Over 500 units of stock marked as unfulfillable and amazon won't tell me why
I have been selling a product for around 2 years and have never had this problem but all of a sudden all my units in amazon were marked as unfulfillable.
I contacted seller support to ask what the problem was and they replied with:
"Regarding the units marked as defective, please note that we would like to inform you that normally units will be marked unsellable due to units does not meet program requirements or if the units does not match catalogue, or packaging and prep issue, the units will be marked Defective and seller has to create removals as per Amazon policy.
We would like to inform you that as per recent policy changes in Amazon, we are sorry to inform you that we do not have an option to check the units in Defective disposition. We understand we may provided the information in the past. However as per recent policy, we are no longer permitted to check the units in Defective disposition.
Also we regret to let you know that if your ASIN units are marked as Defective, we are unable to provide images or flip them to sellable disposition.
Unfulfillable or unsellable inventory will require a removal order where standard FBA removal fees apply. If you do not remove this inventory after 30 days of being identified as unfulfillable or unsellable, Amazon may dispose of it."
There is nothing wrong with the products, it meets all the requirements and there is no prep needed.
Now I have to spend hundreds of £ to remove this stock just to send it back in again.
Anyone have any advice?
7 replies
Seller_d8YGbIjNqwFxn
I doubt very much that Amazon do these checks but have you checked that the catalogue page matches the item, there have been no changes to the catalogue page such as image changes.
Have you checked the prep guidance for this type of product and followed that correctly?
Is there any chance they could have got damaged in transit?
It is most likely a mistake to be honest and someone has marked them as defective incorrectly.
If seller support are not helpful you could escalate it to the escalation leadership team (MD email address) to look into it to see if they can help you.
Seller_oKph7fqXfT0B2
An inventory AI probably decided it, and they have a policy to not go and look to verify it. The main suggestion I have (for this and many other reasons that could risk your stock being lost or flagged as unfulfillable or incur charges) is to just limit the risk by keeping absolute minimum stock in FBA. How many days of stock is 500 units? Get the stock back (there's nothing else you can do or they will do for you) and then make sure the stock complies with any new or changed policies, and send them back just 50 at at time? Their policies change all the time so just having a couple of weeks worth of compliant stock on hand is the safest.
Seller_yKaAOF5OG0p6m
This happened to us a few years ago...the AI driven system deemed that over 1,000 pieces of a given item were made of pesticides and as such weren't allowed to sell them.
The goods were most certainly not manufactured from pesticides so we appealed and they agreed with us. Sadly, the system couldn't be manually over ridden to reinstate them. The only solution was to pull them all out, create new skus and send them back in.
These goods were in the US so it was a massive issue for us. Ultimately we pulled them out and never bothered sending them back in-the stock was sold elsewhere.
Since that point we've always been sure to be never over exposed to the vagaries of the FBA programme.
Seller_RcydWbTvJuBPj
We had this happen to us recently as well. In the end after repeatedly escalating the case through their utterly useless system, they did eventually mark the ASIN as saleable again. However, they also sent around half of it back too and in the most dreadful state, literally the stock was just been piled in box not fit of purpose. It was lucky that only 4 units were broken out of the 300 odd sent back. We then or course packed it all back up properly and sent it back. Unfortunately you just have to play the game. There is no accountability on their side at all and most of the agents that get back to you are just regurgitating a script if they are at all human and not AI bots?!
Seller_PsiOp6OKueHxT
classic absurd amazon behaviour, we had the same thing with 60 units, escalated and escalated and they insisted they were defective, paid them to ship them back to us, took the return labels off and immediately paid to ship the same units straight back to amazon. Of course this time they were absolutely fine.
Maybe the balance sheet was looking a bit weak this month so they decided to boost it with some nice frivolous removal order costs plus their cut of partnered carrier shipping charges. Pretty smart business if you can get away with it I suppose! Al Capone would be proud.
Seller_fOG8EFJJcBwGE
Same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. Just keep pestering them daily with tickets + phone calls & eventually someone will go and inspect it and mark it as non-defective & then it'll get moved to sellable.
Took 3 weeks for all my units to be moved back to sellable.
