7.23.20 – Hello from Ideoclick, For those brands selling on Vendor Central, we wanted to share the following chargeback updates from Amazon:
1. Effective immediately, Amazon is increasing the financial charge associated with Carton Content Accuracy chargebacks from $0.50/unit to $1.50/unit. This chargeback is surfaced when the products or the product quantities in a carton Amazon received does not match the information in the Advance Shipment Notification (ASN). Please note that the date listed in the communication from Amazon (below) has been confirmed as a typo.
2. Pickup accuracy chargeback for Collect Shipping is being relaunched. At this time, there is no information on the associated financial charge associated or the go-live date, so we recommend that you begin monitoring for this chargeback type in the Operational Performance dashboard in Vendor Central and stay tuned for more information be released later this year.
The following related information below was provided by Amazon:
Fee Increase Carton Content Accuracy Amazon has audited the costs of resolving mismatches between product quantities received in a carton and the information provided in the Advance Shipment Notification (ASN). The current Carton Content Accuracy chargeback rate does not cover our operating costs; therefore, it is necessary to increase the rate by 50c to $1.50 per defect. This fee change is effective from August 26, 2019 (sic).
For more details about this chargeback, review the Help topic under Vendor Operational Performance (Chargebacks) > Chargebacks – Problems With the Receive Process > About Carton Content Accuracy.
Pickup Accuracy chargeback change for Collect shipping:Amazon has relaunched the Pickup Accuracy chargeback for Collect shipments involving truckload (TL) volumes. You will not incur charges yet for this chargeback, but you should closely monitor it, as we will be enabling this chargeback later in the year.
Missed pickups have negative impacts on Amazon’s supply chain. When Amazon schedules a pickup for Collect vendors, it plans the optimal carrier, allocates transportation capacity, and reserves fulfillment center (FC) labor and dock. Any failure to meet the scheduled pickup time makes Vendor Lead Time (VLT) volatile, disrupts carrier planning, elevates transportation costs, creates capacity issues, and eventually jeopardizes our mutual goal to maintain optimal inventory levels to serve customer demand.
This chargeback will be applied to Collect TL shipments where we have GPS tracking of the pickup to confirm the carrier’s arrival at your site.
How will this chargeback work? If you are a Collect vendor, you will receive the confirmed pickup date and time of your TL shipments from Amazon. You will have until 5:00 p.m. PST on the day prior to the scheduled pickup time to reschedule the pickup, if you cannot accommodate the time given. If you reschedule after 5:00 p.m. PST on the day prior to the scheduled pickup, you will incur this chargeback. If you do not reschedule, the carrier arrives on time, and your freight is not ready or you are unable to load the carrier in the expected timeframe, you will incur this chargeback. Follow the instructions in the Routing Request emails from Amazon to request a reschedule.
How you can prevent this? 1. Always confirm the planned pickup time given after routing for pickup to ensure that you can accommodate the pickup date and time. If you are not able to accommodate the given pickup time, reschedule the pickup before 5:00 p.m. PST on the day before the scheduled pickup date. 2. Ensure that your facility operating hours are up to date so that shipments are not scheduled outside of your facility’s operating hours. 3. Ensure that your freight is ready when the driver arrives at the scheduled time. (Note: Drivers must be loaded within 60 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.)
Your Partners, The Ideoclick Team
For additional information on staying up to date on chargeback updates from Amazon and how Ideoclick helps clients optimize operational compliance, please contact us.
SEATTLE, June 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Ideoclick, the leading e-Commerce Optimization company, today introduces its data-driven Operational Compliance Dashboard to quickly uncover non-compliance issues for vendors selling on Amazon. The Operational Compliance Dashboard helps Amazon vendors increase profitability by identifying non-compliance issues and reducing the related deductions to an acceptable threshold, which is typically less than one percent of COGS (Cost of Goods Sold).
The new Operational Compliance Dashboard provides clients with a graphical summary of the data most relevant to their operational compliance health on Amazon. The dashboard quickly reveals the top three chargeback types, the necessary information for seeking recovery and repairing root cause, and status summaries of submitted and resolved disputes. Additionally, the dashboard features data drilldown for specific inquiries.
“The Operational Compliance Dashboard provides visibility to a powerful cross-section of complex Amazon vendor guidelines and specific Vendor Central data,” explained Shawn Oleson, Ideoclick’s senior operational compliance manager. “It provides us with the ability to advocate for our clients and provide insight into improving operational efficiencies which ultimately can reduce their cost to sell on Amazon.”
Justin Leigh, Ideoclick’s CEO explained, “The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the e-Commerce landscape forever with significant lifts but even tighter operating margins. Our operational compliance service and the new dashboard delivers actionable insights that can create net margin increases and enable brands to realize the full potential of the Amazon shopper audience.”
About Ideoclick Founded in 2009 by former Amazon executives and harnessing over 200 years of Amazon experience, Ideoclick provides the industry’s leading e-Commerce Optimization Platform, delivering a unique combination of cloud-based software, subject matter expertise and insight to businesses that sell on Amazon. Ideoclick helps hundreds of leading brands achieve transformative results. For more information, please visit www.ideoclick.com.
*The above view of Ideoclick’s Operational Compliance Dashboard displays the type of Amazon Vendor Central chargebacks and the top affiliated purchase orders, fulfillment centers, and ASINs.
Brands that sell on Amazon through Vendor Central must adhere to very specific operational compliance processes and standards in order to be paid in-full by Amazon. Any discrepancies resulting from purchase orders, shipping, receiving, packaging, and data misalignment may result in chargebacks to the vendors and significantly cut into their earnings.
At Ideoclick, utilizing our Operational Compliance Health Dashboard, we aggregate client data to identify deductions from Amazon in the form of chargebacks and shortages resulting from non-compliance. Our team of Operational Compliance (OC) experts then work to identify root-causes for the chargebacks, as they are symptoms of operational issues that lead to shortages. The OC team then manages the complex process of dispute resolution to recover funds on behalf of the client.
For one of our clients, a major player in the healthcare products industry, we were able to demystify the complex invoice hierarchy system produced by Amazon to identify a shortage amount of over $300,000, which had accrued over a 12-month period. Of that amount, we successfully managed the dispute process to recover $235,175.05 in shortages for the client.
Critically, Ideoclick identified the causes for the shortages. In this instance, many of the casepacks were improperly scanned at the Amazon fulfillment center due to labeling issues during the vendor’s shipping process. The vendor also received chargebacks related to advanced shipping notification (ASN) complications. The identification of these root causes was critical in enabling the client to change its labeling and ASN practices to avoid future chargebacks that subsequently lead to shortages.
“Many vendors just accept chargebacks as a cost of doing business with Amazon, as they don’t have the time or systems in place to make sense of Amazon’s reinvoicing system or investigate where the non-compliance originated,” explained Shawn Oleson, Senior Operations Compliance Manager at Ideoclick. “Our process of identifying the discrepancies, helping to solve for the root-cause, and handling the dispute resolution will enable many more of our clients to recover funds, as well as avoid future chargebacks. Ultimately, we are helping clients conform to Amazon’s highly efficient ways of doing business on a massive scale – so both the consumer and the vendor stand to benefit.”
Ideoclick provides a complimentary initial assessment of clients’ overall supply chain defect and cost profile based on a vast set of Amazon data and Ideoclick analysis. Clients can also gain additional details of shortages and deductions for up to three previous years of selling on Amazon.
