I put my account into vacation mode late July, we sold our house in early August, put everything in storage and have been traveling since then. Last night I rec’d an order for one item from a business buyer (never had one before, didn’t register for Business selling but my acc’t shows that I’m registered and the un-enrol button does nothing). I immediately checked my account vacation settings and it says my listings are inactive - as they should be. In October I rec’d an email from Amazon saying my account was deactivated due to inactivity which wasn’t surprising. They want identity verification, again not surprising. I haven’t done that as we’re still traveling and don’t have a permanent address yet.
I obviously can’t fulfill this order so not sure how to proceed. If I cancel the order my account will probably be toast as I’ve had no orders since July to offset the cancellation. Would a “Call Me” request from Account Health dept. be wise and if so, should I wait until tomorrow for perhaps more reliable support?
And of course, the biggest questions are how did this happen when my listings are inactive due to vacation mode and Amazon deactivated my account due to inactivity, and how would I prevent this from happening again.
I’ll bet it was added to their cart before you put them in vacation mode? Only thing I can think of.
I didn’t realize that someone could put an item in their cart and then buy it months/years later even if the seller doesn’t have it as an active listing at that time. I assumed (obviously my mistake) that Amazon would refresh the availability prior to allowing the sale to proceed. This would seem to mean that putting your account into vacation mode still puts you at risk if you’re truly unable to fulfill orders - yikes!
I don’t know for a fact that it’s that - it’s just the only thing I can think of?
My listings have been on vacation since my bypass surgery in March of 2020.
My account needs reverification,
I have had multiple orders, most recently two weeks ago.
It has nothing to do with previous orders. It is probably the same systemic failure which leads to ghost or zombie listings. It can’t be fixed.
I find it less annoying than the bogus IP and other violations which are sent on listings which have zero inventory.
This problem probably isn’t unique to FBM. It’s just that FBA sellers won’t notice it as it’s not their responsibility to ship the item, and not their responsibility to cancel the order when FBA realizes the item doesn’t exist
This is certainly disconcerting to hear that you’ve had multiple orders while in vacation mode due to Amazon’s system failure. I’ve never had to cancel an order due to my inability to fulfill, so probably having to do so now (and perhaps in the future) and jeopardizing my account is really disturbing.
Hope you’ve nicely recovered from your heart surgery.
I have had items in my shopping cart that will show a banner that reads something like, “This item is no longer available from the seller you have selected.” So I doubt that this scenario is a big part of the problem that the OP and Lake are reporting.
A single order cancellation will not trash your account. Even though you have no orders which will result in a huge ODR, this will not trash your account. Do not worry about cancelling this order for this reason. As you obviously cannot fill this order, I recommend that you do cancel the order and send the buyer a short apology explaining the Amaglitch.
I don’t see how it could hurt, but I can’t see that it would do any good either. Even a better than average rep will just tell you there is nothing they can do about the glitches and that your account won’t be shut down over 1 order.
The answers are: Because Amazon is badly coded, and unfortunately you can’t, since this didn’t result from anything you did.
It is not really the case.
It is because distributed database systems cannot be error free, and the same problems exist in all distributed database systems. Some sites do not have sufficient transaction volume to show the problems as often as Amazon, but Ebay which is much smaller is now showing similar problems more frequently.
As well as the problems associated with distributed databases, systems like Amazon who use a transaction processing model, in the past called “non-stop computing” ignored or logged many types of errors and continued running instead of aborting a transaction.
Potential results can be either incorrect orders, inventory or reporting, as well as database corruption.
Eventually, the Internet will become so large that nothing will be correct.
Amazon code is not known for its quality or how clean it is.
Distributed DB isn’t a problem if the system preformed simple double checks, and we all know Amazon doesn’t double check anything.
Overselling, ok I’ll let you write that off to distributed DB, allowing an order to process for a seller who is on vacation and/or suspended? No, that is bad code, plain and simple.
I’m sure you’re aware of this, but just in case you aren’t…
If you do get suspended due to metrics, “Amazon glitched” likely will not work as a defense for appeal.
It’s not just for this, I’ve never had any luck with appeals that involved blaming Amazon or someone else even when the problem is legitimately not my fault.
@ForestSprings I suggest zeroing out your quantities for each listing, if possible, and then after 48 hours deleting any listings that you can. That seems to help a bit, if Amazon thinks you don’t have any in stock for even just a few hours. If you have many listings, do the abbreviated feed upload.
When I tried to make my listings inactive, I got a message that said I had to zero out the FBM inventory for Amazon Business. Is it possible that your FBM inventory needs to be zeroed out for the business side?
Thanks very much for this suggestion @papy. I zeroed out some listings before going into vacation mode but I’m a bit hesitant to do that to all my listings. I’m in Handmade and once before when I zeroed out my listings on vacation mode (yes, I’m that paranoid that I wanted a backup if vacation mode failed), I received an email from Handmade saying that if I didn’t have any active ie in-stock listings, I would lose my Handmade status. I don’t think you meant that I should leave them out of stock but I’m wondering if tinkering with the listings will cause other issues.
@Amazon_Seller, I didn’t know that I was registered for the business side and haven’t created any business listings. When I put my account into vacation mode, I didn’t get a message similar to yours about needing to do anything re. business side listings. Thanks for the input though, I appreciate any ideas!
I don’t think we need to do much to have a business listing other than have a business price. The fields are right next to each other on the Manage Inventory page. The price could be the same as the B2C price. Maybe I signed up for it awhile ago. I don’t remember doing it. I think if we do nothing, even our nonbusiness listings show up on Amazon Business.
I never signed up for Business Customers either and get maybe one order a month with it.
Interesting…I had the business price column hidden on my inventory page so didn’t see it at all. All the business prices are blank so I guess they default to my B2C prices. Learn something everyday!
All the business prices are for is if you want to give a discount to business customers. Otherwise business customers can always buy at whatever the normal price is (with NET30 terms on you of course).