Ok. So when I get a product suppressed for missing description, I don’t usually care because sales aren’t all that great to begin with. However, now I have a product that sells several hundred units a month and the description has been erased.
I edited the listing manually and then created a case with seller support to get the listing refreshed. The agent said there was nothing she could do even though she could see that I had added a product description. She tells me that she will forward this to the catalog team. Instead, it gets sent to brand registry
I have never done an upload to add products or any missing information on existing products. I have always done everything manually. Will doing a flat file upload work? If so, can someone tell me how to make the change? I have no experience with flat files/uploads or anything like that so I need to be instructed just as you would tell a 4-year old.
Sorry @Uncle_Leroy , I don’t have an answer for you but just wanted to say for the benefit of whichever guru responds, that we will also be watching this thread closely because I think it’s essential to know how to use uploads but we have never done it as we don’t have hundreds of SKUs to manage. Thank you for asking this question.
Amazon has been playing with the listings and removing and adding attributes aggressively the last 6 to 9 months. Let’s check a couple of things first.
Since you are use to doing it through Manage Inventory edit page, did you have any fields on any of the tabs that had an error triangle on them?
Was the description missing both above the description attribute box and in the description attribute box?
How long after updating the listing did you wait until you check the product detail page?
Now for how to get your category specific template … click Add Products via Upload
Click the second box … Get Product Templates button
Once you have the template downloaded, open it and get familiar with the different tabs.
At this point, we would need to know how comfortable you are with using excel as these templates often have different challenges as Amazon tends to hide columns which makes things interesting.
Description and search term (the box above description) were both blank. I added description but not search term. Is that a problem?
4-5 days
Thank you very much for everything. So far, I’ve been able to follow you step by step. I’m generally comfortable in Excel when doing different things but I’ve never done a flat file upload before. Well, I will correct myself. I tried to do it a few years ago and kept getting stupid errors and nothing would take.
I’m ready for the next steps to do this flat file thingy…
Ok … what we suggest is opening up the Manage Edit page and either printing or taking a screen shot of each tab on the listing. This way you have all of the information that you will need to complete the excel file.
The first section of the columns on the template tab of the file are required and must be completed. This will include the description. Since your issue is the description, this section would be the only attributes to complete. Then you would need to find the attribute Update Delete column and select PartialUpdate. Once this is done save the file.
Now go back to the page where you downloaded your category excel template and select the tab Upload your spreadsheet
Drag and drop the file into the box or browse your files to select the file from your computer. Then click the Submit products button.
Now switch to the Spreadsheet upload status tab on this page and what for the result. You may have to hit a refresh button after a few minutes. One item usually doesn’t take to long but the system could be busy do to Cyber Monday.
After you get the results and if it is good, wait a little bit (maybe up to 24 to 48 hours to allow time) and check your listing to see if the description is there.
If the upload is bad, come back and we will walk you through how to find out why it was rejected.
Since my current suppressed listing is only suppressed because of a missing description, is there a way I can download the Amazon values to see if they match?
The process our friend @Dogtamer has outlined in this post
The instruction are basically this line within his answer …
the seller must resort to the prior method, of opening a Seller Support case specifically requesting that their Category Listing Reports be “enabled” for download from the Inventory Reports Dashboard.
You are welcome … we have to shut it down now but we will watch and respond when we come back online.
It’s possible it could even be a hack … but we are betting on a bot making the change as that is what we experienced with 3 of our listings. Amazon has been rearranging the attributes … deleting some and adding some … so our bet is on a bot.
When it happen to us, it was the category node. It took doing a PartialUpdate about 3 times with the same info for it to take.
Not sure if this is still the case but in the past, if the original creator (owner) deleted their listing in their account, it took their content with it. And it left an authority gap, in that it was a whole nightmare to get the bot to accept contributions from other non-originating Sellers–whether via edit or upload.
Every time I’ve seen this in the past it has been related to Seller Performance removing the description because of a listing/violation issue and using this to suppress the PDP. Sellers aren’t able to edit the page because it’s looked at like an Amazon Retail take over.
In your Inventory - Fix my products I will see “‘[product_description]’ is required but not supplied.” and the PDP is not searchable, but still exists.
So is there no solution to the problem? I have about 600 units in FBA (as well as another 400-500 here. Would hate to lose all that. I’ve already had to write off more than I budgeted
Since you have added a description I would include you own SellerSKU in the case info and explain that the PDP is not updating with the description you added.
I might add that you think Seller Performance might be involved, but only if you have 1-2 denial type responses on the Case.
There are about a half-dozen variations of the DWALIND (‘Dogtamerese’ for “Determine Why AListing Is Not Displaying”) Tool that I’ve recorded over the years; some of them, such as the URL you linked (https: //sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/support/INTENT_DA_ManageListingIssues), do appear to be deprecated, but this one still works (@ least for me) to gain direct access to that functionality:
@oneida_books@Dogtamer Thank you both for the listing not displaying link… I did open a case using that option.
“We will email you within three days” is the message displaying now that I submitted my request. Let’s see how many “three days” it takes to get an answer
