give thumbs up to Neverlast, April and TVO105.
And Marbles, and Medic, and Picks, and Selg, and Joe, and Rob, and Nutty, and SUNDANCE, and Artie, and Image - just to name a few of the other SAS members who brave the poisoned pond.
I wouldn’t lightly overlook the efforts of CBA_6123 & Vernon (both of whom would probably be recognizable to most of us from their OSFE Handles), & Odrade, or those of long-time vets like Rushdie, River_Retail, SELLC, Bad_Mouse_Vinyl, et. al, nor those of shorter-term vets like TNValleyProducts, AnOnyxMouse, & Brigitte, among several others who are still trying to help - and thus, to my way of thinking, generally deserve a thumbs-up.
That’s not a comprehensive list by any means - mine takes rather longer to delineate, but there’s only 173 days left in the year, so…
We sell stuff in bottles. The label stays much the same, the bottle stays exactly the same, but the cap changes color because we buy overstocks, and the colors are pretty random when you buy overstock packaging. We save a bundle on cost that way, but the color of the cap can vary all over, even within the same lot number, batch number, even within the same carton of 48 bottles we ship to Amazon.
Is that a no-no on Amazon? To ship a mere different color cap on the same product?
No one has ever complained about this, and we even saved up a large quantity of pink caps that all came in a contiguous lot, and ran a joke campaign about the “Barbie 60th Anniversary Commemorative Packaging” in the trade journals.
But aside from some jerk customer (our users/customers are not jerks) pulling a fast one and demanding a refund for “not as described”, is there any risk of Amazon itself taking exception to this?
There are listing where they state that items are shipped with random colors. Maybe add the fact that your item comes with a variety of colored caps for those who would like to start a colored cap selection (ok … color cap selection is a stretch but you get the point).
AND a special shoutout to our friend @bookwormapril - whose level-headed patience w/ even the most-knuckleheaded of the folks amongst us has long been evident.
That admirable quality is vividly on display in today’s reply to an apparent VA, complaining in the NSFE of being kicked to the curb by a client:
Of course even the OP is unlikely to know for sure exactly what Amazon winds up doing in this situation, but it will perhaps be interesting to see what Veronica posts next to this thread:
Like @Lost_My_Marbles stated, sometimes packaging will vary, but if the variation (the red top meant it was sugar-free, or something else that made it unique) than I think a customer could complain to amazon and cause a problem. If the top color has no meaning, than I dont think it would matter. But to CYA we add a note on our listings stating "Packaging may vary, but product and quantity will always be the same). Sometimes we get deals on certain bag colors or we make slight changes to our labeling, so we always put that note to protect us. We havent updated our product photos in 2 years and haven’t had issues, but now that we are discussing it, makes me realize, we need to update them
Yes, that will be interesting. I bet they dont show their reply publicly though. It seems that a buyer who did send that could trigger certain violations of federal law, makes me think they have a legal duty to respond, somehow. We will have to wait and see. Hopefully…
Someone might want to ask Danika_Amazon how to report such a thing.
