4 ms·
Amazon has really turned a little more hostile to Third Party Merchants in the last few years. In 2012/2013, I was doing FBA on damaged cargo/insurance buyouts
by imroot 5y ago
Amazon has really turned a little more hostile to Third Party Merchants in the last few years.
In 2012/2013, I was doing FBA on damaged cargo/insurance buyouts (If a truck gets into a wreck, 99.9%, they can't use the goods on the truck, so, Insurance companies will sell them for pennies on the pound. Yes, pound) when I found a company that was selling a trailer full of LG 27" monitors for what would equate to about $18/each. I had some office and self-storage space and a SUV, and would literally take 10 them from my self storage unit every day, take them to my office space, test the monitor out, open the back to inspect for damage, and then repackage everything in the box and sell them as Used/Tested/Refurbished depending on what I needed to do to get them working again.
My biggest complaint was that when someone would return a monitor, it'd never make its way back to me -- as in, it always looked like someone would never return the monitor. I'd set calendar reminders to follow up with Amazon Seller Support, and I'd always get the money credited back to my account.
I've watched the fees go up and up (when I was doing FBA, my Amazon fees would cost me around $10, shipping included, per piece. Today, the same fees would run me around $30/unit per device: my item is considered 'oversized')
As someone on the Seller Forums mentions a few different times -- you aren't amazon's customer, the end-user is. Amazon is just a channel for selling your goods. Unfortunately, dealing with Amazon as a channel partner is just basically russian roulette -- no matter how well you can describe your problem, you're working with a team that just doesn't care.
I've had offers from the same trucking insurance company over the last few years -- even a truck load of PS5's this summer -- but, didn't really want the headache of dealing with Amazon, so, I've turned the offers down.
- mdrzn 5y agoBuy these trucks full of goods for cheap, and resell somewhere else? Even eBay, instead of Amazon, would be great for flipping these items. Or even better, there's a need for an aggregator where people can offer to buy "their share" of the full truck of damaged items, and once you have sold 100% of the truck you send the items and collect the payment.