Yep, finally, as of today, ESINEM-Rope has dumped Amazon and sales will be through my own site and, at least for the time being, via eBay. Why have I decided to eschew this monolithic international sales platform, you might ask? In short, for an easy life, although there are several other reasons.
What’s in it for you?
Without the hassles of Amazon, I will have more time to devote to improving your shopping experience on my own site, ESINEM-Rope.com. This will be include the look’n’feel but, more importantly, also in lower prices as you won’t be subsidising Amazon’s fees or the time I was spending on sorting out my shop there. Win/win, eh?
The longer version
As you might know, I have been selling on Amazon for years. However, my listings were never optimised, leaving a lot to be desired in appearance and convenience. For example, all my rope was in individual listings without the ability to select set size or treatment from a single page.
A year or so ago, I employed somebody to upload new listings with updated and fuller descriptions, better photos and in a variation format, i.e. with choice of set size and treatment on a drop-down menu. The idea was to improve visibility by listing both in the general and adult categories using appropriately modified descriptions. This is where the nightmare began.
The Amazon nightmare
The newly uploaded listings caused all my listings to be flagged as adult and thus not searchable in All Departments. This precipitated a year long saga to rectify this with literally hundreds emails being exchanged and incomprehensible or repetitious calls that went in circles. Judging by their replies, I swear they must rely heavily on Google Translate in support. How else can you explain an email beginning “I am from American Radio Station”? I assume ‘channel support’ got translated as ‘Radio Station support’. Who knows? It didn’t get a lot better from there.
After removing every even vaguely adult reference and countless re-edits, they remained flagged and no explanation was forthcoming. Finally, I gave up and re-uploaded with new stock codes.
The next problem was actually getting them to appear in the right category. Once again, more fruitless and frustrating exchanges ensued. I won’t bore you with all the other issues but let it suffice it has been incredibly time consuming and frustrating.
The final straw
As part of this update of my Amazon listings, I decided to roll the listings out to the EU sites. I rashly assumed this would be a simple matter but it was just the start of more grief.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was their recent notification. Apparently, my German account had been suspended because Amazon claimed that it is “associated with another account that is not allowed to sell goods on our website”. It is clearly an error as I don’t have another account and the one I have is fully approved. However, after four days with no response to a call and a couple of tickets, I have had enough. My sales from Amazon don’t merit the trouble, so it’s time to say goodbye. Consequently, I feel a great weight lifted off my shoulders as a result.
Awful support and overly complex
I can honestly say that Amazon’s seller support is some of the worst that I have ever encountered. It has become almost impossible to even find out how you can raise a ticket, let alone talk to somebody. The ticket creation option is now hidden deep within a maze of pages, whereas it used to be easily accessible on a menu. Tantalisingly, the old menu briefly flicks onto the screen but not long enough to access it. I can’t help feel this is by design to make it harder to communicate with support.
As I mentioned earlier, a lack of basic English is a hindrance to any communication but it makes technical subjects impossible. When this is combined with a lack of expertise and reliance on stock scripted replies rather than actually listening to a question, it’s an unending nightmare.
I appreciate that Amazon has to cater for a massive range of diverse products, each with unique data than needs recording. However, the complexity of optimally listing items, especially when it involves integration with other systems, is mind-boggling and fraught with technical glitches. I’m sure an IT department would see it as ‘flexibility’ but when you are the IT department, as well as every other department, and official wastepaper basket emptier, it’s all too much. It’s not like I don’t have to be familiar with 101 other types of software to run this business. So, it’s the simple life for me!
The future
From now on, it’s KISS. Not the band, but ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’. I intend to focus more on my own on-line store and not diverse platforms. To be master of one trade, not a jack of many. My own e-commerce shop has taken increasing shares from Amazon and eBay and has growth that would be the envy of many. It has got to a stage where these other channels are an insignificant part of my business and diminishing returns are setting in.
Running multiple sales channels requires complex back-ends systems to manage and consolidate sales and stock. These require not inconsiderable investments of time and money which equal costs. The higher my costs, the higher my prices. The more complex my systems, the less free time I have. You’d expect the opposite but such systems demand a certain level of skills which must be learned or subcontracted. This is fine for a bigger company but not for me. You need to be a certain size to exceed the break-even point.
Simplifying systems will allow streamlining, mean less to go wrong and greater efficiency. All that adds up to better value for you and an easier life for me.