Amazon pricing glitch has caused a £50,000+ loss after selling our FBA inventory for near to nothing!
I raised the price of our product (ASIN B0B1JRFH7Q) from £179.99 to £199.99. However, upon checking the page five minutes later, I was dismayed to find that SellerCentral had glitched during the price update, mistakenly listing the ASIN at £19.99.
All 330 units of this ASIN were swiftly sold within minutes, resulting in a loss of £180 per unit and a total loss of £59,400.
There have been approximately 40 orders in total, with buyers purchasing up to 30 units per order, evidently exploiting the pricing error.
Since Amazon Seller Support is unavailable until 8 am, I have opened a case urgently seeking assistance. Unfortunately, the response I received stated that Amazon Seller Support cannot cancel FBA orders.
Who can I contact at Amazon to promptly cancel these orders?
26 replies
Seller_QuM1AZgzfU9x4
I don't know about prompt, but i believe only a specialist team have the access required to cancel FBA orders. You would need someone in Support to transfer it to them.
Seller_ZJhFeE3tNKzfh
There aren't any phone numbers published. But if you go to Get Help and choose My Issue is Not Listed, then just type request a callback in the box, I then selected FBA related on the next row of boxes, it did give me the option to get a call.
I'll be honest though, likelihood of the orders being cancelled is slim - I also haven't heard of a glitch that moves the decimal point as well - you might well hit a brick wall with seller support on this one.
Seller_76AUwmqvSyRIM
Sorry to hear this, what a nightmare. I'm sure we've all made this type of mistake before.
I'm wondering whether if you close the FBA listing, it might send the units into stranded inventory thereby stopping their despatch?
You can always relist it later with the same details.
Worth a try?
Seller_i2FT3T2D8uIP2
Another question would be why didnt the AMZ bots flag this as a price too high / too low thing that they do?
Seller_hOZNPw7G8FIjl
I've never heard of a glitch where Amazon move the decimal point. Are you sure you didn't just mistype the figure? Easily done, I've done it myself. Not sure FBA orders can be cancelled
Seller_mXZGABFmrYbBn
To make matters worse, Amazon asked us to resubmit our 'Know Your Customer (KYC)' verification literally hours before this event happened. Consequently, Amazon email support has said that we do not have access to phone support during this verification period. Why on earth they would block a large seller from being able to use phone support is baffling.
I am therefore only able to email Amazon via an open case. Their latest unhelpful response stated that 'For security reasons, Seller Support cannot cancel orders on an account regardless of the Order Status.'
Is there anyone at Amazon reading this that can offer some help in this drastic situation?
Seller_1HV0l3GiDoY1A
When did the price drop as Camel Camel Camel doesn't show any changes to the price, it's always been £199.99, and you still have 8 in stock.
If it has happened it wouldn't be a glitch it would be human error and the order would just be processed.
Doesn't seem right though have you got screen shots?
Seller_d8YGbIjNqwFxn
Sadly Amazon are unlikely to cancel FBA orders for you.
To prevent this from happening again you can do the following
1) Make sure you have realistic minimum and maximum prices set up against your ASIN. If you then mistype the price in the future and it falls below your minimum price then Amazon should suppress your listing until you correct the price.
2) Set up a maximum order quantity for your SKU so that a customer can only order a certain number in each transaction. This will stop large bulk orders in case of a price error.
I am though very surprised all the stock went in a few minutes.
Seller_GNZnVcGNo6mDw
Would you not receive an email saying Potential Pricing Error?
Seller_vneMypCZkP1Zo
It's possible that you made the typo without realising it, it has happened to me a few times. There's not a lot you can do in trying to cancel or retrieve the monies back.
You can set low and high thresholds so next time your listing will be supressed if you mistakenly set a price outside of these limits.
