Tagging Miles

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

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There’s a super awesome deal going on now, that gives you 20% back on Amazon Purchases, up to $100 back, if you pay with at least one American Express Membership Rewards point. Doctor of Credit has a great and updated post on the deal. But as I was going through Amazon, I realized I’d never linked my accounts, as a result, I couldn’t use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon!

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

Linking is fairly easy to do, first you want to go to Amazon.com/Membership Rewards

Use Membership Rewards on Amazon

You’ve still got a few steps to go through though.

You’ll want to click that Get Started link, then you’ll see the following screen:

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

Once you decide to add an account, you’ll need to enter your name and your credit card number:

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

From there you’ll have to confirm address, then provide just a bit more info:

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon.

Once you’ve enrolled, you’ll just need to select an American Express card to pay with, then you should have the option to pay with points. 

Wrapping Up

Hopefully this provides a pretty easy to follow way to link your American Express Membership Rewards card to your Amazon account. More importantly, hopefully this provides you a way of maximizing some of the incredible opportunities like the 20% off purchases, up to $100 back deal that is currently happening. But I’d imagine there are so many more awesome deals to come!

Reselling, the next frontier for Manufactured Spending

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Whether you feel the golden era of manufactured spending has passed or not, the fact remains that opportunities tend to close faster than new ones open up. Pure manufactured spending (Read: Introduction to Today’s Manufactured Spending) is still viable, but it certainly has gotten harder. Reselling, which I propose to be the next frontier in manufactured spending is no easier. But I would argue that if you take a higher level view, it can open far more doors. It also is your entry into becoming a Weekend Entrepreneur.

Reselling, the next frontier for Manufactured Spending

Manufactured spending at its purest is a form of arbitrage. You are effectively buying miles and points at a discount and redeeming them at a higher value than you paid for them. Reselling is no different in that regard. As we dive deeper though, there are rather pointed differences:

Reselling is a business

That means that you need to consider taxes and reporting responsibilities. 

Reselling avails you the opportunity to earn miles and points at negative cost.

Choosing the right products that you can earn a profit on in their own right, means that the miles and points become pure gravy. Scale that up, and you’ll have no problem with frequent flyer program devaluations but remember, that Amazon can be just like an Airline, they make the rules. 

Mile High Reselling Club

Copyright: lightwise / 123RF

Reselling can be riskier than pure manufactured spending

Because you are buying product, there is the risk that you might have chosen a bad product, or even if you’ve chosen the best product out there, you still have the liability of returns. Bottom line, there is more risk than just having to pay all of your expenses for a month with Visa Gift Cards (Read More: Considerations for Reselling as a Method for Manufactured Spending).

You’re still interested – what are the next steps?

The first step that I always recommend–once you’ve considered the risks—is to consider your risk tolerance and identify a seed budget. Yes, you want to generate thousands of miles and points, but you need to be reasonable as you dive into a business. You want to identify an amount of money that you are willing to lose. Reselling can be like gambling. You are making a bet that a product that you have purchased will sell. If it does sell, you are making the bet that you will make a profit or at least break even. So please, identify a budget and stick to it, as you get your feet wet in this new venture.

Once you’ve identified a budget, consider what marketplaces you want to work with. I’m a fan of Amazon. Specifically, I am a huge fan of selling via Fulfillment by Amazon. Why? Because they do most of the time sensitive work. You source, prep, pack and ship your products to Amazon in bulk. Once your products reach Amazon’s warehouses, all you have to do is tweak the prices to get the products to sell. As your products sell, Amazon pulls them from the bins in the warehouse (read: A Look inside Amazon’s Warehouses) and ships them to your customer. Amazon provides all of the customer service unless the customer intentionally reaches out to you directly—via Amazon. In short – it makes reselling as a side gig feasible.

If you’ve chosen Fulfillment by Amazon, well, you’re in luck, because I have a beginner’s guide that covers creating an Amazon Seller account, all the way through your first shipment and sourcing tips. Check out the guide below:

Once you’ve cut your teeth and sent a few orders, you could even apply to join the Mile High Reselling Club.

Wrapping Up

I realize that asserting that reselling as a method for manufactured spending is not a terribly popular idea within the reseller world. In truth, it increases competition, and it generally pushes down profitability in some areas. Just look at iPad or Apple Watch prices over time. That said, I don’t believe those depressed prices are primarily due to mile and point collectors. I tend to believe that anyone that gets into reselling will logically pursue profit as soon as they see how much work it is. If you think about it, Manufactured Spending is a lot of work in and of itself, and there your “profits” are usually in the single percentage range.

With that said, I still believe Reselling is the next frontier in manufactured spending. I believed this 5 years ago when I started reselling, and it is true to this day, (Read more: My evolution as a reseller). Just know that there is risk, and this is a business. What does that mean? First, always pursue profit, the points will come. Furthermore, this can become work. For me, I bound it in such a way that I enjoy doing it. That doesn’t mean it always balances out though! During busy times like the fourth quarter, I commonly finish my day job only to come home and work for another few hours on the reselling business. Weekends can easily become more time for the reselling business. But you have to have boundaries. If you do, this is an excellent side gig that can also help increase your miles and points balances, and if you do it right, you should make some money too!

Melbourne, Alitalia, End of Punitive Loyalty Era?

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The Weekly Travel News Roundup is a collection of headlines from around the internet that caught the attention of the Tagging Miles team. Content on these blogs do not necessarily reflect the positions of Tagging Miles, and should not be considered endorsements. Have a great story we should read? Contact us now and let us know.

Travel:

  • Another excellent installment from J. M. Hoffman that just leaves me yearning to return to Australia. Impressive how well he characterizes Melbourne (which is by far, my favorite big city outside of the US).
  • How to book LATAM (that’s the combined airline of Chile’s LAN and Brazil’s TAM for those keeping track at home) Awards with Alaska Airlines Miles.
  • Alitalia, an airline that has had its ups and downs over the past few decades, may be entering the final months of its existence. Employee owned may not have been in its moniker, however, the employees may be the ones to have put the final nails in the coffin, in voting down a deal that an 8% paycut, some amount of jobs cut, but the opportunity to refinance debt. I’m not sure this is the end of Alitalia, but, I’m awfully curious how they’ll get out of this one!

Miles, Points, and Reselling:

Tagging Miles:

Last Chance! Remove or Sell Amazon Meltable Inventory

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Selling chocolate and other meltable inventory via Amazon is a great gig in the winter, however, during the summer months, Amazon doesn’t fulfill meltable inventory. This is primarily due to the fact that warehouses are hard to keep cool during the summer. As a result, Amazon marks anything “meltable” as “unsellable” from 1 May to 30 September. 

What to do with Meltable Inventory

Your first bet should be to try to sell it. Most meltable inventory is also perishable, so its entirely possible that you might not be able to sit on it until the end of September. Yes, you might not make as much, or, you might even have a loss, but, at least it doesn’t expire on you.

Meltable Inventory 2017

This probably won’t sell so well in October.

If you can’t sell it, your next best option is to remove it, then you might be able to seller-fulfill or I don’t know, give it to the neighborhood kids. If you don’t remove it by a certain time, Amazon will destroy it for you. Destroy, it sounds so, destructive. Wouldn’t that chocolate be nicer to enjoy yourself, rather than it to be thrown into some giant masher in an Amazon warehouse?

Wrapping Up

As with many aspects of Amazon, this is definitely something you want to stay on top of. If you do a lot of perishables, you’ll really want to check what is and is not meltable. You’ll likely find some things that aren’t truly meltable, are categorized by Amazon as meltable. 

Do you have any meltable inventory left? Will you recall it or discount it?

 

My Top 4 Funny Amazon Reviews

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I happened to see a random Haribo commercial last night, and it brought to mind some random Amazon reviews that cracked me up. First, check out that Haribo commercial:

I’m not saying the commercial is fantastic, but, rather, that it reminded me of this review:

Funny Amazon Commercials

If that was enough to whet your appetite, check out more reviews of the product.

More Funny Amazon Reviews

There are a handful of truly hilarious Amazon Reviews. I have to give Saianel credit for finding this one:

Funny Amazon Reviews

As if this one wasn’t enough, the risk averse in me couldn’t help but get a kick out of the Backyard Carnival of Death:

Funny Amazon Reviews

but, its not done just yet, read more!

Funny Amazon Reviews

In case this is right up your alley, at last check, there were only 3 left, and nearly 2,800 reviews. See for yourself!

The Swiss Army Knife that trumps all knives

Next up is the pocket knife to end all pocket knives, the Wenger 16999 Swiss Army Knife Giant:

Funny Amazon Reviews

The answer to all of your Banana Needs!

If previous funny Amazon Reviews were inadequate for you, perhaps this one will do. The Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer seems like the perfect Private Label item. If only Amazon hadn’t claimed all the credit for this private label and gotten amazing reviews for this Banana Slicer got (5,649 as of this writing!):

Funny Amazon Reviews

So, lets hope that the Banana Slicer is not needed in order to save your marriage, but, in case it is (or you have some other use for a Banana Slicer), please use TravelBloggerBuzz’ Amazon link (since I lost mine)

Wrapping Up – Funny Amazon Reviews

Hopefully this brief review of funny Amazon reviews gave you a bit of a laugh! That said, from the reselling angle, we have contemplated trying to find a good price on some of the above products… if anyone is looking for the 55 gallon drum of lubricant, well, I can tell you, it does not work well as a checked bag….. but it provides more than sufficient entertainment as the baggage handlers attempt to get it into the baggage hold via the conveyor belt… and the real fun, well, that’s when it comes out in the baggage claim. But perhaps that’s a story for another time!

My Experience with Glasshouse Inventory

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Glasshouse Inventory provides an exhaustive inventory reconciliation service. I signed up for Glasshouse Inventory’s service mid-2016. I even had them go back into 2015 to see if there were any reimbursements that I had missed. I even thought so highly of Ashley, the principle of Glasshouse Inventory, that I was happy to have her present at ResellingDO3. At the time I signed up, I had gotten what was really a sweetheart of a deal, I think I was paying as little as $35 a month. Others were paying anywhere from $25-100 a month. 

Ashley grew this business very quickly, and at some point, she signed up some bigger Amazon sellers, and decided that they needed to change their business model. On 7 December 2016, she sent this e-mail out stating that the business model would change effective 1 January 2017:

Glasshouse Inventory

A cleaner view of that new pricing option is below:

Glasshouse Inventory

I opted to stay on, as I was curious to see how everything would work out. Here was my response. 

Glasshouse Inventory

I received a response that essentially said that the lower subscription was a “beta testing phase” and the company had progressed. I get it, you have to make money. 

A few weeks later I received a refund, however it was insufficient, a couple of e-mails cleared that up, but it gave me my first concerns with the level of service I would now be getting, and in fact, paying more money for that degraded service. The key message though, was in response to my question of how the new business arrangement would work, this was the response:

Glasshouse Inventory

I was sent nothing. In fact, I received no communication from Glasshouse Inventory for nearly a month, then receiving an e-mail regarding a new dashboard:

Glasshouse Inventory

I get it, there are growing pains, but, again, related to my previous concern that as a smaller seller, I wasn’t going to get the same level of service as others, and I see at the end: 

If you’d like to schedule a training session, Ashley has availability the week of March 27

This e-mail was sent February 6. Message received, loud and clear. But I still held through for a week. Then, a week later, I had still not received an invitation to my new dashboard. I sent my message expressing my decision to change course.

Glasshouse Inventory

I received a response fairly quickly, directly from Ashley.

Glasshouse Inventory

She also included a screenshot of my dashboard–the one that I had never received an invitation to, mind you. It was still reassuring that she responded as quickly as she did. I want to highlight something here though, which again, gave me hope:

We will send an email when we’re finished with a record of your cases and reimbursements to explain your January bill and finish your services for that month so you can find an alternative going forward.

I responded to Ashley fairly soon after (as I was in Bali at the time):

Glasshouse Inventory

Ashley responded with what I thought was perfectly reasonable. She answered my questions.

Glasshouse Inventory

Then, a few weeks later, I receive an e-mail stating that I had a bill:

Glasshouse Inventory

Great! I expected this, and I had seen a couple of reimbursements come through, but the number seemed a bit high. So, I go to the link, then download the excel of the invoice, expecting to see, as Ashley had assured me I would see – a record of your cases and reimbursements to explain your January bill. What did I see? 

Glasshouse Inventory

Now, I don’t know about you, but that does not look like a list of all the cases and reimbursements. So, I logically sent an e-mail back–in fact, I sent two e-mails back, because I felt I might have been too harsh in my first response.

Glasshouse Inventory

I received no response to those emails, but, then I got another e-mail Saturday and Sunday morning. I get that this is likely automated, but it still frustrated me, because I was not being provided the information I needed to be able to properly compensate Glasshouse Inventory for their services. So I responded again, this time including every e-mail address of the company that I knew–because maybe this was just an automated e-mail address that no one actually reads:

Glasshouse Inventory

As of yet, I have not received any response, but the last bit of this did transpire over the weekend. 

Thoughts on my experience with Glasshouse Inventory

I have to admit, I was impressed with Ashley in the first few months of working with her. Like I said, I had a sweetheart of a deal; a fixed subscription cost. But when she made the change, I had the logical expectation that I’d receive those things that had been promised. Those included:

  • Two Legal Agreements explaining the services of Glasshouse Inventory and timing
  • A Mutual NDA
  • A Dashboard
  • A record of cases and reimbursements to explain my January bill

Unfortunately to the best that I can find in my e-mail (and I had to search through it to get all of those screenshots), Glasshouse Inventory didn’t deliver. Like I said, I get it, a growing company can encounter growing pains, but, logically, anyone would realize that when you’re telling your customer that you are going to charge them more, you want to back that up, right? 

I think the part that frustrates me the most is the lack of following through on promises. But, as I sit back and think about it, I can only imagine how many of the other “beta testers” feel. Glasshouse Inventory clearly cut their teeth on many of us smaller resellers, I dare say, many folks in the miles and points community, and to receive this caliber of treatment, is a shame.

Have you worked with Glasshouse Inventory? What was your experience?

Amazon Seller App Enhancements – 2017 Edition

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Earlier this week, Amazon rolled out changes to their Amazon Seller app. I call these changes because, I’m not entirely sure they are all enhancements. There are some new features though, which I’ll also cover in this post. You can see what the Amazon Seller App used to be like here and here.

User Interface Changes

Most of the changes to the Amazon Seller App appear to be more focused on the User Interface, and ultimately, the user experience. They moved some things around, and provide more detail and functionality on the “Home” screen. The below graphic shows the differences.

Amazon Seller App

 

You’ll notice that there’s more information here. There are a few things I’d like to point out below.

Amazon Seller App

Of particular note, the “Scan” button has been removed from the bottom, and instead resides in the upper left.

At the top there is a slider, where you see your sales for the day, number of products, current balance, next payment (all standard), and adds your Customer Feedback rating. I find that I don’t monitor my rating terribly often, so the functionality on the Amazon Seller App seems to be excessive, but I can understand how others might prefer that. I generally find customer feedback and my seller rating to be most easily managed from Amazon’s Seller Central.

An additional interface change of note, is the removal of a number of key functions from the menu bar on the right.Amazon Seller App

This could impact folks, I know it is impacting me and some of my workflows.

Amazon Seller App Enhancements

With any change, there are usually enhancements. I use this word almost like I would use for an Loyalty Program’s Change since Amazon acts unilaterally, like loyalty programs. In this case, most of the increased functionality seems to be in the data analytics of Amazon Seller App Enhancement

Historically, you could orient the graph to show you month or week, and dollar sales or unit sales. Now you can see a few more options in the screenshot below:

Amazon Seller App

 

I’d imagine that this is beneficial for folks that like to slice the data in multiple ways.

Additionally, you can click on a particular bar, and do further analytics by day.

Amazon Seller App

Again, interesting for those that like to do more data analytics on their phone.

Initial Feedback

I haven’t played around with the app too much, but others on twitter that have weighed in, have highlighted the app’s increased penchant to crash. My personal experience was that it seemed to be a data hog, and without a strong data connection, it was barely functional. In some of the places I source, I usually find that I have a single bar of signal, so this is a particular concern for me. That said, I think things are still pretty new, so it may be too soon to tell.

Conclusion

I’m glad to see that Amazon is continuing to improve the Amazon Seller App. I feel like in this case, they may have taken away some functionality that can be useful, and the new functionality, while nice, provides for a challenged experience. I think more data is great, but, to the same point, the point of the Amazon Seller App, in my opinion at least, is to facilitate sourcing and some business management functions. You have never been able to create shipments in the app, for example. That said, I’m not entirely sure why Amazon is enhancing the analytics, when there are other areas that they could be enhancing in the app, like enhanced recognition when scanning, perhaps an option to store data for faster scanning, list functionality, and more functionality in the “Inventory” menu, like a link to the listing within the app.

What do you think about the enhancements? Do you find the data analysis addition of particular value?

The Southwest Saga 2017, 2017 Predictions, 2016 Navel Gazing

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The Weekly News Roundup is a collection of headlines from around the internet that caught the attention of the Tagging Miles team. Content on these blogs do not necessarily reflect the positions of Tagging Miles, and should not be considered endorsements. Have a great story we should read? Contact us now and let us know.

Travel:

The Southwest Saga 2017:

Miles and Points:

Tagging Miles:

 

Amazon Long Term Storage Fees Hit 15 February – Caveats!

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Amazon Long Term Storage Fees are something I try to avoid whenever possible. That said, the past few times, they have come with a rather interesting caveat that has made me rethink as to whether I should really remove or not. 

Amazon Long Term Storage Fees – assessed 15 February

Amazon sent a fairly long e-mail that highlighted a number of things:

  • Long Term Storage Fees will be assessed on 15 February
    • Units at an Amazon Fulfillment Center for 6-12 Months will be assessed at $11.25 per cubic foot
    • Units at an Amazon Fulfillment Center for longer than 12 months will be assessed $22.50 per cubic foot
    • Units at an Amazon Fulfillment Center for longer than 24 months will be test units for Amazon Prime UAV Delivery. (Kidding!) 
  • As mentioned earlier, single units of an ASIN will no longer be exempt from storage fees.
  • Units will be subject to long term storage fees unless they are removed before 15 February
  • If you do remove, you will not be able to send in additional units until July 1, 2017 – Which is Likely to late to stock up for (unannounced) Amazon Prime Day 2017.
  • Unlike past long term storage periods, there will be no free removal promotion

What should you do?

Everyone is different here. I for one used Q4 as an opportunity to clear most of my long term inventory out. That which I haven’t cleared out is seasonal inventory that I have to sit on because, otherwise, I’ll miss that particular season. Now that said, for me, I will remove all but a few units of seasonal inventory and store it at my warehouse until I’m closer to that season. You can only imagine how much my warehouse cleared out for Q4 for example.

Conclusion

The fact is here, that Long Term Storage Fees are a very real cost for Amazon Sellers. I know that folks in the various groups that I participate in are getting better. Others are cutting them even more ruthlessly. The fact is, they are little value add. In this case, you have to assess if not being able to send in that ASIN until 1 July 2017 is worth paying the fee or not. Its a long time to be blocked on an ASIN, and a lot of things can change. So definitely consider that. 

Amazon Restricts New Sellers from FBA Q4 2016

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In what may be the first time ever, Amazon Restricts New Sellers from FBA Q4 2016. This is a huge deal, both for new sellers that have wanted to jump into Amazon but hadn’t yet gotten around to sending in inventory.

All accounts indicate that Amazon has done this without any advance notice. Specifically if you haven’t sent your shipment in by 10 October, you won’t be able to send a shipment in until 19 December. Of course the initial reports of this came out late on 10 October, with more official reports coming out on 11 October. There’s already a short thread on Reddit of folks that are unhappy about this development.

Only so much Fulfillment Center space

The Bloomberg article references Amazon’s fulfillment center (FC) expansion–21 new warehouses this year through September 2016. The fact is, Amazon’s warehouses have been full for quite a while. This has been indicated by Amazon restricting shipment of products that sufficient quantities already existed in FCs, increasing FBA Storage fees, with even more changes, all geared toward getting slow selling units out of centers. After all, how could these cool little robots operate without having some space to move around?

Good for established sellers?

A lot of established sellers see this as a good thing. Fewer sellers to compete with for Amazon Prime buyers. In theory, this helps, especially considering ProPublica’s study saying that Amazon’s pricing algorithm favors Amazon and Prime Sellers over Merchant Fulfilled. For long time sellers, this is not a huge surprise. However, with the right undercutting, Merchant Fulfilled sellers can get the buy box, although that usually comes at a much lower profit. The likely increased number of Merchant Fulfilled sellers could shift the balance for the algorithm, but, it might not.

Still reason for concern for all sellers

This action, along with previous no-notice changes, such as brand restrictions are cause for concern. I’ve made the argument that Amazon is similar to Airline Frequent Flyer programs, in that they have all the power, and we have little leverage. The fact is, more and more, it is important to remember that things can change at any time. This is a very concerning reality, especially as many ramp up for Q4.

Wrapping Up

This is not the best of news for new sellers who have been looking at getting into utilizing Fulfillment by Amazon. The fact that Amazon restricts new sellers from FBA without any advance notice is awfully concerning for many. Hopefully this is the last of a string of less than positive actions, but, I suspect that there is still more to come. The real question for me is, whether these actions will help Amazon get the overfilled fulfillment centers under control.

What do you think of these latest developments?

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