Hey Guys
I'm new here so please bare with my noobieness
I have been selling on Amazon US since this past Nov .. just doing FBA and doing quite well.. XMas treated me well
After Xmas, I decided to start drop shipping on AMAZON Marketplace..
Things were ok but last week was a struggle
I had 6 cancellations and 3 late shipments...
3 cancellations was from one item alone ... 2 cancellation was my lack of awareness to set my shipping preferences on Amazon (shipping to PO Box, shipping to Alaska) and 1 out of stock Item
and 3 late shipments because my supplier lost my packages
Needless to say Friday night came and I got a notification
I still had 5 packages that needed to be processed by my shipper ...
Quote:
Hello,
We are conducting a review of your Amazon.com selling account. During the review, a rolling reserve will be applied to funds in your seller account.
The reserve will be equivalent to your gross sales amount for the preceding 14 days. Based on your order volume, the amount of the reserve may change daily.
When your account balance exceeds the reserve amount, funds will be available per your disbursement schedule.
You can view your account balance, estimated payment schedule, and reserve amount on the Payments page in the Reports section of your Seller Central account (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/...t-summary.html).
Account reviews are intended to ensure the timely shipment of orders and compliance with our selling policies. Please continue to fulfill orders and list only items that you are able to ship by the Expected Ship Date.
You can help with the review process by sending us more information about your business. To do so, click the “Appeal” button next to this notice on the Notifications page in the Performance section of your Seller Central account (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/...fications.html).
To learn more about account reviews, search “Velocity Limits and Account Reviews” in Seller Central Help.
We will notify you by e-mail when our account review is complete.
Thank you for selling on Amazon.com.
Best regards,
Merchant Approval Team www.amazon.com |
Freaking out .. emotionally wrecked ... I replied via APPEAL right away ..
Quote:
We’ve received your appeal
Our Seller Performance team will review your appeal, and you should expect a reply by Jan 31, 2015 11:45:41 PM PST.
Things you can do while awaiting our response:
Confirm all the items you have shipped and provide tracking information.
Update your inventory.
Monitor customer contacts and resolve any customer issues.
Solicit feedback from your customers.
Learn more about how to improve your selling performance.
You wrote:
Inventory management
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I have multiple warehouses in various parts of the country where I store items from close out and clearance sales at major retailers
I have recently upgraded to a more enterprise level of inventory management software and am still learning the reconciliation and goods movement procedures
My items are always in stock and ready to ship from the warehouse with in a couple of business days of the order
Selling history
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I am a top rated seller on eBay and have been for almost 10 years
I have had a table at the local flea market for 10 years in NJ where my parents and I have been selling for years
Additional information
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I am aware that my cancellation rate is beyond the recommended threshold and I am very apologetic for that
I do attribute that to some rookie Amazon seller mistakes
1. I did not properly set my shipping limitations in the beginning (had to cancel orders because I do not ship to PO Boxes or out of the lower 48 states) which have now been set correctly
2. I had one item that was out of stock that accounted for half of my cancellations (3 out of 6)
3. I did have to cancel one item because it was a freight delivery issue which has since been resolved with the implementation of new settings and my new inventory system
I do have a bad seller ship rating and I am aware of this; I can attribute this to a small issue in my warehouse where a few orders were lost on the way to the shipper and had to go thru an initial trace of lost items
Those learning experiences have been learned and been resolved and have since been fixed with the aforementioned inventory management system so that this issue hopefully does not occur in the future
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In hindsight, this appeal probably was not the best written or strategic .. needless to say 2 hours later .. got another notification
Quote:
Hello,
We are conducting a review of your Amazon.com seller account. During this review, your listings will not appear on our site and you will not be able to transfer funds out of your seller account.
Account reviews are intended to ensure the timely shipment of orders and compliance with our selling policies. Please continue to fulfill the orders you received before your listings were removed.
You can help with the review process by sending us information about your business. To do so, click the "Appeal" button next to this e-mail on the Notifications page in the Performance section of your Seller Central account (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/...fications.html)
If you would like to provide tracking information for your shipments, visit the Manage Orders page in the Orders section of your Seller Central account (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/orders-v2/list).
To learn more about account reviews, search "Velocity Limits and Account Reviews" in Seller Central Help.
We will notify you by e-mail when our account review is complete.
We appreciate your patience and cooperation.
Regards,
Seller Performance Team
Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com |
Foolishly I replied via APPEAL
Quote:
We’ve received your appeal
Our Seller Performance team will review your appeal, and you should expect a reply by Feb 1, 2015 3:27:45 AM PST.
Things you can do while awaiting our response:
Confirm all the items you have shipped and provide tracking information.
Update your inventory.
Monitor customer contacts and resolve any customer issues.
Solicit feedback from your customers.
Learn more about how to improve your selling performance.
You wrote:
Suspended for poor selling performance
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I understand that recently our performance as a seller on Amazon.com has fallen below both Amazon's and our own standards of quality. I believe there are two main reasons this has happened:
Disorganization in our inventory management has resulted in late shipments and, even worse, unavailable items.
When late shipments and unavailable items have occurred our response to has been too slow and communication with customers has not been adequateI believe it is mainly because of our inadequate communication that we have recently seen an increase in customer A-z guarantee claims which has resulted in our order defect rate exceeding the performance target of <1%.
Plan of Action: We are taking the following steps to improve our performance:
Improve inventory control by reducing the number of items offered until we have systems in place to more adequately handle the number of orders we are receiving. We currently have reduced the number of items for sale from over 150 to a mere 20 items and will go back toward our model that made us a successful; Amazon seller thru FBA. Rather than expand our model of shipping items from our warehouses to customers, we will move back toward offering buyers our products thru Fulfillment by Amazon.
Most importantly, we will respond more quickly and proactively to any problems with customer orders to keep our customers more informed and help prevent A-z guarantee claims. We will continue to respond to all our customers as we have currently and be proactive in any issues in processing/delivery. As you see during all of our customers inquiries, all questions were responded to the buyers professional and quickly to customer satisfaction. We will continue to offer full transparency and as you can see by our feedback by our customers, we are a fully trusted seller.
In addition, we will more aggressively monitor our performance metrics to assure we are meeting the standards set by Amazon and our own standards of quality customer service. We believe with our significant reduction in items for sale to 20 items, our warehouse will be able to manage the demand by our customers and Amazon more expeditiously.
Suspended for policy violation
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Our Plan of Action:
Our inventory file has been reviewed. All misclassified condition items have been re-categorized to follow Amazon's Condition Guidelines. Entire inventory has been deleted from Marketplace to reflect all changes. All of our vendors' inventory will be reviewed before adding to our inventory. Please let us know what should be done to reinstate our account, we are looking forward to hearing from you.
We understand the quality that is demanded by the buyers of Amazon and Amazon itself, we take the advice of Amazon and our customers seriously and in our best efforts to move forward, we will continue the vast majority of our business thru FBA and have reduced our self fulfilled inventory to a manageable 20 items focusing on individual quality. These same items are also available for FBA.
Additional information
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We have significantly reduced the amount of items for sale.
We will/have increased our FBA inventory.
Our customers are happy with us as a seller, we stand behind our products and offer guarantees on them.
Our ratings are also high.
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Only to get another email ...
Quote:
Hello,
You can help us with our review by providing us with as much of this information as you can:
- How long you've been in business
- The sources of your inventory
- Anticipated monthly sales on Amazon
- The availability of items for shipping
- The address of any retail locations
- Links to other websites where you are actively selling
- Dun and Bradstreet (D-U-N-S) Number
- Tracking information for recently shipped orders
If you have tracking information, please add it to your orders on the "Manage Orders" page in the Orders section of your Seller Central account (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/orders-v2/list). By adding tracking information to your orders, buyers can track orders at their convenience.
If you have not already done so, we encourage you to send a friendly reminder to buyers requesting that they leave feedback on your account. To learn about how to contact buyers, search “Buyer-Seller Messaging Service” in Seller Central Help.
We will notify you via e-mail when our review of your account is complete.
Regards,
Seller Performance Team
Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com |
I haven't replied back yet .. and I have 1 item out of the 5 that Amazon let in left to ship ... I wasn't going to reply untill all my items have shipped out.. which is tomorrow...
BUT Amazon did not leave a place for me to appeal and told me to reply via email ...
My stats SINCE that bad week are good
0% cancellations and 0% late shipment the past 7 days...
however the past 30
4.32% pre fulfill cancel and 9.35% late cancellation
I am pretty devasted by this .. this was a major part of my income and Amazon has about $5k of my funds and probably another $5k worth of FBA product
Is there any advice ? Will replying to their latest request help ? Will I at least get my money ?
As you can see in my replies, I told Amazon I won't sell on the marketplace and just do FBA ...
I don't know what to do .. obviously going stealth is a good idea but is there way to salvage my money or my current account ?
I have perfect feedback