Amazon advice needed

Hintza

Assuming you have all the correct emails from amazon telling the sale is complete and they are kosher. then you send the item.

Your problem is with Amazon not the buyer. So if you hold your buyer to ransom over an Amazon issue you will have a very annoyed buyer. I had this happen to me at the start of my amazon career. You must post item and then chase up Amazon but i suspect they will make you wait the 30 days.

When it happened to me they had £3,000 of my money tied up (all my working capital). It is a pain but you just have to get on with it and treat your customers correctly and kick up a stink with amazon.

pinkgem

I haven't said I am not going to send the item, I said above I will send it on Wednesday 27th December.

Although an annoyed buyer would be the least of my worries had I decided not to send it.

What reason could Amazon possibly have to keep £300 of my money for 30 days?

Why did they have £3000 of your money?

redcar_2

Hi Pinkgem

This must be realy annoying for you.

A couple of points. You only got alerted to this pending sale because the buyer mailed you. So you could well have had pending sales in the past which either eventualy went through as normal sales or disappeared. From the Amazon board, pending sales seem fairly common and to relate to either Amazon or the buyer's payment details and don't reflect on the seller at all.

Secondly the mail Amazon sent you doesn't say you have violated the agreeement. It has more the tone that you have triggered a normal checking process as FFM says. Maybe this is due to volume of expensive sales (third time unlucky?) if its not that this is the first expensive item you have sold. Starting with congratuations doesn't sound like the start of a telling off to me.

I also tend to transfer money from my Amazon account if it has built up to above about £50 as I prefer it in my interest bearing account rather than Amazon's paws! I think Hintza and Soolin thought you meant you wanted to wait until the funds are in your bank before posting but I'm guessing you just want them on the way. If I had £300 I'd also want to know it was on the way at any time of year!

Given that you may have just fallen into one of Amazon's annoying but standard checks I think you may struggle to get out of this. If you really can't afford to have the funds tied up for this time then I guess your only option is to cancel the sale, but this will disappoint the buyer and I would have though Amazon may look on this more negatively.

Having the funds on the way wouldn't protect you anyway if there was a dispute as Amazon would draw this out of your account anyway so even if it feels safer it isn't. There is nothing at the moment to suggest the buyer in this case is going to cause a problem. I 'presume' Amazon won't withhold of their own accord especially if you have proof of delivery.

Personally I would just post the item as per normal, wait for Amazon to do whatever and look forward to a nice end of January windfall. I guess stakes are just higher when its large sums of money.


HTH

pinkgem

redcar wrote:

Hi Pinkgem

This must be realy annoying for you.

A couple of points. You only got alerted to this pending sale because the buyer mailed you. So you could well have had pending sales in the past which either eventualy went through as normal sales or disappeared. From the Amazon board, pending sales seem fairly common and to relate to either Amazon or the buyer's payment details and don't reflect on the seller at all.

Secondly the mail Amazon sent you doesn't say you have violated the agreeement. It has more the tone that you have triggered a normal checking process as FFM says. Maybe this is due to volume of expensive sales (third time unlucky?) if its not that this is the first expensive item you have sold. Starting with congratuations doesn't sound like the start of a telling off to me.

I also tend to transfer money from my Amazon account if it has built up to above about £50 as I prefer it in my interest bearing account rather than Amazon's paws! I think Hintza and Soolin thought you meant you wanted to wait until the funds are in your bank before posting but I'm guessing you just want them on the way. If I had £300 I'd also want to know it was on the way at any time of year!

Given that you may have just fallen into one of Amazon's annoying but standard checks I think you may struggle to get out of this. If you really can't afford to have the funds tied up for this time then I guess your only option is to cancel the sale, but this will disappoint the buyer and I would have though Amazon may look on this more negatively.

Having the funds on the way wouldn't protect you anyway if there was a dispute as Amazon would draw this out of your account anyway so even if it feels safer it isn't. There is nothing at the moment to suggest the buyer in this case is going to cause a problem. I 'presume' Amazon won't withhold of their own accord especially if you have proof of delivery.

Personally I would just post the item as per normal, wait for Amazon to do whatever and look forward to a nice end of January windfall. I guess stakes are just higher when its large sums of money.


HTH

I have had a number of pending sales in the past for cheaper items, but I have been alerted to the pending status by a pending email from Amazon telling me not to send the item yet until I receive a confirmation email, and if nothing after 72 hours then item is relisted.

I have a very strong feeling that the Amazon email is directly related to the phonecall complaint from Mrs S.W... although I don't know why it should because I had not officially sold the item to her until 24 hours later when I finally received the confirmation email. Although Amazon did at one point tell her that I had received the funds when I hadn't, they then told her they had an internal system error! Anyway a refund was issued as requested (since it was too late for xmas delivery) within 5 minutes of receiving the confirmation email.

There is no dispute with the eventual buyer of the Wii, they are not expecting despatch until 27th or 28th December and I have had no contact from them.

If I waited for the funds to reach my own bank account before I posted items that would mean I could not send items for at least a week! I simply withdrew the money asap as it was rather a large amount and I would rather it was in, or at least on its way to, my bank account.

I think I will email Amazon the SD tracking numbers for the 2 other Wiis I have already sold, and tell them I will email the SD tracking number for this Wii when I post it on Wednesday 27th.

redcar_2

I would give them a rocket for selling the same item three times. If you look on main Amazon thread there seems to have been a few instances of this type of mix-up.

Maybe the trigger was volume of refunds? My first sale went totally wrong as I didn't check my account and the SDN and first buyer query mail didn't come through. First I knew of the sale was when I had the A-Z dispute mail! I refunded immediately and think I remember something about if you do loads of refunds its a problem. As you've only had to do these as Amazon have sold the same item three times I would hope they would call off the dogs! If not hopefully having the tracking should get your funds released quick.

pinkgem

I have another problem now, I have just logged into my account and I have over £600, it appears I have sold the Wii to somebody else yet I have not had a confirmation email or any emails from Amazon regarding this order, the sale is complete and I have the funds in my seller account! So now I have to refund a 2nd person.

redcar_2

:rotfl: Won't this be refund three? I count Mrs S W and K O. Is this item still in your open listings!! Or somehow are there multiples of the listing?

Getting to sound a bit farcical from Amazon's side. I would make sure no instances of this cash cow wii are in open sales otherwise you could be refunding all Christmas!

pinkgem

I have looked further into my transactions and Amazon themselves cancelled a number of sales for the Nintendo Wiis I sold at the beginning of December, so in total I have only had 3 to sell but have sold 10 altogether!

3 being successful sales (2 already sent and 1 waiting to be sent) I have now had to refund 4 myself (3 previously and 1 just now) and Amazon have cancelled 3 of them that I wasn't even aware of - maybe they were pending orders than never completed. I only ever listed 3 for sale!

pinkgem

redcar wrote:

:rotfl: Won't this be refund three? I count Mrs S W and K O. Is this item still in your open listings!! Or somehow are there multiples of the listing?

Getting to sound a bit farcical from Amazon's side. I would make sure no instances of this cash cow wii are in open sales otherwise you could be refunding all Christmas!

I have only listed 1 at a time, I have checked they were removed after sale and there are none for sale at the moment.

So if the investigation is due to the number of refunds on my account then the reason is because Amazon have been selling my items for me when I don't have anymore to sell!

They are holding my money for up to 30 days because of errors in their system!

redcar_2

Sounds like it!

Hopefully the delay on your funds should be far shorter than 30 days given the rest of the circmstances. I guess its good that alarm bells have rung about your account as there certainly sounds like there is a problem (on Amazon's side).

Hope the call to Amazon goes well.