Just hours after the story breaks that eBay are gauging sellers interest in a fulfillment service, Amazon have announced that they’ll be protecting sellers from negative feedback caused by FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon).
If a seller receives a negative feedback where the buyer calls out an issue with shipping or customer service performed by FBA then the negative can be struck off.
New policy effective January 27, 2009, for FBA orders with negative feedback
FBA sellers are now able to petition for strikethrough of customer feedback ratings for Amazon-fulfilled orders. If you have received feedback on an FBA order regarding a fulfillment-related issue or customer service-related issue, you may submit a Contact Us form to request to have Technical Account Management review and “strike through” the customer’s rating. If any portion of the comment applies to the seller or the condition type (New, Used etc.) of the product, the rating will remain
A thread on the Amazon chat boards has been running for almost two years, with negatives that are out of the sellers control being a big concern. If eBay do go ahead and introduce a similar service, they too will need to address feedback issues and how to protect sellers from issues caused by eBay’s own shipping agents.
Max Leisten on Amazon Stategies has more information on other enhancements Amazon are making to FBA.
3 Responses
So they are expecting a higher level of dissatisfaction?
It will soon be a USP to say seller ‘packs and mails own goods’.
Volume box movers have generally already had a higher level of dissatisfaction so I guess it is logical. Will not address ‘never buy from them again’ ranters. And we all be the poorer for that.
#1 I don’t think they expect a *higher* level of dissatisfaction, but it’s hardly fair to blame the seller for a mess up in Amazon’s own warehouse or shipping.
Does this strikethrough completely eliminate the feedback or does it offer an explanation stating FBA was at fault? If FBA is constantly causing issues for sellers it has the potential to affect my buying decisions there. I wouldn’t be very happy if I found out information that could have saved me from making a bad purchase was removed by the very people that created the issue in the first place.
From my own experience though if there is one issue the buyer usually doesn’t mention it but if there is more than one they will try to find every single thing possible to complain about up to and including the poor grammar on the packaging.