After a years long struggle to straighten out listings for third party brands made terrible either by the original lister or by simplistic and incompetent AI, I took a chance on SAS last summer. I also needed to focus on more productive areas of my account such as my own branded items, A plus content, my storefront, advertising, etc, Even though 99% of the problems I tasked them to solve were created by Amazon and not by me, I made a strategic but highly annoying decision to pay them to take those issues off of my plate.

The main problem was that they imported the seller support ethos, which is to assume that the seller is inexperienced and ignorant of how Amazon works and, as quickly as possible, to find a way to mark cases “answered.” So first I had to convince SAS that these changes need to be made and how important they are (some of the problems put me in performance violation jail due to variations made inconsistent by meddling AI). That done, in short order I realize that for all of that money I paid, they had really no more influence over the "internal teams" -- the actual fixers of the problems -- than first-tier seller support does. The internal teams inevitably pushed back on the changes and then SAS would push back to me using the same argument and I would have to say to them, come on, think about it, remember the larger picture, understand the dysfunction that this represents, etc, etc, etc. They became yet another layer between me and solutions, and it took longer to manage them than it did seller support.

Once I got to leadership in seller support I could get things done. It would take a week or two of arguing with the chronically untrained and unhelpful first tier support people, but on the other hand it was free. Expensive SAS had less influence over the teams than Seller Support Leadership and getting SAS to manage the case all the way to Leadership just didn't happen. I don’t think they realized that this was the necessary strategy. In short, I paid a lot of money for a worse situation than I was getting for free, which required more of my time and left less of my time for growing my business.

In business -- especially as an Amazon seller -- it's grow or die, and every minute you have to spend just getting back to where you were yesterday is a minute wasted. You eventually get it done, but it's still the path to business death because: yesterday (or three months ago) is not tomorrow.

You would think that if Amazon asked me to trust SAS enough to pay that kind of money, Amazon would trust SAS to solve problems like incorrect categorization and misspelled brands. SOMEONE in SAS should have been able to determine that the changes were appropriate and make them. But no, they were just as dependent on the often tunnel-visioned internal teams as regular seller support was.

And right in the middle of this, Specialist Support (also free) showed up. While they seem to have a little more influence over the internal teams, they're still largely beholden to them to make changes. The absolutely positively refreshing difference is that the vast majority of the time, Specialist Support approaches a problem as if the seller is correct both concerning the diagnosis of the problem and what to do about it. They, more often than not, manage the pushback necessary to get the internal teams to do their jobs. They take the time to understand the scope of a problem and work toward completion on that basis. One person manages cases so you're not having to explain the problem over and over and over to different seller support robots who just know how to use the auto-responder and mark cases as answered.

And the Specialists are highly trained and experienced enough where they should ABSOLUTELY be able to make changes that Amazon still makes them go through internal teams to do. Again, Amazon, why do you present them to us as "Specialists" and not trust them to decide what category something goes in and just make the change? Specialists trust me to understand my product line, they trust me to be experienced enough to understand Amazon categorization, and if they push back it is rarely and with thoughtful reasoning. Because of their dependence on internal teams, getting changes done still takes a long time (I still have open cases from November) but it takes much much less of MY time than the old seller support process and especially than SAS.

Although I was contracted for three months with SAS, after one especially ugly incident of SAS being negative help, I told the manager's boss that this just wasn't working. After a month there was literally one small success out of dozens of issues. I had previously referred to an especially bizarre and pointless time consuming procedure Amazon was putting me through as "st*p*d" and SAS fired ME for being disrespectful (I'm never disrespectful to a person, but pointless hoops I have to jump through are fair game because they don't have feelings). Instead of making the point that protecting the dignity of a procedure was really not part of his mission, I made another strategic decision, swallowed my pride, and let them cancel my contract due to this "abusive" behavior. By then Specialist Support was in beta and while again it's not particularly faster to solution, it does require fewer hours of my time and is much much much less stressful and frustrating.

If my store had all of these "get back to yesterday's status" issues solved and was ready to move forward, SAS might be helpful with that, I don't know. I know how to make A+ content, I know how to make a storefront, I know how to list new items, and I'm pretty good at all of that. It's finding the time that is the problem. Creating a new line of my own branded products and making them successful on Amazon, yeah I could use some help from people who presumably know better how to do that than I do and this might be a mission SAS is good for. But all of those other ducks have to be in a row, because OP is right, SAS is going to require a seller’s time and the seller is going to be saying to herself “yeah I paid for this I’d better do it rather than do this other thing that might actually be more important at the moment.”

But taking the load off of my shoulders dealing with by-and-large technical and Amazon-created problems was a promise SAS made that they absolutely fell down on. The suggestion that SAS can take all of the busywork off of your plate and help you move forward just does not take into consideration the dysfunction of Amazon both technically and in it's bureaucracy. If you have the dysfunction otherwise under control -- which perversely seems possible with tons of time, frustration, and work -- you may be ready for SAS.

In the experience of selling on Amazon I have the ever-present feeling that Amazon off-loads a lot of labor onto my shoulders which absolutely should not be part of my job description as seller. I have written to Amazon personnel "I do not work for Amazon I should not be having to do this" so many times the auto complete just fills it in at "I do." It became more perverse when I not only was having my unpaid time wasted but I was having to pay SAS to have my time wasted. Now at least I have some hope. Since Specialists are largely competent and experienced, they are presumably paid well, and Amazon might eventually take notice of the amount of THEIR time that is wasted. Acknowledging their training and skill by granting them the ability to make the necessary changes themselves would reduce the time it takes to solve a complex Amazon-created problem from an aggregate three hours of THEIR work to fifteen or twenty minutes. Now that this is an easily identifiable pile of $$ that Amazon is wasting instead just a nebulous waste of seller time, I have found that teeny tiny glimmer of hope. This is the MO of Amazon: A giant pile of stinky with a little clod of hope.

To be an Amazon Seller....