New Buyer Panic
Hello everyone,
I seem to be having a problem recently with winning the buy box. For the past few weeks I have sold items successfully being priced competitively against other FBA sellers (a few pence difference) BUT, now I can’t seem to win the buy box on any of my listings despite being priced significantly better than the other FBA sellers (a few quid difference).
I have contacted seller support which were friendly and helpful in telling me that the buy box is a mystical entity that picks and chooses as it pleases but 9 times out of 10 I have seen that it will choose the lowest price and I have sold successfully on this premise.
My account is not under review, all my listings have buy box eligibility and I have no seller performance data due to being new.
Can anyone think of any solid reasons as to why this premise has all of a sudden changed for me and thank you to anyone who replies (even just to at least calm my nerves).
0 replies
Seller_EJIX7rqDNQJi2
There are many factors which influence the BuyBox, but it depends mainly on seller’s overall price + shipping, fulfillment method, handling time, Premium delivery options and metrics.
Due to Amazon’s recent Fair Pricing Policy, the BuyBoxes were completely suppressed from ASINs which were sold at a much lower price at some point in the past.
Also, I noticed that when there are multiple sellers on a listing offering almost the same service and price, no one gets the BuyBox.
In such case, I keep decreasing the price by very low amounts and checking how much it takes to get the BuyBox. Usually, I eventually get it after making it significantly lower than other seller’s.
Seller_8tTERQwGFJ515
Kika,
Thank you for taking the time to reply to this. I understand the different metrics that are involved when the algorithm makes a decision on who wins the buy box and I can see on all of my listings that the buy boxes of the past were similarly priced with no suppression.
I do believe I can win the buy box at significantly reduced pricing against my competitors but at a point where I would make little to no return and would be priced several pound cheaper than everyone else, where recently I have been able to win it consistently at only a few pence cheaper than my direct competitors. To me this is the part where it makes no sense, two weeks of consistent and healthy competitive pricing wins me the buy box but to win it now I’d have to undercut the competition by a significant margin.
I simply can’t wrap my head around this sudden change in favour of the mystical buy box.
Seller_8tTERQwGFJ515
So after spending all day investigating this issue I have found that all of my items in the second shipment were sent to EUK5 which I believe only handles SnL items. This has stopped the items in question from receiving the ‘One-day delivery’ details on the listings and as such has affected my ability to win the buy box significantly.
If anyone can provide anymore information such as a list of all ‘SnL only’ fulfillment centres that I can’t seem to find anywhere or advice as to what to do next it would be much appreciated. Similarly if you don’t agree with what I have said above and think there could be some other issue please don’t hesitate to comment.
Seller_8tTERQwGFJ515
So after getting in touch with the FBA dept. on seller support they have informed me that this is purely down to location and every buyer will see something different depending on that factor (this was already known from trawling the forums). However, they also told me that the FC can have an impact on this and it really must have as my buy box percentage went from a competitive 40 odd percent to nothing for days on items that I was successfully selling. I have created a removal order on the items in question with the hopes that I can get them back and send them to a FC that is able to provide better shipping features.
Seller_8tTERQwGFJ515
I understand there are costs involved in this but why would Amazon transfer my stock back to EUK5 if they were shipped to another location entirely?
Seller_8tTERQwGFJ515
This is true but at the moment the cost of getting these items back and reshipping them to a possibly new destination that can offer one day delivery across the UK outweighs not receiving any chance of a sale.
I’ve checked my listings with several locations in the UK and not one of them that were sent to EUK5 show ‘One day delivery’ which means in order to compete I have to be priced 4-5£ lower than all the other FBA competitors. I tried delivery to Peterborough and the listings still did not display ‘One day delivery’ which seems odd so the only thing I can think of is that somewhere in the FC process they were listed incorrectly. I’ve also tried to list the weight, volume and dimensions as mentioned in other forum posts regarding ‘missing one day delivery option’ to no avail.
Thank you for your input Adrian and if anyone else cares to comment with their thoughts on the matter it would be much appreciated.
Seller_8tTERQwGFJ515
Well I think someone must have been listening in because all of my listings were sorted and I now display one day shipping, I have requested to cancel the removal order and thank you all for your input through my new seller panic.
I guess it just takes a significant amount of time depending on the FC for listings to be updated correctly or something but having never experienced something like that before definitely got the blood moving.