Discover Our Terms and Conditions on Invoice Sample for Marketing

Terms and conditions on invoice sample for Marketing

this week on the show we've got more glitches at eBay Etsy and at Amazon some other news to update from those two sites and some fishing attacks over at merari and at [Music] curtsy what is up galaxians welcome to episode number 278 of the Galaxy CD's rocks and flips reseller Talk podcast uh you're in luck this week you're going to get two uh so I announced uh last week that there won't be a live show this Wednesday but uh this is a I've got a massive news update for this episode and then I received an email from a viewer listener uh that I'm going to pair with a what sold segment in a separate episode that talks a little bit about uh business plans and how how you want to run a business is there a white right or a wrong way to do reselling it's a topic I've come to on numerous occasions on this show and I thought the email was interesting enough and the response my thoughts on it were interesting enough that it probably warrants its own episode so that will be coming in a day or two along with this week's what sold recap this week is all about the news and there is plenty to cover I will leave timestamps in the show notes and the video description down below so if you want to go to a particular uh segment of the news you you can do that but otherwise let's get into it use updates so eBay made an announcement whoops that's not right oh man technology um they talked about this back at the like winter seller check-in and it was met with some skepticism which is still going to be the case at least from this corner of the internet uh but they did finally announce this exciting news for auction sellers who offer combined shipping so uh since last year we have eliminated over 50% of unpaid items on the platform with excellent feedback from sellers building on the success we are excited to announce the latest Improvement that moves us closer towards our goal of eliminating unpaid items on Ebay we'll we'll see uh while eBay began requiring buyers in most auctions to keep a payment method on file before placing a bid this requirement did not apply to auction listings for sellers that offered combined shipping this is because automatically charging buyers immediately after each auction ended would have prevented you from offering shipping discounts to buyers of multiple items that is a problem that they still have with offers uh I had one that will be actually in this coming weeks what sold recap where I sent out multiple offers and a buyer bought multiple items but of course had to pay for all of those separately so they still this is an issue they still need to address in a much broader way but at least they're trying to tackle it from the perspective of auctions though you can let me know in the comments whether you think this is the right approach we are pleased to announce we now have a solution for auction sellers that offer combined shipping introducing a wait for it 7day shopping window to help buyers combine more purchases of your items that is a very optimistic way to put this when bidding in auctions buyers may choose to Shop and Ship separately to have their payment process automatically 1 hour after winning an auction that's great or choose shop more ship together to get up to S days to shop other items from that seller that qualify for Combined shipping with either option buyers can still choose to check out manually at any time we are now testing this experience with a subset of buyers and will continue to increase the audience over the next several months here is a specific example of how combined shipping works the buyer lands on an item page and bids on a trading card the buyer sees that this seller offers combined shipping discounts and chooses to bid on the item if the buyer wins they can then select shop more ship together to delay payment on their winning auction for up to 7 Days allowing extra time to add more items from the seller that qualify for Combined shipping now on the face face of it that that that sounds fine 7 days for me is probably a little long I think what they're allowing for is the fact that they may have bid on an auction that's just ended and they're finding another auction that is just started I'm I'm only guessing but I would assume that's where that 7-Day window is coming from the problem that I see is that this is going to open a Pandora's box of buyers just selecting that option so that they don't have to pay right away you can let me know what you think in the comments down below after successfully winning their first card the buyer bids on the second card and wins in the buyer shopping cart the option to request combined shipping becomes available note this feature is now accessible to buyers on mobile in addition to on the web the seller logs into seller Hub to view their latest orders they see these one auction items the next morning the seller prepares and sends an invoice the buyer receives a notification if the seller has sent that invoice they'll see it in their part where they can review it pay for it and complete their order or of course probably continue to wait the seller can then prepare the order for shipment note again this is currently in testing and not all buyers will get this new experience additionally when placing a bid buyers can opt into a 7-Day combined shopping window and the seller experience will adjust based on this choice so you will get to see that that's what the seller has or what the buyer has chosen increase buyer predictability and give them more time to shop as we collaborated with sellers to gather feedback iterate and create this combined shipping solution we decided to implement a 7-Day shopping window to give your buyers an opportunity to gaug with engage with your listings and continue shopping this standardizes the amount of time your buyers have to pay simplifying your process and increasing predictability the window presents an opportunity to encourage more purchases from your inventory by giving buyers more time to shop during that 7-Day window Pro tip send your invoices as early as possible once a buyer wins a second item within that 7-Day window they can then request a combined invoice from the seller be sure to send your invoice as early as possible after receiving that request while it's beneficial to allow your buyer to shop more and take advantage of that 7-Day shopping window a significant delay in sending the invoice may result in the buyer being automatically charged when the time frame ends potentially leading to a request for a partial refund so that is under the assumption that the buyer does not want to buy any additional items I guess uh stay tuned we're enhancing this experience we're in the early stages of testing this solution so you might start seeing buyer requests as combined shipping is gradually introduced don't worry if it's not visible to you yet let me know what you think of that I I guess I understand in principle I don't run a lot of auctions so this is probably not going to be an issue for me but if you are a big auction seller let me know what you think of this new 7day window to complete a purchase uh that's that's what's going on with with that uh some other things happening at eBay now this one so far has only been officially announced as far as I know in Australia but this is potentially coming uh to Fashion sellers here in the US as well this article appeared over on value added resource and of all as always these will be linked in the show notes in the video description below big changes to eBay pre-loved fashion conditions coming in 2025 fashion sellers will need to contend with a more complex listing structure in 2025 as eBay expands condition grading requirements to include pre-owned Fair good and excellent Australian sellers received an announcement that new policies go into effect January 23rd 2025 requiring them to update pre-owned items in fashion categories to comply with this new structure the message said to enhance transparency in our rapidly growing pre-love fashion category and to help reduce returns for item not as described we are launching new pre-owned conditions for clothing categories instead of one generic pre-owned item condition sellers will have the option of three pre-owned conditions to better describe their item from January 3rd of next year we'll replace the current pre-owned with pre-owned Fair pre-owned good and pre-owned excellent you don't need to do anything yet but starting on 23rd January you'll need to use these new conditions and descriptors when updating or listing pre-loved clothing when when the conditions become available all existing listings under the pre-owned condition will note this automatically convert to pre-owned good and you'll need to review and update your listings using the new conditions to ensure that you represent your items accurately so if you've got a lot of listings in the pre-owned fashion category they are automatically uh and again this is at the moment it looks like at least just for Australia they're automatically going to update to kind of The Middle category if you've got some stuff that is better than good or not quite good uh you would need to go in and edit every individual listing now obviously you can probably go in uh if you know which ones or what in the bulk editing tool and update them um kind of in Mass but you're going to have to do all of your existing listings unless you want to just leave them in that middle category which I would expect a lot of sellers will actually probably do uh the announcement went on to advise the new condition requirements will apply to the following categories I'm not going to read this whole list it is massive again this will be linked down below but women's men's kids babies uh vintage specialty fancy dress and so on it is a massive massive list of stuff in that category the full seller help page on the new pre-love fashion condition grading guidelines also provides a handy chart with examples of how the value should be applied so it talks about new with tags new without tags new with imperfections and and so on again I'm not going to go through all that uh here but go check this out if you are a fashion seller they have also included a list of common issues an item may have which would cause it to fall into a different category again pre-owned excellent good or fair is it broken or missing does it have broken or missing Fasteners is there discoloration is there visible where and how bad is it holes and tears and so on uh again a pretty lengthy list of stuff the announcement as I mentioned only applies to eBay Australia and Liz over at value added resource had not seen any official Public Notices posted about similar changes for the US or UK yet however she has seen sellers outside of Australia discussing receiving email notices from Ebay that these pre-loved fashion condition changes will be coming to the rest of the site sometime in q1 2025 which would mean sometime prior to April uh you can probably expect to have to do this uh a recent video by YouTuber and reseller Tekken Sports showed screenshots of emails he says were received by several sellers he's spoken to indicating the change again is effective in January in Australia but just two weeks later February 4th 2025 globally uh eBay had not responded to request for comment to confirm as of the time this article was published sellers have raised concerns of course that the new pre-love fashion conditions are less clear and provide more gray areas for differences of opinion that could lead to an increase in and not as described claims being filed so sellers are on the opposite side of this eBay is saying that having three categories versus one will will reduce the amount of confusion about what the quality is sellers I think in this case probably rightly are saying it's going to lead to more opportunities for interpretation because I may think something is good you may think it is fair someone else may think it is excellent I I see this all the time in books I will sell a book that I have graded as acceptable or good and the feedback I get on that item was that it was way better than they anticipated that it was almost like new so it depends on the eye of the beholder what grouping that might fall into so it could potentially open more opportunities for there to be how shall we say politely disagreements over what the actual uh condition should have been others of course still have bad memories of glitches and extra work do eBay's category and item specific changes that caused chaos in years past uh we haven't had any major ones over the last couple of years uh but there worried something similar could happen when this condition update rolls out and again particularly if you've got a ton of listings this is going to be hugely impactful to you uh to their credit they're doing it in q1 not in Q4 so there is that if there's a small wind to be had there but be on the lookout for that I would assume if this is coming to the US Market uh we'll see an announcement probably fairly soon eBay also quietly made some updates to their marketing terms uh that go into effect this month that allow them ing to value added resource more wiggle room less transparency for future ad rate and attribution changes this is a uh another example of eBay changing their terms of service to allow themselves very broad lad ude in how they adjudicate things like fees and so on so this is kind of a big one that it is not attached necessarily to any immediate changes to any of these fees or attributions uh but it does allow them to do it in a much more opaque way let's say eBay has released marketing terms update with changes to promoted listing ads attribution that begin in 2025 and built in more wiggle room to raise add fee rates with no notice to sellers in the future sellers received an email notice from eBay with a summary of changes that goes into effect on January 15th it said we strive to make our policies clear and our services easy to use uh insert I roll here as part of that commitment we're updating our marketing program terms we've clarified details around our ad products and moved information regarding the way attribution Works directly into the product interface so rather than it being in terms of service they are they're saying they are moving it into like the marketing tab of the seller Hub I I've not seen that yet I'll be on the lookout for that and let you know what I think once that's there you can find information on our newly created page that's dedicated to explaining attribution across our products no action is needed on your part and you can find the current and updated terms on our marketing program terms page the updated terms again take effect January 15th we value your participation in eBay advertising um they put both together uh but there is not a comparison chart where you can quickly look at the two to see what is different um Liz did a lot of that work as always hat tip to her over at value added resource for doing that first she notes eBay has broken out those explanations of how ad fee attribution works for promoted listings General priority promoted store offsite and so on uh into a standalone policy page for Clarity and easy reference while she did not notice any significant changes to the definitions the last line advising that attribution is subject to change and it is the seller's responsibility to check back regularly for updates is concerning uh for reasons that will become apparent and again what they've done is added verbiage that says it's essentially it's no longer on eBay to notify you through a specific Public Announcement they can make a change and kind of to slide it into this new page uh and it is your responsibility apparently to check on that page uh multiple times a month to see if anything has changed uh H I talk a lot about the the lack of transparency and this is to my mind a way to make it look like it is becoming more transparent by creating a new page where all of this information will be contained but then not having to be transparent enough to actually give you a public acknowledgement in advance of a change that's coming um bizarre I I get it from their side why they're doing it allows them all kinds of wiggle room to make a change and not have to tell you and you can't really complain about it you can't request arbitration you can't do anything because it will be on this page that you are now responsible to keep track of uh here we go anyway uh some big things that they changed for for um authorized sellers they have added a term for those of your authorized sellers to the which section is this to a marketing terms apply both directly to your product as a seller and to products sold by your authorized resellers and they have added that term in for those of your authorized sellers which is likely meant to include the ability for large Brands to pay for advertising that may lead to authorize seller resellers of their product even if the brand brand themselves doesn't directly sell on eBay which could fit she notes into other initiatives eBay has planned around creating long-term Partnerships with fast moving consumer goods Brands expanding actions which count for AdFree attribution this is a big one though to be fair a lot of these really do make good sense in March 2023 and we just talked about this I think last week eBay rolled out major changes to ad attribution which introduced the concept of Halo attribution and expanded actions that was count as clicks to include when a buyer adds an item to their watch list so they essentially expanded the time and the number of things that would qualify for ad attribution Now eBay is taking it even further to include clicking add to cart quick view or other interactive functionality the old version said you expressly agree that your listings will be promoted via ads ads may include text Graphics a listing title a listing description or other Fe features and functionality eBay make make available associate with or incorporate into your listing example add to watch list icon so if they put up an icon in your listing that says add to watch list and a buyer clicks on that to add it to their watch list that item is now uh considered attributed to their ad program because it was clicked through a a shown listing that was generated from your promoted listing thing the new version says in addition to add to watch list it now has ADD to cart quick view or other interactive functionality which I believe refers to uh they now have added some U scrolling video to some of these links so that probably would get them that too not sure uh at all it's a coincidence sellers report recently seeing a new test with this Auto playing video uh in some ads in search along with a new add to cart button which had not been there previously that will of course conveniently count as an ad click resulting in fees beginning on January 15th so be aware that again classic example of eBay finding more ways to get clicks on your promoted ads to be counted as having been clicked on your promoted ads so they can collect more fees I I'm I'm not here to argue whether that's right or wrong it's their site they can do that most of make sense if somebody is looking at your item in a promoted ad and they click and add the cart button that indicates they have an intention to buy that should be attributed so while this looks like maybe on the surface a bit of a cash grab I think in for real it probably makes sense that they've added these terms uh and that they're adding more direct ways for a customer to make a purchase if an add to cart button or an add to watch list button was not there previously and they're now putting those on those ads to try to get people to click right from the ad rather than having to go to the listing first and then do that that probably actually encourages more purchases which is in the end what we're all trying to get they continue uh marketing Services may contain certain default settings pricing and targeting methodologies and other Advanced features and this is the important part which may be updated from time to time detailed information about marketing fees methodologies and other program features are available via the marketing services so again nothing in necessarily terms of services it's going to be in this marketing Services page you agree to review that information and stay informed about the marketing Services you use including related product details also available via the marketing services to ensure that your participation and settings remain consistent with your objectives that's right eBay now says they can update default settings pricing and targeting methodology along with other features in a blanket broad-based way from time to time no specific time frame but they're under no obligation to proactively announce or call attention to those changes or let you know in any way other than through this marketing Services page interesting in the future sellers will only find these details within that page and the responsibility is yours uh again I I I harp on it all the time that we we are as sellers responsible for a certain amount of stuff to to pay attention but these platforms I feel like do have an obligation to let us know and hiding it away on a page that may on the surface seem like a good place to put it but then using that as a get out of jail free card to not announce upcoming changes seems to me uh disingenuous at best moving on eBay UK continues to try things to crack down on the private sellers or the businesses at least that are masquerading as private sellers they're now going to limit multi- bu discounts just to business sellers to try to get those folks who are registered as private sellers to do the right thing and become business sellers they're taking more steps the article says to differentiate private from business sellers with a new multi- bu discount it hopes will encourage businesses incorrect ly trading under private accounts to upgrade private sellers were notified via email the change will take effect again in January with those wishing to retain access to discount tools needing to upgrade to a business account which will make their sales subject again to final value fees remember in the UK If You're registered as a private seller you're you're subject to some limitations but you're not paying fees on your sales from 20 January 2025 multi will come become exclusive to business business Sellers and no longer be available to private sellers all active listings using the multi- bu discount tool will automatically become multi- quantity listings and the discounts will be removed if you'd like to continue using that tool and you are operating a business you can upgrade to a business account which includes a number of additional benefits please note since it's now free for private sellers to sell on eBay upgrading will mean that transaction fees will apply to your sales and importantly you'll be unable to revert back to a private account so be aware that's coming over in the UK unlike changes that will delay funds after until after delivery and require private sellers to use the new eBay simple delivery managed shipping this change was met with mostly positive feedback from sellers who've been frustrated with eBay's lack of action against obvious businesses which trade dishonestly under private accounts to not pay the fees so this is probably on balance a good thing uh but be aware that's coming in January if you are over in the UK again no impact yet here in the US they have said on a couple of occasions that they have no plans to roll out this private seller fee free selling in the US uh time will tell on to the glitches oh my gosh uh another tough week for eBay and labels uh this happened on 1219 eBay users were experiencing problems with printing shiing labels and also sending message which of course added stress to the already stressful last minute holiday selling season first the eBay community and social support Pages were being flooded with reports of being unable to purchase shipping labels for any carrier so you remember last week there were problems with QR codes not working at the post office uh prior to that you had an issue with grounded Advantage labels all being printed with the Hazardous Goods warning uh so last week was not great for eBay this week it did matter what carrier you were trying to use you could not buy labels uh while eBay's error messaging seems to indicate it's a problem with the carriers themselves sellers reported they were still able to print labels for those services from other providers so the problem was clearly on eBay side of things I again I was on pirate ship when this was announced I had already shipped my orders for the day without any problem so it was connected to something on eBay's side not the carriers because other were totally fine processing uh and printing labels others say they're being told by eBay that there is a an error processing their payment for the label but that should not be the case as they've got funds on balance and the payment method on file to disc to cover the cost there were any number of people who were posting over there users also were reporting problems with eBay's new messaging system today saying when they attempted to send a message they just got a red dot indicating that the message failed to send if you're watching on YouTube you can see here the little red exclamation point I did not personally experience this I was able to send messages pretty much throughout the week without issue but it was a problem over there uh glitches come on top again as we talked about the other shipping problems from the week before so rough times for shipping over at eBay moving on to glitches this time at Etsy uh this one this one was interesting I have not spoken to anybody who ran into this particular problem themselves if you did let me know in the comments down below if you're watching on YouTube or listening over on Spotify but Etsy apparently was forcing many stores into vacation mode which of course stopped crucial holiday sales the Etsy Community forum is being flooded with sellers whose stores have been forced into vacation mode with no warning or explanation bringing a sudden stop to sales in The crucial final days to meet the holiday shipping deadlines sellers reported the sudden notifications about their stores being temporarily shut down contained very little information or confusing explanations saying Etsy was reviewing their documents to verify their Identity or business details when the seller had not uploaded any new documents for them to review and their previous documents had already been verified I received a message uh probably 10 days ago about uh reverifying that the information that I had already uploaded was in fact still correct and accurate as we approach year end um I don't know if there's any connection between that message and their attempt to have people reverifying there was correct uh but this uh apparently hit a broad range of sellers people were commenting my shop has been put in vacation mode without any warning email or message my account is in good standing I'm a bestseller with no violations and so on uh another one put in force vacation for over 4 days now no idea why uh all I get our generic replies telling me to check my email or wait for a message to make matters worse the article continues moderators over in the Etsy Community are quickly and actively closing and locking posts about the problem directing sellers to contact support privately for help and preventing further public discussion again not to harp on uh the lack of communication and transparency uh but this is the dog chasing its tail you're closing down threads where people are trying to get help directing them to your customer service who is not in turn providing any help that's a bad combo uh no matter where you're from uh again I did not I did not encounter this my store ran just fine all week uh it was probably actually a record week for me on eBay I had a or on Etsy rather I had a ton of business over there last week um I did as a preemptive measure withdraw my money midweek I normally take the Monday uh payout I took a payout out on Wednesday as well just to make sure that my funds didn't get tied up because uh not only does being put into Force vacation mode stop new orders coming in it also freezes payouts for recently completed orders too causing even more of a cash flow crunch for affected sellers it would not have impacted me uh hugely from a cash flow standpoint uh but I just decided to go ahead and cash out midweek and take that money just in case something happened as it turned out nothing did at least not yet knock would for me with many new legal and Regulatory mandates coming into effect like gpsr and Europe and the beneficial ownership reporting in the US which again as a reminder has been postponed so if you haven't done that yet you're off the hook you don't need to there is a court stay on that particular program not to mention they go on tax updates that may impact sellers in different locations it's understandable that Etsy may be in a position to need to collect and review additional documentation from many sellers before the end of the year however as she notes it's not understandable and not acceptable for Etsy to bungle their compliance responsibilities and then in turn put accounts on hold which cause serious harm to the small business sellers on their site in the process not able to sell during what is arguably one of the busiest weeks of the year not being able to cash out when you need to buy more material to make the things that you're trying to sell or that you've already sold really really bad the lack of transparency she continues and communication is very troubling and the loss in business would be harmful of course at any time of the year but especially in these last couple of weeks heading up to the holiday and again this is self-defeating for Etsy because they have poured a ton of money and resources into positioning themselves of the go-to site for unique and wonderful gifts for the season and now they're shutting down accounts who are trying to provide those on their behalf so let me know in the comments if you got caught up in any of this uh was your store put on vacation mode were your funds on hold uh did you ever get a satisfactory explanation as to why that was the case or particular documents that they were looking for I'd be really curious how this how it happened and how it got resolved so there were a couple of things uh kind of midweek and one of them has uh since reared its ugly head again marari sellers began being bombarded with verification fishing spam uh I started seeing messages on a message board about this in about an hour hour later I got one uh they supposedly deleted the account that was responsible for this but I got another one of these that I'm recording this on Saturday afternoon I got another one from a different account this morning so it is still going on over there Mari us sellers reported a sudden influx of fishing attempts using the marari messaging system for verification scam the messages came from an account which was using a marari logo for the profile image claiming the user will need to undergo additional verification due to quote unquote new rules on the platform and directing them to a generic Gmail address not an official marari support email my rule of thumb is any message I get that directs me to message something offsite is probably not legit and I am not responding I'm not doing it I'm not clicking any links I'm not doing anything I'm deleting the message blocking the user and moving on with life um which is what I assume most seasoned internet us users were doing uh there were several different versions of this that went out if you're watching on YouTube you can see one here says to start the verification process please email the verification service at ver. merari gmail.com we will provide you with all the necessary instructions to successfully complete the procedure which I'm sure included putting in your bank account information and your passwords uh so that they could clean out your bank um so hopefully nobody got caught up in this uh like I said I received a message mine actually at least they spelled verify correctly with a y at the end of it um but this was going on I think it started on Wednesday supposedly it was done by Friday and then again like I said this morning Saturday morning I got another one so while most Savvy sellers would see a giant red flag with that email address new or inexperienced users may have been more valuable to falling for the scam as evidenced by the large number of posts flooding Reddit unsure if the message was real or not got this message from marari with a Gmail address at doesn't show up in the Open tickets support items has anyone else received this send a screenshot to support but have no clue when they will respond again going back to all the cuts at merari uh this went on for much longer than it probably should have been allowed to go on they simply in my opinion don't have enough people left on hand to deal with this kind of thing which probably made them a prime target for it it also came attached to an item listed that says the account verification the top of the message that would have been another clue it wasn't just a message from a an account on merari it was actually attached to a specific item so it was somebody who was going through kind of the shopping thing the one I got this morning was an item I literally just listed this morning which indicates to me potentially that there is a bot or a virus runam muuk over on merari that's now just flagging new listings and sending out these generic messages it is it's wild uh to be clear Liz says and as I just said this is definitely under a scam and under no circumstance should anyone email that address or respond to the message within merari this type of scam is not uncommon uh for example Etsy created special tags on a separate inbox for official messages in their battle against similar attacks earlier this year which we had talked about on this show previously similarly whoops oh I lost it goodness let's go back I guess I'm not going to be able to see that screen but uh there was a similar uh attack that started apparently on Friday on the site curtsy which essentially said the same thing but provided a link uh which is even worse than having to go to an email to request information it was a link that I'm sure went to Nowhere good so be aware of that avoid all of that stuff here's another interesting one from merari they are going to as part of their change in fees they are going to automatically deactivate sellers unprofitable items this article appeared over on e-commerce bytes merari shifted fees as we've talked about from sellers to buyers in March but next month it's reinstating selling fees that means sellers who lowered their prices in response to the March fee changes may wish to adjust their prices again and we talked about last week they have now published their link to schedule a bulk price increase so if you want to raise all your prices you can follow that link follow the steps and come that week I think it's January 6th those prices will automatically increase to cover the 10% however in case you decide not to do that merari is automatically going to deactivate listings it determines would be unprofitable to sellers under the new fee structure that goes into effect January 6th so if you've got something say you marked it down to whatever 10 bucks plus shipping um and you were offering free shipping and now now uh and not ship on your own you were going to pay for the shipping through marari and now with the 10% that item is no longer going to be profitable and you would lose money on it marari is automatically going to deactivate that listing that is actually to me really really good news they're going to prevent you from losing money on your own because you weren't able to go in and look at all these listings so I would recommend if you're not doing this price increase the the bulk increase that they're making available to you keep an eye on your inactive listings on merari come the first week of January because if you've got some stuff that would be unprofitable to sell it'll start popping up in there in addition Mari told sellers in that December 19th notification that it was making available that tool that would allow them to increase their prices without having to go into every listing and change the price manually so be aware of that again if you don't do the price increase and you have listings that would become unprofitable merari is automatically going to deactivate them for you so that's good news from merari more glitches this time at Amazon uh this appeared to hit sellers in the pocketbook at least over the short term sellers are dealing with a glitch that Amazon confirmed over a week ago and the repercussions are coming of course at the worst time of the year for both their pocketbooks and their yearend reporting the problem as was described last Monday was that sellers said they were shipping orders but said Amazon was failing to post them to the seller's payments dashboard meaning that presumably Amazon would not disperse the full funds to sellers on time which of course would result in cash flow issues on Wednesday December 11th for example a seller wrote my credit card was just charged over $700 saying Amazon seller account balance charge this is crazy because my balance is showing negative like everyone but it's negative $113 and nowhere is it actually showing any credit or payment on my account for the $700 that was just charged so where did that money go where was it applied and why did I not get any notification saying I owed the $700 as a new seller this is really getting scary two days prior another seller wrote any updates my statement currently says I've done $280 in sales since 124 when I've done a couple of thousand because product charges aren't updating Amazon will be done deducting $1,200 of AD cost from my credit card on 1218 how is this not fixed yet I've reached out to support and I've gotten zero info do the mods have an update on this situation so in essence what it sounds like was happening is the sales were going through they were being processed but the funds from them was not properly being applied to the seller's account however Amazon's fees for those sales were properly being posted to that account which caused obviously a huge discrepancy in what amount should be in there in many cases it put a lot of sellers actually into the negative which caused them to have to pay for those fees with a credit card that is all bad and again would not be great at any time of year but especially during the holiday an Amazon moderator posted several times in a long Thread about the issue the following was a timeline on 1211 and updated on the 14th we're currently experiencing an issue that is delaying updates to the payments dashboard Amazon Seller dispersements to bank accounts are not impacted we are actively engaged in resolving this issue thanks to all who brought it to our attention so if you had money in there I guess it was processing to your bank like it should there were just a lot of payment information that was not getting in there on the 12th the engineer said confirmed the issue has been mitigated and you should now see upto-date financial data report generation however might continue to fail if scheduled on data that's more recent than 48 hours we remain actively engaged in resolving this issue later on the 12th it may take up to 24 hours for that information to reflect correctly I'll be keeping an eye on this discussion until I make sure everyone has up to- date information then on the 17th and repeated on the 18th I am compiling all the information from your comments and reaching out to our incidents team which reported the issue had been fixed since Friday we are waiting on communication from there end so I can provide an update for you all during the day I will be able to reply back with news for you let me know if you're a seller on Amazon did this happen to you and has it been resolved as of today as I record this on the 21st I'm not aware that this has been fixed yet uh you can let us know down in the comments it was not clear ing to this article how many sellers or what percentage of sellers were being impacted or when it was going to be fixed no good speaking of no good one more from Amazon sellers are outraged by Amazon FBA reimbursement update that changes the calculation for lost and damage items again this applies to uh Amazon FBA sellers Amazon has updated their FBA inventory reimbursement policy for 2025 and sellers are not happy the announcement released today lays out changes to how Amazon will calculate reimbursements for items that are lost or damaged before a customer order once this new policy goes into effect in March of 2025 If an item is lost or damaged while in FBA possession before a customer order Amazon will reimburse sellers either an estimated manufacturing cost or the actual manufacturing cost if the seller supplies it instead of the price that the item is usually sold for on the face of it that almost almost it's so close to right makes sense I I don't again I don't use Amazon FBA so this would not affect me but I understand why Amazon would not want to pay you retail for that item um uh manufacturing cost is probably not enough on its own um there's there probably is some happy middle ground there but I absolutely get why they don't feel required to pay you retail selling price for an item that they lost or damaged they they should be responsible to reimburse you somehow for that but maybe not up to the point of full cost but manufacturing cost does not cover everything that you as a seller might have incurred to actually get that there which we'll get into here in just a moment we're updating our fulfillment by Amazon inventory reimbursement policy to help provide you as they always say greater transparency and more predictability in how reimbursements are calculated for items that are lost or damaged before a customer order this will help drive a more consistent approach that works as we support sellers with Supply Chain Services across their sales channels effective March 10th 2025 will reimburse you based on the product manufacturing cost of the affected inventory to help you to help provide you rather greater control and accuracy you can choose how we determine the manufacturing cost for your products we'll provide a manufacturing cost estimate for you how they're going to do that I have no idea this estimate they say is based on a comprehensive evaluation of comparable products sold by Amazon by other Sellers and through wholesale channels I assume what they mean there is if you sell kind of the same item that five or six or 10 or 20 other sellers sell on Amazon and those people all choose to share their actual manufacturing cost Amazon is going to take the average of what all of those reported costs are including their own if they happen to sell this under their own brand name and apply that to your item uh I don't think I would want that actually and or you can provide your specific manufacturing cost directly if you don't provide your own cost they're automatically going to apply their estimate which you can change when you're ready so so uh I guess once you get burnt with this average cost you can then change and submit your actual cost to help you prepare you can view and manage manufacturing costs in the inventory defect and reimbursement portal starting in late January using a new manag your manufacturing cost page they continue we're constantly refining our operations and processes to prevent products from being lost or damaged and having to be reimbursed for cases where reimbursement is necessary we're f focused on ensuring timely compensation we now offer automatic reimbursements for items lost in our fulfillment centers saving you time and eliminating the need for you to submit a claim to receive reimbursement well that's that's nice of them so if they lose or damage your item uh at least now you're not going to have to file a claim they'll just admit that they lost or damaged it and they'll pay you but they're not going to pay you what they would have paid you before got it clear that's perfect perfect uh for items that are lost or damage after a customer order in Amazon store will continue to reimburse you for the sales price on the original order minus applicable fees so what what that essentially means is if the item is sold and they go to pick it and discover it's damaged or lost then and only then will you get your retail reimbursement if they determine that it has been lost or damag and there is no order then you're only going to get your quote unquote manufacturing costs sellers are not buying the line about this change providing more transparency in predictability with the post in the Amazon community having over 60 down votes and over 50 responses overwhelmingly expressing negative responses to the update one of which said Amazon is basically saying at any time we can declare your inventory lost we will give you next to nothing excluding all of your branding packaging handling and shipping costs and they will take your inventory and sell it for their profit that last part is probably a bit of a stretch I wouldn't I wouldn't say it's impossible but that's probably an excessive negative view on it uh but the rest of that is absolutely true your branding your packaging your handling your shipping everything that you did and paid for up to the point where the item arrived at Amazon and they lost or destroyed it you're not you're not being reimbursed for the second part of that again I don't that's just theft and I don't I don't Amazon's a lot of things uh they're they're greedy they want your money and all that but I don't think they would resort to that level I may be totally off base on that but that seems like a bit of a stretch to me uh ever since Amazon announced no fee increases for 2025 I've been waiting for them to announce they found a different way to mess with Sellers and here it is not happy about this at all again my costs are much higher than just the cost of the item itself what about the costs to label and prep items for FBA what about my shipping cost both from the manufacturer to my business and from my business to Amazon what about the insane inventory placement fee nonsense again a fee that Amazon charges you just to have your item in their warehouse if you've paid that for an item that has subsequently been lost or destroyed should you not be reimbursed for that as well uh again really a a policy that I understand in principle where they're coming from but they I don't feel like they have uh Incorporated quite enough stuff into this to make it actually usable uh and fair to both parties to their credit in the past when confronted with these kinds of situations Amazon has kind of redirected and come back out and said hey you know what we we overestimated this we underestimated that we're going to change it again and kind of fixed it so we'll see if they do that here uh but this on the surface probably does not go far enough especially considering uh the amount of loss and damage that sellers report that is caused by Amazon apparently it is a real big problem over there other sellers Express concerns that this could be a round about way for Amazon to try to collect cost of good sold data which could then be used by Amazon to undercut and compete directly against them for items they sell again I that I probably would agree with I don't I don't think they would go stoop as low as to report your item lost so they could sell it themselves uh but would they love to have all of your manufacturing data and then to the point that these people make your marketing your branding your shipping you're packing would they like all of that data as well yeah absolutely they probably would uh I have no doubt about that whatsoever so interesting times at these various platforms uh and you can see why uh I'm I'm separating out another segment and a what sold segment because we're already at like 50 minutes on this show so gosh what what a week I said a couple of weeks ago that I thought H you know we're getting close to Christmas you know the reselling news will kind of slow down things will kind of mellow out was I wrong it has been nuts this week uh there were probably half a dozen articles more that I had pulled up that I just called from this show because it was going to be far far too long so it has been a really really busy week again as I always say if you're not following Liz uh over at value added resource please add her newsletter to Your Arsenal it is full of valuable information uh it is my primary resource for doing this show toing bring to you so uh again hat tip to Liz for all the work she does over there to make uh all of our Lives much easier if you got something out of this episode today please do me a favor and hit that Thumbs Up Button if you're not currently a follower of the podcast or a subscriber to the YouTube channel or remember for that matter please consider doing that as well if um uh yeah there'll be another episode in a day or two where I will cover uh a topic near and dear to my heart is there one best way to be a reseller which will be followed up with my what sold recap until then my friends I hope everybody's having a great week and now it's time to sell thanks guys you have been listening to the Galaxy CDs rocks and flips reseller Talk podcast thank you so much for tuning in and we will catch you again next time