Not reliant at all. It’s a luxury, an insurance policy. But they have:
Removed tons of reviews that were fake or just wrong.
Changed a brand name which you can’t do on your own.
Created a variation after the fact that you can’t do in our category
Helped us take down competitors selling stuff they shouldn’t be
Gotten us more space at FBA
Found a lost shipment by geo-tracking the trailer and getting it checked in within 12 hours after being lost for 2 months.
There’s a lot of other stuff I can’t remember at the moment. I don’t even bother looking at their reports. We have them for escalatory purposes only or if some emergency comes up.
Our SAS managers have been intelligent, super responsive, and 3 of 4 knew our business / about business.
We do get the free deal a week also because we have qualifying ASIN’s. But, like you, we were told that we could have deals opened on everything and that was a big win for us but that never happened, even after I proved the SAS “executive” wrote me in an email that this would happen, prior to enrollment.
When we first joined SAS, we were getting FBA space exceptions weekly. That went away when they introduced the capacity manager. So we didn’t have that long. To be honest, that was the main reason we joined SAS. All we really cared about. It was certainly paying for itself in that regard.
They are still refusing to look into why we get cut by so much more than the avg seller. Slashed down to 6 weeks and being told we will have enough space for 6 months. That will forever anger me. They say that’s just the way it is.
I don’t recommend the SAS program to anyone that is not having consistent issues that can be handled by escalations. It won’t help your sales and once you join and leave, probably hurt your sales. Pay to Play. And be punished when you don’t.
I’d be willing to bet just about anything that if we quit the program, our sales would decline with some algorithmic shift because we aren’t paying to play.