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Something to get Amazon third party sellers all in a tizzy this morning is a new “feature” or mandatory process called charge when ship. If you are selling on Amazon this morning you are going to see a number of new changes to your screen, its mandatory, and no all the whining the world will not keep Amazon from trying to make sure that people get what they ordered, when they ordered it from third party sellers.
The Amazon community boards are on fire this morning with the roll out of Amazon’s new merchant feature, charge when ship. How this works is that you get an order, you process the order, then rather than send the shipping confirm e-mail that many of us do, but many more Amazon sellers do not do, you have to “confirm the order” button to press. Many sellers do not use DC (Delivery Confirmation) on their orders, but you can enter a DC number to “confirm the shipment” or not, depending on what Amazon allows as a suitable confirmation. The Amazon help page adds to the conversation on what is and what is not going to alter how sellers contact buyers to let them know their stuff has shipped.
In your Seller Account, under Manage Orders:
1. Click View your orders to find the order you want to confirm.
Use the Search button, the Advanced Search link, or page through the orders.
2. Click the Confirm Shipment button next to the order (or below the order if you are looking at an order detail page).
The Confirm Shipment page appears. (If you are shipping multiple packages for one order, see the next section below.)
3. Select the Ship Date and Carrier (such as USPS) from the drop-down lists.
4. Enter the Shipping Service (such as UPS Ground) and the Tracking ID (supplied by the carrier).
Note: When you provide a tracking number for a shipment, be sure to also enter at least the carrier’s name (UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.) in Shipping Service. For example, enter “UPS Ground” or “UPS,” but not just “Ground.” Without the carrier’s name as part of the Shipping Service entry, the tracking button will not appear in the buyer’s Amazon.com account.
5. Click the Confirm Shipment button.
The shipment is now confirmed.
Note: When you confirm shipment of the first item in a multi-item order, we charge the buyer for the entire order at that time.
Source: Amazon.com
This is what is going to make it interesting, not just for little sellers, but for the big mega sellers as well. One of the things I have noticed is that buyers are genuinely surprised when a seller keeps the buyer informed about the shipment, and provides a tracking number. Many of the mega sellers do not provide much information if any about the shipment once the order has been placed. You end up in limbo as a buyer. This might be a way for Amazon to address this as third party sales make up a good portion of Amazon revenue. Mega sellers traditionally have a lower feedback score as well. Mostly this will impact the dozen or so huge/mega sellers online, but this will also influence smaller mom and pop or mid level (between 3000 and 10000 items for sale) who do not want to pay the extra money for delivery confirmation.
Some sellers are going to have a hard time with this, but this is also Amazon’s second big major change this year, and should be the last of the major changes before people start gearing up for the holidays. The first major change was to have people prequalify for being able to list as a collectible item, now with ship then charge, you have to prove you shipped the package before anyone gets charged this changes the game a bit and puts the risk firmly on the seller.
If the buyers credit card fails, or if there is a problem with payments, before Amazon assumed that risk, and orders were held as payment needed to clear. With the new ship then charge scheme, sellers are firmly on the hook shipping product, and not being paid for it until the seller has proved they have shipped the product, although Amazon also states in their video that you do not need to use DC or tracking, most sellers are going to start using tracking just to prove they have shipped something. Good for Amazon and Amazon buyers, a small 18 to 75 cent burden on the smaller sellers for DC.
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You misunderstood the change. The tracking ID is not required by Amazon, it’s an optional field.
Different sellers have different complaints about this, with varying degree of truth to them. This change has one undeniable negative impact to sellers, though: they now have to go and click on buttons and fill out forms after shipping, which is an additional step in their shipping process.
I have been a seller on Amazon for a few years now. I only started out with 1000 assorted books for sale, and I’m now down to around 500. When I first started selling, I was green and wasn’t as careful with shipping as I am now. After having to refund 3 books in a row, because the buyers claimed they did not receive them, (and I had no proof they didn’t) I started paying extra for delivery confirmation from USPS. It costs me about $1.00 extra, out of my own pocket, but I haven’t had that problem since. I didn’t mind paying for it because the standard shipping cost is $3.99, and most books cost less than that to ship at book rate. But now, I’m not sure if I can attach that extra dollar for delivery confirmation to the total shipping cost that gets charged to the buyer, or if I will totally have to pay for it out of pocket. This new system seems better for the buyer, and a pain for sellers. I always would send a delivery confirmation email to the buyer, before and after I started using delivery confirmation from USPS. This seems aimed at the mass sellers who don’t email the buyers. Why should I get more work? Just because others aren’t as polite and responsible as I am? Seems unfair.
At first blush, I think this will help the small seller, if anything.
The Mega Sellers/Dropshippers, many of whom floated over from eBay, will wind up raising their prices and/or getting in trouble with Amazon and/or quit.
And this is a minor addition of labor for those who already send ship confirmations, as they should.
It will definitely be a boost to Amazon’s already stellar reputation.
print label online and you only pay $.19 cents for delivery confirmation
The Mega Sellers/Dropshippers, many of whom floated over from eBay, will wind up raising their prices and/or getting in trouble with Amazon and/or quit.
You think?? Is it in Amazon’s interest to lose the big sellers which provide so much profit to them? Even if a huge seller falls below Amazon standards they will never quit/get in trouble. Wake up and smell the roses. This is just a marketing idea – Amazon can now claim they take care of their customers when in fact nothing much changes – just that it makes selling on Amazon a bit more inconvenient for every one.
This does not make sense especially seeing as customers have always been protected via A-Z claims – practically sellers have almost no right/privilege, but as everyone profits no one complains.
Now that I’ve used Confirm When Shipped, it’s actually easier than using the form letter I used to send.
So if informing the customer that you indeed have the item in stock that you advertise you have, and that you have shipped it, is an inconvenience – well, that’s a plus for me, your Amazon 100% rated competition.
And Amazon doesn’t merely claim they take care of their customers, they just do. eBay is just starting to learn that letting the mega sellers/dropshippers slide on their customer service was bad unwritten policy. Amazon still has plenty of megasellers that I wouldn’t buy from, but hopefully this is a crack-the-whip step in the right direction.
No problem with the system just the awful grammar! Why not call it charge when shipped. Charge when ship seems to want a lttle more – e.g. charge when ship – sinks? – floats? -appears? moors? – hits a rock! – typically another case of someone in the USA bastardising the English language – it will start to appear in English essays before long!
It may be a good policy if it was properly managed. I was out of the country when an item was sold and had someone ship if for me. When I returned I forgot to notify Amazon.com that it was shipped. I never received a reminder email from them until they notified me that the order was canceled. Now the customer has the item and I am out the money. The customer service supervisor said that they are fielding a lot of calls like this and that management has a “no exception” policy. It’s up to me to contact the buyer and hope she will pay me. I should have received notices but I didn’t. I manage my email very well and would have responded immediately to any notification. Shame on Amazon.
I forgot to confirm shipment on one of my items. I had many, many orders coming in at once and I shipped all of them within days of each other. I would log in often to “confirm shipment.” It turns out that I forgot to confirm one of the shipments (unfortunately the most expensive). I spoke with multiple people at Amazon customer service. They did not care if I actually shipped the item. All that they were concerned about was that the little button wasn’t clicked. I have cancelled my Amazon seller account and will no longer be using Amazon for purchases. Ditto Sid: Shane on Amazon!!
I forgot to click the “confirm shipment” button on one of my orders, too. So now I’m out almost $100. Amazon won’t do anything. The buyer is ignorning my emails. Is there anything I can do? I won’t be selling on Amazon anymore–that’s for sure! Shame on them for essentially helping customers steal from other customers. Don’t they want items to be paid for? They dont’ get their cut if it isn’t! I also received no reminder emails, even though Amazon insists that they send them.
I’m a small seller, but it’s happened at least five times now where I “confirm shipment” and then a few days later the same item is still awaiting confirmation. At first this only appeared to be a nuisance, but recently I shipped two orders ASAP, confirmed the shipment and then many days later discovered that the orders had been canceled! I immediately emailed Amazon about the problem; an automatic response that they’d received my email was generated, but customer service has yet to contact me about the issue. I can’t believe that due to a glitch in their system, I’m being cheated out nearly $50.
Not only that, but if you want to include a tracking number from the post office (assuming you don’t print your postage from online), you can’t confirm shipment until AFTER you go to the post office and get the tracking number (unless, I suppose, you pick up a small pile of them in advance). Well, what happens if you go to the post office and ship your order, then come home to confirm shipment only to discover it’s been canceled? You’d again be out your money with no recourse of action. It was better when a customer had to CONTACT THE SELLER about canceling an order. The buyers I contacted about the orders they’ve certainly received now are conveniently (and dishonestly) choosing to ignore me.
Shame on Amazon and on dishonest buyers!