FBM Offer has Buy Box instead of FBA
Hi All,
I seem to have a strange issue with some of my listings whereby our FBM offer has the ‘Buy’ box instead of the Prime offer.
Like most sellers, we have an FBM option on our listings just in case the FBA stock runs out, in which case the FBM offer kicks in. An Amazon Customer Services rep. suggested we do this years ago.
Until recently this worked fine but then, suddenly, our FBM offers started taking over on several listings, despite the fact they are no cheaper than the FBA offer.
Has anyone encountered this, does anyone know why it happens, and what is the fix?
For the time being I’ve done the obvious thing and made the stock on our FBM offers zero but that isn’t ideal as I will now have to spend inordinate amounts of time checking FBA stock levels in case we run out of something.
Thanks for your help.
Seller_PY6qN1rPPfY0J
Provided your FBM offer isn’t cheaper, in theory at least the FBA offer will always have the buy box and I would say around 95% plus of customers choose that option. We get the odd customer who chooses FBM - goodness knows why!
As a mechanism to make sure your product remains on sale if your FBA stock runs out, it is invaluable.
Fortunately it looks like there isn’t a problem with our listings, it was as several of you pointed out just a case of what you see depending on whether you are a). logged in as a registered Business customer, b). logged in as a regular Prime customer or c). not logged in at all. This has a profound effect on the way search listings are presented.
Thanks again, we can close this now!
31 replies
Seller_rGtEcZnu0JTRD
Are you logged in as a prime member, I believe that non-prime members have to spend 20.00 to get free shipping, so to a non-prime member the FBM product would be cheaper than the FBA one as the item is less than the cost for free shipping.
Seller_PY6qN1rPPfY0J
Okay, I think this all makes sense now.
When I’m not logged in and I view the results, most of our products do not show the Prime delivery option because they are priced at less than the £25.00 threshold for free delivery, mentioned by someone above (thanks for that). The ones that do are of course, priced in excess of £25.00.
When I log in, most of our products show Prime delivery and those that don’t will be because, ex. VAT, they are technically cheaper for business customers.
I tested this by hiking up the price of the item I used as an example, i.e. the Medium Corrector overglasses and hey presto, suddenly the Prime offer was the leader.
My assumption is that, when non-business customers log in and search our products (or use search keywords that result in our products showing), they will see the Prime offer first because they have to pay the VAT and that switches the Buy Box round. I will test this by asking my colleague to log in using her private buyer’s account but that must be the case because the vast majority of our Amazon sales are still Prime. If non-business customers weren’t seeing the Prime offer first we’d be getting loads of FBM orders and that does not happen.
Thanks again to all for helping me to get this straight!
Seller_bhSWqoVh7Pn98
On a Business Amazon Account:
For the FBA price it shows:
VAT exclusive price not available
£14.99 incl. VAT
For the direct one it shows:
£13.32 + VAT (15.99 incl. VAT)
Therefore, it assumes no VAT on FBA, therefore, the one you are sending is cheaper at 13.32 ex VAT.
If a consumer, then the FBA one is showing
Therefore, you need to alter the VAT information
Seller_tRuvBEHDedp4q
Is this a case of Amazon trying to force people into using its VCS?
For FBA items it seems to show VAT ex price only if seller is using VCS
For FBM items it seems to show ex VAT price if seller and buyer are both registered as a business.
Ideally - it should show ex VAT price all the time (as long as both seller and buyer are using a business account) regardless if the seller is signed up for VCS or not
Seller_sw9b06u9YxArX
For me (non prime buyer account) I see FBM in the Buy box at 14.99 with free shipping.The FBA offer is coming up underneath as ‘other sellers’ also 14.99
Seller_oGFKRixtdkjxL
I’m not actually sure that this isn’t actually a policy violation, as you have more than one listing of the same ASIN in the same condition available on the same catalogue page.
I don’t do FBA so I’m not certain & I’ll be corrected if this is incorrect - but just a heads-up.
Seller_tc3VxVXAlHXbN
It’s your vat settings.
Looks like you are viewing it on an Amazon Business Account on a computer or web browsers.
As it’s on the business account hence showing ex vat price your FBM is about 10-15% cheaper than the FBA
