Amazon's Pricing Mistake Crippling My Business
I'm at a breaking point with an ongoing issue regarding Amazon's "Competitive External Price." My 3-pack product is priced at $17.99, but Amazon insists on a reduction to $11.97, comparing it to a site where a single pack is $3.99—without including shipping costs. This comparison is impacting my ability to secure the Buy Box, even though I am the sole seller and brand owner.
I’ve had detailed conversations with seller support through both phone and email, and they agree that this external price comparison is unjust as it excludes shipping costs. Despite their acknowledgment, the internal team hasn’t addressed this oversight.
This situation is critically affecting my sales. I'm left with thousands of inventory units, and a mandated price of $11.97 would result in a substantial loss per sale. Furthermore, I have no control over the pricing on the other site, and changing it doesn't make sense without shipping being considered.
Amazon, you're seriously hurting us with these nonsensical policies. This situation makes no sense and needs to be resolved immediately!
Amazon's Pricing Mistake Crippling My Business
I'm at a breaking point with an ongoing issue regarding Amazon's "Competitive External Price." My 3-pack product is priced at $17.99, but Amazon insists on a reduction to $11.97, comparing it to a site where a single pack is $3.99—without including shipping costs. This comparison is impacting my ability to secure the Buy Box, even though I am the sole seller and brand owner.
I’ve had detailed conversations with seller support through both phone and email, and they agree that this external price comparison is unjust as it excludes shipping costs. Despite their acknowledgment, the internal team hasn’t addressed this oversight.
This situation is critically affecting my sales. I'm left with thousands of inventory units, and a mandated price of $11.97 would result in a substantial loss per sale. Furthermore, I have no control over the pricing on the other site, and changing it doesn't make sense without shipping being considered.
Amazon, you're seriously hurting us with these nonsensical policies. This situation makes no sense and needs to be resolved immediately!
15 replies
Seller_7LrAV0m5llaI7
I am currently dealing with the same issue.
Our price on the item is $17, a competitor is selling it for $31+ shipping = $40
Amazon wants it sold for $5, and the FBA fee is about $5, before any 15% commissions paid on the sale. Wholesale distributor cost is $7.
Our offer got removed, our FBA inventory stranded, and the responses from seller support "Leadership Team" with my Case ID 16575040821 make no sense, they keep copy pasting nonsense that is unrelated to the issue.
How does this make any sense?
Seller_tzb0Adb4whsRu
Amazon shouldn't even consider external prices!
It's because of Amazon's many, many, high fees to sell a product, store a product, ship a product, etc, etc, that sellers have to set their prices higher than "external" prices.
They do not consider their own fees they're charging us when they "flag" prices.
Surely they realize how much they're charging sellers per unit to sell and understand the sellers need a profit margin too, because it's a business.
With Amazon taking almost 1/2, (yes 1/2) of our sales each month in fees.
Seller_s7F7fMBDtix0d
I don't think you will win. I constantly fight with this, where another site may sell item X for $5 but you have to buy $35 to get free shipping. My item will be $9.99 with free shipping but Amazon won't let me price it that high. I have a particular cd they won't let me sell for over $2 without shutting my listing down for being priced too high. It costs almost $5 to ship a cd, let alone Amazon fees and product cost and (hopefully) a little profit!
Seller_pixSY1g97J4aL
It is called "Price Fixing"!
Report it to the FCC so they can have on file a complaint. Once enough people complain they will contact Amazon and they will in turn pay off the officials so that nothing gets done but at least it costs them the "compliance" costs
Manny_Amazon
Hello @Seller_dFRpdFiawXcak,
Thanks for posting here. I've reviewed the details and see that Support is actively looking into this in case 16763593731 which is open currently. Please allow the team time to review this and get back to you with an update. If you see that the case resolves later and still need help, let me know here and I'll look into seeing what options exist for escalation.
Regards,
- Manny
Seller_7rNklHYkq1IwY
If you have any "options" available to you now, use them, NOW. This seller is hurting. If you can help in any way, don't wait for additional pain to be caused or endured. Escalate now.
Manny_Amazon
Hello @Seller_dFRpdFiawXcak,
I've gone ahead and contacted my partner team and requested their assistance with reviewing this issue. I'll follow up as soon as I hear back from the team.
Regards,
- Manny
Seller_bwwSmXUGwelKI
Same thing happening to us - re-posting my forum post here :
Lost Sales of Bestselling ASIN - Amazon FALESLY identifying our offer price as higher than competitors!
Amazon policy requires to have the lowest price on Amazon as compared to other major retailers outside Amazon.
We are compliant and sell our product for $29.95 + Free SH on Amazon and for $25.16 + $6.95 SH = $32.11 at our other store.
The Amazon web scraping bot for competitive reference prices is comparing our offer on Amazon ($29.95 Free SH) to the offer price at our other store WITHOUT the SH charge ($25.16).
The result is that Amazon is requiring us to match the price of $25.16 in order to regain eligibility to compete for Featured Offer placement.
Amazon policy states: "To be considered competitively priced, your Price + Shipping must be less than or equal to the competitive price."
In our case Amazon is wrongly enforcing this policy based on incorrect data. Obviously, the AI bot is not able to identify the total price including SH to make an accurate, fair price comparison.
We are registered brand owners, manufacturers and sole retailers of our products - we know exactly at what price our products are being offered on the web.
I opened a case and submitted evidence (screen shots of prices including SH), but the response neither indicated any understanding of the problem nor were any actions taken to remove the unfair price matching requirement for our ASIN.
We are experiencing a significant loss of sales through the removal of Featured Offer while the FBA warehouses are stocked with this popular, best selling product.
CASE ID: 16990317731
I am asking any forum monitors who are reading this post to please escalate this case to a speedy resolution.
@TaylorR_Amazon @Glenn_Amazon @Joey_Amazon @Michelle_Amazon @Josh_Amazon @Rose_Amazon
Thank you for your help!
