Strange sellers behaviour, why?
This is not a complaint or anything that requires a solution, it’s just me trying to make sense of strange behaviours I see on Amazon. One is the moderately popular product but not that popular say average sales 3-5 a day that sees a pile up of sellers fighting a penny war. I found myself involved because I spotted a few products with no FBA offers, as soon as my products got there other sellers arrived, now on one it’s about 20 of them all selling at about £10 a product that costs about £9.20 with VAT. And more are coming every day. Why? I buy all my products from brand owners and manufacturers so it’s unlikely that anyone can find them for much cheaper. In some cases they might get a further discount if they buy very large quantities but it wouldn’t be enough to make any kind of profit in a case like this, it’s relatively heavy and the FBA fees etc are about £6. I can’t work this out at all.
I research before sending products to FBA but I got it wrong a few times. I have two products that have never sold. I lowered the price to try to sell them to cover the costs, nothing. In both cases new sellers have arrived with full stock, , one is selling it for £1 less than me, considering that I bought the products from the actual manufacturer and I am selling at cost price, they will lose money if they ever sell. In the second case, they are selling the product for £10.99, I am trying to get rid of it at £4.99 and no one buys it what chances do they have at that price?
I don’t get it, there are so many products and opportunities why are some people wasting time and money in penny war frenzies or flocking dead horses?
0 replies
Seller_EHYOwAkoZV3Hb
I don’t think we realise how many scammers are on Amazon.
As an example, I recently did test purchases on some items selling on “my” branded listings. The scammers used fake FedEx tracking references and nothing came of course.
I did get my money back as I knew I would but what did the scammer gain? Were they able to keep the money? How?
Is it a case of numbers? Do they “sell” so much that by the time buyers and Amazon get up to speed, they are able to run away with a percentage of that money? Probably.
Seller_77IcbQKVGdZo0
One thing to keep in mind with selling price which impacts me a lot with my competition is those who are not VAT Registered
For example I can sell a product at £2.50 but immediately 42 pence is taken off that product for HMRC. I then see competitors who are not VAT registered able to sell the product at a lower price as they don’t need to take VAT into account.
Obviously you can only stay non VAT registered for a short time but this does hit me sometimes when a new seller jumps on a popular listing
There is also though some sellers who seem to think volume of sales is more important that profit. These are the ones who push the price down. I used to use repricing software but I don’t do that anymore as I have competitors who will always list cheaper than me pushing my price down. I used to get into an endless battle of staying a few pence cheaper until one of us hit our bottom price.
There are also those sellers who just don’t seem to know what they are doing. Yes we can all speculate on how much they buy products for but even taking that into account they obviously just do not know what they are doing.
Seller_NR7AbZwDMu6mb
Keep in mind many sellers use automated pricing rules to finely adjust the price to win BB. Also sellers can quit or cease trading and they sell on bulk stock at less than cost which then gets listed on Amazon and can still be profitable for the seller even below your cost price.
You may also see less experienced sellers being a little over enthusiastic to make the sale and perhaps not considering margin effectively. These sellers soon disappear! Just hold your nerve on price in these cases.
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
There is a specific set of products I looked at as a relatively new customer and I can buy them cheaper from a wholesaler I know, as they get better discounts than I would as a small, new buyer direct from the manufacturer
Have you tried asking your supplier what your price would be for several pallets of that product?
Seller_3yhYGU61cigbH
There’s a lot of companies using amazon for clearance, so the product can be costing them to sit on shelves, they then just want to get something back again so they can re-use the money.
Seller_RSaktJ3KqN82w
I’ve also been wondering how some items are selling so cheap. For example, I’ve seen badges selling for less than it would cost me to post.
I applaud all of you who compete on listings with others.
Seller_fMsCVAHNu4txH
You only have to read these forums regularly and you’ll see there’s a constant stream of ‘New Sellers’ who appear, sell a few items, think their world is going to change and invest heavily, and 6-12 months later they’re £20k down, and asking where it all went wrong.
Usually it’s because they seem to think that ‘Time’ is free, a niche business that you do for an hour a week is suddenly filling several rooms of your house, you’re knee deep in paperwork, the tax man is knocking at your door, and that side-hustle that YouTube convinces you can turn you in to a millionaire overnight is actually now dominating your life and causing you to lose sleep.
The problem is that the Amazon mentality is that there’ll always be another ‘New Seller’ along in a minute, they make their fees regardless of who sells, and in the meantime customers are actually benefitting from the bad business practices.
We’ve been selling on here for years now, and there’s been a number of competitors who appear, take a cut of the market share, and then flop.
We generally just have to ride out the period(s) until they realise they’re just the new money-pit.
It’s not that no-one can do what we do, it’s just that we know there isn’t much margin in the products we sell, so we can usually work out how much our competitors are paying, and know when they’re chasing sales rather than profits.
Seller_pD4k5nUkDbIgP
I have been working for myself since August 2005. I used to get the Piccadilly Line to Kings Cross station in London every morning. One morning the Piccadilly Line stopped I tried to get the Victoria Line but they were evacuating all trains and stations. Yes, it was the day of the London bombs. After that, public transport was in a mess, the Piccadilly Line was out of action for a while and there were more bomb scares and evacuations. After a few weeks of that, I thought ‘what the hell’ and resigned. The best decision ever. It’s a lot of work and it’s hard at times. but it feels great when I am in bed in the morning listening to people rushing to the bus stop waiting for a packed bus to go to work. If there is a hell, it must be like a packed London bus at rush hour.
