Update to the FBA inventory reimbursement policy

Wow, I nearly smiled at the idea of a competent reply from seller support for once. I would probably think it was fake, if a human actually articulated an intelligent reply during a communication with Amazon.

Our supposed “Account rep” for Amazon Canada called a few days ago about increasing our portfolio, and I flatly told him “We are not interested in expanding our FBA business any further due to repeated inventory failures, false IP flags due to AI usage, and incompetent seller support”. He said he could assist with some of the issues, and I stated “Why should I have to waste additional time to do that for Amazon’s sales benefit? How about you fix your broken process’ instead of adding additional seller steps costing reducing seller efficiency?” Lets just say the call was not productive.

Amazon reps are like many of the proselytizers that come to my door. They take the insults right on the chin for their obvious falures and misdeeds, and come back for more a few weeks later.

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TBF they also have the identify verification process that is consistently broken. So even sellers trying to get started are stonewalled into paying that $40 a month while they keep sending in the same paperwork over and over, meeting video calls that Amazon never shows up for. It really is a money grab, you are spot on.

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I really hate being even a bit ‘fair’ when it comes to the monster, BUT if any of those rookies actually pay attention to posts on any of the different Forums (Fora??? Help @Dogtamer ) they would see that they can apply for a refund as long as they haven’t used any of the features on the site.

That means only the two or three that opened a selling account and then went into hibernation for the winter…

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As does this gem of corporate double-speak just posted by KJ:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/b84f90fe-4751-4cd4-b338-a268d22322fc?postId=1a090c8b-6996-4f6f-ab95-b441da049d2e

Except my costs before an item is ordered by the end customer also includes shipping my stuff to your logistics and fulfillment center, among other costs that you don’t reimburse, but whatever. You were saying?

In other words, “that would be hard and we don’t wanna.”

How kind! You won’t charge me for storage of an item you aren’t storing, that’s so altruistic it’s practically charity! A couple more policies like this and Amazon can file for 501©(3) status.

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The exposition of the corporate stance has been ‘massaged’ by KJ in this later reply to a PRC-based 3P Seller:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/ca7ad06b-9c61-4127-9ea6-f190833409d0?postId=a563b94b-2d31-4d76-9a3a-cb7ba16a54ef

I strongly suspect that further contortions are yet to come…

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All I see here is yet another reason why I am glad I only used FBA for 6 months in the begining.

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