Why is Dealing with Amazon Seller Support so Hard?

[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_3]
Liran Hirschkorn joins us again to rant about dealing with Amazon Seller Support

Seller Support reps abroad sometimes don’t work for Amazon but are contracted out
They have limited knowledge andexperience
As experienced sellers you must give them pushback on poor information
They can tell you wrong information so you need to be on top of it
Getting canned responses is a regular frustration from Seller Support
There’s a lot that can be improved there
It’s okay to pushback
Okay to ask for escalation to the Leadership and Captive team
Call at another time to get a US representative which are better trained employees than some of the other countries

Horror stories with Seller Support

Liran is in the Amazon Exclusives programme
A benefit of being in is thast they ‘gate’ your brand to stop hi-jackers
Rep asked for all the ASINs on a Friday
He sent them over to Seller Support and they said they’d get it done over the weekend
Liran checked his account on the Saturday morning and he had ZERO sales
Turned out Seller Support had ‘gated’ him out of his own product!
Didn’t get onto his listings until Monday
He left the Exclusives Programme after this

Another example was where Liran raised an infringement case against a competitor that had his brand name in the backend of their product
Seller Support immediately sent back a canned response that they saw no infringement in the “listing”
This frustrated Liran and he went straight back in ALL CAPS pointing out that the infringement was in the BACKEND and not the LISTING and was a clear break of ToS by that competitor
In this case Liran emailed the Seller and they took it out themselves
Seller Support were just reading an instruction sheet on what to look for and don’t have the knowledge themselves

They also close your case without it being fixed and just send you some cut and paste email response

Had an issue with Merchant Fulfilled in Japan
He had weak information from Seller Support and ended up in a huge email chain with Seller Support
He forensically broke down the inaccuracies in their responses
Due to the time difference the email ping-pong took weeks when dealing with Amazon seller support
He even ended up trying to find people in the Amazon offices over there on Linkedin
They ended up telling Danny he cannot raise another case on this topic for support ever again

Liran heard of a pilot programme where Amazon was looking at a paid for Seller Support dedicated representative
This doesn’t appear to have taken flight though

There is a way to get things done if you don’t accept the first answer in dealing with amazon seller support front-line people
Liran never accepts Seller Support’s answer when they say NO he can’t do something
Don’t accept that exceptions can’t be made in dealing with Amazon seller support
Liran has managed to get his over-size stock holding limit raised by pushing to escalate to a manager
You can always escalate
Ask for them to please put you through to someone with more experience in the area of your problem

In dealing with Amazon seller support, the first layer of support is the canned response screen reader staff
You can get past these by asking for someone in the NEXT Layer with more specialist skills to help with this problem
The 1st Layer don’t want to pass you through as it hurts their rating and metrics – they cling on to the call and won’t pass it on
Liran was told by an Amazon Rep that he should ask to be transferred to the ‘Captive’ team
Liran has highlighted the ‘Captive’ and the ‘Leadership’ teams
He’s found these teams have been more able to help with his problems than the front-line support team have been able to

There was a Boost event held in NY where Amazon setup this event so Sellers could hear from and meet Amazon Support people
You could book a 1-2-1 with some of their reps at this event
Liran found the quality of information available from these reps was inadequate
In many cases Liran knew more about Amazon and the systems than they did
He and others that attended this event gave Amazon this feedback

Liran is in the Exclusives programme and has a dedicated Rep
Marketing and advertising help is their core role
But he has used them for Support issues recently for a Lightning Deal that wasn’t working
emailed fba-deals@amazon.com and had a false-positive issue
They were able to help and get it fixed
Any chance you have to go to an Amazon event and pick up business cards from them it’s worth doing it

Good people are quickly identified and moved up into more senior roles from Support
Two years in Amazon is a long time according to people working in Amazon
If you’re good at support then you are earmarked and moved up quickly
Amazon is a big company with lots of opportunity

Liran has a bad review on his product that he could prove was a competitor
Screenshots and evidence that it was a competitor leaving a bad review on his product
He wrote a letter and pushed and pushed but could not get it removed
Liran won’t generally go to Amazon to get reviews removed
Amazon really don’t want to remove reviews as it damages their integrity
Amazon will not remove reviews, even when the terms of service say it would be allowed to

A competitor has left 5 star reviews on a Seller’s product saying he’s received the product for free in return for the 5 star review
Then this competitor reports you to Amazon!
Liran has heard something similar
Where a Seller received 1 Star reviews on his product that said ‘go buy this other product instead’
This Seller contacted the seller of this other product
And it turned out that there was a 3rd Seller who was placing the 1 star reviews but pointing to this other product to hide the fact he was the competitor!
It can get this crazy it seems
These things Liran would fight hard to resolve

Liran has heard that Amazon is looking at Seller Feedback to make changes to it
Frustrating for Sellers who get constant product reviews in Seller Feedback
It’s often shipping related issues that come through
Merchant Fulfilled and FBA should not be the same system
Rather than Amazon send out ‘seller feedback’ it should be ‘product reviews’ instead

There is also the “Jeff Bomb” if it’s all not working
Danny has found these to be very helpful
If you’re going to make a telephone call to support do it in US daytime hours to get the US Support people who are generally better
The routing of your call is down to luck
Don’t let Seller Support dictate your business – think like Jeff Bezos and push the envelope at every turn