Look at the link for the report that ASV gave above. It’ll tell you the amount they are planning on reimbursing you. If you want to contest it, you can give Amazon your actual costs but looking at their “rules” they will ask you to provide proof of your costs with threats that you will be removed for anything they view as fraud.
I agree with you, no way I will give them any invoices. Looking at what they are using for reimbursement value, it’s not crazy far off my actual costs. Some I will make some money, some are about even and I will definitely lose an a few. The issue as I look at these numbers is that you can buy what looks like the same thing using garbage materials really cheap which is how they are apparently coming up with their figures. Problem is, I don’t do this so my product costs are significantly higher. Thanks Temu…
Mine does not look like that. I think mine shows everything, even items that are not in FBA and haven’t been stocked FBA or FBM in a long time.
I am in handmade BTW.
Ours are much less for some ASINs, which could be problematic if there are shipments with significant discrepancies. I think I’ll decide what to do on a case-by-case basis, if / when I see a reimbursement for an amount far lower than the COGS for a particular ASIN.
Item A - Single Bottle - They are 26% of retail but still higher by 28% over our actual cost
Item A - 2-pack - They are 36% of retail and higher by 60% over our actual cost…
LOL
Clearly this is being done by category. But how do you have $3.65 for a single and $9.13 for 2 of the same thing, while the 2-pack is a discount to the consumer.
It’s a parent child variation too (package count)… Simple math…
Are we really sure we want AI running our lives and businesses? Asking for a friend.
I did found few that has lower suggested sourcing cost when other same type and priced items has higher suggested cost. So I Updated the lower ones to the same suggested cost as the others with the same retail price and the system approved them right away.
I just entered a new cost, and the system didn’t ask for any proof. Maybe the system has a limit on how much we can increase of the cost before it asks for proof?. My increase were between $0.13 - $0.93
Currently, Amazon reimburse us the retail price minus all the fee.
With the upcoming new policy, Amazon is going to reimburse us whatever the “suggested sourcing cost” they determined is (or we can proof of), but they are NOT going to deduct out any additional fee from that, right?
I only tried one of 400+ listed, it was one that has been out of stock FBA and FBM for many months. I put a $4 increase in, $2 less than normal, and it asked for proof. I will have to play around with some other non-important ASINs and figure out the limit.
I didn’t send proof on the first one, waiting to see if there’s any response from Joey_Amazon on the handmade forum on Amazon. There is absolutely no direction from Handmade. Handmade paper invoices, anyone?
I’ve been looking at our reimbursements in the last few weeks, and the results are dismal. Amazon is paying 40-50% of the cost of lost ASINs (AFTER rebates), which is way lower than the suggested 43% of retail price that some folks have suggested above. There are very few cases where reimbursement is close to the full value, but for the vast majority of them, it is dramatically lower.
Thankfully, the percentage of lost units is relatively low, although the percentage of shipments with lost units is high, despite the fact that we always ship case packs and follow Amazon’s requirements to the letter.
Of course, I’ve requested revision for the cost on the Manage Your Sourcing Cost page, but they’ve denied 100% of the revisions, and have asked for proof of value for every single ASIN. I really do not want to give out our pricing, even though (or precisely because) Amazon already has relationships with all the manufacturers we buy from. I’m assuming this is going to be yet another implicit fee that we’ll have to pass on to the customer?
What a horrible shame that all of a sudden, a large portion of FBA returns are a completely different item in the box being Amazon is too lazy to open it before they slap an LPN# on the outside of the shipping box. Shame they cannot know this is going on being the packaging was never opened or evaluated in any way before it got back to the seller, or their handling destroyed the shipping box by their own Amazon delivery personnel making the product inside unknown/missing/different.
It’s almost as if sellers with equal moral footing to Amazon might fight back by using Amazon’s own ineptitude. I guess it is a good thing for Amazon, that I/we have more moral fortitude than they do.
I have told the story numerous times on the OSFE about the (now defunct) Amazon seller that was down the street from our old building, where every time they got a customer damaged item they would simply buy a replacement from an Amazon vendor using a family member (large family or organization) on Amazon, then return the broken/defective/whatever item and keep the one sent by Amazon. This type of behavior will come back as Amazon puts the screws to honest sellers to squeeze profits out of them.
We used to just ignore the few bucks for different items returned on our cheap high volume items, but now we demand each penny, despite the juice not being worth the squeeze.
I don’t know about “all of a sudden,” this has always been an issue for my FBA returns.
Once a month I would have to go through the pictures on my phone and delete all the FBA return claims and SAFE-T claims pics because my storage was full.
Cough cough… I was referring to those returns received by sellers of low moral character cough cough cough.. You know those who would get a legit return in the box and put a minecraft plushie back in for the photo instead of the hello kitty plushie so they can get reimbursed because the box was never opened for anyone to know… cough cough cough.. Because Amazon only does the bare minimums to save profits.
I know many many sellers who find tittt for tat behavior to be acceptable when Amazon steals via their policies/procedures and ineptitude. I received a UPS package yesterday with the box completely blown out on 3 sides but the item was still stuck to a piece of tape on the inside, and I could easily see many sellers taking a picture of that box along with their middle finger in the way to demonstrate their displeasure with Amazons numerous “No lube” policies/procedures, when filing a claim for damages on FBA returns.
“What’s that Amazon? My bar code was not scannable at your broken FC so you charge me for the bar coding you didn’t do in the pictures you sent… Okay. each and every box I get that is damaged, is shipping damage or is missing items.” Middle finger emoji…
I assert this is the majority of sellers, and the cause for most stupid Amazon policies, and that is the result of a lack of Amazon policies, creating entry barriers to the Amazon marketplace.
If Amazon limited sales to professionals in their craft, half of the polices could vanish overnight.
Amazon has now chosen to steal from the inept, instead of tack to culling them and profiting off the competent. Sociopathic greed machine at work.
I have been arguing for quite some time that Amazon needs a TEST that applicants for a selling account need to pass before they can open a selling account.
At this point I would implement the test with an application fee of $100 (or more) to weed out all the rookies on a tight budget. It would possibly eliminate all the posts about “why is my money in reserve? I need it to pay my bills”.
Amazon will never do it though because they collect the $40/month from every one of those accounts and many will eventually be suspended, their funds held, and, their FBA inventory seized to be sold by AMAZON!
I also assert seller support would actually work because they would not have to outsource that department because competent people could read their TOS and policies before calling/email/messaging support as you pointed out…
They could hire 100 competent Americans instead of 3000 foreign cut and paste reply workers.
Handmade paper invoices, anyone? 
