Amazon pushed out updates to their amazing Amazon Seller App a week or so ago, and there are some great modifications, and one that I really, really, don’t like and am trying to see what alternatives exist to fix. Just in case you aren’t familiar with the Seller App, I’ve got two pretty extensive posts on it as part of my Beginners Guide to Fulfillment by Amazon, see FBA Seller App Part 1, and Part 2.
Amazon Seller App Enhancements
First lets talk about the awesome stuff. From the Home Screen, you can now scan a product with a single touch:
I think anyone who uses the app to scan products would agree, this is a huge time saver!
Next up, is the “Sell A Product” option, this leads you to a less aesthetically pleasing screen, but infinitely more helpful than the previous version.
Here you still get the helpful search field, and the scan field, in case you changed your mind. But you also get a number of new options, including Top Sellers, Movers and Shakers, Hot New Releases, Recommended Products, and of course, your Favorites and Search History. In my experience, most of the Top Sellers that come up, are usually sold by Amazon already, so some of those new options don’t do a whole lot for me. But I do like fewer taps or clicks.
Now The Bad
Let’s say you’re in the store, you’ve just scanned a product:
“Wow!” you say, only $1.62 in Amazon Fees… It must be too good to be true! Well, unfortunately, it is, you see, if you click on the arrow next to “Gross Proceeds*” you’ll soon find that you were given the fees for Merchant Fulfilled:
Now, the whole benefit of being an Amazon Seller, is leveraging Fulfillment by Amazon, right? So you want to see what the FBA costs are:
As is always the case, it is a big difference. This of course means that despite one fewer taps to get to the scanning tool, you need one additional tap per product, which can lead to a lot of taps!
Wrapping Up
It is great that Amazon continues to improve the Amazon Seller App, however, not everything is an improvement. I’ve got a ticket into Amazon (and have been going back and forth over e-mail) about this, and hope that they will have a solution to get FBA fees as the default when you do a product search or scan. Until then, be forewarned! Always verify the Amazon Seller Fees before buying!
I first learned about Amazon FBA fees the hard way. I purchased 40 items to sell via FBA for about $5 each, then learned that the seller fees exceeded this number. So, I lose about 50 cents per item sold.
They are moving slowly, because another seller is listing the same item for $4…he must be losing $1.50 each.
@Miles – are you a professional seller account? If not, and you think you’ll do more than 40 or so products, you may want to look into it, as you’ll save the $1 per product fee.
I’m surprised they don’t offer that option on iOS. I’m using the android app and can change the default fulfillment channel for fee estimates and lowest price via Settings / Product Search.
@Cav – I’d love to know how to do that. I’ve tried on my android app, and don’t see the option.
Menu icon in the top left corner.
On the menu that pops out, gear icon in the top right corner, next to the American flag.
Product Search
Default Fulfillment Channel
Pingback: FBA Seller App Enhancements Part 2 – A Fix! – Tagging Miles
Same as what the previous two said, you can change that setting. Also, it looks from your screen shots that you don’t have a shipping estimate saved, not sure if you knew that you can do that too. You input your average shipping fee per pound, the app saves the info and will calculate that with your net proceeds. I like the new format of the app!
Pingback: 2016: Looking back at quite the year of Reselling on Amazon - Tagging Miles