Here’s a new one - Amazon kept losing my inventory and going out of stock, so I stopped shipping to FBA FCs, and started fulfilling in-house.
But Amazon will, on occasion, “find” one of these “lost” items, and put it back into FBA inventory, which grabs the buy box, and it immediately sells on the same day it was found.
October 31, 2023 Shipments SELLABLE MSP1 -1
October 31, 2023 Adjustments SELLABLE MSP1 Inventory found 1
Yet, I get charged for an entire MONTH’S storage on this “found” item. This is not a big hairy deal for me, as my products are small, but what of someone selling something large, like enema kits for elephants, or waistcoats for whales?
It was OBVIOUSLY there for the whole month since they found it and sold it.
The most shocking part from my perspective is that they don’t charge FBA sellers EVERY month for all the lost/missing items since they are (almost always) someplace in their system. Can’t wait for Amazon to figure that one out and start adding more fees for “MIA/Discoverable at a Future Date” ‘inventory’.
Not according to them - they said it was GONE, and they must be held to be consistent with their statements - if they lost something, then they cannot charge storage, as they cannot possibly sell it.
With the amount of inventory that’s routinely lost and found, every FBA warehouse clearly comes with a wormhole installed. I see nothing in the BSA about needing to pay for interdimensional storage.
Like everything else on Amazon they can make the rules say whatever they want. If it involves money the rules are — “YOU owe US” 99.9 % of the time.
Only slightly exaggerated and sarcastic when it comes to the big A…
While yes, it was obviously there, IMO Amazon should waive any associated storage fees because it was their error that lead to it being unavailable for purchase during the entirety of its “lost” phase.
Had it been available, it would have sold and not needed storage.
Speaking of more / new fees… After being on Amazon since 2018, a new fee popped up this year. I was getting ahead of Tax season yesterday because we are going to be very tied up Q1 24 with other activities and discovered this new “Tax and Regulatory Fee” for a penny that I had never seen before that screwed up all our P&L / Accounting templates…
Anyone ever seen this before and know what the penny charge is related to?
Usually when we see Regulatory Fee next to Tax, we think of something like CRV collection on like plastic bottles or some other fee associated with the sale of a certain type of product.
Well maybe Amazon is running a penny for your thoughts campaign and prepaid you knowing that you did have a thought and there was no other way to account for their expenditure so they pawned it off as a government payoff as a way to balance the books …
I’ve not encountered this, but have run across a similar problem.
Item gets lost. Okay, stuff happens.
A year or two later, it’s found. But there’s no listing for it, since (in accordance with good bookselling practice), I routinely delete old listings. So now it’s “Stranded”, and since I don’t have it in my hands, I can’t write a description for it, even if I knew exactly what it was.
So now, because they “lost” it, then “found” it again, I’m on the hook for paying for removal or disposal (which is often more than the amount they reimbursed me when they lost it).
Probably won’t surprise anyone that I got 3 of these within a week of the new (much higher) removal rates going into effect.
This prompts a good question - how do others backup and archive amazon product set-ups? I have been downloading the inventory spreadsheet, but which specific sheet is the best and most complete expression of a product? I know that I must track and save images myself, but that’s easy to do - one directory per ASIN/SKU. But all the Amazon fields and the text - which spreadsheet or report gives us the best “backup”?
Thanks for the laugh.
