Our latest lesson learned: When Amazon loses or misplaces your inventory, it’s not their fault, it is yours. And Amazon will ensure that they do not incur any monetary penalties. Only you, the Seller, will.

This is How to Destroy a Business 101, brought to you by Amazon’s finest in their New Jersey warehouse (ABE8). In less than 45 days, they managed to effectively drive our sales into the ground and even get our most profitable (top 50 best seller) ASIN deactivated to avoid admitting their own obvious and blatant mistakes.

This story is not complicated, yet Amazon’s “seller support” has pulled every string to avoid admitting any guilt. Instead of taking any responsibility for their mistakes, they have repeatedly tried to spin their errors on our brand. Note, we proudly have an Account Health score of 204 and are Small Business certified.

Here’s the timeline of events…

• Officially launch our private label brand on April 15, 2024 with FBA
• We continue to add more products and variations across 9 total ASINs over the next 2 months with consistent weekly organic growth.
• With growth now outpacing our expectations, we send out 1,120 units (3 SKUs) in 4 boxes of our best selling product to 2 warehouses on June 12
• On June 15, Amazon receives 280 units (1 SKU) in 1 box at their AVP1 warehouse and 840 units (3 SKUs, 1 SKU per box) in 3 boxes at the ABE8 warehouse.
• On June 17, we achieve our highest sales day ever, including highest sessions and highest daily sales conversion.
• In the same week, all units received at the AVP1 warehouse are received and distributed for prime eligibility smoothly and timely, as expected.

When things start to turn sour…

• Several weeks pass and the ABE8 warehouse in NJ has made zero progress with the delivered shipment. UPS tracking confirms again that all 3 boxes containing 840 units (280 units for 3 ASINs each) were delivered on June 15
• During the same period, we begin to notice returns increasing, session dropping, and sales falling off a cliff. We have not made any changes to our listings that would have caused this.

We finally reach out to Seller Support…

• On numerous occasions over several weeks, Amazon refuses our requests for investigation since the shipment is not in a “closed” status. Eventually, the shipment “closes”, the shipment appears to still be missing, and overall nothing changes except for more sales lost and time wasted…
• On July 15, we reach out to Seller Support again. This time, they finally admit that they have misplaced a box containing 280 units and would be reimbursing us for the lost sales revenue. After losing out on sales revenue due to low inventories, this was a desired and appropriate outcome. Over the phone and via email/case support tickets, Amazon verbally admitted they failed us.
• Two weeks pass and Amazon continues to do absolutely nothing. We ask several times via Seller Support for them to provide us an update on the reimbursement but are consistently told they are “still investigating.”
• On July 29, we receive an email by surprise about an inventory review “due to an influx of negative customer return comments” — at this point, it’s now clear that Amazon has been shipping out the completely wrong ASIN to our customers, despite all inventory being labeled correctly (we determined this with their support team after numerous hours on the phone with them and receiving photo confirmation that all inventory was in fact labeled correctly). As it turns out, Amazon didn’t lose the box; instead, they had miscategorized it under one of our other ASINs.
• On July 31, Amazon support reaches out to us again about mislabeled packages which includes pictures of our inventory. Comically, we now understand that they are completely lost on what they are doing, now with picture evidence that proves our inventory is properly labeled. They have simply failed to properly receive and organize our shipment.
• On Aug 1, we open yet another case with Amazon’s FBA team to review overall health the emails regarding our customer complaints (that we, the sellers, have no visibility into. No returns, no complaints, etc). Amazon stated that our account was healthy, even has us navigate to Seller Central, Performance and Account Health. Specifically to point out to us that we were “healthy” with zero issues, including complaints and violations Amazon had previously stated via email.
• All our various phone calls, messages, and conversations have culminated with zero resolution, no action for either party (us and Amazon), and ultimately our sales and overall brand continue to nosedive. We now have orders being placed and Amazon is marking them as unfulfilled. They currently have 847 items on hand with customers actively buying them, and never receiving them. To the customer, we have failed. To us, Amazon has failed us.
• The icing on the cake = Customers are ordering our product. Amazon charges them. The customer never receives the item (since Amazon has marked it as "unfulfillable"). The customer requests a refund. Amazon approves the refund and keeps the FBA fee. Is this a joke?

Not only has Amazon demonstrated to us that they are incapable of simply receiving, scanning, and sorting inventory, but they refuse to admit fault for their mistakes. They will operate in a way to ensure that you, the Seller, are responsible for any errors, and that the Seller shall bear the brunt of any and every mistake they make.

With all of our hard work seemingly wasted and sales crashing to a halt, Amazon really has left us with zero choice but to move all our inventory to an alternative platform.

If any Amazon Support employee reads this, we’d love to hear from you. Maybe someone at Amazon will do choose to do the right thing and try to save our growing brand that the ABE8 Warehouse managed to ruin in a day…