As a new seller on Amazon, I had high hopes for leveraging the platform to reach a broad audience and grow my business. However, the experience has been an absolute disaster; and I am partly to blame, its my first time on that platform, and yes I went through the Seller University Tutorials, and they were very informative; however they did not highlight the various issues that I went through.. Here’s a detailed timeline of events that illustrate the challenges I’ve faced over the past two weeks.

1. Inventory Issues

I shipped a batch of products to Amazon's fulfillment centers. Out of the 490 units sent, 450+ were received and available for sale. However, 36 units have been marked as "Receiving" for the past four weeks after the rest of the products have been received from that shipment, which by the way I sent the box I am referring to with another box that was already checked in and received for . Despite multiple attempts to get this investigated, I was told it couldn’t be looked into because the shipment wasn’t "Closed". The lack of updates and resolution on this matter has been incredibly frustrating.

2. Brand Registration Complications

When I first listed my product, I didn't enroll my brand immediately—something I later realized was a mistake. Upon trying to register my brand, my application was rejected, and I had to go through an appeal process that took 2 days, why? Because I had all of the correct information on the forum, but the email I use for this, didn't match the email I used for my official documents, which I understand the need for security, but that's a bit insane when all of the information was correct and ready to go.

After the appeal, I was excited to utilize the benefits associated with having a registered brand, we will get into that in another section. However, dealing with Seller Support was a nightmare. In just two weeks, I opened 20 support tickets due to various issues, most of which were related to Amazon’s restrictive controls over product details, even when you own the ASIN and listing.

3. Major Issues with Seller Support

One of the major issues was changing my product’s brand from “Generic” to my registered brand name. Seller Support initially told me I needed to create a new listing, which would have meant losing my inventory and paid Vine reviews. After spending four hours on chat, being transferred multiple times between FBA, Vine, and Brand Registry teams, they finally managed to update my listing without needing to start a new listing, which they instructed me to do, but I was very skeptical of doing so as I'd lose the progress that I have already made, as this seemed to be an easy fix, boy was I mistaken, as this issue is still not fixed.

However, the very next day, my listing was search suppressed, a status that apparently had been active for three days without any notification. This suppression explained why I had no sales during Those days, but no message was apparent at the time. When I contacted support again, they vaguely assured me that it would update in 48 hours. I am assuming that this issue is due to the Backend changes they needed to make in order for my Brand name to appear on my Product.

Additionally, despite successfully attaching my brand to the ASIN, I am still unable to post ads for this product or view analytics, which further hampers my ability to manage and grow my sales.

4. Automatic Pricing Disaster

Another major setback occurred when I enrolled my product in Amazon’s automatic pricing. This action caused my entire inventory to go stranded, taking an entire day to resolve. This incident underscored the complexities and pitfalls of Amazon’s system, especially for new sellers. I cannot believe what a seemingly simple task of clicking "enroll now" turned into such a mess.

Conclusion

Selling on Amazon has been a highly frustrating experience. The platform’s complexities, coupled with inconsistent support being a brick wall to work with, have made it incredibly challenging to manage my business effectively. While I acknowledge that some of the problems may stem from my inexperience, the lack of clear guidance and support has exacerbated these issues. My product is still not searchable, and sales have stalled, leaving me questioning the viability of continuing on this platform.

To clarify: I had my inventory sent out in April prior to me prioritizing this as a marketplace for my product; which I then started selling 2 weeks ago by this point.

I mainly want to put this out there to vent; as I'm sure many of you have experienced this sort of thing as well; and I'm sure many of you also felt disheartened and disappointed as I do now. Thank you for reading.