The most difficult Black Friday: more than 4,500 reviews have been wiped out, a large number of listings cannot be sold, and hundreds of millions of packages will be rejected!

Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday were supposed to be a good opportunity for sellers to boost their sales, but they unexpectedly encountered various "obstacles".

The peak season is here, and my brother-in-law is back with his machete to post reviews .

According to foreign media reports, an investigation conducted by Channel 4 in the UK found that Amazon is full of fake five-star reviews. It is reported that a pet toy received more than 17,354 reviews with an average rating of 4.3 stars, which actually aggregated reviews of other pet dog toys in the same range.

This shady tactic is used by some third-party sellers to boost sales of new products on the site, as items with no or few reviews rank lower in search rankings and do not sell well.

When Channel 4 informed Amazon of its findings, the company removed all of the fake reviews that day: One set of adapters went from 600 reviews and a 4.6-star rating to just three reviews and a one-star rating; another set went from 4,520 reviews and a 4.6-star rating to zero .

This is not the first time Amazon has been in the spotlight because of its reviews.

According to sellers’ feedback, the review-sucking problem on the US site has been quite serious recently , with both new and old accounts losing reviews. One seller had only 5 reviews left out of 25, and even several reviews from early reviewers were deleted .

Xiaozhi would like to remind all sellers that during the peak season at the end of the year, try to do less evaluation, spend more energy on product creation, focus on the golden traffic period for new products, and cooperate with refined advertising promotion plans and off-site traffic to quickly create products.

Recently, a seller said that in order to prepare for Black Friday, he launched multiple accounts at the same time. The goods have arrived at the warehouse and he is waiting for the orders to explode. However, he did not expect that his listing would suddenly show "not for sale" ( out of stock ) .

Why is the listing unsaleable when FBA clearly shows that there is sufficient inventory? The seller asked customer service, and the customer service replied that it was because the goods had not been distributed yet ...

Judging from the feedback from sellers, in many cases the listing suddenly becomes unsaleable. In this case, the reason cannot be found and the only thing to do is to ask customer service.

In addition to the above, logistics is also a problem recently.

The cross-border logistics situation has been rather bad recently, with sea freight ports being congested, express delivery warehouses being lined up, trucks being stuck in traffic jams, railway lotteries, and air freight prices fluctuating violently, with even sky-high sea freight charges of US$10,000.  

In addition, Kapai's reservations are even less optimistic. Some sellers said that a large number of people failed to show up for the appointment number delivery, the freight companies were so anxious that they kept scolding, and the sellers were stuck in payment and cried, and Kapai's channels were mostly losing money.

It is difficult to enter the warehouse, and the goods are seriously overstocked. Many freight forwarders have issued notices stating that FedEx refuses to deliver to the following 14 Amazon warehouses :

Other warehouses may be added in the future, so the delivery of goods in the above warehouses, whether in port or in transit, must be stopped. Failure to comply with the requirements will result in all goods being lost.

Although FedEx refused to deliver, sellers can choose UPS, DHL , etc., which are relatively fast. However, after the UPS cargo security inspector at Pudong Airport was diagnosed with the virus in the past two days, UPS East China cargo will be transferred to Shenzhen Port for export starting from November 23, which will affect the delivery time of cargo. DHL is said to have a serious backlog of cargo in Hong Kong.

Logistics are blocked, and Amazon is also limiting its restocking. Many sellers are already facing shortages. What’s more frightening is that next year, there will be higher requirements for packages entering the United States.

According to foreign media reports, starting from January 1, 2021, packages entering the United States will also face stricter data requirements . This is because the United States will implement the next phase of the Synthetic Drug Trafficking and Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act, which aims to combat illegal opioids smuggled into the United States through mail packages.

In order to meet the requirements, starting from January 1 next year, the postal department will provide complete and valid data of all mail parcels sent to the United States without exception. As it stands now, this means that hundreds of millions of parcels sent to the United States will be rejected and eventually returned to their original places.

Such a huge cargo volume will not only bring huge logistics challenges, but also have a serious impact on air cargo capacity, further aggravating the already congested logistics situation.

It is the peak season at the end of the year, and now there is a "crowding with goods" everywhere. Sellers should pay close attention to logistics trends and ship goods reasonably.