The Annual Groans of Pain From Some Amazon sellers
Once again Amazon have decided to bring in their ‘Christmas selling Guidelines’ for toy and games sellers on their marketplace platform. The guidelines only apply to third party sellers who sell products in the toy and game category on their site. The upshot is that sellers who don’t meet the ‘criteria’ get banned from selling on the site during the peak selling season (Christmas).
What is most galling about this process is the lack of tolerance on Amazons behalf. If a seller suffers a mere 1% order defect rate they will be suspended during Christmas. Contributions to the order defect rate are brought from receiving a negative feedback comment from the customer. So if you make one hundred sales, and one customer leaves a bad comment your business could be left in tatters!
Of course Amazon feel that this is all justified in the name of preserving the customer experience. We would all agree that keeping bad sellers off the platform is vital, all year round, not just at select times of the year. I sense there is a second motive, one whereby they wish to cull a certain number of sellers in this category. Why else would they set such low tolerance and draconian criteria for their sellers at this critical time?
The whole system is drastically unfair. Amazon ask their customers to rate the shopping experience after they have purchased from a third party seller. In the innocent eyes of the customer they are simply leaving a comment, nothing more, nothing less. They are completely unaware of the fact that if they decide to give a low feedback score the end result could be a small business shutting down, the staff being made redundant and sent home all due to the main sales channel of the company has been removed!
It’s likely we will never know the true reasons behind Amazons crazy plan for the Christmas Selling Guidelines, what ever they are the net result is a huge amount of stress for small business owners who rely heavily on Amazon for their sales income. At a time when the economy is in recession and business needs all the help it can get it comes as a very poor show from Amazon to implement this vile policy for a second year running!
