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"There's a lot of gossip on the eve of a big sale" seems to have become a cliché in the cross-border industry. In the recent period, sellers on Amazon's European site have felt this law the most: they have not received verification codes when logging into their accounts, additional insurance fees, errors in pricing system settings, and batch scanning of local accounts, and these problems are one wave higher than the other. It is learned that on the evening of June 5, many sellers reported that many European sites of Amazon were hit by "zero-dollar purchases": "The prices of products on Amazon's Turkish site were synchronized at low prices, and many orders were placed at almost 0 yuan." “The Italian site was purchased for almost nothing, and we are still waiting for a reply from the relevant team mentioned by the customer service.” "My UK site is the same, the price of more than 800 was changed to 1.1." Among them, the "0 yuan purchase" phenomenon is the most rampant on Amazon Turkey. According to sellers, the reason why these European sites have large-scale "0 yuan purchases" is because there is a bug in the Amazon system. Many sellers have errors when synchronizing product prices across sites due to the bug, and the system automatically changes them to ultra-low prices, resulting in a large number of goods being sold out overnight. After the incident, many sellers took quick action, including stopping sales of related products in a timely manner, submitting cancellation applications to customer managers, and taking screenshots as evidence , in order to minimize losses. ▲ The picture comes from the seller’s disclosure However, as of press time, there are still many sellers whose "0 yuan purchase" orders have not been successfully canceled, and some sellers even checked the logistics and found that some consumers have already received the goods. ▲ The picture comes from the seller’s disclosure Based on the feedback from sellers, this "0 yuan purchase" farce was caused by problems in Amazon's system, not by the sellers' operational errors. Therefore, most sellers believe that Amazon should bear more responsibility for this. It is worth noting that although some sellers opened cases for consultation after the incident, they only received a response from Amazon that "we are aware of it and the technical team is handling it." Currently, many sellers are still anxiously waiting for Amazon's subsequent processing plan. At this critical moment when most sellers are preparing for Prime Day, the turmoil caused by Amazon's European site is actually not just the "zero-dollar purchase" incident. It is understood that according to recent industry reports, Amazon has launched a new round of "account sweeping" targeting European local accounts. In the relevant scan notification email, Amazon requires relevant sellers to submit information within 30 days to prove that they are local sellers and that the company is truly operating in the local area rather than established for value-added tax purposes , otherwise the balance and inventory in the account will be frozen. ▲ The picture comes from the seller’s disclosure According to sellers’ feedback, this round of “account sweeping” is coming fiercely. Currently, a large number of local accounts in the UK, France, and Northern Ireland have been affected , most of which are Chinese legal person stores. One seller even said that all 20 of his stores have been affected, and this round of account sweeping has affected nearly 90% of Chinese legal person sellers. Based on this, many sellers have speculated that Amazon is recently stepping up its scrutiny of Chinese legal persons' European local accounts. Its ultimate goal is to crack down on cross-border sellers who are not actually operating in Europe and prevent such sellers from exploiting policy loopholes to evade taxes. Judging from past experience, this speculation is not groundless. Last May, when the media broke the news that "tens of thousands of UK VAT addresses were suspected of being stolen", overseas economic experts analyzed that after the European tax reform, since e-commerce platforms started withholding VAT services for overseas companies, many sellers seemed to want to register local European accounts to bypass the platform's withholding and save costs. It is also learned that since Amazon Europe implemented the policy of withholding value-added tax, the platform has already experienced three rounds of "number sweeps" targeting European local accounts, most of which are related to tax audits, so they are also called "tax inspection waves", in September and November 2023 and January 2024 respectively. At the end of February this year, a large number of sellers with local European accounts such as the UK and France received warning emails from Amazon that "funds have been reserved", which was also speculated to be related to tax audits. In addition, according to industry insiders, the cancellation rate of Amazon European accounts has been very low recently, and tax audits, authenticity audits, etc. are emerging in an endless stream. Many sellers have received relevant audit emails from Amazon. Some sellers said that in the past two years, as Europe has strengthened its audit of tax compliance, major e-commerce platforms have also tightened their compliance reviews of local accounts . Relevant sellers must also abide by relevant laws and regulations to avoid their accounts being judged to have committed VAT fraud. Now that Prime Day is approaching, we recommend that you make promotional plans in advance to avoid "zero-dollar purchases" due to overlapping discounts. On the other hand, you also need to operate based on compliance and prepare goods in advance to ensure sufficient inventory to meet expected demand. Are you ready for the peak season sales in the second half of the year? Please vote and discuss in the comments section~
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