💡 Seller Poll: What Were Your Growth Challenges in 2025?
Hello sellers,
We've been monitoring thousands of seller discussions in the Grow Your Business category, and have observed clear patterns in 2025. Understanding these trends helps us prioritise the resources and support you need most—but we want to hear directly from you about what's impacting your business.
What We're Hearing From Sellers
Based on analysis of over 4,000 forum discussions in Grow Your Business in 2025, here are the top challenges sellers are facing:
Advertising & Campaign Management
- Adverts stopping unexpectedly or failing to run
- Campaign manager access issues
- Budget restrictions and profitability concerns
Payment & Financial Issues
- Disbursement delays and fund holds
- Lending programme challenges
- Invoice and financial tracking problems
Pricing & Promotions
- Strike-through price display issues
- Promotion cancellations
- Voucher configuration errors
Sales Performance
- Traffic and order volume declines
- Seasonal performance variations
Promotional Events
- Deal eligibility and suppression
- Event performance below expectations
Share Your Experience
We're opening this discussion to understand what's genuinely happening in your business right now. Your insights help us advocate for better tools, clearer policies, and more effective support.
Please Tell us:
- Which of these challenges is affecting your business most significantly?
- What specific obstacle is preventing you from growing right now?
- What solution or resource would make the biggest difference for you?
- Have you found any strategies that helped you overcome these issues?
Your detailed responses help us identify where to focus our efforts. If you find a comment that resonates with your experience, upvote it to help us see which issues are most widespread.
Let's work together to identify the priorities that matter most to your success.
💡 Seller Poll: What Were Your Growth Challenges in 2025?
Hello sellers,
We've been monitoring thousands of seller discussions in the Grow Your Business category, and have observed clear patterns in 2025. Understanding these trends helps us prioritise the resources and support you need most—but we want to hear directly from you about what's impacting your business.
What We're Hearing From Sellers
Based on analysis of over 4,000 forum discussions in Grow Your Business in 2025, here are the top challenges sellers are facing:
Advertising & Campaign Management
- Adverts stopping unexpectedly or failing to run
- Campaign manager access issues
- Budget restrictions and profitability concerns
Payment & Financial Issues
- Disbursement delays and fund holds
- Lending programme challenges
- Invoice and financial tracking problems
Pricing & Promotions
- Strike-through price display issues
- Promotion cancellations
- Voucher configuration errors
Sales Performance
- Traffic and order volume declines
- Seasonal performance variations
Promotional Events
- Deal eligibility and suppression
- Event performance below expectations
Share Your Experience
We're opening this discussion to understand what's genuinely happening in your business right now. Your insights help us advocate for better tools, clearer policies, and more effective support.
Please Tell us:
- Which of these challenges is affecting your business most significantly?
- What specific obstacle is preventing you from growing right now?
- What solution or resource would make the biggest difference for you?
- Have you found any strategies that helped you overcome these issues?
Your detailed responses help us identify where to focus our efforts. If you find a comment that resonates with your experience, upvote it to help us see which issues are most widespread.
Let's work together to identify the priorities that matter most to your success.
142 replies
Seller_i38MVIJDH23AY
I am amazed that you have decided these are the issues.
As far as I am concerned there is only really one major issue preventing me from growing. I would be shocked if every seller does not agree with me.
SELLER SUPPORT
This stops sellers solving all the other issues that arise with a large website. Sellers understand there will be occasional issues but the dysfunctional Seller Support prevents us reporting/fixing these.
Seller_76AUwmqvSyRIM
So the biggest challenges (according to your AI analysis) were not the economic climate or increased competition or supply chain difficulties. They were failures or errors by the Amazon website and processes.
Let’s hope someone in authority takes action to resolve these issues.
Seller_AlYpsVHv0gj21
I am speaking as a used book seller.
I believe that some of the main issues affected this sector are:
1 As another poster has already pointed out - the almost complete lack of Seller Support. This has been written about on this forum hundreds of times
2 The complete mess the book catalogue is in. Again this has been highlighted many many times with absolutely no response from Amazon
3 The arbitary removal by Amazon of many of sellers listings because of "High pricing" or because of the need for "approval". There have been at least 10 long discussions on this forum just in the last few months
4 The number of "mods" like yourself who have come onto the forum promising help but ending up actually doing nothing. Let's hope that you are the mod that actually gets something done.
There are many other issues I could list but I am just being called to put the Christmas turkey into the oven!
Seller_vdeib394DPMRe
Payment
Disbursement delays and fund holds
The account appeal has been pending for over 270 days with no progress whatsoever. I must say I’m extremely disappointed with the lack of progress on Amazon's support team's work efficiency.
Seller_RAXEWLxQ2dbmN
As another book and media seller, i agree with dunsterville that with BMVD generally and books in particular, the broken catalogue is a big problem.
The advanced search engine is worse than useless, and the proliferation of bogus duplicate ASINs created by/for dodgy dropshippers compounds the problem.
In addition, of course, are all the bureaucratic obstacles that have been put in the way of selling overseas.
Advertising is, as far as I know, irrelevant in BMVD and I wish Amazon would do more to separate the management of BMVD listings from the rest of the catalogue.
'Branding' is largely a nonsense for BMVD sellers and gets in the way of doing catalogue updates.
Seller_Y1ty3yhljJgKF
Returnless refunds.
Amazon giving away my stock and charging me for it.
Make up etc is absolutely loss leading.
You couldn’t return an item to local shop that’s been used and “they don’t like the colour”
Seller_lmJOjF6JybyzB
My ONLY challenge is Amazon's gross organisational INCOMPETENCE and total LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY for said incompetence.
NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING else even comes remotely close.
Amazon and in particular Seller Support are the single most incompetent organisation I have ever dealt with.
Seller_5VsVlvdiDnITx
The most common topic on the forums for the last 24 months without fail on is Amazon allowing fraud, specifically customer return fraud and wrong A-Z decisions. Yet you have left these out of your list? Some 'analysis' you've done here.
Seller_UN9ILzxADiCK3
@Indy_Amazon
My list of greatest challenges for growth have been following:
1. Amazon catalogue - A complete mess.
a) Listings with wrong/invented/seller name "brands". Sellers can't add genuine branded products that some seller has (in some cases years ago) listed with a wrong brand name. Obviously this leads to customers being confused and not finding the correct products.
b) Listings cannot be edited even they are clearly wrong in the catalogue - and goes without saying that the so called seller support doesn't understand the issue, have no interest in helping and even if they finally after several contacts and escalations would understand the issue are unable to assist.
c) the search engine not working - Some of our products do not come up in Amazon search even if they are written exactly with the correct brand and name - leaving it impossible for the customers to find the correct product(s)
2. Constant suppressions / compliance document requests for products. Every single of our best selling products have been suppressed without any warning at least once and getting them reinstated is nearly impossible as documents seem to get rejected by so called "review" every single time. Again getting anything sorted at least 8-12 contacts and several escalations and complaints later some can be overturned and accepted. Best solution usually is just to sell on a another selling platform.
3. Seller support in every single case. They clearly have never heard of the "one call resolution" concept as every issue that needs dealing with takes about 8-12 contacts and several escalations, complaints and forum posts to have anything addressed and even then in some cases nothing can be done. An absolute waste of time, money and energy. A loss for us, Amazon and the customers not getting the products. We have decided to move those product lines (that cause challenges) to other selling platforms as they offer better value for money, have less disruptions and sort problems with professional support and in timely manner.
4. Amazon as an unreliable "business partner" -
a) Refunds offered with out any scrutiny for orders that have been delivered and signed for as lost. Refunds for orders that are claimed to be damaged without any proof of damage or return.
b) FBA - products are damaged, lost, suppressed and stranded with the seller taking all the financial burden on Amazon's incompetence.
Offered solutions:
1. Every Amazon country manager should set up a couple of/few test selling accounts and see what concrete challenges the sellers have to face in reality and how to navigate the constant inconsistency and incompetence of Amazon's processes and support.
2. Every country should have their own specialised seller support that is not outsourced somewhere where there is not even basic understanding on how brands, business, delivery firms, compliance, etc works. Even a seller support that would understand how Amazon works would be beneficial.
3. It's time to ditch the "The seller is always wrong" attitude - usually the sellers have the best understanding of the business and Amazon's policies in practise.
I hope these initial thoughts are something that other sellers can relate to, but I'm not expecting anything to get better if I'm completely honest. We have sold on Amazon since 2018 and until about 2022 the experience was mainly positive, but after that the changes have been for the worse. The catalogue, compliance, suppressions, disruptions, and last but definitely not the least the seller "support" have all become worse and has made the whole experience negative.
Seller_2MDS66zdjPMUU
Get back to being a platform.
Not a competitor
Not an auditor
Not a compliance zealot
Not judge and jury
TRAIN seller support
Make the policy pages simple, fewer and appropriate.
If Amazon stopped doing all these things that we do everyday in our own businesses for ourselves perhaps the extortionate price of listing here compared to other platforms could be much less by cutting out the costs of staff intervention that add to the problems not resolve them. .
