The Wholesale Forums

[hardwareheroes]

It is extremely tight to trade on Amazon - far more nonce required just to keep your account - let alone proper

[x_Emily_x]

Oh dear..

[wulf2ram]

yup amazon is hardwork for alot of sales i believe hh lost his account and if people like hh/ian can lose there account with customer support you need make sure your spelling is right as that how bad it seems

i feel ian as myself take customers returns and loseses seriously and built it into the business structure but even that cant cover everything as i say customer is always right and if they go far enough .... you will be on the receiving end not the customer just play everything by the book

[ADC]

Amazon is better than eBay in lots of ways. You can get a higher price for you products & you don't get many idiots asking stupid questions. But your customer service does have to be outstanding. If we get a problem on there now and the customer wants a refund I just ask them to post it back and then refund it, & the return postage costs, no questions asked. You have to remember they can neg you up to 90 days after purchase so you really need to do this even on products which are a couple of months old.

You have an Order Defect Rate which you have to keep below 1%. Every time someone negs you or opens an A-Z guarantee claim (similar to a paypal claim on ebay) that counts as a defect. They add up all your defects over a 3 month period and divide it by the number of sales you have had and multiply it by 100 to get the percentage. If thats over 1% you are a gonner. It's a moving total thats updated every day. So you can basically say if you sell 99 items over 3 months and just 1 customer negs you or opens an A-Z guarantee claim you will be gone.

So my advice to anyone who wants to trade on Amazon is be prepared to accept refunds for any reason within 3 months of purchase.

[wulf2ram]

yeh unfortunatly the point being people like me and ian/HH do that anyway without thinking about it but amazon are insanely on the customer side

so the point is you can be as cool as you can be but dont count on amazon being there tomorrow not the site but you being able to use! as a medium!

[x_Emily_x]

Quite a daunting prospect. Something i would not have known if it was not for the replies in this post. It sounds extremely off putting, obviously i'm not just going to write it off completely, i will just have to keep myself prepared and remember not to rely on just one selling site.

I think you're right though - if Ian lost his account that puts people like me at an even lower disadvantage.

Hmmmm, it sounds like quite a farce to be honest. Although i'm sure others who use it have some very good experiences.

[wholesaleguru87]

Very informative thread, thanks for enlightening me on Amazon as i was planning on selling there aswell.

[wulf2ram]

theres no doubt that people can do well out of it ive had a ok experience but im only selling a few a week if your a bigger seller it gets harder

and yeh if ian can get lose his account no matter how good you are if that one persistent customer trys hard enough your a goner

as you said dont rely on 1 selling platform specially amazon ebay maybe ok to rely on but its still not garunteed to be always there for you they still flex there muscles every now and then

[x_Emily_x]

I know.. I've experienced ebays force first hand..Thank you for your input Wulf, as Wholesale has mentioned you have been very informative.

I'm guessing it's best not to put all my eggs in one basket, which i wouldnt do anyway. Perhaps starting slow on there like with ebay is an idea.

[mickster505]

Originally Posted by wulf2ram

i believe hh lost his account

Not so sure about that??

Originally Posted by ADC

Amazon is better than eBay in lots of ways. You can get a higher price for you products & you don't get many idiots asking stupid questions. But your customer service does have to be outstanding. If we get a problem on there now and the customer wants a refund I just ask them to post it back and then refund it, & the return postage costs, no questions asked. You have to remember they can neg you up to 90 days after purchase so you really need to do this even on products which are a couple of months old.

You have an Order Defect Rate which you have to keep below 1%. Every time someone negs you or opens an A-Z guarantee claim (similar to a paypal claim on ebay) that counts as a defect. They add up all your defects over a 3 month period and divide it by the number of sales you have had and multiply it by 100 to get the percentage. If thats over 1% you are a gonner. It's a moving total thats updated every day. So you can basically say if you sell 99 items over 3 months and just 1 customer negs you or opens an A-Z guarantee claim you will be gone.

So my advice to anyone who wants to trade on Amazon is be prepared to accept refunds for any reason within 3 months of purchase.

I have been using Amazon since I was kicked off of ebay (my own stupidity - only myself to blame but there we are, I was 16 and making a killing). In the 2 or 3 years Ive used Amazon I have never had any issues, only 1 A-Z claim and that was just due to a misunderstanding, few negs, but mainly because people do not read 'seller comments' and just assume things, same with neutrals. My order defect rates have been higher than 1%, and Ive never (touch wood) had anything happen to my account. Then again, I am not a 'pro trader' or whatever they call it - it would appear this just makes them tighter on you, and provided your selling products already listed in their catalogue, I can see little advantage to becoming one (especially as I only sell around 10-15 products a week). I was very suprised to read the negative reports on here when I first joined about Amazon, as I have found them fantastic in many ways, and as you have said you can get a much higher price for the majority of things than on ebay - people really do not shop around! Having praised Amazon though, Play.com's seller support is much better, but on both as long as you give good customer support then your fine - Ive invested in an iphone in order to answer emails as soon as they arrive even when out, even through issues with a certain dropshipper, I only received one neutral feedback which was then removed by the buyer.

I think what the quote above has said is unrealistic - there are hundreds of sellers on amazon with about 32 feedback at 90 or so % - they are only selling a handful of items so I doubt their order defect rate is a low % (as it would be for volume sellers), so things cannot be as harsh as they are being made out to be. In fact, I myself had a spell where I only sold a few things and 1 neg meant I was getting "Alert" messages for a few weeks - nothing else happened, and soon enough orders picked up and the % went down again.

Sorry for huge post, just wanted to balance the arguement a bit as Amazon has been a great selling platform for me over the years (as has play.com, but the focus here is Amazon)