QUESTION: Did Amazon do away with the “order it used” feature as well as the “buyers waiting” feature you mentioned in a recent post? The “order it used” link hasn’t been present on three out-of-print, unavailable books that I’m looking for. For years, I’ve been buying books this way on Amazon, but am no longer able to.
ANSWER: I believe you’re right — it looks like the entire “buyers waiting” feature is being phased out. This contradicts Amazon’s explanation from a few weeks ago — that the “buyers waiting” feature was still there for buyers, but was no longer visible to sellers.
Here’s the way it worked for about a decade: buyers used the “order it used” link to initiate a “pre-order.” Then sellers listing a copy of the wanted book were alerted by a “Buyers Waiting” flag.
I looked up some of the books in my most recent Amazon.com Top Out-Of-Stock Products Report. Here’s an example:
No link to “order it used” as before. Unless this is a temporary glitch, it looks like Amazon is leaving the door open to Half.com’s pre-order feature. Unfortunately Half has been slowly dying on the vine since it was bought by eBay several years ago.
So, why is Amazon killing off one of its best features? I can only guess it was a favorite target of scammers, and someone in Seattle decided the feature was more trouble than it was worth. But if that’s the case, why can’t they simply say so, instead of leaving everyone hanging?
Here is the most baffling thing about this. I can still download preorder reports as usual (this works for Pro-Merchants only). I can still get a report of 1,859 preorders supposedly placed in the past two days! Here’s one of the pending books. When I try to list a “new” copy, there’s no Buyers Waiting flag.
Perhaps they’re phasing out Buyers Waiting slowly or selectively? If anyone has ideas about what is going on, please chime in.
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7 Comments
I have a pro merchant account and can sign into the preorders, and do occasionally. I have noticed that for the last 2 weeks that this downloadable file has not been updating…when sorting by most recent preorders it will list one or two new listings, that’s all. Usually there are hundreds of new requests per day.
I think there is something amiss and am wondering if anyone has any info. All amazon seller services will say is that this feature is not supported by them, so they are no help.
I just received an email from a seller about this, asking “Do we have any recourse?”
We do, but I don’t know if it will work — Amazon is notoriously hard to communicate with.
I know that Half.com phased out its preorder feature a few years ago. When buyers found out, they raised holy hell. And faced with all those complaints from book buyers, Half.com backtracked and the preorder feature was restored.
Perhaps this will happen with Amazon — when and if enough buyers realize what is happening and complain about it. We all know that Amazon pays closer attention when buyers complain than when sellers complain.
The problem is, the front-line customer-support people are probably going to be clueless about the complaints resulting from this. Unless they happen to be a heavy book buyer themselves, the poor CS rep won’t understand what the complaint is about in the first place. So this double-talk that people are getting (“we don’t support this”) will continue, and lots of people will simply give up.
Someone at Amazon has decided that preorders are a pain in the butt, and is trying to slip this under the rug. Either that, or the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
I’ve never used the “buy it used” feature to any great advantage, but I can see how it would be useful to buyers and certain selling models. Getting rid of a useful feature doesn’t make sense.
Amazon seems determined to limit the effectiveness of third-party sellers, but I can’t understand that either. At one point, Amazon boasted that third-party sellers accounted for 40 percent of their business. That has to be important to them.
Hi,
I was buying books to fill the demand the preorder report led me to beleive existed.
The seller who posted the need that showed up in preorder had no way to know I had a copy unless they deliberately checked Amazon manually.
Some of the books I had copy on went and some are sitting here still waiting for a buyer.
Nice books. Look great on the shelf behind me.
Waste of time.
Paul Hanrahan
There must be ’something’ for pre-ordering used copies, because whenever I list a truly rare and out of print book, within hours I get an order. All buyers looking for those books cannot be out there looking JUST WHEN I list, so there must still be something in place. I got one just a couple of days ago. So, maybe they still have a stable of ‘wants,’ but aren’t requesting any more.
THIS book was a local and regional interest, though.
Debbie E.
I was the one who posed the original question to Steve. I sell and also buy books on Amazon. I have 5 pre-orders that I keep renewing, but apparently no ability to add more.
There is one aspect to the old “buyers waiting” feature that I always viewed as sketchy. As a seller I loved that I got hints as to how high I could price a book, so much so that it seemed like cheating. As a seller it put me at a disadvantage in that my book most likely would be priced at my max or higher. No bargains to be found. In any case I want the feature back. Why is Amazon trying to take all the fun out of selling? Because they can?
If I had to make a wild guess about Amazon’s reasoning I would think competitive pricing was the issue.