A commonly-used technique is the creation of two separate business entities under a single ‘corporate umbrella’ - a manufacturing arm and a sales arm - and producing invoices from the former to the latter.
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I have no idea why… but when you said this, I thought of “Master of Puppets” song.
How apropos.
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@Dreamscape-Studio and @aerides this is exactly what I did. I was not a handmaker but a small batch manufacturer, and every product was both assembled and created. My umbrella Company (LLC; manufacturer) invoiced my Store (DBA; sales).
Regardless, it’s this part that torpedoes ALL Sellers using FBA:
Your stickers, your outer packaging, your printing, your internal packaging, your individual shipping packaging, your shipment packaging, your (compliant!) inserts, your QA labor, your shipping labor, your shipping fees, and probably more–NONE OF THAT is reimbursed to Sellers, for Amazon’s errors.
So it almost seems like all FBA Sellers (who are concerned about reimbursement values) need to consider becoming brand registered (so your ASINs and private label/small batch/handmade products are yours only) and then invoicing yourself for THE COMPLETE PACKAGE that is shipped to FBA. All costs looped into that invoice and per-item cost.
Am I seeing this clearly?
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You certainly are but the odds of Amazon accepting that kind of invoice are zero.
They are looking specifically for your supply chain source with the ability to verify.
I know how difficult it can be for Handmade sellers to prove their costs and get them accepted. That’s only made worse by this.
Again, I will note that this change doesn’t mean much to us in terms of large quantities of inventory getting lost or damaged but that could change in a heartbeat. I guess we have been lucky with this so far.
@VTR brings up other important points in post 32 upthread for seller who sell expensive merch. That’s not us so it’s less of a concern.
I’ll also reiterate my other point upthread about how much more Amazon was reimbursing sellers than they really should have been. Now, they took it to a very unfair and seemingly illegal place.
A lot more goes into the COGS of an item than just what it cost to procure. A lot of sellers are paying freight to get the product to themselves, aside from just getting it to FBA.
ETA - You know how Amazon said they weren’t raising FBA fees and reducing others? This is how they pay for that.
Someone did some math that said “how do we make these poor bastards feel good before we make them feel mad”
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Does anyone remember 10ish(?) years ago when Amazon would send offers to buy your FBA inventory at the going rate so they could use it to fulfill their own orders? Pepperidge Farm does.
Now it’s just “lost” at the warehouse so here’s 20% of its value.
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Of course they are. That’s because they want to buy straight from the manufacturer. If the manufacturer refuses, Amazon just rips off their IP and introduces it as Amazon Basics.
And then, we all know what happens in the search results when Amazon introduces something.
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And if the manufacture refuses all of a sudden their products are in violation of Amazon policies.
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I’m pretty sure if Amazon comes a knockin, any manufacture / brand will offer up a better cost than what the third party seller is getting. Just saying…
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Not always.
Some of the manufacturers I deal with have very specific ideas regarding what their products should sell for. They have no interest in giving bulk discounts as that will lead to some retailers offering their products for discounted prices. They don’t mind the occasional sale, but they aren’t interested in participating in the devaluation of their own product.
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actually quite a few I deal with charge Amazon the highest price. The cost of dealing with Amazon makes giving them discounts not worth it.
Amazon has too many demands and requirements.
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This is absolutely true, especially for geographic territory and dealer network products. Any half intelligent manufacturer with a dealer network understands that they will no longer control the market share, and price point of their products on and offline.
The closest Amazon will get is a finger pointing to a large distributor who Amazon will try and make a vendor, but the manufacturer will yank that distributors’ chain as soon as the pricing interferes with the rest of the network by yanking back end money like advertising/volume rebates etc.
I saw this in the toy business where the manufacturer was a previous Amazon vendor. They got tired of their items being given away and went out of stock on everything, and pointed Amazon to a distributor.
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Interestingly this all but destroys reimbursement services right as there is literally no margin?
Has this point been brought up already 
?
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Well… that’s a really good point… 
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That subject has indeed been broached over in the NSFE, among other related discussion venues.
Still, I suspect the impact will be minimal upon the larger players in the Reimbursement-tracking industry - entities such as those alluded to in the Modern Retail article you linked elsewhere in the SAS, Getida, Manage ByStats, et al. - simply because of the relative attractiveness of their prevailing pricing model.
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Please explain.
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Acme doohickey retails for $9.99 and is lost or damaged
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Acme seller hires Getida to seek reimbursements for lost or damaged acme doohickey units
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Getida takes x% of the reimbursement.
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Prior to policy Amazon would refund $9.99 for every lost or damaged acme doohickey unit claim.
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Now amazon is will only reimburse seller $1.50 for every lost or damaged acme doohickey unit claim.
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Are you saying that Getida and every service like it will have to make do with [x% * $1.50 * unit count] ?
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No, I’m saying that I’m expecting that there will be an ample amount of 3P Sellers who utilize the “inter-entity” invoicing paradigm mentioned in Post # 41 upthread, and/or similar proprietary data-shielding mechanisms, to keep these Third Party Service Providers humming along.
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This is a good point. Getida has it’s own packing slip generation as well. So I don’t see why this would be any different.
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I don’t use services like these so I went to look up Getida’s pricing plans and see that they operate on a “no upfront subscription, pay per recovery” basis.
Even with the sellers using the invoicing method mentioned above, once the policy change kicks in I assume the amount they make will still be at least 20-30% less than what they get now while doing the same amount of work.
Maybe they’ll be forced to do a basic subscription fee + a lower % of the reimbursement amount in the future? 
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I am sure this has happened quite a bit, but remember who they come from and who owns newspapers. There was an article about an overturned Amazon delivery truck, it was up for a few hours and then changed to “delivery truck” they do not want anything with their name to have a bad light so they just pay off the press. Entire media suppression on the realities of Amazon life.
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Think of every big corporation or business entity. Look how long it took to nail Jeffry Epstein. And even then, it was only because of a reporter asking questions and not giving up until she got answers.
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