I had a problem of items being “automatically removed” on the excuse of being “expired”, when we sell a product that has no expiration date.
Tracing that down led to an admission that Amazon had decided to change the “product type”, which can cause changes in the “browse node” the category in which one’s products sit.
I was lucky enough to speak to an actual cluefull person who worked on the catalog team, and she explained that Amazon has yet another AI, this one reads product TITLES, and decides what the product type is from the title. It then silently changes the product type, and the browse node, and to heck what you submitted when you created the listing.
This led to the assumption by Amazon that, because the product was in a (completely wrong) product type, that the product simply MUST have an expiration date, this led them to imagine that this was so, and to change a yes/no field to “yes the product has an expiration date”, and then to apply an arbitrary expiration date of still unknown length to the product.
Alternatively, it made “expired” appear on a list of choices, and it was easier for the worker to pick that option than to go through the “grade and resell” option we selected for all returns, so it saved the poor warehouse worker 30 seconds.
I have no idea how this is supposed to jibe with the new shorter product title requirement, but it does not seem to be working at all, as our product was misclassified, and burdened with the costs of “removals” of over 2 dozen perfectly saleable items.
This or that Amabot has been sporadically doing the same at least since the 080218 Search Conformity Initiative first came down the pike, so I’m not surprised to learn that there’s a new Ai-driven one policing the 061026 Title Truncation | Item Highlights (“Modular Title Format” in "Amazonese) Initiative.
Such an admission as was revealed to you, I would think, probably goes far in explaining why there’s been a veritable explosion of complaints, over in the NSFE & related biz-discussion venues alike over the last two months, about non-Expiration-Dated Inventory suddenly being flagged as such, w/ the almost-inevitable expenditure of Removal Order costs to fix yet another Amazon-created problem.
this is exactly what happened to me, and I am following your instructions to “insist upon reimbursement”. But even that is comical, they want me to send them photos of mailing labels they generated for the removals, and the boxes in which the removals were shipped.
Also, while they openly admit the the error being Amazon’s alone, they comically demanded photos of the product, to “prove” that there is no expiration date on the product. I said “no” to all those silly requests, as this was purely a computerized fol de rol, with a computer change the made resulting in removal orders for items that had simply “been in inventory” for some period of time.
At least they know when inventory arrives and when it leaves a warehouse.
This not only affects inventory and search, but it also effects fees. We sell furniture, which has a lower fee structure for the portion over $200. Now, much of it is not furniture, meaning higher fees. I also banged my head against support, and while they were able to add the furniture node back in, the new, canonical node is what’s used for fees, and I’m expected to open a case for each sale that results in a higher fee, in hopes of recovering it. Needless to say, with my time worth more than $0/hr, this is the same as saying “pay more fees”.
“Fortunately”, we can’t currently sell furniture, because we shipped ONE order (of 80 chairs) by a (great) carrier that Amazon hasn’t extorted into a cut of the shipping money. As a result, the only thing that’s selling is what’s miscategorized. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they sometimes make a sale.
So, here is where Amazon stands on making us whole for their error. The short version is “no”.
They admit to the error, they admit to the automatic “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” escalation of their error into removals of perfectly salable merchandise, yet they stand on “policy” even when the sole cause of the “policy” being applied was their back-end error.
I’m inclined to send this to Amazon legal, which should prompt “executive intervention”, but is the threat of a arbitration/mediation a good way to get retaliated against?
So can one read about these initiatives, and are these the official Amazon project names, or do you just make a list and come up with cute names that sound “corporate” enough to be plausible?
The official “Amazonese” nomenclature for this is “Modular Title Format.”
“Title Truncation | Item highlights” is the “Dogtamerese” phrase I came up with, to help me categorize the various things I archive which are relevant to the topic, as soon as 061026 Amazon News Headline “Updates to improve your product titles begin on July 27” (link) brooked the light of dawn; it incorporates the official “Amazonese” terminology for this new Product Attribute, “Item Highlights,” w/ a phrase which @ first-glance indicates what the predominant focus of this particular Initiative happens to be.
I chose to incorporate the ‘pipe’ (" | ") character in crafting that phrase because it was Amazon’s originally-stated position - since supersededFootnote - that the Product Title and Item Highlights attributes would be bisected in that manner.
I remain convinced that one of the reasons my recollection faculties seem to be a bit sharper than they might otherwise be is my life-long habit of using such mnemonical devices as aids to memory; I also remain deeply grateful to my elders who taught me how to find (and/or create) useful shortcuts/shorthand of this nature.
Footnote
The ‘pipe’ character - aka “Vertical Bar” - is a glyph which seems to’ve originated way before the art of Typography began to flower; the scholars who study such things have asserted for centuries now-passed that there exists a not-insignificant body of prehistoric evidence to support a notion that cave-painting ‘Early Humans’ used such ‘visual separators’ to good effect.
In any event, the Pipe/Vertical Bar passed into ASCII (“American Standard Code for Information Interchange”) at an early stage in that standard’s development (w/ a brief flirtation w/ the “Broken Bar,” mercifully-abandoned when I was but a youngling), perhaps primarily because it became standardized in various disciplines of Higher Mathematics as a separator between this or that piece of information well before Information Technology standards were even appearing as ‘blips’ on most of mankind’s radar.
From thence, its usage evolved to become a quite-useful tool in prototypical Programming Language(s) (think “piping command”), and thus a “Special Character” - none of which are recommended for usage in any system of modern Information Technology other than in that specific manner, as eschewing that Best Practice can (and often does) open up entirely-unforeseen extenuating circumstances on the Unintended Consequences front.
In simpler terms, integrating machine-readable characters into a human-readable workflow format is, by the very-disparate natures of the intended goals which they serve, typically considered - widely, broadly, and generally - rather inadvisable.
Nonetheless, Amazon has been breaking HTML standards ever since the Z-Shops Days (if not before - witness its continued support of the non standard HTML Entity-like " < /br >" [‘broken’ for web display) line break designator - in its pursuit of revenue generation via its proprietary A9/A10 Algorithm Search Sales Engine; there would also seem to exist some data to suggest the same paradigm surfaced in its headlong rush to implement the Title Truncation | Item Highlights/Modular Title Format Initiative, as evidenced in this reply by the shape-shifting Kris_Amazon to s/he/its 082126 ‘Engage’ NSFE discussion “Product Title Updates: Progress, Feedback, & Your Questions Answered” @ https: //sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/57eafaea-964e-4701-96f2-61d32d9b27c4, indicating that the originally-professed position has now been rescinded (underlined emphasis mine):
Great story - but what advice do you have about my choice of (a) dropping the issue, or (b) threatening arbitration on this issue?
Here is the latest from Amazon on this issue - they admit to all the errors, and say they have now fixed all the errors, but refuse to reimburse for the damages we suffered due to their errors.
Is this the new “jeff@” approach? Because…yes, I would*. I mean, yay, Amazon corrected their errors, but correcting their errors did not reverse the effects of Amazon’s errors on your business.
*ETA: But cooler heads will likely reply that no good can come of it, there’s no chance of succeeding, it’s not worth it. And they are maybe right.
On the contrary, I’m telling you to go for it! I would, personally. You have clear communication from Amazon detailing everything they are guilty of and that you did nothing wrong yet were harmed. They might still tell you no, but you will also keep documenting this situation for formal complaints to your elected reps and relevant state agencies.
But I am also acknowledging that many Sellers would disagree with me and that you should never rely on one opinion as reason to act (or not act, as the case may be).
And every Seller should decide for themselves what battles are worth their time, energy, and money.
I apologize if I was unclear. These types of Amazon shenanigans infuriate me. As does the idea that Amazon is unbeatable.
I am by no means a cooler head, but I would also love for each and every seller to escalate each and every legal claim, until the cost of Amazon’s malfeasance gets high enough that it’s cheaper for them to fix the things that they “moved fast and broke” then to simply ignore sellers and deal with the rare blowback.
If you do pursue this, please keep us updated on progress. Every win against the machine spawns more attempts to win.
