Update on Amazon Featured Offer 0%

It has been exactly a week since the featured offer went from 98% to 0% on one of the accounts I’m managing. Sales took a hit naturally and we couldn’t advertise because there is no point if there’s no featured offer available. But sometime today, the buy box on all listings became available again.

How was this resolved?

I participated in the Seller Forum discussion where other sellers are experiencing the same thing. An Amazon moderator is monitoring the discussion thread and asking everyone to provide a list of affected ASINs so the Amazon team can look into it.

It was also recommended on the same discussion thread to email the managing director directly to speed up the process. I emailed the MD two days ago explaining the situation and provided the account’s merchant ID and all affected ASINs. After hitting send, I got an auto-reply after 2 minutes —

Thank you for contacting the office of the Amazon UK Managing Director, John Boumphrey. Your information has been passed to the relevant department for investigation and they will respond to you as soon as they have an update. If you have not received a reply within 2 business days then please reply to this e-mail.

After 2 days, I got an update from the Selling Partner Support Executive Escalation Department informing us that the issue has been resolved and all listings have the buy box again.

Quite frankly, I was doubtful that emailing the managing director would actually resolve the issue but it did so it was surprising to say the least. The issue did cost us a lot of lost sales so I’m hoping (against hope) that this won’t happen again but knowing Amazon, it is highly likely that this will happen again.

In summary, if you are experiencing a similar issue and couldn’t figure out the root cause, try searching the Seller Forums because, almost always, there are other sellers who are also affected with the same issue. There’s some sort of relief in knowing that you are not alone but it’s also frustrating.

Got questions? Drop a comment or send me an email.