Q&A: How generous should I be in correcting my shipping mistakes?

QUESTION: This past weekend I received an e-mail from a customer on the opposite coast inquiring why they hadn't received their book yet. The buyer paid for expedited shipping, but I accidentally sent it Media Mail. I've been selling books on Amazon for two years now, and this is the first time I've made this mistake.

Since the customer paid $60 for the book, I've offered to refund them half the cost of the book. Do you think my offer to refund half the purchase price is appropriate? Is there anything else I should do?

ANSWER: I've made the same mistake several times. Usually I apologize profusely and refunded the shipping fee, $5.98. But several other times I have done exactly what you did and refunded 50 percent of the total (but never for an expensive book like this).

Sometimes I've based my decision on how much longer the person had to wait -- for example if the person was in Alaska and Hawaii and it took over a month, I've refunded 100 percent -- but those happened to be cheap books.

On an expensive book like your transaction, a 50 percent refund really hurts. It's exceedingly generous, so I defintely wouldn't offer anything more.

Through experience, though, I've noticed one great result out of admitting your mistakes and offering to make good on it. For example, many times when I've offered a partial refund (for this and other types of problems) the customer has responded, "No refund is necessary, thanks for the offer." They were totally satisfied that someone acknowledged the problem and made a gesture of offering something for their inconvenience. This puts us in a favorable light compared to most retailers -- so often when people make a complaint about service, it's not even acknowledged.

Q&A: What type of scanner do you recommend for booksellers?

QUESTION: Can you recommend a good source for a light/scanner pen? I use Homebase for my inventory on a Windows 2000 based-system. About 90 percent of the books I enter into Homebase have ISBNs and currently I key in all the numbers manually. It sure would save a lot of time and also help ensure accuracy if I could scan the barcode from the book with a light pen and have the ISBN appear in the appropriate field in Homebase.

ANSWER: I've tried two different scanners, one which didn't work well, and one that has worked just fine.

My first scanner was a Cuecat. You can still get these for a few dollars on eBay, but I don't recommend them. Often it took me three or four passes before the Cuecat would spit out the numbers. I could type the numbers faster than that.

After that experience I decided to get a more reliable piece of equipment -- a presentation scanner, which sits on a base. Since you wave the barcode in front of the scanner, you have a free hand, since you don't have to point the scanner.

The one pictured here is the one I use, it's a Metrologic Orbital, and has a powerful, reliable laser. I found somebody who had a good deal on them at an eBay Store and it was a great buy. It's been a few years so I can't remember the name of the store. But there are several Stores who have this type of equipment on eBay with excellent feedback. Another place to get scanners is POS Guys.

If you don't mind using a handheld scanner, you can get a used one for a song on eBay. You might want to get a used one on eBay just so you can try it out before spending a lot of money.

Just make sure you buy one that's set up as a "keyboard wedge" output. That simply means that it plugs into your computer's keyboard port, and the output appears just as if you typed it.

Missing the manual for Amazon Services Order Notifier

I remember when I bought my first computer about 12 years ago. The thing came with a users manual as big as a small telephone book. And the manual for Microsoft Word was even bigger!

Software has has gotten lots more powerful and complicated in the past few years. Meanwhile, the software makers have been eliminating the users manuals to cut their costs. I suppose that's fine -- IF they include all the documentation you need in well-designed help files viewable on your computer.

But what happens when the help files aren't very helpful? That so-called productivity tool you paid big bucks for can waste your whole day. It's gotten so bad recently that a whole new field of publishing has cropped up to help people learn how to use the stuff they've bought. The "Missing Manuals" are selling like hotcakes because the makers of software and other products often can't be bothered to let us know how to use the products they've sold us.

I was reminded of all this on Friday afternoon when I downloaded the Amazon Services Order Notifier. It's the new software that's going to be replacing our "Sold, ship now" e-mails pretty soon.

Usually I avoid installing software updates until the last minute, and I've gotten pretty gun-shy of trying out betas. I need my computer 24/7, and I don't want to have to pay Geeks on Call to get my computer unstuck.

But I couldn't wait to try this one out. I make my living on Amazon, so I was just too curious to resist this download.

The good news is that installation was pretty fast and, no, my PC didn't lock up. But I was a bit surprised that there was no documentation -- at least none I could find -- as to how to use this darned software. I stared at it for about 10 minutes before guessing that you had to select and double-click an order in your Order History window to do stuff like print an address label/packing slip. Am I the only one that didn't get it?

The lack of documentation aside, I think the ASON is going to be a handy little tool, and I'll tell you why: Last November, my Internet provider, Verizon, began filtering some of my Amazon orders into a spam folder, and I wasn't aware of it. If Verizon had filtered ALL my Amazon e-mails -- or MOST of them -- I would have noticed. But Verizon only killed about one in every 15 of my "Sold, ship now" e-mails.

It took me about five weeks to catch on to the fact that Verizon was filtering some of my Amazon e-mails. When I got the third "where's my book?" e-mail in one week for a transaction I'd received no e-mail for, I finally woke up. So I had to send about 75 books via Priority Mail, along with a personal letter of apology to all those customers. But that was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out which customers I hadn't shipped to. I had to spend two days comparing my shipping log against my Payments Account. What a nightmare!

If you've had a chance to check out the Amazon Services Order Notifier, I'm interested to hear what you think about it. Please add a comment at the bottom.

Q&A: Will cancelled orders from students hurt my Amazon performance summary?

QUESTION: My store sells textbooks on Amazon. I'm worried that our performance summary rating on Amazon is going to suffer because we're getting quite a few order cancellations from students buying textbooks for the Spring semester.

I believe Amazon's threshold for refunds is 5 percent. Today we've had 100 Amazon Marketplace orders but five cancellations before the books shipped. We're not getting any reasons for the cancellations, just e-mails asking to cancel.

I think this is a double-edged sword -- we're apt to get negative feedback for some unknown reason, and we're worried about our account being suspended by Amazon Alliance for an excessive refund rate.

Do you think I should call Amazon¹s customer service number to try to explain the situation so they don't kick us off? If so, what number should we call?

ANSWER: Your performance summary provides statistics on your sales, refunds, customer feedback, and A-to-Z Guarantee claims.

I remember when Amazon began compiling this data in 2003, there was a big hubbub because they e-mailed the first few monthly tallies to the sellers, even sellers with good records. Many sellers felt compelled to contest each and every ding on their records. Amazon quit mailing the monthly statistics, and I assume nowadays you only hear about them when you're in hot water.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too concerned about one day of excessive refunds. I doubt your refund rate is out of line compared to other sellers who do heavy volume in textbook selling. I'm sure Amazon sees a spike in refunds across the board this time of the year thanks to the back-to-school rush.

I always get a lot of cancellations without explanations from students this time of year too. As we know, most students are notorious tightwads and don't select "Expedited" shipping. So my hunch is that when they receive the e-mail confirmation from Amazon and notice that delivery may take weeks, they freak out because they're desperate to receive the book quickly. Of course these were the same folks who ignored the opportunity minutes earlier of upgrading their shipping to ensure delivery within a few days.

And I'm sure a good number of the cancellations are from students who realize they've bought the wrong edition. It's frustrating, but it's better to get an immediate cancellation than a returned textbook several weeks after the big bookselling season.

My understanding is sellers get a warning if the refund average gets to be unacceptable. Personally I wouldn't waste the energy explaining the refunds until it got to that point, if it does. Then I'm fairly sure a human at Amazon would take into account the situation with textbooks.

If you want to contact someone at Amazon, my best advice would be to call the seller support line and ask to speak with a supervisor: 1-877-251-0696

Here's Amazon's tip sheet for improving your performance summary, but it's all common sense for anyone who's been selling for longer than one afternoon:

• Carefully describe and categorize your items to avoid buyer confusion.
  

• Provide helpful and timely customer service.
  

• Carefully pack items to avoid damage that might occur during shipping.
  

• Ship orders within 1-2 business days and provide post-order support (refunds, returns, and exchanges) to help ensure buyer satisfaction.

• If an A-to-z Guarantee claim is filed against your account, respond quickly to the claimant to attempt to resolve the dispute.

It would be nice if Amazon Pro-Merchants had account representatives so that we could talk to a human occasionally about issues like this. I'm curious if other sellers have gotten into hot water about refunds or other things related to the performance summary, and how they resolved it. Comments, anyone?

eBay revamps feedback

If you're a regular eBay user, you know the auction site is planning to updating its feedback system. Here's a preview of what it will look like, based on testing on ebay's UK site.

eBay's "Feedback 2.0" adds these features:

Detailed Seller Ratings – In addition to the current positive, negative or neutral comment, buyers rate the sellers on these specific transaction aspects based on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest rating. The average of all ratings is displayed on the seller’s Feedback Profile page.

Display of Item Title and Price – To give buyers more information to evaluate the reputation of a seller, the transaction’s item title and selling price will be displayed beneath each Feedback comment on the Feedback Profile page for 90 days. This will give buyers more context while reviewing and evaluating Feedback comments.

Feedback 2.0 will help buyers feel even more confident about a seller’s reputation, while rewarding good sellers by recognising and highlighting the things they do to ensure customer satisfaction.

Get more details at AuctionBytes.com

Q&A: Can I revive my online bookselling with signed books?

QUESTION: I have been buying books and listing them on Amazon for about six weeks now. I love the business but am in a lull period. I have sold 23 in the past month but none in the last five days. I primarily buy at Goodwill stores and I've found some gems. I also find many books that seem like interesting, possible good sellers but turn it turns out Marketplace has 200-odd listings starting at 1 cent.

Now I have about 130 books listed but nothing is selling. Should I be concerned? Should I continue to buy and trust that books will eventually sell?

Also, is a book signed by the author usually a good purchase?

ANSWER: To keep your sales going, you must add new listings constantly. That's because you inevitably end up with a certain percentage of books that never sell. If you quit listing new books, most of your attractive books sell, and sales dry up. The longer you sell, the more duds you end up with, and eventually have to get rid of.

If you haven't checked your prices lately, you might have been undercut by other sellers. In that case you'd need to come close to their price to maintain your visibility on Amazon's page, if you want to sell the book soon. Be careful about lowering the price of your expensive books. But for the cheapies, you've got to come close to the lowest price -- the bargain shoppers tend to grab the first thing they see.

Also, you may want to try some additional places to find books beyond Goodwill, like library sales and estate sales. You're fortunate to find anything in a Goodwill in my opinion -- the ones near me have been picked clean to the bone.

About autographed books: I've never gone out of my way to find signed books, but I've ended up with quite a few. The best one was a book I paid 25 cents for that turned out to be signed by Eleanor Roosevelt (but it wasn't a book she had written).

I've seen both sides of the coin. I've had lots of autographed books where there was no demand and I could never sell it. On the other hand I've gotten lots of autographed books where the signature added some value to the book. But none of my signed books were a case where the signature added much collectible value to the book. Amazon isn't a good place to sell collectible books, not yet at least. I hope that will change.

So in a nutshell, look for a book that's already a strong seller. Then the signature will be worth something.

Amazon postpones changes to "Sold, ship now" e-mails

Amazon has indefinitely postponed the deletion of customer e-mail and shipping addresses from its "Sold, ship now" e-mails.

Amazon had planned on making the change February 1, but now says it will wait until it has released new order-notification software, which has also been delayed.

The announcement:

As a result of your feedback, we have postponed this change. We will announce a new date for the change in the near future.

We want to allow plenty of time for sellers to make the transition from relying solely on e-mail order notifications. To help you make this transition, we will be providing two new notification options: an Event Notification Web Service API (Application Programming Interface) and the Amazon Services Order Notifier (ASON).

The Event Notification Web Service API documentation, including SDKs (Software Development Kits), and a beta preview of ASON will be released together soon.

We welcome your feedback on both the Event Notification Web Service and ASON. We will consider your suggestions and comments when making future improvements.

Amazon delays launch of order notification software

Amazon postponed the introduction of its order notification software which had been scheduled for release on January 15.

Now the software is scheduled for release sometime before February.

Amazon has said it will delete customer e-mail and shipping addresses from its "Sold, ship now" e-mails by February 1.

Q&A: Can I sell books on Amazon.com from Canada?

QUESTION: I live in suburban Toronto and I'm wondering if it's possible to run an online bookstore from here. I looked at Amazon.ca and the book selection is much less, and the sellers are still in the States.

Would I have equal access to the U.S. market? How different would shipping costs be? Would there be duty on used books sold outside of Canada?

ANSWER: I think your best bet would be to list books on both Amazon.ca and Amazon.com, especially your higher-priced books. Of course that would require you to delete listings manually on the other site when you have a sale.

You need to have a U.S. bank account to sell on Amazon.com but perhaps you can arrange that with a visit to a bank in the northern U.S. to open an account.

Being outside the U.S. Postal System would be a handicap for you (when selling on Amazon.com) but not an insurmountable one. For example, there are sellers on Amazon.com who live outside the continental U.S., in Hawaii and Alaska. To be competitive, these sellers often pay for airmail delivery for all their orders sent to the mainland, to ensure prompt delivery -- even when the customer pays only for ground shipping. These sellers seem to do OK, even though it's certainly a drain on their profits. You'd be operating with a similar handicap, but you're accessing a big market.

Another thing you might consider: Amazon has a new program called "Fulfillment by Amazon." Participating booksellers send their inventory to Amazon, and Amazon does all the shipping and customer service, and sends the bookseller the proceeds minus some storage and service fees.

Personally I wouldn't use Fulfillment by Amazon because I like to have total control of my business. But you might consider it if it allowed you to dramatically reduce your costs -- you could bulk-ship your inventory to an Amazon warehouse. Using a truck freight company you could probably get your per-book cost down very low.

If you fill the orders yourself, I'm not sure about the duties of books being shipped from Canada to the U.S., so I'm hoping we'll get some helpful comments. Anyone?

Q&A: Why are some books priced so high Amazon Marketplace?

QUESTION: I was listing an audiobook for sale on Amazon and noticed a huge price variation. There were two copies for sale. One was listed at $9.35, and the other was listed at $100.

Both are used, not collectible. Obviously, one is priced wrong. How can I find the real value?

I also have a book with a similar discrepancy. The low price is $39.82 but the next copies are priced $114.26 and $197.34. Usually I like to price my books at the lowest price and make a quick sale, but I don't want to leave money on the table.

ANSWER: There are several sellers on Amazon who act as drop-shippers. They copy the listings of other sellers and triple the price, at least. They export these pilfered listings to all the bookselling sites and hope that some inept buyer overpays them. Then they buy from a seller who actually has the book, has it shipped directly to the real buyer, and the drop-shipper pockets the difference.

Usually these drop-shippers are easy to spot: Their feedback is horrible because so many of their customers never receive what they paid for. (I haven't taken a close look at these listings you mentioned, and I'm not accusing any of the sellers here of anything. I grossly overprice my listings occasionally by hitting the wrong keys on my keyboard.)

Most books are in such plentiful supply on Amazon, the going price is obvious simply by glancing at the Marketplace listings. But for books in shorter supply, like these two, it helps to do a little research. A good way to double-check the value of a book is to search its ISBN at Addall or BookFinder.

These comparison sites will show you the lowest prices on all the major bookselling sites and usually give you a clear idea of a book's market price and scarcity. If you still don't find many copies at that site, it's best to play it safe and price your listing high until you can research further.

I'm not sure about the price of your audiobook -- it's scarce but the demand for old cassette audiobooks is not tremendous. Your book, Food and Beverage Market Place, could probably sell for a good price if it was a bit more recent. Business directories can sell for good money on Amazon, even if they're a few years old. Consider the buyer's alternative: paying nearly $600 for the current edition.

The only problem is, your copy is six years old, and is probably woefully out of date, since there's undoubtedly been turnover among the people listed in the directory. Used copies of the 2006 edition are available for around $200, so you'll certainly have to beat that price to get a sale. In this case, I'd go with a price under $40. This is definitely a book that won't appreciate.

Q&A: Should I ask buyers for feedback?

QUESTION: I've been selling books online since 1999, but started getting serious about selling on Amazon a year ago. My sales are not huge, maybe 30 or so since August, but my feedback is lame -- only four in that time. At least I'm at 100 percent.

Should I ask for feedback on Amazon? I usually do on Half.com in my e-mail that notifies shipment. I always say "I've left you positive feedback and hope you will do the same for me if you are happy with your purchase". I have had good luck with that. On Amazon, with no option to give feedback to the buyer, I am reluctant to, well, beg.

ANSWER: My thinking on this has evolved a bit since I started selling in 2000. When I went full-time, I rigged up a system to send my Amazon customers an e-mail shipping confirmation, including a link for leaving feedback. This way I'd often receive feedback before the customer received the reminder e-mail from Amazon (as you know, Amazon sends an e-mail 21 days after the transaction, asking the buyer to rate the transaction.)

I solicited feedback, of course, because I think having a big and good feedback record makes you more competitive as a seller, making it more likely that people will buy from you.

I changed my mind on this about six to nine months ago. I realized that perhaps half of the negative feedback I was getting was before the 21-day mark. Almost always, it was someone frustrated about slow delivery of Media Mail (even though it was usually before the estimated delivery date). Eventually I decided that I could avoid a lot of that negative feedback by not asking for the feedback at the time of shipment. It's just a guess, but I figure that most of those people who are angry about slow delivery at the 10-day mark won't be angry after they receive their book and get Amazon's 21-day reminder to leave feedback -- and, hopefully they won't leave negative feedback.

If you're trying to build up your feedback, I'd just continue what you're doing, perhaps ramp up your selling a bit. There is software available for automating the process of asking for feedback, but I really don't think it's worth it. I base this idea on my own buying behavior when I'm shopping on Marketplace. All else being equal, I will usually buy from a seller who has a better average score (I like to see 95 percent positive), rather than buy from a seller with more feedback ratings, but a lower average. In other words, I'll buy from a seller with 96 percent positive and 200 total ratings before I'll buy from someone who has 2,000 feedbacks but only 90 percent positive.

As far as leaving feedback for buyers on Amazon: There is a way to do it, but it's very convoluted and not worth it. Probably 99 percent of Marketplace buyers aren't aware of buyer feedback and don't care. I think buyer feedback was important back when Amazon first launched third-party selling, and a lot of the buyers were familiar with feedback from experience with eBay. Nowadays, a lot of the Marketplace buyers have never used eBay, have never purchased from an individual online before, and some of them don't even realize they're not buying directly from Amazon.

So over time, I've gotten a lot more relaxed in my attitude toward feedback. Lately I just take care of my business the best I can, and hope the feedback situation takes care of itself.

Q&A: Are off-site sales a good idea, or probably a scam?

QUESTION: Why do so many people contact me to ask whether I will do a private sale? They see a book I have listed on Amazon, Alibris, or ABE, and then they want to buy it from me directly with a money order, check, or PayPal. They will say they don't like to buy things using the computer (so they email me about something they saw online?) or that they don't have an account with Amazon. I would rather sell via a site for the protection it offers me, but am I just turning away good money, or are these folks more likely to be scammers?

ANSWER: I used to get those types of inquiries all the time when I first started selling, and I rarely get them anymore. So that makes me suspicious that at least some of the people who ask for off-site deals are up to no good. I would be very concerned about getting a counterfeit check or ending up in some other type of scam. When you get paid via Amazon Payments, you don't have those worries.

I really have a hard time believing anyone nowadays who says they're scared to buy on the Internet. If they don't want to buy on the Internet, then they should shop only at brick-and-mortar stores, if you ask me. Perhaps the reason they don't "want" to buy online is because they're broke and all their credit cards have been cancelled.

It's entirely possible that some of these people aren't scammers, they're just cheapskates. They think you'll offer them a great deal when you don't have to pay a commission to Amazon, Half, or someone else. But personally, I'm not willing to go out of my way for them, just to eliminate a dollar or two in commission. I don't think it's worth the aggravation.

The other thing, of course, is that Amazon and all the selling venues prohibit off-site deals. So while it's probably unlikely, there's always the chance that somebody asking for an off-site deal would end up reporting you. Again, it's a risk I'm not willing to take.

I'm curious to know if other sellers have had good or bad experiences with off-site deals.

Q&A: How important is customer service?

QUESTION: As a new online bookseller, I wonder how important our relationships with customers are. Of course it's always important to deliver what you promise, do a good job, etc. in almost anything you undertake in business. But why does everybody preach so much about the importance of customer service? Isn't this one business where you are likely to sell to a customer only once, especially if you're not a megaseller? And even if you did sell to someone more than once, they probably wouldn't remember your bookstore name anyway?

Or does it really boil down to feedback, where having a 5-star rating results in many more sales than a 4.7 star rating, for example? I always ship within the deadlines, but other sellers spend up to $1.00 on elaborate packaging and 3 minutes of packaging time per book, in the name of customer satisfaction. While this may produce higher satisfaction, I would rather ship using an easier/cheaper method, that will deliver the book fully intact but may not evoke praise for "professionalism."

ANSWER: I think you're right, as booksellers participating on a network, we don't have the same necessity of acquiring and keeping customers that traditional businesses have had. Platforms like Amazon or eBay bring us our customers, and that's why we pay those commissions.

So it's true that for many buyers, we're anonymous, an unknown quantity. From some of the e-mails I get from customers, it's obvious they think they're dealing with Amazon, that I'm an Amazon employee.

Nevertheless, I do stress customer service for two main reasons:

1. To protect your business. If you're selling books to earn money, you'll be more competitive if you can display a good feedback record. Many of the customers buying cheap books don't look at feedback, but those who buy expensive books do.

2. Providing good service can make your business easier to manage. That's my philosophy, there's no way I can prove it works for everybody, but it works for me. It's just a general approach, like checking your e-mail every few hours and being pro-active about handling little problems that come up. I believe if you can nip little problems in the bud, you can prevent a lot of big problems from happening. If you can prevent the big problems, it eliminates the big headaches that can suck up so much of your time.

As far as packing materials go, when I started selling I used cardboard bookfolds on every book, even if it was a 25-cent sale. Over time, I've transitioned to vinyl bubble mailers for books worth less than $15 or $20. That makes the packing job go a lot faster, and I haven't had any more mishaps with books being damaged than when I was using bookfolds.

A lot of Amazon sellers believe that the company's trend toward hiding buyer and seller e-mail addresses is going to downgrade the customer experience, and I agree wholeheartedly. Getting in the way of our communication with buyers is going to hurt everyone in the long run, including Amazon.

But getting back to your question about repeat business: While you'd think the odds would be very high that a seller is going to have more than one book for a Marketplace customer, it happens. Every week or two as I scan through my feedback, I see a feedback comment from a customer indicating they were "pleased again from buying from this seller," or something to that effect. If a customer is happy with their purchase, they will often look through your other listings.

I am curious to know if other sellers have repeat business. What are the prospects for more repeat customers during the coming year, considering all the recent changes at Amazon, like the demise of zShops?

eBay's Happy New Year message: higher fees

Not much surprises me anymore, but I've gotta say, my jaw hit my spacebar when I got this message in my inbox this morning from eBay honcho Bill Cobb:

We're increasing the Insertion Fee for the $1.00 to $9.99 level from thirty-five cents to forty cents.

Huh? I could swear it was only a few months ago when eBay announced a big fee hike, and several booksellers were trampled amidst the stampede toward the door.

If I recall, Cobb's last announcement was about "rebalancing the core" back towards auctions and away from Stores, which so many booksellers had found promising.

Seems to me eBay is forgetting about its core sellers.

What do you think?

Q&A: Why do you send Amazon Marketplace buyers to the A to Z Guarantee?

QUESTION: You've said you usually steer people requesting refunds to the A to Z procedure at Amazon.com rather than just refund their money yourself through your Seller Account. Why? Is there any advantage to the seller to send a buyer to Amazon.com and A to Z for a refund, or is this just to figure out if the buyer is running a scam?

ANSWER: It's a combination of things. The bottom line is, I know from experience that Amazon will pay the A to Z claim if I have proof of postage.

So my typical response to a customer complaining about a late Media Mail delivery, for example, is, "I'm fairly certain you'll receive the package very soon, but in the unlikely event you don't receive it within 30 days of the purchase, I'll assist you in getting a refund from Amazon."

This way, the A to Z Guarantee covers me in the case of nondelivery by the Postal Service, and also in the case of a scammer trying to get his money back because the Postal Service actually delivered, but didn't scan the package delivered.

But A to Z isn't my first resort. Actually I do a fair amount of refunds, especially for customers who aren't belligerent. But my radar goes up when a customer's first response is, "I want a refund." That's the first response of a problem customer, and that makes me suspicious they're trying to take advantage. For customers who give me the benefit of the doubt, I give them the same courtesy, and I rarely go the A to Z route -- I'll meet them halfway somehow.

The interesting thing is, the people I refer to A to Z actually follow through on it less than one out of 10 times. And it's not like they're confused, I give them the A to Z link, and I give them their order number just in case they don't know it. That's the key, making it firm but not confrontational.

Why do only a small number of people demanding a refund actually go through with the A to Z Guarantee claim? Well, I have no way of knowing for certain. But after several years of experience, my hunch is that the people who ask for refunds but don't follow through with the A to Z claim think better of it when they see this warning on Amazon's claim form, where they must indicate:

I understand that submitting a false claim violates federal and state criminal fraud laws and may result in serious criminal penalties.

I've had four or five A to Z claims deducted from my payments account in over 100,000 Marketplace transactions, and in each case it was a customer I would have refunded if they'd notified me of the problem before filing the A to Z claim. There have been two or three other cases where I believed the customer scammed me by filing an A to Z, and in those cases Amazon has always restored the funds to my account after I insisted on it. In two of those cases, I had to insist several times, but I thought it was worth making the point.

Anyway, my stock response to customers "I'll assist you in getting a refund from Amazon" covers me in both cases. It assures the scammers I'm not a pushover, and it reassures the 99.9 percent of the others -- the skittish customers who are probably going to get their book in the mail tomorrow.

Amazon will delete customer e-mails and shipping addresses from "Sold, ship now" e-mails

Do you rely on Amazon's "Sold, ship now" e-mails to fill your orders? Starting Feb. 1, those e-mails will no longer contain customer e-mail and shipping addresses. We'll need to get that order information from our Seller Account or with software Amazon will introduce in two weeks.

Here's the announcement:

To protect the privacy of our customers and sellers, we will soon be changing the content of "Sold, Ship Now" e-mails.

Beginning on Thursday, February 1st, "Sold, Ship Now" e-mails will contain only the following information:

• A notification that a customer has purchased one of your products.
• The quantity and product title of the items in the order.

We will no longer be including information about the buyer, such as the buyer e-mail address, or information about the order, such as the order ID or the product ID, in the "Sold, Ship Now" e-mail.

On Jan. 15, Amazon will introduce the Amazon Services Order Notifier application.

When ASON is launched, an icon is added to your Windows system tray in your task bar. Running in the background, it periodically polls Amazon.com to retrieve any new orders you have received. When new orders arrive, ASON displays a user-friendly “pop-up” notification to let you know that you have new orders.

Here's what the new software will look like (click on the pictures for a clearer view):

Pop-up notification:








View up to 30 days of transactions in the Order History window:



























View the details of each order and print shipping labels and packing slips:

























I'm interested to know the reaction of sellers to this. If this new Amazon software works as advertised, it could make order retrieval more reliable. I've had several mishaps this year when my Internet provider, Verizon, deleted my Amazon e-mails, mistaking them for spam.

Amazon's new software could also reduce the value of some of the third-party software that automates the tasks of printing address labels and packing slips, especially if you're paying $30 a month to handle those jobs. What do you think?

Greatest hits of 2006

Happy New Year, everybody. Here's the top 10 articles from this site viewed most often during 2006:

eBay bans cash payments.

How can I sell used books on multiple Web sites?

How can I find profitable books for resale online?

Amazon Sales Rank and its impact on used book sales.

Do I owe income tax on used books I've sold on Amazon.com?

Should I sell used books on eBay or Amazon?

Barnes & Noble rolls out welcome mat for sellers.

BuyBundle manages your Amazon Marketplace listings on Google Base.

Treasure hunting with your cellphone.

Amazon sellers irate about feedback changes.