Hi everyone.
I'm a small academic book seller, and it's shortly the start of Semester A for all undergraduates and this is my main selling period in the year. I've spent a lot of money to buy stock.
I knew the Account Level Reserve was coming, but did not apply to postpone it as I thought I'd just bite the bullet and get it over with.
Amazon decided to apply the ALR to my account from mid-August, my last pay day was 11th August, but how they are calculating this, I have no idea. I send books via 'Buy Shipping' from Amazon via Royal Mail. Each parcel, while not strictly tracked, shows delivery date and proof of delivery when you enter the tracking code in Royal Mail Track and Trace. I haven't gone through all my sales, but two books, sent on 18th and 19th August were delivered, with proof, on the 22nd August. Surely DD+ 7 would mean the funds would be disbursed after 29th August.
It's really an awkward situation as I've borrowed money to buy stock, as I do every year, and what is being withheld would pay down a lot of my loan and cut the amount of interest I'm paying.
My account is Healthy. I had one awkward situation, where Royal Mail ripped a customer's parcel with an expensive book and left it outside his door in the rain. I settled that with the customer and gave a full refund. I currently have two pending refunds for 'Accidental Orders', both approved for return, but the customers haven't yet sent the books back. One of those orders was recent, so I'm not so worried about that, but the other customer has not sent back the book for over three months, despite a few reminders. Would those 'Accidental Orders' affect my ALR?
Has anyone gotten successfully through this initial stage and started getting their payments again?
Actually, I looked again at my payments page. It's even more confusing. My normal disbursement day would have been today and I had zero payment, but I did sell one book since the scheduled payment time and it's scheduled for payment on 15th Sept. Does Amazon intend to keep all the money I made since 11th August? I thought it would be a rolling system whereby we would be paid for our sales when the risk of the orders being refunded was over.
Any insights much appreciated.
Thanks
Alan