Why Amazon Piggybacks on Your Listing and How to React?

Generally speaking, sellers will find their listing piggybacked by Amazon under the following three conditions:

1. A VC vendor authorized by Amazon is selling the same product. This happens rare in recent years and sellers don’t need to worry too much about it.
2. Amazon appreciate a certain listing and want to cooperate with the vendor. Under this circumstance, Amazon will contact with the vendor first to get permission on direct delivery to Amazon warehouse. And Amazon will sell under the same listing once the agreement is reached. Of course, normal sellers may not come across with that.
3. Amazon is piggybacking on your listing with “Amazon” or “Amazon warehouse” as the vendor. You will find this kind of piggybacking with goods in Used-Like New conditions or with very low stock of 1 to 2 units. This happens to sellers more frequently compared to above conditions and today we will explain it in more details.

Why Amazon piggybacks our listing with Used-Like New products? It is all about customer service.

Amazon believes firmly in customer focus. While 3rd-party sellers who use FBA delivery will trust Amazon’s customer service to deal with related issues. The customer focused service agents may help unhappy customers making unconditional refund returns all the time. Sometimes, the sellers are responsible for the returns, for which you will be charged related fees by Amazon.

However, sometimes there is nothing wrong with the product. Amazon may still satisfy the buyers with refund returns. In this case, Amazon will be responsible for related fees. Amazon will refund the customers directly and get returned goods back in their warehouse. FBA warehousers will check the status of returned goods to see whether they can resell them. If the goods are in good condition, Amazon will piggyback on the seller’s listing and resell returned goods as Used-Like New items. Certainly, you will find the product in low stock as it’s been supplied according to how many it’s been actually returned.

Under this condition, Amazon warehouse is likely to have the buy box as they are offering a lower price for the returned goods. Once the products have been purchased by buyers and went out of stock, Amazon warehouse would stop piggybacking immediately.

Some Amazon newbies will get nervous when find out that they are getting piggybacked by Amazon. Actually, this is totally fine and will do no harm to your business. What you really need to do is to check your bills to see whether there are any charges for refund returns with no actual product returns. If there are, you may need to open a case.