Suspended from Seller Prime yet again
We received a suspension from seller prime yesterday, on time shipment 98.49%, which is below the threshold of 99%.
I take responsibility, we did not meet the threshold, I just document for the record the exact situation here as rather than suspend perhaps Amazon would do better to actually contact businesses and find out what happened, better understand us and better understand things we struggle with.
We’ve been 6 day a week dispatch since it came in last summer. We have 3 dispatched trained staff on site usually. 2 weeks ago 2 of them were on holiday at the same time (one of them was myself).
On Friday afternoon after last collection I get a message from the remaining worker that he’s very ill and would struggle to get in on Saturday for dispatch. I turn off prime remotely from abroad, but only after 6 orders are already on screen.
Ordinarily we’d have cover, on this occasion we did not. I accept I did not meet the prime obligation, the orders did get sent on the following Monday.
POA and appeal are in, I’m just forever disappointed that the knee jerk reaction from Amazon is nuclear on these things. If they talked to me, or gave a phone line into someone sensible real time to discuss these things, they’d understand that operationally we had a real issue and that actually the last 9 months of Saturday service were the norm and this was the exception.
Yet more reinforcement of needing to expect to be treated like a child by Amazon for the crime of someone being ill or on holiday.
0 replies
Seller_ae51e0CJoHqCX
Unfortunately you are taking this a little bit personally and Amazon is anything but personal with sellers.
Yes you were below the threshold and in the way the system works whether you are .05% or 10% under the requirement, you are under the requirement and nothing can mitigate you from this. In fact you have to do a plan of action to mitigate it from happening in the future and put steps in.
I wish Amazon would look at things on a case by case basis but it is a bot that instigates this and you just have to be methodical in the response.
According to Amazon’s VAR system, you were a fingernail offside and have to pay the penalty.
Hopefully a decent POA will just get it back to reinstatement.
Seller_qZO3ZCjoBXEeL
To be fair, it isn’t nuclear. You’ve lost the Prime badge for now because your business couldn’t meet its contractual shipping obligations. Nuclear would be having your account suspended.
From Amazon’s point of view, they offer options.
You can sell MFN/FBM
You can Sell SFP
You can Sell FBA
Different sizes and scales of businesses have choices. In this case (and entirely due to a perfectly understandable human factor) your business was unable to meet it’s obligations. It was a rare occurrence but it highlights that you are a small business choosing to take option SFP - but that that is a stretch for you. You can manage it, but you aren’t a large operation with a fully teamed warehouse with true redundancy.
That is fine, no-one will criticise you for that because for sure there are a great number of small businesses running with less - but you have to accept that you are pretty close to the bare-minimum required to reliably offer SFP the way it is contractually setup with Amazon?
Seller_4MlYJvoHfdkDh
I always here of people getting into issues with Prime and Saturday issues, If I had Prime Id turn it off Every Friday and back on on Saturday/ Sunday.
