Has anyone else noticed a BuyBox algorithm change?
Right, so i sell completely FBA. I used to sell Merchant but Amazon would always prefer the FBA sellers and force me to drop the price by £2-3 to enter the BuyBox. Even then, it wouldn’t take much to knock me out by dropping by 20-30p at a time. So when i changed the FBA i became nearly universally in the BuyBox for my products and that lasted for quite a while, about 6 months.
Recently, within the past few days. Even as FBA I’ve noticed that it seems i need to compete as if i was Merchant to enter the BuyBox.
I have checked my account health, which is squeaky clean 0% across the whole thing. Then i checked my eligibility for the BuyBox which it states i am eligible. So i thought maybe it’s my price competitiveness which stated it was at 100%. So i am stumped by what could be causing this.
Has anyone else noticed anything like this?
47 replies
Seller_9XaW0NYd0nkDF
Out of curiosity, do you auto reprice? How does your price compare with the competition?
Seller_POrEiTkyfOMz6
Yes, many FBA sellers are suffering the same. The search and BB algorithm appears to have changed sometime in September and again in early October. It seems that the Buy Box price for FBA sellers now has to be much closer to the FBM price to retain the BB.
There is already a few threads on this subject including
Seller_wYZz965BSpmvX
Amazon have been told off for prioritising items that make them more money, i.e. FBA items.
So where amazon used to mislead the buyer by always giving a FBA item the buy box, it has been told that this is not fair. So I imagine the buy box is now not so easy to get simply by being FBA instead of merchant fulfilled as it now looks at the price to the buyer instead of profit to Amazon.
Seller_TK2OUpwGNKKsN
I’m FBM and it’s a standard change. They do it every year.
It generally changes quarter to quarter and most heavily for the Christmas period.
Seller_KBwzft4820u0P
we have also had this for a few month of and on but we now do not lower the price but still get lots of sales as most of amazon shoppers are on prime and want prime and only look for prime so just stick to the old price and make more money rather than just lowering the price till no one makes and money
Seller_ssr3IED195LLh
Yes I’ve had this issue in the last few days on one ASIN where the buy box has been removed and changed to the dreaded ‘Available from these sellers’.
I got a reply from Seller Support about an hour ago - they say the reason is that I am not priced competitively compared to retailers outside of Amazon. It’s worth noting that I’m using FBA, have 100% positive feedback, plenty of stock and no issues reported in my pricing competitiveness and buy box eligibility sections in Seller Central etc. They won’t say what price they believe to be ‘competitive’ but I suspect it would leave me and other sellers in the red.
Sales on this ASIN have ground to a halt. I’m already offering it at a thin margin so if Amazon expects me & other sellers to lower our prices further we simply won’t be able to offer the product profitably.
Seller_Mi6R9tcTOAoU3
Where could I see this for my products please?
Seller_3u63TG7fpfnG6
yes because they are now wanting us to sell at home with prime! and they do not always give you the prime blue tick for your FBA stuff either, they keep moving the goalposts
Seller_0jWlqgUh2docO
can’t say i understand the buy box, i have brand registry and so all the products i list are not replicated by anyone else and i dont always get 100% buybox, last week it went down to 50%
Seller_TH9DATW06Doc2
A few days ago, I stumbled upon an ASIN where amazon were the only sellers but they are out of stock. I listed it for 21.99 and instantly sold out of 5 which made me check why and it says amazon will dispatch this between 1-4 weeks. By taking preorders they have an unfair advanatge because they can commit to bulk orders only once there’s enough demand.
Anyway, so I upped the price to 27.99 and instantly sell out another 5 units. I then try for 34.99 and still have the buy box and near instantly sell 10 units. Amazon algorithms have picked up on this and now it’s impossible to set the buy box price unless I set it to £30.99. It reminds me of a recent (last week) email I got where they will not give you the buy box unless your “price competitive” in their eyes. I thought this was a marketplace where lowest price and the person who can fulfil the stock wins? Doesn’t seem to be the case now. Even when Amazon does not have stock they hog the buy box unless you price it to what they want.
