Selling Lego on Amazon.com

[AWES1234]

2 minutes ago, pharmjod said:

That's all well and good unless your inventory is stranded at FBA.

Exactly,  so a few of you have been experiencing this issue not just me

[Sauromosis]

Occasionally I'll have an FBA item completely stuck on inactive because of pricing issues and no matter what I do (even using the Manage Pricing page), it won't go to "Active." Sometimes, I'll make a support case and the agent will say, "Ok now it's active sir, thanks" and it never shows up active, basically forcing me to recall it and then it gets to my house completely destroyed.

As my dad would say, "That's the price of playing poker."

Edited June 25, 2020 by sauromosis

[cobrakai]

3 minutes ago, pharmjod said:

That's all well and good unless your inventory is stranded at FBA.

Delete the listing, wait 24 hours, relist it as merchant fulfilled matching low price, then convert to FBA after a few hours.  Works sometimes, but usually you are screwed if it uses the same SKU.  Their algorithm must factor in price increase % from what you've sold it for before as some sort of anti-price gouging system.

[camaroz150]

I have had the pricing error issue.  What it ended up being was the listing had a minimum and maximum price set.  I don't recall ever inputting those amounts, but when I went to edit the listing it was there.  Increase the maximum amount to within your desired range and then it will work again.

[AWES1234]

6 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

Delete the listing, wait 24 hours, relist it as merchant fulfilled matching low price, then convert to FBA after a few hours.  Works sometimes, but usually you are screwed if it uses the same SKU.  Their algorithm must factor in price increase % from what you've sold it for before as some sort of anti-price gouging system.

Can i still delete the listing if my inventory is at FBA

[pharmjod]

5 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

Delete the listing, wait 24 hours, relist it as merchant fulfilled matching low price, then convert to FBA after a few hours.  Works sometimes, but usually you are screwed if it uses the same SKU.  Their algorithm must factor in price increase % from what you've sold it for before as some sort of anti-price gouging system.

I've never actually sold this particular item FBA or FBM. It's a new one for me. And screwed how? Would I lose my inventory if I did that?

[smittypop2]

6 minutes ago, camaroz150 said:

I have had the pricing error issue.  What it ended up being was the listing had a minimum and maximum price set.  I don't recall ever inputting those amounts, but when I went to edit the listing it was there.  Increase the maximum amount to within your desired range and then it will work again.

That literally never works. I have been having these problems for months and months and it has really intensified in the past month. I have opened cases, tried to get help, etc. Nothing will fix it at this time. I have many listings where I would be the only seller, but HIGH PRICE ERROR. The idiot bots scrape prices from 9 year old walmart listings and things like that and then you are screwed. It is really getting bad and no one seems to care enough to address it. I don't know what Amazon is going to do about it or if they even care, but it is getting increasingly harder to do business on the venue. 

[Sauromosis]

10 minutes ago, camaroz150 said:

I have had the pricing error issue.  What it ended up being was the listing had a minimum and maximum price set.  I don't recall ever inputting those amounts, but when I went to edit the listing it was there.  Increase the maximum amount to within your desired range and then it will work again.

I've tried every single possible combination of pricing limits and pages and had things still be stuck.

[camaroz150]

Just worked for me last week.  Go to Manage Inventory page, on the upper right hand side click on "Preferences"  Click show "Your Minimum Price" and "Your Maximum Price".  Update your maximum price even if it is blank to a higher amount.  Wait the 15 minutes to take effect then go to the Fix Stranded Page and it will work.  At least for me it did...

[brickology101]

Guys, I am really suffering with Amazon right now. Never in my 5 years selling with them have I been in that much predicament. What a mess. In early June my seller account was deactivated out of nowhere from a related account issue. Seems to be a mistake from their end but I am still in the appeal process waiting to be reinstated, 3 weeks onward now. They hold all my payments and 50+ sets are in stranded inventory due to irregular account status. I have a perfect performance matrix and 100% feedback by the way. Then, 2 boxes out of 3 from my last FBA shipment are unaccounted for. Of course, they just closed the shipment claiming that all is counted and no way to reconcile. Oh, and while I am deactivated I cannot file any claim other than those related to my account suspension. Now, I read that more pain maybe coming one I get reinstated. One battle at the time.

[cobrakai]

18 minutes ago, pharmjod said:

I've never actually sold this particular item FBA or FBM. It's a new one for me. And screwed how? Would I lose my inventory if I did that?

If you are are matching the lowest price and you've never sold it before, then you'll just have to keep lowering it by $1 until it sticks and falls into their accepted price range.  No danger of losing your inventory, but just screwed because you might have to drop the price in order to reactivate it.

22 minutes ago, AWES1234 said:

Can i still delete the listing if my inventory is at FBA

Yes.  After you delete it, it will show up as stranded and you just click "relist" and it will automatically fill in the old SKU.  I would wait at least a few hours before trying to relist and make sure you are matching the low price when you relist it.

[skinsfan0521]

I've been running into the High Price Error a few times recently too. I've put in cases and sometimes they just respond with the canned response about that it's significantly higher than competing websites, but others they do actually send it to some other dept and then get back to me. Usually, that doesn't fix it still, but sometimes it does. I've also found that I can be selling an item for say $14.95 and then want to lower it to $14.90 to match buy box or something and then it will get flagged. Even though it was perfectly acceptable and active at the higher price and I'm actually trying to LOWER my price, it will still get deactivated.

[Miami Bomb Squad]

Start Shipping FBM, at lease you will have all your inventory no matter what arises.  

[cobrakai]

2 minutes ago, skinsfan0521 said:

I've been running into the High Price Error a few times recently too. I've put in cases and sometimes they just respond with the canned response about that it's significantly higher than competing websites, but others they do actually send it to some other dept and then get back to me. Usually, that doesn't fix it still, but sometimes it does. I've also found that I can be selling an item for say $14.95 and then want to lower it to $14.90 to match buy box or something and then it will get flagged. Even though it was perfectly acceptable and active at the higher price and I'm actually trying to LOWER my price, it will still get deactivated.

Yes, i've had that happen a few times when lowering the price also.  I turn off my repricer on those items, but it is annoying.  I have a good item that i've had pricing issues with before and I really want to drop the price a little to sell them. I'm scared it will get flagged again.

3 minutes ago, Miami Bomb Squad said:

Start Shipping FBM, at lease you will have all your inventory no matter what arises.  

And sometimes you can have an item $14.99 plus $15 shipping, but it will flag it if you price it at $29.99 free shipping.

[pharmjod]

42 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

If you are are matching the lowest price and you've never sold it before, then you'll just have to keep lowering it by $1 until it sticks and falls into their accepted price range.  No danger of losing your inventory, but just screwed because you might have to drop the price in order to reactivate it.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Fortunately I only sent 16 units of this item in and it's not a particularly expensive one, but it is still frustrating. I guess I can always recall it and just wait until later this year to try again. I've also got inventory sitting in the IND9 warehouse for 3 weeks now that hasn't been checked in. Thanks for the feedback. 

[smittypop2]

2 minutes ago, camaroz150 said:

Just worked for me last week.  Go to Manage Inventory page, on the upper right hand side click on "Preferences"  Click show "Your Minimum Price" and "Your Maximum Price".  Update your maximum price even if it is blank to a higher amount.  Wait the 15 minutes to take effect then go to the Fix Stranded Page and it will work.  At least for me it did...

I'm aware of how it is supposed to work or did work at one point in time, but it does not work. You can put in whatever prices mini or max prices and it still flags it. It might reset it for a few minutes and then will kick it out again later on. The system is 100% broken right now.

[Darth_Raichu]

48 minutes ago, smittypop2 said:

I'm aware of how it is supposed to work or did work at one point in time, but it does not work. You can put in whatever prices mini or max prices and it still flags it. It might reset it for a few minutes and then will kick it out again later on. The system is 100% broken right now.

Is the ASIN for your item under the building blocks category or is it one of the duplicates under household items?  It is possible Amzn is making the prices more restricting for household items

[smittypop2]

44 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

Is the ASIN for your item under the building blocks category or is it one of the duplicates under household items?  It is possible Amzn is making the prices more restricting for household items

It is currently active for 41 items out of the 3000ish I have active and about 50-80 that I closed a few months ago in hopes of trying to relist them at some point and seeing if that worked, but it didn't. 

[joch29]

current response from amazon is sooo slow compared to pre-covid.  I hope they can figure stuff out.I've been responding to their survey questions regarding service.

I currently have a lego stranded because it's flagged as a pesticide device.🤨

[$20 on joe vs dan]

Why is searching for a specific LEGO set so damn hard on Amazon sometimes?

for example: last night I saw Minecraft Endbattle 21151 on Brickset sales link to Amazon for about 15% off RRP...I thought about it and decided to get some.

So I searched "LEGO Minecraft 21151" today and only to be 3 pages in w/ no hits.  So I go back to the Brisckset page and follow that link to the original deal. (In for 5, the prior version blew up).

ANYWAY...on ebay I search LEGO and the set# it's instant.  It never occurred to me (naive, I know) that Amazon was so manipulative in its searches.

 

[SpaceFan9]

21151 shows up high on a search for the Ender Dragon.  So, not truly suppressed, but it is odd that it doesn't shows up at all for the set number specifically.   I think Amazon's algorithms tune themselves based on which search terms result in a sale.  This sample tells me that successful sales tend to come from people searching for "Ender Dragon" rather than "21151".  Just a hunch, though.

[$20 on joe vs dan]

1 hour ago, SpaceFan9 said:

21151 shows up high on a search for the Ender Dragon.  So, not truly suppressed, but it is odd that it doesn't shows up at all for the set number specifically.   I think Amazon's algorithms tune themselves based on which search terms result in a sale.  This sample tells me that successful sales tend to come from people searching for "Ender Dragon" rather than "21151".  Just a hunch, though.

SO you're saying don't think like an AFoL but a soccer mom?

If AI takes over the world (if it hasn't already)...logical minded folks are screwed

[Darth_Raichu]

15 minutes ago, $20 on joe vs dan said:

SO you're saying don't think like an AFoL but a soccer mom?

If AI takes over the world (if it hasn't already)...logical minded folks are screwed

Amzn search seems to match the original catalog entry for each product.  So, if the person created the listing first time entered wrong information, it will stick forever even though the catalog is updated later.

[Achilles]

6 hours ago, Darth_Raichu said:

Amzn search seems to match the original catalog entry for each product.  So, if the person created the listing first time entered wrong information, it will stick forever even though the catalog is updated later.

Double entries have always been annoying, but it's a problem I feel has gotten worse in the last year or two. Every damn set has two entries with an equal amount of reviews. It's a PITA.

[Phil B]

41 minutes ago, Achilles said:

Double entries have always been annoying, but it's a problem I feel has gotten worse in the last year or two. Every damn set has two entries with an equal amount of reviews. It's a PITA.

I was working on a large FBA shipment last weekend and all the "(renewed)" listings were a PITA. They pop up in seller central instead of the real listing that has the right ranking and typically have no sellers even listing on them.