Review: Selling Books and DVDs on Amazon Seller Central (End Result: Partial win, with critical failure.)
The snapshot:
* Good for DVDs.* Good for compatible electronics.
* Good for small, light paperbacks.
* Bad for other books, especially bigger books.
* Bad for tech books, as they most always are heavier.
More Detail:
I was happy to hear that Amazon had opened their system to individuals to liquidate DVD and book collections. I selected enough books to fill a box among books that I didn't want to keep and nearly all of my DVDs. I added these easily to my account as 'for sale' by entering the book ISBN or the DVD UPC code. I set my prices based on the provided average value, the lowest price and the Amazon price. I felt good about the list of items I had in the shop. Not a full day went by before my first item sold; a book. This is where amazon drops the ball. They know which book I'm about to ship to the buyer because I entered the ISBN, they showed me a picture and the title and I completed the item creation for sale. But they gave me a $3.99 'shipping credit' when the actual shipping was going to cost over $9. Okay, so The customer payed $8 for my book. Amazon took $4 as commission and gave me $4 as a shipping credit. I shipped the book for $9. I essentially paid that guy to take my book. That's jacked, if you ask me. I didn't need to be rid of it that badly. Amazon has these individual book weights on file. They have to. How could they not. I emailed this to Amazon and explained that I shouldn't be subject to a wimpy system when they are using a powerful system as part of the same brand and service. My $4 commission paid should cover my exposure to customers as well as the ability to allow the customer to pay actual shipping costs. I don't have a shipping scale, nor should I have to weigh each item, I am safely assuming that their system has the weight of each item in an accessible database. They emailed me back with instruction to increase my prices to cover shipping costs. I emailed them back explaining that this was unreasonable. No two books are the same and it shouldn't be on us to calculate coverage of our shipping expenses into the price of the item. My reply bounced. What?! No reply address for any email from any company should ever hit a bounce bin. It should go to someone. Even if that person manually routes it to the right place, acting as a communication routing center for lost or misdirected email. Sure put a SPAM filter in front of that person's inbox, but every time a customer takes the time to email you, you must accept that email, process it with a human and respond appropriately. Every time. Period. Amazon Seller Central: FAIL (...So far. Get your act together Amazon.)
