Amazon News: Accelerate Takeaways, FTC Fallout & Walmart Mess

Amazon News: Accelerate Takeaways, FTC Fallout & Walmart Mess Unknown Speaker: Welcome, fellow entrepreneurs, to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, everybody. Amazon Seller News Live. Lighten up the lasers over there, Daymond. I love those effects that you got. Those are awesome. I need to get myself a camera like that. Speaker 2: This is an Apple thing. Speaker 1: It's an Apple thing? It's not the camera? Speaker 2: No, it's not the camera itself. It works with any camera. It's an Apple thing. It's called gestures, I think. Speaker 1: Okay, awesome. Well, that's pretty cool. Add a little effect just by making hand motions. And you do the bubbles, I think, when you do the... Speaker 2: Yeah, you can do the bubbles. Let's see. There you go. Speaker 1: Yeah, very nice. Cool, cool. Well, we've got another week's worth of news here to unpack this week and a relatively big week because Accelerate was the end of last week. So we touched on a little bit of Accelerate news, but you were there firsthand. So we can dive into that here with our first news story. Just mention though for everybody out there watching, feel free to throw your comments, questions in there. We'll bring them into the show. If it has to do with the news, awesome. If not and you just want to get a question answered, we always love doing that as well. Let's go ahead and dive into this first article here and get your thoughts standing on the show. Speaker 2: Cool. So there's, I think there might be a little bit of a delay. So I'll just, I'll have to wait until you're done speaking before I answer it. Just my system just kind of delayed for some reason. Speaker 1: So, okay. Yeah. You're coming through good on my end. So no problems there, but All right, so takeaways from Amazon's pitch at its annual conference for third-party sellers. At Accelerate 2025, Amazon emphasized AI as the centerpiece of its future seller tools, showcasing upgrades like the proactive seller assistant for compliance, inventory, and ad support. While flashy AI demos drew attention, sellers gave the loudest applause to the announcement of the ending of commingling. Reflecting their preference for fixes to long-standing pain points. Amazon is also pulling many services in-house. Offering built-in compliance, ad optimization and creative tools that could reduce reliance on agencies, but potentially disrupt service providers. To encourage product innovation, Amazon introduced tools for spotting opportunities, lowering shipping costs and streamlining product launches, aiming to ease pressure from rising fees, tariffs and global competition. So, Lots of stuff there. AI was huge from what I'm reading at the conference there. But some of the bigger things, in my opinion, was again, the commingling. And some of the new data insights that they've been releasing, but you were there live, Dane, and so I'd love to get your thoughts and takeaways. Speaker 2: Yeah, so full disclosure, I spent most of my time speaking with Amazon teams or up in Seller Cafe. You can only go twice to Seller Cafe, but I went there to solve a couple of Interesting issues that I've got going on. There's some fraud happening on my own seller account. So like I help people, you know, I do negative review removal and catalog defender and stuff like that. So I help people all the time with their seller accounts. And but this time it's me. And it's no fun. Well, you know, it's true. It is no fun. But what better person to have this fraud than the person that helps others do this? So what happened was we had someone reaching out to us through the buyer-seller messaging network saying, hey, we'd like a refund. They were like, What happened? Well, it came with greasy, all the stuff on the inside of the box. We're like, oh, interesting. Can you send us a picture? I destroyed it all. Oh, okay. Can you explain to us what happened? And they're like, hey, listen, don't mess around with me. I want a refund. This is your last chance. We're like, look, we're just trying to get confirmation of what occurred because if this is a widespread issue, blah, blah, blah, blah. We knew it was BS from the beginning just based on the order. They were like, we do a 30-day supply, right? And they were like it like 35 days or something like that. And so we had this from two different buyers, right? Two different orders, two different buyer seller messages. And both of them said, hey, listen, if you don't refund me, me and I'm going to have all of my friends buy your inventory, return it and leave you one star reviews. Uh, so that other people don't buy your product. I'm like, yes, yes. And my wife is like, this is going to ruin us. I'm like, no, it's not. This is perfect. The best possible, uh, case study ever. Cause it's my own account, you know? And so, but now here's, here's the, the clincher is that, I don't have these reviews yet and, but we have seen an increase in purchases and returns, which our return rate is, it's less than 1%. You know, if, if, if we get a return, it's like maybe we get a, a few a year, you know? And so, I bring this to Amazon. I show them the buyer seller message and they're like, Oh my gosh, that's like absolutely fraudulent. And guess what help I got from them? Nothing. Speaker 1: Really? Even at the seller cafe. Speaker 2: Yes, even at the Seller Cafe. Speaker 1: I've heard good things about the Seller Cafe. Supposedly, they're able to solve just about everything there. Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. Certainly not everything, but yeah. Seller Cafe makes Accelerate worth going to, but you only get 30 minutes with them. You only get one appointment, in-person appointment. You can do a second appointment, but then it's a digital one. Okay, so like I reserved one appointment for one of my brands that is a client of mine that got hit with over 61 star reviews and went from a four and a half star rating to a 3.6 star rating in six days. And so I'm trying to get, it's like so obviously fraudulent. I'm trying to get help from Amazon on this and I'm actually working with brand registry on this. So that was one appointment. That was my in person one. And then the second one was for my own account. So I did a digital appointment for that. Speaker 1: So, but so they literally seen it and they're like, Oh yeah, that sucks. That's fraudulent. Talk to you later. Speaker 2: More or less, it's more the, oh, yeah, I'm not the team for this. Like, cool, who is? I'll escalate it and get back to you. Like, yeah, sure you will. Speaker 1: Bummer. And have you heard anything from them so far? Speaker 2: I did get an email from the in-person guy that I spoke to about my client, but I got absolutely nothing from the digital appointment. Silly me, I did not write down the person's name. You're on an Amazon Chime meeting. Chime is Amazon's own internally built system. It's like a Zoom or Google Meet, but it's Amazon's. I have no record of the meeting on my calendar or anything like that. Did I take notes? I forget. I don't think I've got the girl's name. She was sympathetic to my situation, but when it comes to resolutions, sympathy doesn't mean anything. Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. What about the one with the 61-star reviews? Did they help you with that at all? Speaker 2: We're still emailing. I just responded to the email that I got from him two days ago. But I also got a connection for one of the guys that runs Brand Registry. Because I brought him a whole bunch of cases in the past, which he told me this year that it sparked an internal investigation at Brand Registry and that they found some sort of gap. So I'm like, dude, you let me know. How I can help you fill that gap and I will be there for you. Like I'll put my own money and time and resources into helping you do that because this is a huge problem for Amazon sellers. Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. And it's, it's so obvious. That's the, what drives you crazy is when these fraudulent things happen. It's so obvious. Like the one that I was dealing with, with a brand that we work on and you know, fraudulent seller jumped on. And they're selling the product for half of what the lowest price it's ever been sold at. And then you look at this seller's catalog and it's all the same. All the products they're selling are products with no other sellers on it other than the actual brand. And they're all at like half price of the real price. It's like, do you need anything to be more obvious that this is a scam? Speaker 2: You know, brand registry was supposed to resolve that issue, right? Then it didn't because of, I don't know, incompetence or whatever. So they did transparency. That didn't solve it. And there's another program. Brand registry, transparency. I forget the other one. Speaker 1: Well, transparency can solve it. It's just so annoying that they want you to put the labels on all inventory that ever exists from here until the end of time now. Speaker 2: Yeah. Serial labels, you know? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: And yes, each one of these things handles a thing, but doesn't terminatedly handle the overarching issue. If I am the trademark holder on a product and I tell Amazon there's someone else selling this product that should not be selling it, Amazon should say, yes, sir, they're gone. Speaker 1: Yes, it should be that simple, especially when it's so obvious. There are some cases where Okay, maybe they bought the product legitimately, but when it's so obvious, it's like, come on. Speaker 2: Yeah. But you should, as the brand owner and the trademark owner, you should be able to say, I'm sorry, brand, but you're not allowed to sell this. You're undercutting us. You're in violation of minimum advertised price policy, my map policy. But Amazon, being founded on giving the best pricing, On the internet, they don't care about your policy. They don't care about your prices. They don't care about your profits. And that's an inherent issue for a company that goes, our production cost is $10. These guys bought this from a stolen shipment that fell off the boat and they're selling it for $12. No, that's not possible. And Amazon goes, oh no, yeah, yeah, it is. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's very annoying. And so here's the thing, right? We're talking about Accelerate. And everything was all about AI, which the seller assistant That's supposedly supposed to solve all of our problems when it comes to seller support. Speaker 2: Yeah, not a chance. Speaker 1: Do you think there's going to be any kind of relief there with something like that on issues like this? Will it be able to help in that kind of case? Speaker 2: I actually do think that. I did go to that. Now, every example that was given at that was like, Oh, you have this issue. Here's the policy on that. And the AI has already prepared the documentation. And all you have to say is yes, right? Dude, I, I'm cautiously optimistic that this will solve a percentage of problems. So I've said it for years. I believe that Amazon automatically declines basically every, every case because it eliminates probably 70% of the work. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Right now, if you can eliminate 70% of the people, That are declining these cases and replace it with an automation and an AI that's trained on the policies having to do with each one of these factors. I actually think you'll get better support that way initially. The moment you have a unique situation, you're going to have serious trouble. Speaker 1: Yeah, and it all depends on the data that it's trained on, right? Because it says that in the article that it has access to all seller support cases, you know, through history, basically. But it's like, does that include all the ones that they gave you the wrong answer? Exactly. Spitting out the wrong answer because the wrong answer was given so many times or will it be trained enough that, you know, ignore these ones that were obviously wrong and just jump all the way to the end and give the correct answer instead? Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, look, no matter what. So here's a couple of things here, right? If it's trained on all the cases, okay, cool. But it's also going to be trained on all the policies. There's so many policies. I've found policies at Amazon that conflict with each other. The most recent one that I found had to do with the Amazon Vine program. In the same contract, On a different section, it says, you may not under any circumstance contact the Vine reviewer. And then it says, if you'd like to use the Vine content for your blah, blah, blah, you may contact the Vine reviewer. So it's conflicting data within a single policy. And so I believe that There's going to be if, if they leave the support solely to the AI, it's not going to work. They're going to have to have some form of human oversight. And I, I, I hope upon hope that they've got a legitimate helpful escalation process away from the AI. But it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon just didn't do that and hid the data or hid the opportunity or the button to get escalated. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. You would hope that they would replace all of the frontline I'm a seller support people who are just button clickers with the AI and that should be able to solve a majority of those first level issues. Like all the questions that a seller would come in and say, Why is my listing suppressed when all you got to do is look at the dashboard and it's suppressed because you've got a bad image? Those kind of questions that go to seller support. The AI should be able to take fine. And so hopefully they take the savings from that, you know, probably pocket 50% of it and then put the other 50% into a higher level support that you can escalate to when AI is like, okay, yeah, I give up. Let's escalate or bring someone else in here. But you know, it's Amazon. I'm not going to hold my breath that that'll be the case. But hopefully it will be I'm very hopeful I. Speaker 2: If they deploy this correctly, it will, it will solve probably the majority of the problems that come to seller support. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: And then they will be able to invest into people that can genuinely help you. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to wait and see. Yeah. Um, did you look into any of the, uh, like the additional data and stuff that they've released? Speaker 2: No. So, um, my, my, there's a couple of things. My account is unique in that. I am not the brand owner of the brand that I sell. And the brand owner, I have to go into their brand registry account, but it's got no sales data. So that and also I rarely actually even go into Seller Central. My wife is the one that runs Seller Central. I do need to go in and look at the metrics. I've heard the metrics have been an amazing upgrade from what they were. Speaker 1: Yeah, there is a lot of extra data. I'm looking at it over here. I can't bring it into the live to show my real life data. But they always had kind of the customer journey there where you could see how they dropped off and everything. But they've got so much additional things in here like trends and your top search queries. And you can click in to each section and just get more detailed data as to who it is that's looking at your product, where they're falling off, how they're falling off. Launch, you know, they've got all these recommended actions and things like that, that you can look into as well. So it's nice that they're giving us all of this data in an actual usable format. It's not just like a tab, a tab separated CSV file, you know, that you got to look at and try to figure out what it is, but it's actually a nice, graphs and formats that you could actually use to make decisions on your product. Speaker 2: Yeah. Cool. Send me the link, your Seller Central link to that. And I'm going to log into, I'm logged into my Seller Central cause I was, Just looking at the subscribe and save. Unknown Speaker: Um, okay. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sending it. Uh, let's see. Let me get rid of the comments. I just threw the comments there. So whoever's looking, they can click on that and get to see their customer journey. So you can see exactly where they came through and where they left. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: They've got, you know, high potential customers that you can then create a tailored promotion to and offer them a discount. And targeting and things like that, that you can use to try to convert those sellers or those customers, I should say. And it works pretty good. The cost at converting those customers is on average that I've seen less than driving ads or paying for ads to try to get new customers. So it's definitely worth doing, putting in those brand tailored promotions. To target, you know, abandoned cart customers or customers that visited your page and didn't add to cart and all those kind of options that they give you in there, which are really nice. Speaker 2: Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I, uh, I'm unable to get into my mind right now cause I'm logged into the wrong seller central account. So there's no, no, no need for me to log out, log in and then start talking about it. We can just go on to the next subject and take too long. Speaker 1: Yeah, no worries. Uh, we've got lots more that we can talk to, but anybody out there, if you haven't looked at your customer analytics page lately, take a look. There's a lot of good data on there that will help you make some decisions for your product. So let's go multi, find this one here to the next article. So this one was kind of cool. So Amazon introduces FBA multi-unit fee discount for business orders. So this post was by Vanessa Hung. She highlights a rare seller friendly update from Amazon, which is so true. A fee discount that boosts net proceeds when sellers apply a 3% or greater business pricing or quantity discount. For multi-unit business orders, Amazon reduces the per unit FBA fulfillment fee, often turning small discounts into net profit gains. This update encourages sellers to drive larger basket size, helping Amazon improve efficiency while strengthening seller margins. For Amazon sellers, the key is to strategically adopt business pricing and quantity discounts to capture both higher sales velocity and profitability. I like this because I already use business discounts to drive larger basket sizes. And it also, we talked about last week, Dane, and how, I think it was last week or maybe it was the week before, how discounts outperform coupons. So maybe it was two weeks ago, because you were here for that one. Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there for that one, yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, so having this for your business buyers is gonna be a discount. It's gonna show up with that strikethrough or additional discounts for buying multiple products. So you're gonna have a similar kind of effect for that. So I think this is a win-win for everybody out there because like I said, I already do this. So just having a discount on the fees is gonna be good and Amazon's actually passing a little bit of that along to us. Which is nice because they're able to ship multiple products in one box when these orders go through Yeah, so they're I'm curious. Speaker 2: I'm always Leary of this sort of stuff What did they change to make more expensive? Mm-hmm you know and If they did do this like they're reducing the FBA fee. That's incredible and They should because I would wager that they must be doing this only for the reason that what they're finding is that business purchases do tend to do more quantities, right? So they're saving loads of money. Speaker 1: It's been a little while since I've seen the news about it, but there was news. It might've been the beginning of this year, earlier this year that Amazon So Amazon was trying to increase its share of business buyers because that's been a place where Amazon's been lacking because there's not as much control on Amazon for that. When you order the same product, you're going to get the same product the next time you order it, right? Which is what businesses want to ensure. And so Amazon's been focusing on that. So this could be a part of that, trying to push more sellers to offer more discounts for business buyers. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, everything Amazon does ultimately is to make more money. Speaker 1: Hey, Amazon sellers, tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. Speaker 2: Yeah, so they'll either do that by attracting more business or they'll do that by raising fees and sometimes by reducing a fee, they attract the business that now they're going to change the fees back or increase them in other spaces, right? We've seen this, you know, AGL and AWD. They said, hey, come on, adopt. Let's start with AWD. They said, hey, if you put your excess inventory into AWD, then we'll give you a 10% discount over here. And then they attracted, I don't know how many, probably tens of thousands of sellers. And then they brought the fee back. Speaker 1: Yes. That's the question. Unknown Speaker: Yes. Speaker 2: So now, you know, a standard 3PL is going to You know, cost you a dollar, but Amazon costs you $1.30, $1.40, $1.50. You know, so I, having been in this game as long as we have and the fact that we are always doing these, these new segments, like we see these things and we see the evolution, everything that they do, they do to attract more business and then they change the fees to make, make that money back. Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath expecting that this is going to be around for good. It definitely could go back to the way it was. It makes sense to have a lower fee for multi products because it's going to cost them less. They're going to be able to ship it in the same box. So it just makes sense. So hopefully it will stay. But like I said in the beginning, I already do this as just a tactic to outsell other people who are selling on a similar listing. Because if you have a business discount set, And the other seller does not, your offer is going to show for the business customer that comes to that listing. You're going to get the buy box over them. So it's a tactic that I've used for a long time. So I'm just welcoming the extra fees back in my pocket. Speaker 2: Excellent for right now. And I do hope it sticks. Speaker 1: And anybody out there, if you're not utilizing it, I would use it, especially, even more so if you're a reseller and you're up against other sellers, because if they don't have these turned on and you do, like I said, you're gonna get the buy box and they're not going to. And if they don't have a business account on their end, the seller that you're competing with, they might not even see that you're offering that discount and they won't even know about it. So it's a little bit of a tactic that you can use. But it's a good thing. Fee decreases are always good, but they will get it back one way or another down the road. Speaker 2: Yeah, somehow they will get it back for sure. Speaker 1: Yes, but it's always good to have a little bit of good news. Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and jump on to the next one here. So Amazon to pay $2.5 billion in FTC settlement over deceptive Prime tactics. So they settled their FTC lawsuit over allegations that Amazon tricked consumers into Prime subscriptions and made cancellations deliberately difficult. The settlement includes $1 billion in civil penalties and $1.5 billion in refunds to around 35 million affected customers. As part of the deal, Amazon must add a clear opt-out button, fully disclose subscription costs and billing details, and make cancellations as simple as enrollment. For Amazon sellers, this signals growing regulatory pressure on the platform, which could reshape Amazon's practices and consumer trust. Going into Q4. So I've got some thoughts on this, Dayna, but I'm curious what you think. Speaker 2: Well, I'm happy that Amazon's got a slap on the wrist. I'm sure it's terrible for them that they've lost 24 hours of revenue. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: But, you know, this is something that, how many years did this go on? When did this case start? It must have been two or three years ago, I think, right? Speaker 1: It was filed in 2023. How long they started doing it, that I'm not sure it's going to tell us in here. 2019. Uh, no, that was a settlement with Facebook. So it doesn't say when they first got started doing the practice, but 2023 is when the suit was filed. Speaker 2: All right. So two years of lawyer fees and like, and then the, the people that are pay had to pay for this. They had to wait two years for their 79 or $89 or whatever it is. Um, here's the thing. These, in my opinion, these things take and I could gripe about this forever, but these things take too long. Change is not effective quickly enough. And, um. And Amazon is not slapped hard enough. So 2.5 billion, that definitely sucks for the company. So they're going to have to do an extra prime day. Speaker 1: Or raise fees. Speaker 2: And raise the fees. So at the end of the day, the government gets a billion dollars. Or 1.5 billion dollars the lawyers get their fees and and the people that were affected by this. You can't directly get a $70 refund, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I calculated at 1.5 billion, assuming it all goes towards the customers of 35 million, that'd be $42.85 a piece. Speaker 2: Yeah. So, okay, cool. I get, I get 40 bucks back. Congratulations me. I can now afford two Starbucks coffees today. Speaker 1: Well, but to get that $42, you're going to have to take an hour and a half to fill out the form that they sent you in the mail and mail it back to them. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever looked at those. I've gotten a few of those and I click on them. And I'm like, no, I'm not filling all that out to get $7. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 2: And so that, you know, three quarters of a billion dollars then just goes into somebody else's pocket, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So, yeah, the only one that I've actually ever filled out and gone to full end was a Wells Fargo class action lawsuit. And that I got many hundreds of dollars back from Wells Fargo that they'd stolen from me, basically. Speaker 1: Yeah, usually most of these that you get emails about or letters about, it's like, hey, claim your $5.42 or whatever. Just fill out this 10-page form and we'll get it to you. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'm sure they make that, the firms make that so annoying that they get to then just keep that money. So, you know, I'm happy to see that in this case that Amazon is required to put an easy cancellation policy. But you know what? That should have been done from the get-go. As soon as they got slapped from that, they should have handled that right away. It shouldn't have had to have been drug out for two years, cost Amazon $2.5 billion. Someone should have just brought the lawsuit and they said, yeah, sorry about that. We'll fix that right now. And then there are people like you and I, Amazon goes, we just lost 1% of our revenue. We need to raise prices. Because we can't show a loss this year to our investors. Speaker 1: So my thought on this before the show, I was just going through some of my notifications on LinkedIn and this post from John Aspinall popped up on there talking about, let me see if I can make that a little bigger, talking about the way that Amazon is changing the subscribe and save and kind of defaulting to it and then changing the button To only buy a single to another way to buy instead of one time purchase. And so I seen you commented on it. If they force me into subscribe and say I'm going to be pissed, which I agree. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And my thought on it was, you know, they just settled for 2.5 billion on shadily leading people to sign up for Prime next. Speaker 2: Yeah. Nice. Speaker 1: Like this is the next $2.5 billion lawsuit by forcing people to sign up for subscribe and save without them even knowing about it. Speaker 2: Yeah. And think of it like this. Let's say you got a hundred million users. You're buying one item a month, right? So you've got 100 million items a month. Let's say 50% of those are subscribe and save worthy. Now you've got 50 million people that are going to, if they force the issue, right? You've got 50 million people that are going to be buying a subscribe and save. They'll get a second unit and go, what the heck is this? Return it. Get a third unit and go, what is going on? Oh, turn that off, right? And so Amazon, if they, now, I hope that John clicked on the subscribe and save initially, but it definitely, go to the other image real quick. So this one, one-time purchase on the left, subscribe and save on the left. On this one, subscribe and save is on the left-hand side, meaning to the eye trail, that's default, right? So they're already through subliminal messaging, we'll call it. It's not so subliminal, but they know that when you read this, another way to buy, I don't know what that is. I just want to check out, right? So if the subscribe and save is checked by default, they're going to cause themselves a lot of pissed off customers, a lot more returns, and a lot more work With their support to buyers. And I hope that John clicked on that. Speaker 1: I am pretty confident that I have seen the subscribe and save defaulted because I've been annoyed by it that I go to check out and then I realize that I'm subscribing and so I gotta go back. Yeah, so here's one right here. I'm just clicking on some listings. Just open this up. And look what the top thing is here, select it automatically, subscribe. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And so if I only want to buy one, I got to click on this little icon down below here. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's insane. That is, that should be illegal. Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets annoying for sure. I've had to catch myself doing it. Now, at least here, they're making it pretty obvious that I'm clicking a subscribe button. But still, to me, it's annoying that they're defaulting to it. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: If you look at this here, it's not obvious that I can click on that and only buy one. It doesn't say anything about buy one here. It just shows like it's another offer. But if I click on it, then you can see it's only buying one. So they're really trying to hide that there's any other option versus subscribe for these kind of products. Now this is on desktop. So, I mean, mobile, it's probably even harder to notice. Speaker 2: Yeah. And me on desktop, I'm not seeing subscribe and save by default on anything that I'm clicking. Speaker 1: I had to click through like 10 of them before I found one that had subscribe and save turned on as an option. You got to make sure you find one that actually has it turned on. I just clicked on a bunch of vitamins and most of them don't have it turned on. Somebody contact all these brands and be like, You need my services to improve your sales. But yeah, all the ones that have it turned on, it looks like it's defaulting. Well, actually, I take that back. So this one has it turned on, but it defaulted to add to cart. It did not default to subscribe and save. So it kind of goes back and forth. I see a future lawsuit coming down the pike on that one. Speaker 2: If nothing else, a future bunch of pissed off customers, but they're going to be pissed off at the brand like, hey, I didn't subscribe to you. Speaker 1: I know I've had to do that once or twice in the past before I realized And I'm clicking subscribe. So if I can do it and I'm in this world and relatively computer savvy, you know, I can just imagine your grandma or your mom is signing up for subscriptions that they know, have no idea that they're signing up for. Speaker 2: Yep. I foresee this being a huge problem. Mark our words, folks. Check back in, in 365 days and let's see if we were right. Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. Speaker 2: We should probably keep track of these predictions that we make. Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be nice. I'll have to have AI go through our transcripts and be like, bring forth all of our predictions. Speaker 2: Yes, perfect. You want to know something funny is Jade and I, when I was at Managed by Stats, we did a weekly news segment on that, right? And I, as a joke, I said, well, Amazon has partnered with Paramount and created a whole new thing replacing this actor with an Alexa or something like that. And then Amazon announced their purchase of Paramount. And I was like, oh my God, that was a total joke. And yeah, so it would really be interesting to take the transcripts of everything that we've done and go, hey, what were the predictions that came true and see how good we are at our job. Speaker 1: Check it out. I don't know if there's a bulk way to download transcripts from Amazon or not, but There is, that'd be. Speaker 2: You mean from StreamYard? Speaker 1: No, I'd probably download the transcripts from YouTube, I mean. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And then put it in a notebook LM. Speaker 1: It's what? Speaker 2: Put it in a notebook LM. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I'll have to try that. Pull them down and see what predictions we've made that have come true over the years. Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be fun. Speaker 1: All right, next article here. How Alibaba is trying to win over well-known Amazon sellers. So Alibaba is aggressively pushing AliExpress to attract established Amazon brands by offering lower shipping costs and taking a smaller commission than Amazon. The company is also expanding its catalog by bringing global brands alongside domestic T-Mall favorites like Xiaomi and PopMart. For Amazon sellers, this signals growing competition in international markets, especially Europe and Latin America, where Aliexpress hopes to gain ground against Amazon, Shein, and Temu. While Alibaba faces tariff challenges and profitability struggles, its incentives could tempt some Amazon sellers to diversify beyond Amazon's ecosystem. So for me, again, I always welcome more competition. I always wish it wasn't from China. But at the same time, more competition is good for sellers if it gives you more places to sell your product and make a profit. Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, Here's my thing on this. I do welcome competition to Amazon and we're starting to see it. We all thought in the beginning that Walmart was gonna be like, oh my gosh, finally a big company is gonna take some market share. Not yet. And then TikTok shop came out and everyone was like, oh my gosh, look at how this is performing. And then Amazon went, uh-oh, let's partner with TikTok and help fulfill orders that way. That way we can at least capture some of that revenue. Um, Alibaba is probably a, quite a well-known place to buy product now and AliExpress, maybe not as much as Alibaba, but probably some, some decent sort, some decent customer base there. The problem that they're going to have to overcome is the, the fact that is direct from China, cheap goods. Speaker 1: Well, that's why I think they're trying to court other Amazon sellers. Now, it says mainly in Europe, which makes sense, but I can see them doing this in the US as well if they're willing to build out the infrastructure. Speaker 2: Exactly. They're going to have to put a significant amount of investment into building trust In the American the Western community, you know, and I see like I just went to Aliexpress and I immediately see this jacket here. This is this is where they're going to have trouble. There's this jacket that says it's basically the North Face logo. It looks like a North Face jacket, but it says the Darth Face. It's actually quite funny. Speaker 1: I'll give you the link. It's a dark face. Speaker 2: Yeah. And here I'll put the link to it right here. Now, I'm no trademark expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if the North Face would have grounds for copyright infringement or not quite trademark. Well, maybe trademark. I don't really know. I'm not an expert, as I said. But this is the sort of stuff that Alibaba, AliExpress is going to have to figure out a way to eliminate. And this is just a random example, you know, but they're gonna have to figure out a way to. Oh, look. Okay. Speaker 1: Taking a while to load for some reason. I got the homepage up over here, though. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Did you see it on the homepage? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, it was. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just, I think it looks like Dollar Express is the one. I'm not. You've got a different. No, no, no. Wait, that's it. Scroll down. Where did it go? Go down further. Speaker 1: Yeah, they're probably swapping it out. Speaker 2: No, no, no. It's down further, down further. Speaker 1: What in the world? Simulated eggplant model plant. Unknown Speaker: Okay. Speaker 1: Smart sensor trash can. Look at that. You got like a tablet on your trash can here. Yep. Speaker 2: It's four rows down from there. Speaker 1: Four more rows down? Speaker 2: Yeah. Next row. There it is. There it is. Speaker 1: There it is. Waterproof military jacket. Okay. What happened? Shoot. Speaker 2: There it is. The Darth face. It's quite funny. Speaker 1: Yeah, but in the United States, that would probably equal a some kind of lawsuit real quick or takedown. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And basically emulating their logo. Speaker 2: Exactly. And there's a, there's a thing above it. It's a leather belt. It says Calvin exact same font and everything as Calvin Klein, but they added two eyes to it. Calvin with two eyes. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: It's just a scroll up a little more and you'll see it. Let's see if it's there. Speaker 1: Hmm. Speaker 2: There. Speaker 1: Oh, yes. Ah, yeah. See, so those are definitely going to be problems in the US. And I would imagine Europe as well. I mean, you can't, you can't try to confuse customers. And that's obviously what they're trying to do there. Now. Now this one, What's going on with my browser? The dark face one, the jacket here, that you could claim parody and maybe get away with that. But if you're familiar with Stephen Pope, he was doing that with his tumblers, doing parody of like Star Wars and things like that on his tumblers. Amazon ended up taking all those down after like a decade of selling them or something like that. But he got all those taken down, so it probably wouldn't fly. Legally, you could probably get away with it, but on Amazon, they would probably side with North Face and take it down. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. But AliExpress, Alibaba is not Amazon. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: But you know what? If this gets big enough of a platform in the American market, Well, then companies like this, they're going to be subject to these legal fees no matter what, you know, and they're going to have some trouble. Speaker 1: It's going to be interesting to watch as with all of these. In the US, it's just going to be harder now with the closing of the loophole. So they're not going to be able to get the cheap goods from China so cheaply, if cheaply is a word. So they're going to have to be courting more U.S. based sellers and also increasing the price on their products that they're sending over the U.S. But, you know, competition is good. But how is Amazon replying, responding to the competition? Well, right there, they're increasing the delivery speeds for Walmart, Shopify, and Shane. Apparently, from what I've read now, the multi-channel fulfillment for these other E-commerce stores is at three days now. Hmm. They're guaranteeing supposedly three business days delivery times. Speaker 2: Pretty good. Speaker 1: So Amazon is just responding to the increased competition saying, okay, yeah, just give us your money for fulfillment then. Speaker 2: Yeah. Logistically. And honestly, yeah, look, There's two sides to this coin, of course. In one way, that's a good thing. They finally worked it out where they're going, okay, you know what? We know that our sellers don't solely want to rely on Amazon.com to make their sales and that in order to expand a brand, you have to expand off of Amazon anyhow. So some genius over at Amazon went, well, why don't we just go ahead and support them in doing that rather than prevent them from doing that. I don't know why this company, it takes so long for them to realize that they can't just control everything, but But then they go, wait, but we can control part of everything. Speaker 1: Yeah. So I wonder, I think this is just a natural growth to Amazon, but I wonder if all of this kind of rapidly coming out lately over the course of the last few months has anything to do with the other lawsuit that Amazon is dealing with, which is the suppression of the buy box. And, you know, price fixing essentially by suppressing the buy box on sellers that didn't have the price where they wanted the price. Speaker 2: Yeah, that is one thing that, you know, this has been going on for a long time as well. But I hope that Amazon doesn't just get their face slapped for this. I hope they get their jaw broken from a haymaker on this one. Because that is completely unacceptable. You cannot tell me where I can and cannot sell and how much I can and cannot sell for. You can mitigate what I can sell it for on your platform by If you're charging me fees and stuff like that, that is a convenience fee for me. I'm happy to pay that, but don't tell me what I can do in my own business. You're not a, you're like, this is, this is, uh, you know, like the, the kind of person like, Hey, the government can't tell me how I can live my life. You know, well, Amazon can't tell me how I can run my business. I'm happy to use it as a platform and I do and I'm basically 100% all in on Amazon. But to do that, I've had enough suppressions and suspensions that it's like, To me, Amazon overall is untrustworthy because they have so many gaps and, and random issues and they shoot first and don't ask questions at all. And when you go, Hey, what happened? Like, Oh, something happened, but we can't tell you what happened. Like, okay, well, what do I need to do to fix it? Oh, for that, you're going to need to know what happened. Like, cool. What happened? No, no, no, no. You have to figure that out. Once I figure it out, what do I need to get you? Oh yeah, you'll have to magically know that. Speaker 1: Yes. That is frustrating. Speaker 2: Yes. To that degree, look, I have 15 years of this. Amazon used to be a phenomenal company to work with. Absolutely phenomenal. I had great customer support and that's all gone now. I'm not gonna say they've gotten too big for their britches because they've definitely expanded with their own expansion and put in lots of stuff. But like Vanessa just said, rare is it when Amazon does something that actually helps the seller and is beneficial. More common is that they put some sort of policy or change in price that negatively impacts, especially smaller sellers. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. They, you know, in the beginning they were courting sellers as much as customers. Speaker 2: Correct. Speaker 1: You know, and that was the case for quite a long time where now it's kind of the opposite. They're like basically trying to get rid of sellers. Speaker 2: That's what it feels like. Speaker 1: In favor of bigger sellers and that they may or may not have to deal with as much in, in seller support. So it's kind of gone the other direction, which is where competition is beneficial. But at the same time, then Amazon is like, okay, yeah, competition, but now we're just going to take a piece of the pie from our competition for delivery and get our money that way. But I definitely think this has something to do with the buy box suppression lawsuit that's going on. It'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. Hopefully, like you said, it'll be a giant smack to the face instead of a little slap on the hand. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: But, you know, Amazon is just changing and adapting to make sure they get a piece of the pie regardless of where you sell. Speaker 2: Yeah, here's what I'd like to see from the FTC is rather than saying, hey, we caught you on this. You got to pay us $10 billion. And then everyone drinks champagne because they made $10 billion that week. They go, you have to invest $10 billion into resolving this problem. And we want to know and see exactly where every dollar is going and how you improve this issue. That's what I think the FTC should mandate is, cool, you got a problem here? Invest into fixing it. Show us what you've done. Because yeah, Amazon loses $5 billion, $10 billion, $20 billion. Yeah, that sucks for them. Ultimately, we're the ones that pay that price because If they're going to show a loss on their, on the PNL, they just go, well, where can we make this money? Let's have another prime day and charge people an extra 10%. All right. But yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. It'll be a never, never ending cycle. That's for sure. Big, big businesses are, this is built into their, They're forecasting essentially these kind of lawsuits. They're going to push the envelope until they get smacked and then they're going to shift to something else. It's just part of doing business for them. They're just going to keep pushing until they get pushed back and then they'll Refocus somewhere else, pay the fine. Okay, sounds good. We'll pay you $2.5 billion because we made $10.5 billion or $25 billion or whatever the case may be off of doing that regular practice. So ROI was pretty good for us. We spent $2.5 billion to make $25 billion. Let's do it again somewhere else. Speaker 2: Exactly. Here's your sales commission governmental agencies. The other thing is on the review side, Amazon was suspending people like crazy for review manipulation. They still do, right? And yet was found guilty of review manipulation on their own products like Amazon Essentials and stuff like that. And so 2015, you had a huge surge in sellers. And so these sellers would go out and get a whole bunch of five-star products and then the sales would go up and then Amazon said, hold on, you can't do that. Anyone that you give a product for in exchange for review has to say it in the review. So everyone did that, right? And then Amazon went about a year later, went up. Never mind, you can't do that. They deleted all those reviews and a whole bunch of other reviews that were completely legitimate and causing mass mayhem for lots of brands that were savvy on this. And then they went, nope, nobody can do paid reviews at all. And a little while later, like, hey, we came out with a Vine program where you can pay for reviews. Speaker 1: Yeah, we made this great service to help you because we love you. Speaker 2: Yes. And they went, you pay us for the review. Then give this person the product for free, who's contractually bound to give diversity of reviews. It's not only good or bad. So they have their own little review manipulation system, but they still got slapped around for that. And so their response to that was to hide the reviews on products. So you've got these products that have 500, 5,000, 50,000, 500,000 reviews, and Amazon only displays the last 100. You cannot locate the other ones. Well, not, I mean, I can, It's part of how I do what I do, but that's the response is to hide the evidence. Come on. This is the stuff that really makes me upset. I don't care that Amazon had to pay $2.5 billion. I want a resolution. Speaker 1: Fix the problem. You mentioned Vine. It makes me think about some other news that I've seen. I haven't been able to collaborate it and show for sure that it's happening but I've seen some mentions that with Vine, You're going to be able to select which reviewers you want to review your product. So you can hone in more and target people that will actually know about your product. So you're not giving away like an electric drill to someone who's a baker or something who's never picked up a hammer before in their life. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that actually, That does make sense. So there's an influencer program out there called LaVanta. I'm sure you've heard of it, right? And LaVanta is working on things, something like that to match the brand to the type of reviewer. Because I'm a LaVanta influencer, but my stuff is so niche. I am a video content creator in the off-roads and overland space. So that eliminates 99% of the products that are on there like don't you can't come to me for content on supplements, you know, so That was one of the things I've been talking with them a little bit back and forth because I need to get to the correct brands and then have correct expectations on what I'm going to be delivering. But yeah, I think that's a good thing as long as Amazon's not going to divulge exactly who the people are. I think what they're going to do is you can choose categorically, categorically the type of reviewer that you want. So someone that does a lot of supplements, someone that does a lot of outdoors, someone that does a lot of electronics. Speaker 1: Yeah. And hopefully my hope for that categorization would not be I'm categorizing them based on the reviews that they're doing, but categorizing them on the products that they're buying for themselves. This person buys a lot of tools, so let's put him in the tool reviewing category, because obviously they're a real consumer of those products. Speaker 2: Yeah. You know what? I actually need to get on the Amazon Vine program just to see what it's like. I'm hesitant to do that because I'm a buyer, a seller, and now a content creator on Amazon. How biased can I get in the eyes of Amazon? Speaker 1: I was looking at how to get into Vine and it looks like right now the only way is basically writing reviews on Amazon and then get invited to it. Speaker 2: You used to be able to submit. I was declined twice. Despite having many thousands of followers, I was declined twice. And then if you get declined a third time, that's it, you're out. Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah, probably it could be because you're a seller. I mean, it makes sense. I'm in the Amazon Influencer Program, though, and I'm a seller. And I create videos for the products that I sell, and they let me do that. So they don't seem to have an issue with that. But maybe with the Vine reviewer program, they're a little more strict on it. Speaker 2: Yeah. We'll have to see. I'm going to try and get into it. I've told my wife, I'm setting you up a tabletop where you can just like, we buy so much from Amazon that it just doesn't make sense for her not to be producing content on it. Speaker 1: It's a little stream of income. I mean, if you're already getting the products, why not? Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. If you make an extra couple hundred bucks a month, I mean, maybe that's groceries for you. If you're a single individual, a few hundred dollars a month, that could be groceries. Speaker 1: Yep. Yep. For sure. For sure. All right. Well, we are over the top of the hour, Daynon, so let's go ahead and wrap it up there. Appreciate you coming on the show as always. Speaker 2: Always. Speaker 1: And everybody out there watching, appreciate you joining us. We'll be back here next Friday, 1 p.m. Eastern time. So look forward to seeing you then. See you. Have an awesome weekend. Speaker 2: Bye. Speaker 1: See ya. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller. And always remember, success is yours if you take it. Speaker 1: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.