Amazon Print Assist Problem

The Problem: Amazon refuses to support 3% of its business sellers in the UK with ZPL format labels, which Amazon themselves require sellers to produce. 3% sounds small, but that’s still thousands of customers who are being told to buy PCs (If anyone from Apple reads this, come on, start swinging your big company balls around and sort Amazon out).

ZPL labels can NOT be printed on MacOS from Amazon Buy Shipping because they do not support MacOS (Print assist is not available for MacOS). I have asked why they are not supporting MacOS with a VITAL feature, and the responses have been “Computer Says No”

Unfortunately, although appreciated, most of the above replies seem to miss the point. We have seller fulfilled prime with DPD which means we have to abide by quality criteria, amongst others not relevant to this issue.

Amazon, despite being on the largest companies in the world, refuses to support an estimated 3% of its sellers using macOS.
Currently, Amazon’s Print Connect program only supports Windows, and there appears to be no effort to support macOS X. Compounding this issue, is the requirement of Amazon Seller-Fulfilled Prime sellers, to use the ZPL format that Amazon Print Connect produces. Amazon has introduced a policy of checking the quality of thermal delivery labels produced, and is rejecting all those that are not printed in the ZPL format, effectively, rejecting labels produced by MacOS sellers. This has to change, but the story doesn’t end there, as we gave in, and bought a Windows PC, but thing’s didn’t go as we expected.

ZPL labels can NOT be printed on MacOS from Amazon Buy Shipping because they do not support MacOS (Print connect is not available for MacOS).

I have asked why they are not supporting MacOS with a VITAL feature, and the responses have been “Computer Says No”.

At F-JAS, we have seller fulfilled prime on our Amazon account with DPD and Royal Mail which means we have to abide by the following criteria, amongst others not relevant to this issue:

DPD REQUIRE ZPL format labels. Printing PDF or PNG labels to a thermal printer is not allowed and our label test attempts have been rejected on these grounds. Printing on normal paper or vinyl is not allowed. Only THERMAL labels that conform to then DPD measurements (to within 1mm tolerance) are allowed

Postage MUST be purchased through Amazon Buy Shipping, which does not support ZPL thermal printing on MacOS, despite;
a). Amazon being one of the largest companies in the world
b). MacOS market share estimated at 10% of all computers worldwide

c). It is estimated that Amazon UK has 90,000* business sellers in the UK. We have to assume that a good number of these will also be Seller-Fullfilled Prime enabled. According to idata.com there are 2,469* UK companies known to be using MacOS as their primary platform. So an estimated 3% of sellers will suffer this issue.

3% sounds like its not worth bothering with, but that’s still thousands of customers who are being told to buy PCs so If anyone from Apple reads this, come on, start swinging your big company balls around and sort Amazon out.

So - we gave in and got a windows 7 pc. Last thing we were expecting after all this faffing, is that it doesn’t work for some reason, and all we are hearing is:

“WELL IT SHOULD WORK!”

Regarding ZPL printing on MacOS, Amazon pointed us to the forums to find we should do the following for EVERY label if we use MacOS.
Obviously, this is BIG BUSINESS gone crazy and not understanding in the slightest how a small business needs to operate, i.e. efficiently.

Blockquote

Buy your shipping through amazon
On the Page :Buy Shipping" 3rd Column At Very last look for “Label print orientation”–>Default(ZPL)
Next Page it won’t appear a preview image. Just an orange download link. Just click on it
iMac will ask to look for software for a zpl file ignore it
It already downloaded a file called " shipping-label.zpl"
Yes you can not print it using right click Print …dont panic
Open your “Terminal” Software, or go to–> Launch–> Terminal
Once Terminal opened you are at the command line like
Robert-iMac:~RobertDoe$>_
We need to know exactly the name of your Zebra printer as it tis on your iMac, not a dash nor a number different
for that you will type at the command
Robert-iMac:~RobertDoe$> $ lpstat -p -d
It will return something like:
printer Brother_HL_2280DW is idle. enabled since Sat Jun 2 09:19:30 2018
printer Zebra_Technologies_ZTC_ZP_450-200dpi is idle. enabled since Fri Jun 1 22:23:40 2018
system default destination: Brother_HL_2280DW

As you see I have two printers. Laser Brother is my default

So We are goint to use (example above) only this portion

Zebra_Technologies_ZTC_ZP_450-200dpi
Now I suppose we use the Folder Downloads for downloaded files. So we look for the file mention above" shipping-label.zpl

If you use another folder just change the name, if you don’t find the file do a simple search at top corner of the “finder” page

We go back to command prompt at Terminal and type

Robert-iMac:~RobertDoe$> lpr -P Zebra_Technologies_ZTC_ZP_450-200dpi -o raw Downloads/shipping-label.zpl

Blockquote

Thanks to the original author of that method, I’ve need to use it to illustrate my point.

So, to summarise;

How it should work.

Buy Shipping Label
It prints.
Job Done.
Repeat 10 times or more.

What Amazon thinks mac users should do:

Do that above.
But the process is a saddening bore,
For it needs to be done ten times or more

*Source: http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazon-business-uk-…
** Source: https://idatalabs.com/tech/products/mac-os