Amazon India is aware that the Coronavirus and related actions are impacting millions of Sellers. As an Amazon India Service Provider, Softbox will keep our Sellers updated of the developments of COVID-19 and its impact on our Sellers.
Most common Seller queries
What will happen to my sales? Why is Amazon temporarily pausing customer orders for low-priority products?
Will I see my order cancellations increasing?
What happens to my inventory which is already in the FCs?
How do I ensure that my Amazon Seller Account health is not impacted?
Amazon answers to some of the common seller queries
1. As of 1st April 2020 limited delivery has been restored in the below mentioned cities: Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Chennai, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Nagpur, Noida, Panaji, Pune, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Jaipur, Jamshedpur, Ludhiana, Mohali, Mysore, Patna, Raipur (payment through COD not available).
2. Why is Amazon temporarily pausing customer orders for low-priority products?
To serve our customers’ most urgent needs while also ensuring safety of our employees, we are temporarily prioritizing our available fulfillment and logistics capacity to serve products that are currently critical for our customers such as Household Staples, Packaged Food, Health Care, Hygiene, Personal safety and other high priority products. This also means that we have to temporarily stop taking orders and disable shipments for other products
3. What are the products that are affected by this change?
All products except Household Staples, Packaged Food, Health Care, Hygiene, Personal safety and other high priority products are considered low-priority. We will continue to update the categories based on guidance from the government and our available logistics capacities.
Following are the items which are considered priority:
Food:
1. Staple food like Pulses, Wheat Flour, cereals, Rice, Sugar, Salt, Cooking Oils etc
2. Tea & Coffee
3. Spices & Masalas
4. UHT Milk, Baby Food. Baby Formula milk etc
5. Processed and packaged food
6. Farm produce (Fruits and Vegetables)
Non Food items – Cleaning & Hygiene products:
1. Soaps, detergents, oral care
2. Other personal hygiene products, (men and women)
3. Sanitary Pads
4. Diapers
5. Sanitizers, disinfectants, masks, gloves
6. Medicines – range of OTC and prescription medicines
7. Innerwear
8. Cleaning materials - mops, brooms, pochas, flasks, garbage bags,
9. Essential Kitchen utensils , flasks, hotplates
10. Healthcare products and medical equipment & devices
11. Elderly care products like specs, walkers, toilet seats,
12. Mosquito repellents, air fresheners
13. Aluminium foils, cling foils
4. Will I see my order cancellations increasing?
Yes. You are likely to see an increase in order cancellations. The primary reason for this is that we are delayed in meeting our delivery promises to customers due to the prevailing exceptional circumstances. Therefore, we are providing customers the option of cancelling their orders. This will also ensure that you don’t face challenges with returns and rejects at a later date due to the delayed deliveries. However, please be assured that you will not be charged cancellation fee for these orders and you will not have to do anything at your end.
5. What happens to my inventory which is already in the FCs? Can I place removal orders for this inventory?
All products which are already in the FCs but not currently made available for purchase by customers will be exempt from Storage Fee for the impacted period. While you may see the regular storage fee charged, you will receive a reimbursement for the period for these products within the next two billing cycles. Additionally, these products will not be considered for LTSF aging calculation for the period. Removal orders have been put on hold till operations normalize. With the limited operations capability, we are catering to customer orders only and will be unable to process removal orders.
6. How do I ensure that my Amazon Seller Account health is not impacted?
If your business operations are impacted in anyway, we recommend you to take precautions to ensure your Amazon Seller account health is not impacted. Here are a few tips for the same:
1) If you are unable to fulfill any previously placed orders: Please cancel them immediately.
2) If you are not able to operate your business temporarily: Put your account on vacation status.
3) If you want to remove any listings that may be un-serviceable, update your listings from the Manage Inventory page
If your performance metrics have been impacted by this event, please include a brief description of how your business was impacted when you respond to the relevant performance notification in Seller Central. We will consider this unforeseen event when we evaluate your account’s recent performance.
All above queries have been answered by the Amazon SPN team.
For further queries and support Contact Softbox here