Is Amazon secretly raising prices again? A large number of sellers' orders have dropped sharply!

Before the results of the US presidential election were announced, many cross-border sellers had already felt the market fluctuations, but they did not expect that the traffic would drop so drastically!

Many sellers have complained that Amazon traffic has been getting worse over the past few days. Not only has the conversion rate of top products dropped, but the advertising investment seems to have gone down the drain and will never come back.

This time of year in previous years has already entered the peak sales season, but this year's situation has made sellers feel very troubled and helpless.

There are two main reasons for the decline in sales: first, during the US election, consumers focused on the election results, causing them to temporarily put their daily shopping plans on hold; second, the 2024 "Black Friday Online Monday" promotion has not yet started, and sellers may choose not to shop for the time being and wait until the promotion period to make purchases. The combination of these multiple situations has led to a decline in sellers' sales.

However, the challenges sellers are facing recently are not only the severe decline in sales, but also the increase in Amazon shipping costs and pricing loopholes that have led to product price cuts!

Recently, some sellers have reported that the shipping costs through Amazon Buy Shipping are actually higher than those through Shipstation!

According to the seller, as the peak season is approaching, he had expected that USPS shipping rates would increase, but he did not expect that the shipping fee using Amazon Buy Shipping would be US$4.28, while the shipping fee through Shipstation would only be US$4.14!

Although it seems that there is only a difference of 0.14, this is just one batch of goods from the seller. If the seller charges a little more for each shipment, it will not be a small amount in the long run . And compared with the previous Amazon Buy Shipping, the shipping fee has also increased!

And, many sellers are currently experiencing the same situation:

"I have a batch of 8 ounces of goods, and Amazon Buy Shipping costs a full dollar more than Shipstation."

"I just sent out a few 4-ounce packages a while ago, and the shipping costs have indeed increased a lot."

"Comparing the 8 oz USPS Ground Advantage rate in Buy Shipping to the same rate in Shipstation. Over $1 more!"

Some sellers speculate that as the peak season is approaching, Amazon may want to take this opportunity to reap some profits; however, some sellers hold a different view. They believe that although Amazon Buy Shipping is more expensive, it can provide sellers with more protection - the seller's OTDR score.

One seller said: “It is unfair to simply compare the fees of Amazon Buy Shipping and Shipstation because Buy Shipping provides sellers with many protections that Shipstation does not have. ”

Some time ago, Amazon issued new regulations requiring self-delivery sellers to maintain an on-time delivery rate of more than 90% without extending their commitments. If the OTDR score is too low, it may affect the seller's account health and may also cause a series of chain reactions.

Therefore, many sellers will choose to use Amazon Buy Shipping in order to maintain their OTDR scores. After all, it is more important to keep their account than to pay a little extra fee.

Also worth noting is that an urgent question has emerged on the Amazon Seller Forum.

Recently, many sellers found that their FBA product prices were mistakenly reduced by 70-90%. This anomaly caused a large amount of inventory to be quickly sold at extremely low prices , causing huge losses to sellers.

Some sellers believe that this situation may be related to Amazon’s pricing system or third-party pricing tools such as repricer.com.

Sellers tried to deal with this problem by manually adjusting prices, but many products have been sold out . In order to cancel the orders that have already been shipped, they have repeatedly sought help from Amazon, but have not received a specific solution , which has made many sellers dissatisfied.

Some sellers believe that Amazon is responsible for this system error and needs to take measures to resolve the problem as soon as possible. They also suggest that other sellers collect evidence in order to file claims against Amazon .

This abnormal price event not only caused direct economic losses to the sellers, but also may have an impact on the sellers' long-term operations:

In the long run, sellers may need to pay more attention to market dynamics and increase their sensitivity and response speed to abnormal situations to reduce the impact of similar incidents on their business.