Common Questions about FBA; Q&A

Here is a quick list of common questions we get about "Fulfillment by Amazon":


Can sellers get negative feedback from FBA orders/warehouse mistakes?
Yes

Are FBA sellers still covered by A-Z protection?
No

Can a seller be reprimanded or suspended for negative feedback from FBA orders? Yes

Can a seller be reprimanded or suspended or customer complaints about FBA-fulfilled orders?
Yes

Will FBA work with my 3rd party listing/repricing software?
No - FBA does not work with Seller Engine, Art of Books, Alibris, and most others.

Can I reprice my FBA items?
Yes - we had started working on a tutorial for this, but FBA has changed the layout of seller central too many times.

Are there hidden fees not explained in the FBA Rate Card/Fee Chart?
Yes - In addition to the fees on the official fee chart (Order Handling Fee, Pick & Pack Fee, and Weight Handling Fee) there are several hidden (also called passive) fees. Here are a few:

VCF (variable closing fee, $1.35 per order)

Restocking Fee (5%, when items are rturned)

Storage Fee ($0.45 - $0.65 per foot)

Oversize fees (you pay an extra $3.00 per item)

Stickering Fee (pay directly to the FBA staff, or buy your own stickers, $0.03 per item)

Weight error Fees (A common error in the Amazon database. i.e., If you are selling a mass market book, and it is classified as 4 pounds instead of 4 ounces, you will pay an additional $1.60 per item)

Non-Amazon sale Fees (if you sell an item outside Amazon, additional fees range from $1.40 -$3.00 more per item)

Priority & International Fees (between $7.40 and $17.00)

Be aware that these will be deducted out of your account, sometimes entered as a "miscellaneous adjustment". As sellers get used to the system & adjust to the new (and ever-changing) fees, some sellers have experienced more fees than income, with a net-zero or net-negative earnings their first month.

Where can I get more information about FBA fees?
Click here for a nuts & bolts example of one seller's fees (an apples-to-apples comparison, before & after FBA)

And, click here for a list of 12 "passive" fees not explained up-front in the FBA fee chart.

Where can I learn more about how weight fees are charged?
Click here for an analysis of how Amazon determines the fees for the weight &/or dimensions of your item

What happens if a customer cancels or returns an order?
FBA deducts the amount from your account. They will not notify the seller.

Do sellers have any control over refunds?
No

What happens to inventory that doesn't sell?
You either pay for indefinite storage, or you pay to have it returned to you

Does FBA ever damage inventory?
Yes

If a customer returns an item, does FBA relist it for me?
No - you must manually relist the item. You will, however, pay for storage fees in the meantime.

Will FBA notify me that items have been returned &/or refunded?
No - you must review your inventory & transactions periodically. Returns will be noted as "miscellaneous deduction" - no reason will be indicated, no records are kept of customer service issues.

If the item is returned due to condition (either FBA damaged the item, a customer opened/damaged the item, or it was damaged in transit), will it be relisted?
No - you must (1) pay to have it discarded, or, (2) pay to have it shipped back to you, so you can inspect it and make a decision about it's sale-ability, or, (3) you will pay storage fees for that item indefinitely.

Does FBA ever send the wrong item?
Yes, occasionally there are mix-ups in the FBA warehouse

What happens if FBA damages an item and the customer complains?
FBA deducts the amount from your account, and you risk getting negative feedback

Is there a phone number for the FBA warehouse?
No, the only way to contact FBA is by generating a support ticket. In most cases, you will receive an answer within 24 hours. If it is a difficult question, or a technical issue, it may take up to 3 weeks to receive an answer.

Will FBA handle ALL customer service for the orders they fulfill?
No - only if the customer knows to contact Amazon. Customers will often continue to contact the seller about the status of their order.

Can the seller issue a refund to an FBA customer who complains?
No - this functionality is disabled for sellers.

What if a customer refuses to call FBA - can the seller submit a support ticket?
No. We have heard several stories where customers feel they are getting the "runaround" by being asked to call or email somebody else. If the customer refuses to call the Amazon customer support, there is nothing the seller can do - and you risk receiving negative feedback.

Does FBA provide tracking numbers for orders?
No

Does FBA pack orders well?
Sometimes - we've received reports both ways, and it seems to depend on the warehouse. One buyer reported purchasing 15 items from an FBA seller, and they were thrown into a large box without any padding, packing, or peanuts of any kind.

Do FBA orders come in Amazon boxes?
Yes. FBA announced they may soon work on ways for sellers to specify whether they want orders shipped in FBA boxes or blank boxes.

How long does it take to send items in to the FBA warehouse?
Plan to spend at least 30-60 minutes preparing your shipment online. You must create a special sku for each item, convert each item from Merchant-fulfilled to Amazon-fulfilled, you must set the quantity (again), then confirm your shipment, prepare/print item labels, prepare/print packing slip, prepare/print shipping labels, chose a carrier, and mark your box as shipped.

Then, you must sticker/label each item (some items require multiple stickers), and pack them up. When FBA checks in your inventory, if they do not agree with the condition of the item (i.e., they feel it is "good" and you marked it as "very good" or "like-new") then your item will be marked as un-fulfillable, and will not be listed for sale on Amazon.com.

What kind of stickers are required for FBA?
FBA requires that all bar codes are covered with a unique FBA bar code. These are standard Avery stickers (roughly $0.03-$0.05 per sticker, if you can find a generic brand). Some items require up to 3-4 stickers - every bar code on the product must be covered.

Do customers ever complain about the stickers?
Yes - especially if they purchase the item as a gift. We suggest paying extra for the "easy-peel" stickers, to cut down on negative feedback.

Is Seller Central easy to use?
There is no fair way to answer this. It is under constant revision.

Will FBA increase my sales?
In the last FBA survey, 40% of sellers reported the same or increased sales under FBA; 35% reported no change; and 25% reported a decrease in sales.

In the same survey, 85% of FBA sellers reported an increase in Amazon fees, and 90% reported that their net income per item had decreased. 60% of sellers reported that participating in the FBA program consumed more time than fulfilling items themselves, and 40% reported that it saved time.

70% of sellers reported an increase in negative feedback and/or refunds under the FBA program.

Does FBA ship internationally?
Yes and No - there is an international program FBA sellers can subscribe to. However, this program is only available in 7 countries (for example, FBA sellers cannot sell to Canada).

How to contact Amazon Customer Service

We get dozens of emails each week asking if we know the toll free 1-800 phone for Amazon and for FBA (the Amazon warehouse, otherwise known as fulfillment by Amazon). The bad news is, there is no phone number for FBA. Sellers are out of luck - the only way to contact them is to start a support ticket.

The good news is, if you're an Amazon customer, you can contact Amazon 3 ways - by email, by "click to call" (log into "My Account" and find the link), or by calling this toll free number (a 1-866 number, not a 1-800 number, but it's still free):

1-866-216-1072 (US only)
1-206-266-2992 (international customers)

Good luck!

FBA fee comparison chart - fees are more than most people realize

Here's a nuts & bolts example of how the FBA fees work. This is a direct comparison for one of our top selling books. It's a small item, inexpensive to store and ship. We raised the price by $1.00 when sending it in to FBA, yet are still losing quite a bit, because most of our orders are international, and we lose out on the shipping reimbursement:

(click to enlarge)

Anybody else getting this error when trying to deposit/sweep funds?

FBA charges sellers a restocking fee?

Yes, it appears this is a new policy. FBA charges the seller 5% when an item is returned.

Ironically, this applies even if the return was a result of an FBA mistake!

Read the full thread here.

What FBA did to one seller's feedback

Account suspended/payments delayed due to bad FBA feedback?

Earlier, we commented how we were getting bad feedback due to FBA fulfillment errors, and we wondered if this would affect our seller performance. In fact, in the past 8-9 months, 100% of our neutral and negative feedback has come from FBA-fulfilled orders, and zero bad feedbacks from merchant-fulfilled orders.

Further, we speculated that poor "seller performance" (that is, poor feedback based on FBA mistakes) could result in getting an account suspended by Amazon Alliance.

Apparently this has already happened to another seller. Read the full thread on the Amazon discussion board.

Another payment delay from FBA

...these happen about once or twice a month with Seller Central/Marketplace 2.0. Never any explanation why...and of course, they never offer to pay mortgage or credit card late fees, which directly result from their "technical problems".

FBA charges VCF fees (variable closing fees)... one of the biggest complaints we hear

The FBA policy that we receive the most complaints about is the VCF (variable closing fee).

This fee is $1.35 per order. Usually it's deducted from your s/h reimbursement (3.99-1.35 = $2.64 s/h reimbursement). When this was initiated, we were told this is to cover the A-Z program (an insurance-type program which covers sellers in case of damage/loss in transit).

However, FBA sellers receive no s/h reimbursement, and receive no A-Z protection. In fact, in case of returns, FBA charges an ADDITIONAL 5% restocking fee (if they even bother to recover & restock the damaged/returned item).

This raises many questions: Doesn't Amazon/FBA use UPS to ship all their orders? And, aren't all packages automatically insured up to $100? So, what happens to this money?

(a) Why are FBA sellers still charged the VCF for the A-Z insurance program, when the packages should already be insured?
(b) Why are FBA sellers penalized (not reimbursed) when damage or loss occurs in transit to the customer?
(c) What happens to the UPS insurance money? Does FBA "double-dip" and keep both the insurance money and the seller's money?

PS - For a complete list of FBA fees, visit:
Fba fee comparison sample

and,

FBA Passive Fees (often not explained up front)

FBA decision - no turning back!

We see comments all the time, calling FBA users "whiners" and asking, "Why don't you just cancel?", or, "Why don't you just fire them?"

The answer is simple - there's no turning back once you upgrade to Seller Central/Marketplace 2.0. You cannot undo it, and you cannot open up a new account (or else Alliance will suspend or terminate your account).

Most people don't know this, so be aware. So if you rely on book sales for income (we're a bookstore, and online sales account for a large percent of our overall income), then keep in mind you'll need an "exit strategy" in case something goes wrong, because you'll no longer be able to sell on Amazon (i.e., Half.com, eBay, ABE Books, etc).

FBA Users: Get used to this Seller Central error message

Seems like Seller Central/Marketplace 2.0 is constantly down. Getting this message 7 or 8 times a week:

FBA nickel & dimes sellers - fulfillment fees charged in pounds, not ounces

We've seen this several times, where an Amazon listing would mistakenly list a book as 14 pounds, not 14 ounces. Well, guess what ... that means you pay 10x additional storage fees, and 10x additional fulfillment fees.

Does that mean you have to look up each item's weight & dimensions on Amazon.com? YES!

Does this mean I could actually lose money selling a book? YES!

See the chart for cost comparisons. Keep in mind, while this happens a lot, the more common error is one that is off by several ounces, not several pounds ... an error that you would probably never notice.

Also keep in mind, it does not take an error like this to lose money on an FBA transaction. Sellers lose money all the time - by being forced to lower prices, by having an item sit in storage too long, on returned merchandise, by FBA restocking fees, etc:

Is Amazon deleting posts from the FBA discussion board?

We've been trying to find past posts & past comments on the FBA discussion board, but we can't find them!

Is Amazon deleting the more "sensitive" and critical posts from the FBA thread? The FBA thread is already pretty bad, riddled with complaints of all sorts...

FBA mixing up sellers inventories - you get the bad feedback & fallout from customer

We've seen this happen many times - once on our account, many times with other sellers.

FBA will put an item under your merchant sku, sell the item, then realize their mistake and cancel the order. Guess who gets the fallout (and negative comment) from the buyer? Of course! The seller always gets the negative feedback:

Click here to read the full thread, of yet another example of this

PS - We had an earlier thread about a seller who's account was suspended due to excessive negative feedback from FBA.

Inventory marked as "unsellable"

What happens if an item gets damaged in transit, on its way to the FBA warehouse?

Logic would dictate that FBA would notify you, and you could initiate an insurance claim through UPS or FedEx. WRONG!

Instead, they set the item aside and don't tell you why (meanwhile, you are paying storage fees). Keep in mind, there are a million reasons they might set an item aside - it's totally your guess until you email and ask. Then it might take days (or weeks) to get an answer.

If you discover an item has been damaged in transit, you can request to have the item shipped back to you at your expense (usual cost is about $3 per item per book, $5 per item for non-media), then it's completely up to you to file an insurance claim.

And, if you used FBA's preferred shipping method to send in your items (the FBA UPS account), you're out of luck. They will NOT help you file a claim.

(click to enlarge)

Broken FBA promise - bad feedback NOT removed

When we signed up for FBA, we were explicitly promised that we would NOT receive bad feedback as a result of Amazon's mistakes.

We were told it has NEVER happened in the past. On a follow-up phone conversation, the salesperson told us they were checking into ways to remove bad feedback, in case it ever happened. Exerpt from the email they sent:


However, we are receiving neutral & negative feedbacks from FBA mistakes. In fact, roughly 30% of our inventory is being fulfilled by Amazon, and 70% is fulfilled by us (called merchant-fulfilled). In the past 8 months, we have had 100% feedback (ZERO bad feedbacks) for self-fulfilled items, yet our FBA orders have generated close to 14% neutral and negative feedbacks!

FBA has sent the wrong items, sent items late, damaged items in their warehouse, etc. So, they promised us ZERO bad feedbacks, yet, in the past 8 months, 100% of our bad feedbacks has come from them! Think about it... there's a huge difference between 0% and 100%!

Naturally this slows down sales. And it's obviously not something we're doing wrong - we have always maintained close to 100% feedback.

But it now appears, however, that they never intended on taking any preventative measures against bad feedback. They are not working on ways to prevent or remove bad feedback as a result of FBA errors, have since updated their policy page as follows (click to enlarge):

Allow me to summarize - their policy is basically "bugger off".

Now, we get an angry letter from Amazon Alliance, saying that unless we improve our feedback, our account may be suspended. HUH???

The rule is, if sellers do not maintain minimum standards (maintaining less than 5% refund rate, more than 95% feedback, and keeping low A-Z claims), they will suspend your account. How ironic, that a 5-star, 100% seller is now being threatened with a suspended account due to Amazon's own mistakes, through no fault of their own!!!

No A-Z Protection under FBA

Under Amazon's A-Z Guarantee program, buyers who have a problem with their order (lost in mail, damaged, not as described) can file an A-Z guarantee.

We were told this program is funded by the VCF (variable closing fee) of $1.35 per order, which comes out of the shipping/handling reimbursement.

Usually, in the case of damage or loss, if the seller can prove the item was shipped on time they are not liable for the claim, and the customer gets a refund direct from the A-Z fund.

However, with FBA, there is not A-Z protection... for the buyer or the seller! If the buyer has a problem, it is completely up to FBA staff - usually they just issue a refund, no questions asked.

But this refund is taken out of YOUR account, not the A-Z fund! We learned this the hard way. A customer ordered a $75 book, which arrived damaged. It was new when we shipped it into FBA, and FBA verified it was new when they checked it in. So the damage must have happened in the FBA warehouse, or during transit from the FBA warehouse to the customer.

Even though the damage was not our fault, they refunded the customer, did not ask them to return the book, and took the $75 out of our account. What's more, I'm pretty sure FBA uses UPS, and each shipment is automatically insured for $100. So...if this was damage during transit, why did they not file an insurance claim? If they did, why did they charge us the $75? Is it their policy to pocket the money?

Their response to this question is, "if the FBA program isn't working for you, feel free to close down your account at any time." Keep in mind, once you convert to Seller Central, you can never change back. So they're basically inviting you to close down your business if you don't care for their one-way policies.

And to make matters worse... FBA sellers still pay the VCF of $1.35 per order! What the heck? Where is this money going??? We're paying into a supposed insurance plan, why are we not insured like other sellers?

FBA "Passive" fees are not explained up front - an additional $1.00 per item on average

Here are some passive fees that FBA charges, which are not explained up front:

FBA Advertised Fees (for book fulfillment):

• 15% normal Amazon commission

• 50¢ fee for books under $25

• $1.00 fee for books over $25

• 40¢ fee per pound for shipping

• $1.35 fee per book (variable closing fee)

• 45¢ fee per month storage (per cubic foot)

Additional FBA Passive Fees (you must read the small print):

• 5% restocking fee on returned items

• 3-12¢ per item, cost of FBA labels (some books require 3 or 4 labels)

• 30-36 ¢ per item (cost of shipping items to FBA warehouse)*

• 25-50¢ per item storage fee (assuming 45-90 day turnaround per item)

• 45-75¢ per item storage fee (assuming 45-90 day turnaround during 4th quarter, holiday storage fee rates)**

* Cost of shipping. Keep in mind, you have no control over which FBA warehouse is assigned to you. There are only a few FBA warehouses. We must ship our items to Reno NV, which is a remote location and expensive to ship there. Average shipment is 50 books per box / 45 pounds. Media Mail (generally the cheapest rate) is $18 in postage, or 36¢ per item.

**Additionally, most sellers underestimate FBA storage fees. Keep in mind, the rate jumps to 65 cents per foot per month during the 3 Christmas shopping months. Also keep in mind, they take the larger of the weight-based or volume-based calculation, and round up. (Not sure what this means? Neither do we...but it results in more fees)

**Many sellers think they can "raise" the price of inventory by $3.99, just by having them fulfilled by Amazon, and offset these costs Think again. There is another post entirely dedicated to this. Just remember - you can never surpass Amazon's price (which is often 30-40% below retail price), it's unlikely customer will pay more than the sticker price on an item, and if you're the only seller of an item, you cannot justify raising the price.

**Final note - here are some other costs not usually considered:

• 100% restocking fee (no seller credit) on items FBA considered damaged

• 100% restocking fee (no seller credit) when FBA refunds a customer but does not require them to return the item

• 100% loss on items damaged during transit to FBA

• $1.25 more per item (or more) for non-media items
  

• $2.00 - $5.50 additional fees for non-Amazon orders (or more)

• and, of course... $1,000's of dollars, if an FBA mistake gets your account suspended, or they lose your deposit, or any number of other glitches that hold up your money.
  

FBA sent wrong item to customer, and refused to fix problem

That's right... a customer ordered one of our FBA books, and the FBA sent him the wrong book, from another seller's inventory.

That impacts not only the customer and us, it also impacts some other seller who is now mysteriously missing a book (and doesn't yet know it).

The customer left us a "1" feedback. I would too - it's not an unforgivable mistake, but it's bad service. And of course, he didn't understand that it wasn't our fault. We contacted FBA right away, and they said (get this!) that the customer needed to contact them, they would NOT contact the customer or pro-actively fix the problem!

We gave the customer Amazon's 1-800 number, but since it was only a $8 item, he had already given the book away to a neighbor, and basically said he didn't care about the money and wasn't going to hassle with it.

But we STILL have the negative feedback, and some other seller's inventory is now missing an item. Plus, I suspect we are still being charged a storage fee for the book (which should have been shipped out in the first place). Inevitably, that other seller will someday probably get a "1" when someone tries to order the item that our customer threw out.

To add insult to injury, FBA refuses to remove our "1" feedback, even though they promised they would remove any negative feedbacks as a result of their mistake. When we signed up for FBA, an aggressive salesperson told us that NEVER had a seller received a bad feedback for an FBA mistake, and if it ever happened, they would remove it. Now, even though we have that guarantee in writing, they tell us they don't have that power, and we must have been mistaken.

Amazon deposits unreliable with Seller Central/Marketplace 2.0

Sellers on Amazon have funds automatically disbursed every 2 weeks. Or, they can access their payments through their seller "marketplace" account, and sweep their funds to their bank account more often.

However, since we've "upgraded" to Seller Central/Marketplace 2.0 (a requirement to participate in FBA), our deposits have been irregular.

We typically sweep our account every evening. However, it's been 8 days since a deposit has arrived. We started asking about it, and apparently they are not making the deposit, but adding that amount to the next deposit. It gets debited from our account, as if we received the money, then the next day it shows up as a credit again (as a "miscellaneous adjustment"). By the way, get used to these "miscellaneous adjustments" if you are on FBA - they appear on our account daily, usually as debits, and we rarely know what they are:

(click to enlarge)

This revolving deposit has now been adding up over the past 8 days, but it won't disburse. We actually had to carry a credit card balance this month because we can't count on our Amazon deposits any more. I wonder if we can sue FBA for the interest charges?...

Customers complain about FBA stickers

One of the requirements for FBA is to print up special bar codes for each item you send in. Didn't sound like a big deal to us at the time, however...

First, this requires a special label (not any Avery label will do - it's got to be the "peelable" kind, which cost more).

Second, this is more time-consuming & expensive than you might think.

Third, FBA requires that you cover ALL bar codes on the book. Some books have 3 or 4 bar codes (including on the inside cover), and apparently they don't want the staff at the FBA warehouse to accidentally zap the wrong bar code. So sellers are required to cover every bar code with either a blank label, &/or an FBA bar code.

Not only does this add to the cost of participating in the program (3-4 cents per label adds up, especially if the book takes 3-4 labels), but also, we've received 2 customer complaints so far:


Customers don't know why the labels are there - FBA doesn't explain it to them. I personally think it's a stupid thing to complain about, but, I also totally understand that the customer isn't expected to know the operations of the FBA warehouse. But it's Amazon's job to inform them of their policies, not ours. Apparently, when one customer called Amazon to find out what they are, Amazon told them to mention it in our seller feedback. HUH???

FBA sold same book to 9 different buyers

I'm not even sure how this happened, but FBA made 8 customers angry at us because of their glitch.

We sent in a single copy of a book, which sold within a few days. If you're on Seller Central, you already know that setting the quantity of a title is out of the seller's control. We tell them how many we're sending in, they count and confirm the quantity before activating your inventory . (You may have seen other sellers complain that this process sometimes takes days or weeks). But adjusting the quantity is out of the seller's control.

But for some reason, FBA would not zero out the quantity after the book sold. They kept relisting it! We tried several times to manually close the listing, after realizing that others were trying to buy it. But the "Seller Central" system wouldn't let us.

So after 5 weeks of this nonsense, 8 other buyers also tried to buy the same book! But there was no book - there was only one copy, and it had sold 4 1/2 weeks ago. But the customers didn't know this and don't understand FBA. So we got 5 or 6 angry emails, including one negative feedback, because those buyers thought that we were trying to pull a trick, or that it was our mistake.

This may sound like a silly question, but how the heck can we get a negative feedback for a non-sale of an item we didn't have in stock???

Switched to FBA & Alliance Canceled Our Seller Account - NIGHTMARE!

When we converted to FBA, Amazon Alliance thought we were trying to open a second seller account, because Alliance & FBA apparently don't communicate with each other. As a result, we lost 3 weeks of income, additional actual damages, and $1,000 in funds got frozen.

This is a recount of our first days on FBA:

• Wednesday 31st - We signed up, were told that our inventory would be "converted" to FBA and Seller Central within 24-48 hours. We shipped a box of inventory on Wednesday afternoon - cost to us was $19.50.
  

• Thursday 1st - Seller Central was up, but inventory disappeared. So was our balance (about $1,000). Were promised it would be up and running soon.
  

• Friday 2nd - Inventory still down, 24 hours and counting. No income during this period, and our $1,000 was still inaccessible.
  

• Saturday & Sunday - ditto. No income for 4 days and counting.
  

• Monday 5th - We were contacted by Amazon Alliance. Our conversion to FBA was perceived as an attempt to open a second seller account, which was against Amazon policy. Were told our seller account was permanently canceled, we're NEVER allowed to sell on Amazon again. We were told not to bother calling or emailing - this decision was final.
  

• Tuesday 6th - We decided to email & call anyway. FBA knew nothing about this. No phone number for Alliance. We emailed Alliance, and received an automated response, saying not to send any more emails, and don't expect a response.

• Friday 9th - No response, FBA doesn't know what's going on. No income for 11 consecutive days, $1,000 still missing. Meanwhile we are paying storage fees. Decided to give up on Amazon. Instructed FBA to throw out/discard less valuable inventory (at $1.50 per item) and ship the rest back to us, at our expense. Total cost to us $127 + $19.50 initial cost to ship to FBA + $5 in FBA storage fees + cost of items thrown away (approximately $300 retail value).

• Friday 23rd - Received email from Alliance. Without admitting their mistake, they reinstated our account, apologized for any "confusion". $1,000 was finally released.

Summary: We lost 3 weeks of income, lost access to our account ($1,000) for almost 4 weeks, & spent $151.50 on shipping costs and FBA fees.

FBA - Problems with support

In order to save costs, FBA has discontinued all phone and email support. The only way to contact them is by creating a support ticket.

This may seem like no big deal...until you have an emergency situation. Factor into that, there are very few (if any) FBA staffers available on weekends. Once, for example, ALL our inventory disappeared on Friday afternoon - we had to wait until Monday to have someone figure it out for us. That's not just 3 days of lost income.... since 50% of our sales happen on the weekends, we lost 50% of a week's salary because of their mistake, and nobody was around to help us.

Also, once our deposit didn't come through - again, we had to wait 3 days before even getting a response.

To make things even more complicated, some issues require generating a support ticket with Amazon, and some require generating a ticket with FBA. How do you know which is which? Bottom line is, you don't. It's very confusing using the "Seller Central", because you're not technically on the Amazon site.

So sometimes you will contact Seller Central support, and they will tell you instead to generate a ticket with Amazon, or vice-versa. And God forbid you ever have a problem with Alliance - there's a completely different process, and another group of people who don't want to talk to you.