An Amazon FBA seller explains how unauthorized resellers hijack listings, undercutting prices and shipping fake products. He lost thousands in sales and ad spend before locking his listing, then walks through five steps to stop it: close when out of stock, pause ads, warn the hijacker, use Transparency codes, and get Amazon to lock the listing permanently.
One of the worst things that sucks about being an Amazon FBA private label seller is hijackers. If you guys don't know what a hijacker is, basically not all the time, but it's Chinese sellers selling under your listing and undercutting your price. And because they're undercutting your price, Amazon's going ahead and rewarding them as the owner of that product because of the price point. And it sucks because you're driving ad spend to your actual listing and somebody else is basically getting the sale instead of you. And number 2, most importantly, they're probably not selling your actual item. So when somebody receives it in 2 to 3 weeks, because that's how long it takes for a hijacked product to arrive to a customer, if it's not the same exact product, they're likely going to leave a bad review. So what do you do in the circumstance where you get a hijacker? Number 1, if you are out of stock already, close your listing. You're basically primed to go ahead and get a hijacker if you're basically out of stock. Number 2, and it sucks, if you're in stock, you have to stop running ads. There is no point in you running ads to a listing where someone else is going to get the sale. So stop running ads. Number 2, you got to send them a message immediately letting them know that they are an unauthorized seller and you will take legal action if they don't go ahead and take off the actual listing. Number 3 is potentially getting transparency codes ready. That means every single one of your products gets a transparency UPC code, right? And this is all to go ahead and, you know, you want to go ahead and be doing this and be proactive, but obviously you have to go ahead and purchase the product itself too and tell Amazon that this is an unauthorized seller. It's a huge headache. I've had hijackers before. I lost thousands of dollars because of these hijackers, but now my listing is locked. So no one can go ahead and sell under my listing. And it took a lot of hard work of reaching out to Amazon, hiring attorneys and doing this and that in order to get those listings locked. But it's one of the biggest headaches ever.
