ER 016: Amazon Tricked, New Performance Reporting, Vine and Video, Product Reviews

ER 016: Amazon Tricked, New Performance Reporting, Vine and Video, Product Reviews

Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings: http://azmarketers.com/listing 

Mentioned Links

Fake law firm tricks Amazon and seller gets banned

New inventory performance dashboard

Show Notes

This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 16, today is September 15, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week –

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1. Amazon tricked by a fake law firm and removed a listing
2. New inventory performance reporting
3. Video and Vine for FBA sellers
4. A quick talk about product reviews
5. Wall Street Segment

Amazon was tricked by a fake law firm and removed a listing

This is a very disturbing story I just saw this week.

An Amazon merchant said his hottest product was kicked off Amazon because of a complaint made by a fake law firm.

The merchant owns a store called Brushes4Less, and he was suspended for his best selling product, a toothbrush head replacement, because of an intellectual property violation. In order to resolve the matter and get the product reinstated, the owner would have to contact the law firm that filed the complaint.

But the law firm didn’t exist. And this was right before Prime Day this summer. The seller said that the matter was resolved in 2 months but that he also lost at least $200,000 in sales.

This is incredibly disconcerting for all sellers. Everyone needs to face it, there are bad actors out there and you might be a victim even if you’re following all the rules. Then if this happens to you, what are you going to do?

Amazon really doesn’t have a good way to address this right now, and with Amazon, you are guilty until proven innocent. So, I’d recommend being aware that you might get a competitor coming after you and filing a false claim that takes your business down. And if that happens, get a lawyer. I’m including a link in the show notes to this article, and in it you’ll find 2 people who help sellers resolve these issues. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/07/amazon-was-tricked-by-fake-law-firm-into-removing-toothbrush-head.html

I hope Amazon will clean this up for its sellers very quickly. Until then, keep your guard up and follow Terms of Service. Also always reply to messages from Seller Performance and other issues you have with Seller Support. You want your account to be clean and annotated that you are a seller in good standing.

New inventory performance dashboard just added

In Amazon’s own words – “The Inventory Performance dashboard is the hub for optimizing your FBA business. From this page you can identify opportunities to grow your sales, reduce costs, track your KPIs, and compare your performance to other sellers.”

Amazon uses the Inventory Performance Index to gage your seller performance, and they refer to it as your IPI score.

Currently you’re judged on three metrics – In stock rate, Excess inventory, and stranded inventory. Amazon has a little bar to also tell you how to stack up in comparison to other sellers.

I’m including a link in the show notes for you to review what this is, and it’s worth the five minute read – https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/202174810

If you don’t have this yet in your account, you probably will soon.

Video and Vine are coming to Seller Central

This is great that Amazon is giving Vendor t