I am not a huge product reseller, but I have dabbled a bit in product reselling. Â While there are some people do it for the miles and points, most resellers I know treat this as a profit generating business, albeit one that has a pleasant side effect of generating a lot of airline miles and points!
I do most of my product reselling through FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon). Â I am a very small fry in reselling; I’ll estimate that I have sold about 50 units total – a mixture of OA (Online Arbitrage) and RA (Retail Arbitrage). Â I wrote back at the beginning of the month that I had received my first return of an item. Â That Apple watch was sold, returned, sold again and now returned for a 2nd time
And now… the negative feedback!
I was looking through my Amazon seller profile this morning and found that I had gotten negative feedback
Received an apple watch box with no watch inside…
At this point it could have been the 1st buyer having stolen the watch, the 2nd buyer having stolen it, or Amazon having screwed something up (or the shipping company)
What to do next?
So having never experienced this before, I’m not entirely sure what the process is. Â As I understand it, buyers are not “allowed” to give feedback / reviews on the actual selling process – product reviews are supposed to be only for reviews of the product itself (though I could be misunderstanding)
I talked to a few people and they suggested
- Contacting Amazon Seller Support to have the feedback removed
- Have Amazon send the watch BACK to me and then photo / video my opening the box. Â If it is empty (as I assume it should be) then I will need to go through the process
- Jeff from Sourcing Simplifiers sent me a link to their page about negative feedback removal
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You say here that the first or second seller could have stolen it. I assume you meant buyer rather than seller. I’m not clear how the FBA works. Did you get the returned watch after the first buyer (and not verify a watch was in the package)? Or did it go to Amazon (and they kept it) and they didn’t verify? In your first post you were suspecting Amazon would ship it back to you and you would see if it was in salable condition.
Thanks – you’re right that I meant buyer (edited the post). I never got the returned watch. I had assumed after the first return that Amazon would send it back to me but they didn’t
If Amazon allowed it to be sold again without being returned to you, it had to have been new/sealed when they got it back from Buyer #1. That said, I once sold an expensive camera I had bought open box from Best Buy. It was “open box”, but the Best Buy box was sealed. When it got returned, it was still sealed…but there was no camera inside. I’m still not sure whether the buyer stole it or Best Buy sold me an empty box. I ended up eating it. I do enough volume that it wasn’t the end of the world — but I do wonder if the buyer opened it with a hair dryer or something (easy way to unstick labels/tape).
Been doing FBA myself for a little over a year (100-500 units a month, not a big seller but not small). There are a few ways you can reduce this risk and also make amazon reimburse you if it happens in the future but it will take a few changes to your process:
1. In case you are using commingled inventory (manufacturer’s barcodes) for tracking, turn that setting off for all of your inventory IMMEDIATELY. This setting is described described here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/200141480
2. Don’t trust amazon to inspect your returns; it isn’t their money they are potentially losing. You can turn that off by changing the setting here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/ssof/configuration/refurbish-settings.htm
3. Start recording the serial numbers of your expensive units when you ship them into amazon (they are usually printed on the box and sometimes also the sales receipt).
Note that you will now have to have all returned units shipped back to you from the amazon warehouses (at very low cost) but that this provides two key benefits:
-Co-mingled inventory should never be used in my opinion. I wouldn’t consider this optional as it exposes you to the risk of selling counterfeit inventory. Despite what the help article says about tracing the source of the inventory, there are several horror stories on the fba forums of permanent selling account bans and even legal action. See a worst case example here: https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/plan-your-business/amazon-fba-program/
– Personally inspecting your returns reduces your risk of permanent account closure or suspension for bad reviews from returns that are in bad condition resulting in an account rating that is too low or has a high “defect” rate.
– You can request reimbursement from amazon if the accepted a returned box with no watch inside once you receive and inspect the returned unit. You can also request reimbursement if the serial number doesn’t match any serial number of the units you have shipped to amazon (broken or defective unit swapped by a customer).
Hope the advice helps!
I just got my first negative on ebay. Sent an item that was damaged a bit during shipping. Seller sent an email saying so and thanks a lot. Didn’t ask questions or for refund. It was insured for $50 and was only a $20 item so he could have filed a claim w/ the post office but apparently didn’t. I was expecting to hear from him, asking for a refund or to make it right somehow, which I would have done. But the first email saying thanks a lot, the post office damaged it was all I got. Well a few days later I got a negative feedback. Maybe I should have just offered to do something but with insurance and only getting a sarcastic email, I didn’t. I thought with ebay that one was supposed to try to make things right before leaving negative feedback. The item was still usable, just not as cosmetically wonderful as it was when I mailed it.
I had the same thing happen to me with a scamming buyer. I packed a new factory fresh iPad and the jerk said the box was empty and Amazon made me refund him. So he got a free iPad. I had a lot of calls and emails with Amazon to no avail.