I am going nuts!

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#1
Amazon took down my product listings because someone said my product was counterfeit, which is hard because I created the brand and I am the only seller. Two weeks later and it is still not up and running. I have lost half a months wages on it. Now, I find that Amazon are selling through themselves UberTape green roll with 82 in stock. I then check my stock levels and it says 82. So Amazon have been selling my product as their own. I don't know how many rolls they have taken off me but this doesn't look good. Yet I cannot get any sense out of anyone with their Support system. I'm still on the phone 42 minutes later and no answers.

You can see Amazon is selling it here:

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Add to basket to check their stock levels:

1539878710484.png


Here is my inventory through their dashboard:

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What are the chances of Amazon having the exact same level of stock as me while the colour of the roll is identical?
 

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#3
I just got off the phone with them, after 1.5 hours. It was driving me potty. Getting fed up with the Amazon business. Such poor support, things going wrong outside of your own control. All for piddly earnings!

I'm wondering about other options, like creating a SAAS (Software As A Service) type business.
 

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#6
Ok, so today I just checked my stock levels of green tape. It has gone down to 81, from 82. But Amazon have stopped me selling the tape due to a cock up. So how can this be? Well, they are selling MY tape from MY stock as though it is their own product. Their stock level has gone down to 81. Coincidence? I think not. How can Amazon be allowed to sell my own product? It is an utter mess behind the scenes.
 

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#7
As from yesterday, my tape is back in stock and selling again. What a sorry saga. One thing I learned is that sometimes it is better to use the written rather than telephone support system. Then there is a "paper trail" of conversations. They are supposed to do that with the telephone conversations too but when I checked the case no's, they put no notes in there. Failing forwards.
 

The_Doc_Man

Founding Member
#8
Yep, they have to pay attention to paper trails. That's why when I was with the Navy, it was "nothing by phone call." We had to have either a digitally entered trouble ticket (with a number) or a digitally signed e-mail (which we could forward to the help desk to enter, schmooze with the client, get the details, and assign a number.) Once we had a ticket number, we could PUT that number on our weekly "what have you done for us lately" report and nobody would even SLIGHTLY raise an eyebrow. There were other projects that didn't have help-desk numbers but DID have engineering numbers. Again, if there was a recognizable number in the weekly report, we were golden.

We also had special numbers representing our "standard" weekly duties. That is, purging old log files, tuning system resources, etc. - there was a contract line-item number for those things. So reporting was easy. Even for the self-imposed tasks, there was a line-item for "other system improvements." We just had to be able to justify it.

So to hear that you needed it in writing is no surprise. We had a mantra for a while: "No e-mail? No ticket? No Number? No work!"
 

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#9
It was a painful lesson for me. Three weeks of phone calls got me nowhere. As I said, they are supposed to put details in the case numbers but on this occasion they just ignored doing that. Maybe they didn't know what to do and so bodged it. One day after doing it in writing and it got fixed.

These little distinctions are valuable. They help you iterate forwards, improving your decision making in the future. I just wish it hadn't cost me so much money.
 
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