The other day we considered what New Year’s Resolutions eBay should make. And you had plenty of ideas and made many suggestions in the comments. Thanks for all that vital input.
But what about Amazon? What should the guys there be considering as their promises for 2016? We have some suggestions.
Become more personable. Obviously, at Tamebay, we get out and about and deal with ecommerce professionals a lot and we get to know people. And yet the one really unknowable and faceless company we deal with is Amazon. Seldom do we meet Amazon people and rarely do they talk about their people. Now, on one level this is a professional grumble, but it has a more practical point for sellers.
It seems to me that Amazon really doesn’t have a UK operation with a face. And if the UK is really such a vital market, there should be more visibility from relevant staff.
Improve seller relations: If you talk to Amazon sellers, as we do, then one grumble comes up more than others: “Amazon could screw us at any time.”
The most recent example of that which we reported was regarding those so-called Hoverboards. Unlike eBay, Amazon competes directly with marketplacee sellers and isn’t shy about that. And, obviously, it also seeks to control the buyer experience.
Amazon sellers like the service and sales and the platform but so many just don’t trust them. There’s work to do there.
Keep innovating: Amazon is a fine company with a strong inventive streak and they get things done. New things. Whether it’s same day delivery, or considering drones, they are significantly more inventive than eBay.
And they should keep doing that. For my money, especially when it comes to delivery, Amazon has been the pacesetter on standards over the past few years and with Prime going from strength to strength, they also deliver on their promises. It will be interesting to see if they continue down that track.
4 Responses
Amazon need to resolve the issue of Non-UK sellers using their FBA Uk warehouses to sell goods to UK buyers where they have not registered for VAT and gain an unfair advantage.
This is EASY for Amazon to police. Simply don’t accept stock to FBA in the UK from non-UK sellers without a valid VAT number.
1. Show obvious details like where the seller is posting from & how much the postage is on the same page as the seller details instead of having to click through five pages to find out from each seller.
2. Maybe they could display their own phone number in a place where it’s easy to locate.
3. Pay the correct amount of Tax.
4. Employ some decent customer support.
5. Stop banning people for returning goods that dont fit.
6. Stop wasting money on Drone delivery because it will never happen.
Employ seller support staff who can read so you don’t have to re-submit the same enquiry multiple times before you get a non cut and paste irrelevant reply.
Answer sellers emails within the 24 hours we are expect to achieve.
Find away to resolve Chinese sellers hijacking product pages with a different product without having to order a product from China, wait 3 weeks for delivery to prove to seller support it is not the same as the ASIN product even when you are the brand owner.
Give non FBA sellers a real chance, not everybody has Prime so for products less than £20 merchant fulfilled are better for non Prime customers.
Three things that I would like them to do, and I think if they don’t fix them then in the long term it will turn customers away:
– stop the hijacking of listings, and more effort to prevent fake and unsafe goods being sold, tired of reporting these and no action is ever taken
– sort out the VAT fraud committed by sellers particularity overseas sellers, mainly Chinese, but many others selling from other EU countries into the UK market avoiding VAT
– stop fixing the feedback of certain sellers, normally the larger ones, we’ve seen a seller who gets 30-40% negatives, all service related, then within 24-48 hours their feedback is cleaned up, I just don’t trust the feedback ratings any more
Myself and the missus used to shop a lot on Amazon but for the reasons above its now a place of last resort.