Four months to return products? Will Prime Day 2020 ever happen? $100,000 in bribes? If you’re not keeping up with Amazon news, this episode is your one-stop-shop for everything e-commerce. Stay tuned to stay informed.
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Extended Holiday Returns
While the Holiday Season always means longer return windows, we’ve never seen anything quite like this. According to a recent article, Amazon is giving customers until January 31st to return products purchased from October 1st through December 31st. As sellers, there’s nothing we can do about this policy change. Just make sure to prepare for more returns and set up a process for quickly inspecting and resending returned products.
Prime Day
Amazon hasn’t confirmed 2020’s Prime Day but the latest rumors say mid-October. Because Amazon is unlikely to cancel altogether, make sure you’ve got your warehouse or prep center stocked and are constantly streaming products into Amazon. You can also list products as both FBA and FBM, so when you run out of products in FBA, FBM will kick in. Todd recommends keeping between 90 and 180 days of product stocked at all times. After all, the last thing you want is to run out of product during the biggest sales season of the year.
Fraud Fiasco
A recent article reveals six people were indicted in an Amazon bribery scheme. Amazon sellers allegedly paid $100,000 to Amazon employees to, among other things, reinstate accounts and suspend those of competitors. While some will use this as an excuse to avoid Amazon altogether, remember there will always be problems in businesses generating the big sales that Amazon is. You may get bit by a problem but the trick is working your way around it.
Package Takeover
Finally, Amazon is apparently delivering nearly two-thirds of its own packages. This news comes as no surprise given the rise in e-commerce sales throughout the pandemic. As Amazon continues moving in that direction, expect Amazon to be shipping 80-90% of their packages within the next few years.
Overall
Staying successful on Amazon means staying up-to-date on everything e-commerce. Hopefully this helped bring you up to speed! As always, leave a review where you’re listening. Also email Todd letting him know your thoughts on this episode.
Happy selling everybody.
Resources From This Episode
- 2020 Extended Holiday Returns Policy
- Amazon won’t confirm latest rumors of mid-October Prime Day
- $100,000 in bribes helped fraudulent Amazon sellers earn $100 million, DOJ says
- Amazon is delivering nearly two-thirds of its own packages as e-commerce continues pandemic boom
- Sign-up for a one-on-one coaching call with Todd
- Contact Todd!
Outline of This Episode
[00:33] Todd’s introduction to this episode
[01:37] The extended return policy
[04:00] Prime Day Rumors
[07:53] Fraud scandal
[11:35] Amazon delivering Amazon
[13:30] Todd’s closing thoughts on this episode
Transcript
todd (00:00):
Amazon’s crazy. Extended returns window, 100 million made from bribes prime days all over the place. And Amazon is delivering more packages than ups, FedEx and ups. PS stay tuned for Amazon news.
Announcer (00:16):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Seller School podcast, where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an eCommerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host Todd Welch.
todd (00:33):
whats going on everybody. Todd weld here for Amazon Seller School and welcome to episode 43 of the Amazon Seller School podcast. And this week we have some big Amazon news, the really interesting stuff they’re definitely going to want to stay tuned for this. Check out the show notes and entrepreneur venture.com 43 for all the links that we talk about here. And before we get started, I wanted to let you know, if you are trying to get started selling on Amazon, or maybe you’ve been selling on Amazon for awhile, you’re stuck on something. You have some question that you want to get answered. You can set up a coaching call one on one coaching call with myself, just simply head on over to Amazon Seller School.com forward slash coach. And we can jump on a zoom call and talk for an hour, a couple hours if you want to. And we can dive into whatever issues that you have.
todd (01:28):
So definitely if you’re stuck at all entrepreneurventure.com/coach, and without further ado, let’s go ahead and dive into the new. Alright, so the first news here comes from Amazon themselves and the headline reads 2020 extended holiday returns policy. Now it’s normal that Amazon extends its return policy in the holidays. So usually if you buy products throughout December, you have till the end of January to return those products. Well, this year they’ve gone crazy and it actually says that they are going to allow returns through January 31st. If you purchase between October 1st to December 31st. So this is really huge window and a pretty big deal because it means coming up here shortly, starting in October, any purchases that people make from you, they can return all the way up through January 31st. So it’s going to be interesting to see how high of a spike in returns we’re going to get because a lot of things can happen in what is that four months of having a product, a up to four months so crazy that Amazon is extending it out this long.
todd (02:51):
I really disagree with having this long of a return window. I understand having the longer return window for gifts and everything like that, that makes complete sense. But for months to be able to return a product is pretty crazy. So you’re definitely going to want to keep this in mind when you are selling products. There’s not anything really we can do about it. Just knowing, understand that you’re probably going to get more returns than normal, especially in January. So be prepared for that. You’re going to be getting a lot of products back. You’re going to want to have some kind of process set up where you going to expect those products. See if we can send them back in resell them maybe sell them used like new or something like that. So going to be interesting, I’m disappointed in Amazon for having a policy this long for returns.
todd (03:43):
It’s really crazy. The 30 days of course is normal. An extra 30 days during the holiday. Completely fine with that for returning gifts and things like that. But October 1st, all the way through third, January 31th, people are going to be all a return product. All right, next piece of news here from the verge.com Amazon won’t confirm latest rumors of mid-October prime day. And it just does Amazon postpones its annual prime day from July to a date to be determined, but new rumors with a hint of evidence suggesting that may be happening in mid-October. The latest rumor mill was set off after tech site T3 discovered a promotional poster from Bron titled brawn X prime day, which reads in mid-October. Brian will be taking part in Amazon prime day. The T3 post has since been removed. So still Amazon has not committed to a date on prime day.
todd (04:42):
We know that if it’s going to happen, it needs to happen in October. Anything later than that, doesn’t really make sense because then you’re running into the holiday shopping season. That’s going to be big anyways. So it doesn’t make sense. I could potentially see Amazon just calling off prime day because their facilities and stuff are overloaded. Even though I think that’s unlikely, I could see it happening if Amazon isn’t able to keep up with everything, but I think they do want to do prime day. Obviously the big sales event that Amazon has been doing every year. And the last thing they want to do is ruin that brand that they’ve built, right? That’s become a staple for Amazon shoppers prime day and getting really good deals and stuff like that. So I don’t think they’re going to cancel it. It’s going to happen some point in mid October, some point in October.
todd (05:40):
Now we’re looking at mid-October previously. I reported that it was thinking beginning of October, which for me, I think makes more sense, but we’re almost in October and we don’t really have a whole lot information. So yet to be determined when the heck prime day is going to happen, but regardless, make sure you’re stocking up with product. You need to have a lot of product stocked up. I would say at least 90 days, preferably maybe even up to 180 days, 120 days, something like that and stock in your warehouse or in your prep center that you can stream into Amazon or possibly even merchant fulfiled you can have more than one listing, right? So you can have the prime listing and you can also have an FBM listing that is not against policy to have both of those. So you could potentially have the FBA listing in there.
todd (06:38):
And then maybe at the same price, they’re a little bit higher price, the FBM listing. So if you run out of stock on the FBA, the FBM will kick in and you can keep getting sales because people are going to run out of sales or run out of stock here in fourth quarter. It’s just going to happen with the limits that Amazon is putting on how many units you can send in another product, the extended period, two, three, four weeks sometimes to get a product received in Amazon warehouses people. And everybody’s going to be running out of stock and you’re going to want to have some kind of backup either so that you can stream that product in all the time, be shipping in those units every single week. That’s what I’m doing with some of my bigger sellers already that have limits on them. I’ve got them sitting in the warehouse, every shipment I make into Amazon.
todd (07:30):
I’m checking if I can send more in, if I can, I send, you know, a handful and or 20 and or 50 and whatever the case may be just to constantly keep those streaming in, make sure that I’m not running out of stock. So you’re going to want to be making sure that you’re doing the same thing out there as well, to be prepared for the holiday season, which is rapidly approaching. Alright, this next article from ARS technica.com $100,000 in bribes help fraudulent Amazon sellers earn $100 million. Department of justice says, so the first paragraph reads six peopStle were indicted on allegations of paying over $100,000 in bribes to Amazon employees and contractors as part of a scheme to give third party sellers unfair advantages on Amazon marketplace. Among other things they diamond says that Amazon workers who accepted bribes, reinstated sellers, whose accounts had been suspended for offering dangerous products.
todd (08:37):
And these workers suspended the sellers accounts of fraudulent sellers competitor. The us department of justice today announced the indictment handed down by grand jury in the Western district of Washington. The defendants paid bribes to at least 10 different Amazon employees and contractors, the department of justice. In one case a 31 year old defendant named Nishad Koons you accepted bribes as a seller support associate in Hyderabad India before becoming an outside consultant who recruited and paid bribes to his former colleagues, the department of justice said. So really interesting and big news. I think we all knew this was going on. We did a no there’s been articles on this in the past of people bribing Amazon employees. And this just proves that now a hundred thousand dollars was used in bribes to make at least a hundred million dollars. So big money here. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
todd (09:39):
There’s so many people that are doing this that have not gotten caught. It’s good that this is getting looked into. It’s going to bring attention to it. Hopefully make it harder for people to do this kind of stuff. In the beginning, Amazon is selling hundreds of them, billions of dollars of product, of course, of this kind of stuff is going to happen. Whenever you’re talking about that big amount of a pie, that big amount of money there’s going to be fraud. There’s going to be criminals. There’s going to be bribes. All of this is going to happen. We’re going to have to keep looking into this and trying to stop it as much as possible, but it’s just going to be a part of the game, right? A lot of people are going to look at this and be like, see, I told you, Amazon’s not fair.
todd (10:23):
You shouldn’t sell on Amazon. And those people just probably got burned at something in the past, or they’re just constant naysayers. Something like that. Amazon is the behemoth. There’s grime, there’s bribes in everything. It’s not just Amazon. Amazon is just the gorilla the room. So don’t use this as a reason, not to sell on Amazon or to grow your business on Amazon, just know and understand this stuff goes on and you may have to deal with at some point, hopefully you don’t get bit by it, but you may. And you’re going to have to figure out a way around that there’s problems in business, any kind of business that you have to figure out. And this is just something that’s a part of selling on Amazon. Awesome that they bust these people. But I guarantee you, these six people went down and 100 people took their place.
todd (11:14):
So it’s not going away, especially with the amount of money that is moving around on Amazon. So big news though, brings this to the light and kind of proves that it’s been happening even though we already did know that it’s been happening and is gonna continue happening, unfortunately. All right. And last but not least, this is a little bit older news, but it’s really big news, Amazon. And this is coming from cnbc.com. Amazon is delivering nearly two thirds of its own packages as e-commerce continues, pandemic boom. So the pandemic field e-commerce boom doesn’t appear to be slowing down in the second half of the year. It’s July package volume exceeded the average monthly volume in the first three months, the outbreak, according to data from ship matrix, Amazon ship 415 million packages in July compared with a monthly average of 389 million between April and June. E-commerce giant also delivered 66% of its own packages in July compared with 61% between April and June.
todd (12:25):
So more huge news. Amazon is taking over the shipment of its product. Now this has been ongoing for a while to ups FedEx, and USPSS detriment really hurting them. I’m sure I can’t imagine losing that much of your business and having to make it up in other places, but Amazon is moving this way. Full steam ahead. I expect they’ll be shipping 80, 90, 95% of their packages as we move forward more and more, they’re going to be taking this over so they can control it, know how long it’s going to take and just to not have to rely on other people. This has been coming for a long time and it’s going to continue moving in that direction, but really interesting. 66% of its packages. Amazon is shipping and cutting out ups, FedEx and USPS. Alright, so there you go. That is some of the top news on Amazon right now. Hope you guys enjoyed that Amazon Seller School.com/ 43 for all the links in this episode. Let me know in the comments down below, if you’re watching this on YouTube, what you think of this news? Shoot me an email entrepreneur, adventure.com. Let me know what you think as well. If you’re listening to this on podcasts that wraps up this show as always I’m Todd Welch with Amazon Seller School signing off happy selling everybody.
Announcer (13:57):
This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours. If you take it.
