FBA Stock Disposal - Amazon sold my stock without permission! Nightmare
To cut a long story short, we had a seasonal product that was delivered too late to shift in volume over the Christmas period (port delays / covid). This left us with a huge amount of excess stock that we simply won’t sell, so we decided to make room in our FBA storage by creating a removal order and asking Amazon to dispose the goods (3000 units in total).
Within the last week I’ve noticed a few other sellers trying to list against my Amazon product. This was a huge shock to me because I am the manufacturer and I don’t sell the product to wholesalers anywhere and I never have done.
Having messaged one of the sellers, they got super defensive and said they’d purchased it legitimately but was refusing to tell me where from and asking me what the problem was.
So either the goods are counterfeit (unlikely) or the sellers have purchased the stock I asked Amazon to dispose of. When I request for Amazon to dispose of the goods, surely this should be literal e.g. binned or burned. Disposed of doesn’t mean sold to a third party liquidator or donated to a charity.
I’ve checked the removal detail within my account and it is disposal - 100%.
The issue I have is that there are now in excess of 20 listings on Ebay with sellers all over the country trying to sell the product. There are also sellers trying to sell it through Amazon. Why is this a problem you might ask?
- This is severely damaging the value of my brand and product.
- This is a product that get’s updated annually so come Christmas, I will be trying to sell the 2022 version of the product and may lose sales to the 2021 obsolete product sold cheaply online by the sellers that have somehow got hold of stock.
- It’s simply not right for Amazon to sell on this product for their own gain when I’ve asked them to dispose of the goods and paid for this.
There is no other way the sellers could have acquired the stock in question - we only sell this item through Amazon and Amazon is the only place that have held stock of the product.
Can anyone shed some light on where I stand with Amazon - I have no doubt they’ll deny it. I wouldn’t even know where to begin in trying to get an explanation - you all know how hard they are to communicate with. How would I prove this and should I pursue damages?
One last thing to note, one of the Ebay sellers is AgeUK (a charity that is partnered with Amazon to receive stock donations). There must be a link here it seems too co-incidental to not be linked.
Either way, I requested Amazon to dispose the stock, NOT liquidate or donate it.
I’d appreciate any help or advice.
Kind Regards
17 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
Don’t know if this applies to disposal orders too - presumably it does if they’ve made a pledge not to send to landfill
Seller_taDBgt7LctucW
I don’t see why it wouldn’t mean sold on or donated. Do Amazon have a policy page detailing what actually happens with disposal orders?
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
OP - Amazon are unlikely to deny passing your goods on as it is in their policy for them to do so. They haven’t sold them on, they’ve donated them to charities as per their policy for disposal orders. I have bought / seen various pieces of former Amazon 3rd party stock listed by charities on ebay and that’s likely where the new sellers got them.
As for pursuing damages, I mentioned they have acted in accordance with their policy and when you create a disposal order there is a message that says:
Granted that message does suggest you can opt out which is incorrect, but from memory you used to be able to and they haven’t updated that text. I suppose if you created the disposal by file upload you may not see the message, but still doubtful there could be any form of damages.
Seller_l78koE9kGCu59
Really simple. The OP gave permission for them to be disposed of (not thrown away). They have been.
It’s sly but in no way needing a 2nd lot of permission.
Seller_FZLmkAPnHuV4L
Don’t know what your product is, but we purchased a lot of disposed/Amazon lost stock (which still had the FNSKU labels on them) from a major charity, and listed them back on Amazon. This has upset a lot of the original sellers/manufacturers of the stock , who retaliated by making the listings brand enabled.
It would be criminal for Amazon to throw this stuff away, and I’m glad a charity has benefited from the sale of this stock, as well as myself 
Seller_bdSdLjti4IugQ
We had something similar but slightly different. There was a warehouse fire last year? year before? and we had a bunch of stock that Amazon automatically put aside and I believe it was flagged as warehouse damaged or similar. We got credited the money for the units no problem and we assumed as they were damaged in the fire they were put in the bin etc… couldn’t be sold. Then around 6 months later we had a 3rd party selling them who we messaged and ask why they were selling a fake version of our product, as only we manufacture and we don’t wholesale or anything, and they advised they’d purchased them at a car boot sale from someone who buys Amazon job lots.
