I would be fairly certain they are selling stock that they don't have as well.

Can we do that?

I would guess it is a pricing error, even Amazon can't buy a product, pack and deliver it for 25p + VAT and still make a profit., looks more like a cost price to me. Also all the other colours that are available from other sellers are higher than your price.

Have you considered trying to buy all of Amazon stock and selling it on Ebay next year, its cheaper than your current supplier?

I just added 999 to my basket and at checkout was informed that quantity wasn't available so I tried one instead which was accepted and was offered premium delivery for £4.99 to receive it on the 23rd December! I declined to complete checkout.

This happens quite a lot with books. Amazon have no stock, are expecting no stock, but have a very low price live with an extended estimated delivery date that is really just a holding date.

On that listing in particular Amazon were charging £3.87 for almost 4 years until they ran out of stock a couple of months ago and dropped it to 30p. They were charging similar prices for the other colours and certainly haven't added the 30p price to those when they ran out of stock.

All i can say is that it is possible to get Amazon to change the reference price back to something realistic, but it certainly isn't easy.

Theres loads of foil balloon listings like that but nothing ever gets done

Hi TriProducts,

With books, Amazon sometimes offer items decades old at the original cover price and NEW.

I order one and, usually, a few weeks later when they find they can't get stock they delete theit offering - at which point I can re-list at a more realistic price...

Good Luck

Brian

This happens all the time with books. Amazon don't seem to want the market to set the price but want to "Dictate" what you can sell at. All they will do is push more and more used books over to Ebay, which I have noticed is happening already.

Over 10 years ago the OFT were looking into whether Amazon's price parity policy was anti competitive and illegal. Amazon ended the policy. presumable to avoid any fines or official directives before the investigations concluded. It seems they are hoping this has been forgotten and are doing the same, but renamed the policy.

I am fairly sure (but don't quote me) that the EU banned the practice, or found it was already illegal, and fined Amazon.

I really don't get why we can't sell for a price that we decide is fair. I had the opposite the other day of a book being underpriced. So if I can't sell it for £11.99 how the heck am I going to sell it for £25.99 ( which I think is the price a US seller is selling it for) It's been up for sale for a couple of years. Surely if I am happy with £11.99 that should be my decision not Amazon's

If it's an error they should correct it or at least SS should flag it to whoever can make changes. But they tell you to sell at the same price. I can understand that Amazon is big and doesn't know what's happening but they should pay some attention to the forum then, as this issue have been mentioned several times. They shouldn't do it for us sellers by all means but for their customers.

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I would guess it is a pricing error, even Amazon can't buy a product, pack and deliver it for 25p + VAT and still make a profit., looks more like a cost price to me.

I have ''bought' one very cheap product with a long lead time to see what happened, but after several months when the delivery date was approaching I got an email saying that I had to wait another 6 months.

This is so customer-centric, isn't it?

It was a product readily available from the UK manufacturer, it didn't even need to be imported from China.

You can complain to the UK Competition & Markets Authority. There is a specific part email for it, you can find it here: ....

OK, amazon wouldn't let me post a link to it (shocking). It is in their 'news' section here:

Pursuant to the commitments Amazon has entered into with the UK Competition & Markets Authority, if you have any complaints regarding Amazon’s compliance with its commitments, you may direct them via a complaint form to the Monitoring Trustee at *****or Alcis Advisers GmbH, Fasanenstraße 73, 10719 Berlin, Germany.

The complaint form and further information can be found on the Monitoring Trustee’s website:

Give it a google, and you'll find it, I'm sure.

Ive had similar issues too

I used to sell a 'Hello Kitty' paper lightshade. I was only making about 20p on it by time I took account of fees, postage, VAT, etc

Another seller came along and priced it at 99p - including postage. Now the item had to be sent as a parcel so they could only have been losing money per sale as postage alone was going cost more. I thought perhaps it was coming from China so they were getting away with low postage costs. So I bought a test but it was posted from UK as it came 2 days later posted by Royal Mail Parcel48.

Amazon in their wisdom deemed my price was now too high and so they suppressed my listing unless I reduced my price. I was not going to deliberately sell at a price where it would cost me to fulfil the order so in the end I just left it and sold it on other marketplaces instead.