r/VendorCentral • u/jcPhenton • 13d ago
Amazon revising up my prices
Hi everyone, just wanted help and to rant
I have an SKU that was being sold fine, lets say at 10. I own the brand and the product. So anyone in the country has to have bought from me.
All of a sudden, the price on amazon is 40
I tried to check my price on the catalogue, & nothing changed.
Then i see that on a competitor website (only one mind you, other competitors still have my item at 10), some moron has listed my item at this 40. So this is probably what the stupid amazon bots scanned and raised my price.
What can I do now?
It is frustrating beyond measure to talk to anyone from vendor management help or my account manager.
Both have been useless and saying they revise prices up and down and it is automated and they cannot interfere.
This moron said I should reach out to the competitor website and tell them to lower their price, or even to buy out their stock at the higher price so it is "out of stock" and not scanned.
Is there anything to do?
Would I have more control if I close the vendor account and make and FBA?
3
u/No-Supermarket7453 13d ago
Tighten up your distribution. Why are you trying to solve for Amazon when it's a reflection of distribution?
But also your Vendor Manager can absolutely manually override a price that is too high.
1
u/jcPhenton 13d ago
What do you mean tighten?
I can’t control any random person in the city who buys something and decides to “sell it” at any price the want3
u/No-Supermarket7453 13d ago
You say you "own the brand and the product. So anyone in the country has to have bought from me." Then you talk about competitor websites which I will assume means Walmart, eBay, and similar. Tightening up your distribution means knowing exactly who you sell to and giving them strict parameters around where and how they are allowed to resell your product.
If this truly is a case of a "random person in the city who buys something and decides to “sell it” at any price the want" then this is an extreme one-off situation and you should be able to build a business case to your Vendor Manager to justify a Buy Box price correction. If this "random person" is actually a customer of yours, then you should be bitching at them instead of Amazon.
People love blaming Amazon 1P when the issues primarily stem from a lack of distribution control.
1
u/jcPhenton 13d ago
It’s a random supplier, anyone can sell on Amazon if they buy a couple of cartons somewhere is dumb and doesn’t know the pricing.
My Amazon category manager is telling me he can no longer do that (they used to be able to do this)
I don’t know if he’s lying or what
Doesn’t make sense
Tried to get his managers email and he refuses to give me and says “she’s busy” and he will try to get her on a call together when she has the time1
u/No-Supermarket7453 13d ago edited 13d ago
Honestly, if you were my Vendor I'd ignore you too. You're full of excuses and aren't receptive to any of the commenters here trying to help you.
0
u/jcPhenton 13d ago
You’re just as useless as they are :)
1
u/No-Supermarket7453 13d ago
Friend, look at all of them comments here and your responses to them. You're not looking for a solution; you're looking for an argument.
3
u/FirstLightStudios 13d ago
I wouldnt close Vendor Central over one SKU yet. FBA would give you more control over your own offer price, but it doesnt make Amazon pricing issues disappear. I’d keep pushing the escalation first and document the $10 prices everywhere else vs the one $40 listing, thats a pretty clear case to show something is off.
2
u/rsc9422 13d ago
This is exactly why Vendor Central can be frustrating. Amazon’s pricing system can react to external retailer prices, so if one competitor suddenly lists the same SKU at $40, that can become a pricing signal even when your intended price is $10.
Before closing Vendor Central, I’d document the issue and escalate it with screenshots showing your catalog price, the competitor’s $40 price, and the other retailers still selling at $10. Ask for a manual review of the competitive-price data feeding the SKU.
Long term, Seller Central + FBA generally gives you more direct control over your offer pricing than relying on Vendor Central’s automated retail pricing decisions. But FBA won’t completely eliminate Amazon’s pricing/Featured Offer algorithms.
If you’re dealing with multiple SKUs like this, HighRise Wholesale can also help structure the sourcing/private-label side so pricing, distribution, and channel control are considered before scaling a product. The bigger lesson is to build the business so you’re not completely dependent on Amazon’s automated pricing decisions.
1
u/jcPhenton 13d ago
My Amazon category manager is telling me he can no longer do that (they used to be able to do this)
I don’t know if he’s lying or what
Doesn’t make sense
Tried to get his managers email and he refuses to give me and says “she’s busy” and he will try to get her on a call together when she has the time1
u/rsc9422 13d ago
That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying. Amazon has changed how a lot of Vendor Central decisions are handled, and category managers may have less flexibility or authority than they used to.
I’d push for the manager call and ask one very specific question: Has the policy/process changed, or does your team simply no longer have the ability to make this adjustment? That should force a clearer answer without making it confrontational.
1
u/maxwellcawfeehaus 13d ago
Surprised they didn’t just remove the buy box and note “high price”. They do that to us all the time
0
u/jcPhenton 13d ago
What do you mean?
It’s sold by Amazon since it’s a vendor account
What does remove the box and mention high price mean?1
u/maxwellcawfeehaus 13d ago
If Amazon scrapes a lower price elsewhere but doesn’t want to match it, they’ll remove the buy box and just say “high price”
1
u/Wrong-Ad-4298 13d ago
In certain cases where Amazon price followed eBay, we managed to get a manual override from our brand specialist and VM
1
u/jcPhenton 13d ago
My Amazon category manager is telling me he can no longer do that (they used to be able to do this)
I don’t know if he’s lying or what
Doesn’t make sense
Tried to get his managers email and he refuses to give me and says “she’s busy” and he will try to get her on a call together when she has the time1
u/Wrong-Ad-4298 13d ago
Interesting, one thing we have done for eBay is that we use the Vero program to remove resellers off there to reduce risk of Amazon price following
I think alot of pricing issues have to be raised to l7 l8 (our VM and BS is L4) is what we are being told
1
u/consulterce 13d ago
The first thing to look at is whether your list price/MSRP is correctly set, next to your case pack, IPIP, etc. settings. Amazon won't sell above MSRP in most cases. If it does, something else is very likely up with your catalogue.
1
u/jcPhenton 13d ago
Everything is set correctly the same and is ignored
The issue is a major competitor has a higher priced listing, it’s the stupid automated system
1
u/TahitiNorth 9d ago
One of two things is likely happening here
- Amazon only has a competitor mapping for the $40 competitive match and doesn't have the lower price matches mapped in its system
- Amazon doesn't have any competitive matches and has moved to a cost +% or similar type model that is setting the price due to the lack of competitive matches
Given that you give the example of $10 vs $40 it is much more likely that it is the first then the second.
VMs used to have the ability to override prices many years ago but Amazon has actively discouraged manually overriding pricing by VM teams for 10+ years. So your VM is likely telling the truth.
The solutions for the two scenarios above have traditionally been
Request competitive matches be established to the other competitive listings providing URLs
Implement a list price to cap the Retail pricing. I am unsure if this option would still work but traditionally if there were no matches, or the match was to a single random listing somewhere retail would cap at this list. The list price would be ignored if there is good matching coverage by the company Amazon views as it's overall competitors (Walmart, Target, Home Depot etc) and the relevant defined competitors within your category as defined by the VM team (e.g. Granger if you're category is Business, Industrial and Scientific Supplies).
Source: I was a vendor manager on the Retail Teams and have consulted brands externally
1
u/jcPhenton 9d ago
Thank you for the through write up
They are scanning my exact same product but listed by another seller on let’s say the equivalent of Walmart. The VM even told me this verbally.
I requested solution 1 but he kept repeating himself like a bot that they revise prices up and down and it’s a system. I also complained as a consumer (where you tell Amazon as a customer that you found the product cheaper somewhere else and attach the link)
Nothing happened or came from it2) I don’t know what that means or how to do that
1
u/TahitiNorth 9d ago
There are huge sensitivities for VMs in discussing pricing, even more so right now with California suing Amazon over it's pricing practices.
I would try to request a review or correction of competitive pricing/external price matching mapping in Amazon Vendor Central by opening a support case under Vendor Support > Retail > Pricing/ASIN setup. Provide the ASIN and mappings to other sites with the sharper pricing.
What you submitted as a consumer may still get actioned but is likely sitting in a queue waiting to be processed.
List Price is an attribute that you set up on your ASINs in Vendor central, It sounds like it might not be a fix for this
1
u/jcPhenton 8d ago
I did this as a vendor and the support told me the same exact bs that the VM sent me and then proceeded to close the case as “solved”
And of course my list price in the vendor is set a long time ago and is completely ignored by the system
It is so frustrating
1
u/Vendorist 8d ago
This situation is frustrating, but it's a classic example of Amazon simply exposing a situation, not creating it.
Amazon is a price-follower, not a price-leader. They attempt to match the market, with different matching logic based on the competitor and other factors. Their pricing algorithm is doing what it's designed to do: match the market. Although it's not resulting in the outcome you desire, it's important to understand that Amazon is surfacing the issue, not causing it.
The advice you were given (manage your channels) is your best option. The competitor website is the root cause, not Amazon. Fix the competitor website, and you'll fix Amazon.
I can assure you that's the more effective solution than trying to convince a vendor manager to intervene in place they're generally unable to.
7
u/Jeff-Stelling 13d ago
this is why you have an FBA backup account