A bug was discovered in Amazon's backend! Flash sales were inexplicably cancelled!

In the past two days, many sellers have reported that there are problems with the flash sales in the background! Not only have the upcoming flash sales been cancelled inexplicably, but also the flash sales time or quantity have been modified.

This incident started to occur on a large scale this morning. Several of our seller communication groups were discussing what to do if there was a problem with the flash sale (add me zyqmda to join the group). Everyone initially judged that this should be a bug in the backend.

It is not just the US site that is affected. Global sites such as Japan, Germany, and the UK have also experienced flash sale bugs, and there are many different forms of bugs.

Some sellers’ flash sales had their dates/quantities modified and could not be edited; some flash sales that should have started were still shown as “under review”; in some cases, the backend showed that the flash sales were cancelled, but the front-end products were still running; in the most cases, the flash sales were directly cancelled/deleted, and some sellers also reported that after the cancellation, all their flash sales recommendation positions were gone .

At the same time, while more and more sellers are reporting problems, some sellers who had problems earlier have found that their flash sales problems have returned to normal.

If the event was cancelled or changed inexplicably before it started, you can wait for the bug to be fixed and the flash sale event can be restored. The sellers who were most affected this time were those who had flash sales in the past two days, as they were cancelled shortly after they started due to a bug . In this case, Amazon cannot compensate for the flash sale in another period, and by default, it will not refund the fees for this flash sale. Sellers need to take the initiative to request compensation for the fees.

The fluctuation of the flash sales this time has a huge impact on a wide range of sellers. Amazon can no longer get away with it. It may issue a centralized announcement and solution to sellers, resume the flash sales that have not started, and refund the fees of the flash sales that are affected and cannot be carried out normally. However, this may take some time. If the sellers whose flash sales were running but were cancelled can also contact customer service to apply for compensation.

The impact of this large-scale flash sale bug is very large. According to our previous experience, this level of bug often appears before Amazon makes a major update to the platform function or policy , and it is "whatever is updated will be included", which means that the flash sale module may have a big move in the near future. Many sellers speculate that it may block the service providers from doing flash sales, or it may launch a new flash sale function like the 7-day deal. In any case, everyone can look forward to the content of Amazon's update this time.

In addition to the possible big moves in the flash sale module in the near future, Amazon has also recently cut off a shopping feature - Prime Pantry.

The Pantry feature was first launched in 2014. Consumers and Amazon members can use Pantry to order daily groceries in a single 45-pound or 4-cubic-foot package. No matter how many items a customer orders, as long as the above conditions are met, only one shipping fee will be charged. This will reduce the shipping costs of large or heavy daily necessities such as bottled water, toilet paper, flour, laundry detergent, canned goods, etc. for both customers and Amazon.

Recently, Amazon announced that it would cancel the Pantry program and move all products in the program to the Amazon store, so that consumers can only buy these daily necessities through the normal purchasing and delivery process.

The original intention of launching this plan was not only to reduce the cost of consumers buying the above-mentioned daily necessities on Amazon, but also to facilitate Amazon's competition with traditional offline department stores. The Pantry plan fulfilled its mission very well at the time, and even when Amazon raised the Pantry delivery fees one after another, many buyers still chose this plan.

Now that Amazon has acquired a large number of offline department store businesses through mergers and acquisitions, including Whole Foods Market and its own offline stores , Pantry's position is rather awkward. It is only a matter of time before it is changed or taken offline.

This is actually a good thing for the daily necessities sellers in the mall, because the products of the Pantry program are separate from the Amazon mall, with independent shopping pages and entrances . After the closure of the Pantry program, the original traffic will be directed back to the main site of the Amazon mall , and categories such as daily necessities, maternal and child products, and household groceries will usher in a wave of extremely accurate long-term customer flow.

In fact, these categories have a lot of overlap with the categories that have seen a surge in demand during the pandemic. Plus, with no end in sight for the overseas pandemic, these categories will definitely be long-lasting and popular . You can develop products in these categories based on home needs.