Things that really annoy me on Amazon
I know I shouldn’t complain of a platform that offers so many opportunities etc. but I still complain because things could be better and there are things on Amazon that are not really good for anyone.
When I can’t change a listing for a product I am allowed to sell. Yesterday I saw this product that would be good to sell but the listing claims something that is not true. I cannot change it and I am not prepared to sell a product with the wrong information. I had to refund someone months ago as they had bought something that claimed to measure their blood pressure, it didn’t. I couldn’t change the listing so I had to stop selling it, now I am more careful when listing but honestly Amazon should allow changes when the description is not accurate. So I ended up having surreal conversation with SS. The description says it’s a 1kg, actually it’s 50 grams can we change it? - No, only the brand owner can - But the brand owner is not on Amazon and told me in writing that I am allowed to change it - No, only the brand owner can change it - THEY ARE NOT ON AMAZON WHOEVER CREATED THIS LISTING IS NOT THE BRAND OWNER
And some sellers claim a brand as theirs even when the packaging has the proper brand name in big letters. As I use trade only wholesalers and a couple of manufacturers that are not selling on Amazon this happens a lot, I can’t sell something that I am allowed to sell. And SS will always side with the fake brand because the real brand is not on Amazon. 
0 replies
Seller_rGtEcZnu0JTRD
This is a problem on Amazon, but understandable to be honest, as if they allow anyone to edit the listings, then they can be changed to suit what an alternative seller wants to sell, rather than the actual product that was originally set-up.
We have seen the reverse side to this, recently we had a seller who obvioulsy did not like us selling the product he originally listed, so he changed the description to say it was a pack of 3, so we sold loads of product before realising, and to cancel multiple orders, as did several other sellers on the same listing once we put our price up to cover the new quantity. We were lucky as a high volume seller that it did not affect our metrics, but it could do for a smaller seller.
Seller_77IcbQKVGdZo0
It happens a lot on Amazon. I will always check the listing on Amazon before I purchase an item to make sure the description is correct, over time I have discounted loads of products because the listing is not in a good place.
With the brand owner controls the listing it can often mean it is the person who created the listing in the first place and they have edit control over it. It is a misleading term by Seller Support.
You can sometimes get listings changed by providing evidence of the change. This can be by real life product pictures, links to the manufacturer website or copies of the manufacturer catalogue. Often though the answer from SS is no.
Seller_ae51e0CJoHqCX
If you have a problem with anything on Amazon you can always contact seller support and they will put you through to someone if they can’t help themselves, I find them so helpful especially towards experienced sellers.
Here are some of the departments or teams that I don’t believe exist but have had quoted at me.
The Relevant Department/ Team
The Specialist Department/Team
The Corresponding department/Team
The Higher Department/Team
The Internal Team/Department
The Leadership Team (This maybe credible)
I once said to seller support that I didn’t want to be put through to any of the above teams as they won’t be able to help and they said in that case they would pass it on to the the “concerned team”.
Some of the annoyances end up just becoming a joke and in the end you have to laugh otherwise it will drive you insane.
Seller_3TuKPsB3ieWKC
Amazon’s catalogue is a total mess. Wrong pictures, wrong descriptions, barcodes not matching the actual product. We gave up trying to chase Seller Support to fix things like this years ago. We have hundreds (probably over a thousand actually) of products which can’t be sold through Amazon for the reason that you have stated or something similar.
We get quite a lot of ‘description on website was not accurate’ in the return reason on Amazon. Strangely on eBay, where we control the information that the customer sees, we don’t get any.
It’s bizarre in a way, when Amazon claim to be so customer centric, yet there are loads of examples where the customer will never ever get what they are expecting, but Amazon refuse to correct the issue.
It will always be an issue on Amazon because people can’t spell, people make mistakes, people deliberately change listings to cause problems for competitors and everybody is lumped into the same listing, and you become responsible for what somebody else has done. Fine if you have 10 listings, you can do some housework and review every listing regularly. For sellers who have hundreds or thousands of products for sale it is ridiculous to expect every listing to be manually reviewed just in case another seller has made a change.
This kind of thing causes both buyers and sellers a problem.
Seller_QVpjrN1BsybDT
Things that really annoy me on Amazon
I cant really comment — there is simply not enough ink in my pen!
Seller_x1xMSBwZsJrTE
What you need to do is find some scam Chinese seller and ask them to change it for you.
For some reason Amazon seems to let these people change listings whenever they want and then Amazon believes the scam seller is the brand owner, even though they have NO connection with the brand whatsoever.
Seller_3TuKPsB3ieWKC
We had a supplier just before Christmas that was talking about re-barcoding an entire range as the listing was not correct on Amazon and variations not being displayed. They have loads more like this and thought one of their customers had made an error in listing initially. I told them it looked more likely that it was an Amazon issue and not something that a seller could fix from their account. I told them that I would give it a go fixing this one listing.
I tried everything that I could think of from our account/inventory to get the listing fixed and failed at every step. Eventually after 3 weeks and around 15 Seller Support contacts the listing was corrected and is now OK. It was something Amazon had to do and no seller could fix. THIS IS HOW LONG IT TOOK AMAZON TO FIX ONE LISTING!
I explained to the supplier that this is the reason that I/all of their other customers are unable to sell a lot of their products on Amazon, and it is simply not worth the hassle and stress fighting with Amazon, getting robotic, non-sensical answers to questions to try (and usually fail) to get pictures/images/variations fixed.
I don’t think it will ever get fixed unless you give sellers the ability to show and edit their own pictures/descriptions.
Think about how eBay works. You effectively have thousands of sellers working hard to update/edit and monitor their listings and content to ensure it is accurate. There are thousands of sellers working for free to keep the information up to date. Their immediate reward is to see the changes instantly reflected in what the customer sees. On the very rare occasion we get something wrong it is corrected in less than a minute. No stress, no hassle, all buyers get the correct information. Good experience for all.
On Amazon, you either cannot edit information in the first place, or are told that you can, but you actually can’t, or are told to contact Seller Support to update listings which usually they cannot, or do not, or refuse to, don’t work in the right department or don’t even understand the issue to begin with.
A large number of sellers learn that information cannot be corrected and lose interest trying to update. They either live with the listing in the state that it’s in or move on to something else.
Of the three main platforms which we sell through 100% of our inventory is listed on eBay, 100% on our website and around 50-60% on Amazon. There are other factors, but a large percentage of that is products that we cannot list on Amazon because information in the database or listing is wrong.
Seller_oGFKRixtdkjxL
Pendings - why oh why to they allow pendings - bad for customer UX and bad for us - no one else sanctions stock be held hostage when payment cannot be validated and customers very often are unaware there’s a payment issue holding up their purchase.
Seller_DTufFoxJuMU0M
most of the problems on Amazon could be easily solved if they hired a few actual people with an IQ over 75.
all these “my brand name was changed” etc could easily be fixed by someone checking the listing history.
Wrong brand names, descriptions etc can easily be fixed with a photograph of the product or the manufacturers product page.
Descriptions/titles that are against policy should be obvious enough.
But Amazon don’t like hiring people, they’d rather have bots, I honestly have no idea why.
So many problems could be solved with minimal financial input, it would probably actually save them money in the long run from refunds/returns etc, for a customer centric company it baffles me why they’d rather confuse the customer, give them incorrect information and outright lie to them…
