Hello,

I really need your urgent help/advice guys.

First of all, I'm not a new seller. I've been selling since September last year, I've achieved month on month steady growth on the UK marketplace. I currently have over 700+ active SKUs.

However, overnight, without any warning or notification, since 16 June, I have had a significant issue with my Amazon account: I have lost the BuyBox/Featured Offer for ALL of my listings.

As a result, in the last few days my daily sales have dropped from around £1000 to almost zero. In addition, my "Featured Offer %" has dropped to 0%. Btw, my account health is currently 248.

I opened several tickets without success, but chatted with Amazon Support who confirmed: "As of the moment your ACCOUNT is not eligible for BuyBox".

However, as to the reason why this happened and what I needed to do to get it resolved, I was told nothing but to wait. The problem is that I am losing money every day by not being able to sell anything, but I have to cover the costs of my business and order new products.

I cannot name here a specific ASIN, because this issue affects ALL of my SKUs (700+ listings), and given that it appears to be an Amazon-side problem. Therefore I am requesting your urgent assistance.

I have already emailed the Managing Director about this, but have not yet received a reply.

Can I somehow reach the team responsible to check my account and restore the Featured Offers in my account as soon as possible?

Thank you for your prompt attention to this urgent matter.

Thank you!

Regards

Also just be wary that any large refund may put you over the threshold where you should have become VAT registered.

So for example you were doing a 12 month turnover of £80k and got a VAT refund back of £15k then HMRC calculate your turnover to be £95k and you would need to become VAT registered (based on current threshold of £90k)

Thankyou, yes I did and I attached copies of about 10 post labels that they said had invalid tracking and copied the FAQ into the reply, so to say the least I was a bit surprised

I'm getting nowhere with Seller Support (Live Chat & Phone), made a ticket asking for escalation, E-Mailed CEO's office and got a pretty rude reply, I'm at a total loss as to what to do. I have lost the buy box for ALL of my key products and best sellers, I am the brand owner, I am the only offer.

I am stunned at how little support there is from Amazon, I knew it was bad but I had no idea it was THIS BAD. Absolutely no transparency what-so-ever, nothing on performance notifications, account health is perfect, no violations, I am enrolled on the new Account Health Assurance scheme (which gave me peace of mind for all of 3 days).

With the CEO's office giving me the cold shoulder, seller support sending me links to 'Seller University', spending in excess of 10 hours trying almost everything on my account blindly, I'm at a complete loss sitting here with next to no sales. So my last resort is this... a mega thread... I'm hoping with enough people complaining about the issue, Amazon MAY acknowledge this problem as a bug/glitch before I have to file for bankruptcy (no exaggeration) and when they do, I also expect no apology or compensation.

I think we have to face different issues; one is the bots that change category, and then you have a set of candles under sports - golf etc. The other issues is sellers who create listings without thinking. My favourite has to be those that copy the text of the wholesaler's product page including things like:

"this wholesale product comes in a cartoon of 24 units",

"check our website for other similar products that your customers will love"

"EAN 52098900938942"

"Thinking of visiting our showroom? Drop us a line and you will get a 10% discount"

"assorted colours and sizes in each cartoon"

"This Purchase is 24 Units "

"RRP £24.99"

We always have to be careful where we list our offers as the risk of having returns is very high if there is misleading information, some customers also try it on at the first occasion. I am expecting a A-Z any minute now as a customer complained that she got only one pack when in the listing there is a photo with three packs. The title and description are ok this time, they clearly state it's ONE pack but still.. I told her to return it if not happy but she wanted a refund and keep the item

Thank you Stillhere. I have opened 12 cases with the Help people trying to find out what I am doing wrong. That has not been mentioned once. Millions of people self-publish books. Most sell very few copies. Nor will mine.... so it would be ridiculous to register as a business with its monthly payments when I will probably sell, at most, 10 or 20 copies of my book. What do other people do?

Quote: "I have opened 12 cases with the Help people trying to find out what I am doing wrong. That has not been mentioned once."

Probably because they have not properly read your question, and they would not know what you were trying to list. Sadly Seller Support (SS) are not as knowledgeable as other sellers, and mostly read from scripted replies, AND have been known to give out totally wrong advice.

Before you go any further you need to register with HMRC and wait for your UTR to come in the post,

I am new to Seller and opened an Individual account. I want to sell one single item, my self-published book. I Add Product, put the book’s ISBN in the Category and fill in everything else required. It appears in My Inventory and I get an email saying it will be available for purchase in 15 minutes. But it never does. Seller helpdesk tells me my listing ’is not currently assigned to a product category, therefore is not searchable’. It tells me to complete the following steps. First go to Edit and select Product Identity and then fill in ‘Recommended Browse Nodes/Item Type Keyword’ BUT THERE IS NO PRODUCT ID to be found. Heldesk told me it is under Product Description… but when I click on that I get a message saying ‘Restricted Edit Permissions. As you are not the brand owner for this product…’ etc. It stops me filling out anything under Brand Description’, (It is my own self-published book but, when registered, Nielsen book registry automatically lists all books on Amazon.) Helpdesk then tell me, as an alternative, to ‘Toggle Advanced View’ BUT THERE IS NO ‘ADVANCED VIEW option to toggle. I am now on my 10th case with Help about this over two weeks and can’t get them to understand that it is not possible to carry out their instructions, despite sending screenshots to show I can’t fill out Product Details and there is no ‘Advanced View option. Please, please… can anyone else suggest anything and put me out of my misery?

Its been pulled from several sources and outside links are banned on Amazon anyway.

My advice is to ask your accountant to check.

But - VAT is not applicable to goods exported and Amazon are the deemed supplier for VAT purposes only. So anyone (who is not UK established) selling something at £12 on UK site, then Amazon is the deemed supplier. You actually sell to Amazon at £10 and Amazon sells to customer at £12 and sends £2 to HMRC.

Your sale is £10 (VAT not applicable as an export) for accounting purposes.

The fees on invoice is my understanding of the recent changes Amazon are making on 1st August here you will be invoiced from an office in same country where you are established. And just like any invoice for goods/services Amazon will be adding VAT at the rate your country specifies.

This is certainly the way eBay are doing it and have been doing it for several years. But this is Amazon so they may do it differently but it is my understanding.

I am posting this more to vent than anything.

I must say that I rarely get any A-Z claims so consider myself fortunate in that regard, however, I’ve had two A-Z claims in the past week and on both occasions, the Royal Mail tracking has shown that the orders have been DELIVERED.

Normally when we are unfortunate enough to have an item not arrive, the customer will request a replacement rather than immediately request a refund so it always peeks my suspicion when a customer immediately asks for a refund instead.

The first order even has a photo showing the delivery, together with the GPS map, yet Amazon have refunded the customer out of our funds anyway.

The second order just has the GPS map but still shows as delivered.

Both A-Z claims have been granted and the appeals rejected with the usual ‘we stand by our decision’.

It is wholly unacceptable where there is evidence of delivery that Amazon employees completely ignore the ‘evidence’ and refund the customer anyway, which leaves me wondering, at what point does this become Amazon being complicit in fraud against sellers?

Ok, these orders are relatively low value (one at £11 and one at £23), but when Amazon are constantly screwing sellers over and don’t give a rats backside about their sellers, this is just another nail in the coffin.

Absolutely sick of Amazon treating its sellers like scum.

I have already tried reaching out to the managing director email about these two claims but not holding out any help whatsoever.