449: Amazon Is Silently Stealing From You And How To Get Your Money Back With Yoni Mazor

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You’re listening to the My Wife, Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today I have a very special guest back on the show, Yoni Mazur. And Yoni is the founder of Getita, where he helps Amazon sellers recover their money. And the truth of the matter is that Amazon screws up all the time, and we’re gonna discuss all the ways that you are losing money on Amazon right now as a seller and what you can do about it. But before we begin, I wanna let you know that tickets for the 2023 Seller Summit

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are on sale over at SellersSummit.com and the price goes up on April 1st. It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And you all know me well enough by now to know that my event has zero fluff. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business and not high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people and it’s a very intimate event.

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Everyone eats together and everyone parties together every single night. I love smaller events and tickets always sell out far in advance. And if you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer a special mastermind experience where we break up into small groups, put ourselves in a room, and then help each other with our businesses. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 23rd to May 25th. Go to SellersSummit.com.

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That’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I focus a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS, or text message marketing, is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce store, and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript?

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It’s because they specialize in e-commerce and e-commerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot I O slash Steve. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast.

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that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this one, where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell like how it is in a run entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

02:46
Welcome to the My Wife Clutter Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Yoni Amazor on the show. Yoni is the founder of Getita and he’s helped thousands of e-commerce entrepreneurs get their money back from Amazon. He also spoke at my last e-commerce conference, the Seller Summit. And I would say if you’ve ever sold on Amazon before, you know that inventory often just magically disappears from their warehouse. In addition, Amazon makes a lot of mistakes which can inflate your storage fees unless you are paying strict attention. So,

03:15
in today’s episode. What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna discuss how to finally get your money back from Amazon and get what you are owed. And with that, welcome to the show, Yoni. How you doing? You’re good. Thank you so much for having me. Hello, everybody. I’m honored to be here. So Yoni, I’m just curious. I’ve always been curious. How do you get into this line of work? Because it’s not like the sexiest type of work, I should say. 100 % Is that insulting? I didn’t mean to insult No, it’s great. You actually hit the nail on the head. We actually often we laugh about it. We say, we took the

03:44
the most unsexy thing you can think of in business and try to create a fun environment or make it exciting. So when you think about geteeda, you actually get excited because you realize the ones who know us, if you don’t know hopefully after this episode you know a little bit more, but you’re kind of thrilled because it means that money’s coming your way. So once again, taking the most unsexy, like the gray, cost accounting, boring stuff you can think of, but package it into an opportunity. So yeah, you actually…

04:12
one of the only few that actually hit the nail on the head and realizing that. But this is kind of the dimension and where we live in. So when you, if you want me to get started, kind of give you the… Did you start it because you kept losing all this money on Amazon? Yes, 100%. As they say, I think there’s a cliche that says, Necessity is the father of event or something like that. yeah, essentially we created Getida or the solution of Getida, which is maximizing the FBA reimbursements and refunds for ourselves because

04:42
About 10 years ago, we started selling online. When I say we, myself and my co-founder, Max Boran, we’re still partners until today. We started selling on eBay back in the day, about 10 years ago. And then at 2013, we started selling on Amazon. And the business grew very, quickly from zero to 20 million in FBA sales. And then we became a part of a larger group. Together as a group, we’re doing about $100 million in FBA sales. So what happened was that we had so much data to process.

05:09
right, to reconcile all the FBA transactions that our spreadsheets were breaking, right? So that kind of pushed us to create technology so we can really process the data at scale on a daily basis but also have a dedicated team to keep focusing on solving the issue. Because on an annual level, we discovered that the discrepancy rate is between 1 to 3 % from our revenue. So when we’re doing like $1 million a year on FBA, 1 to 3 % was like $10,000 to $30,000 that we had to recover.

05:39
But when you’re doing 100 million, it becomes very material. It’s like between one to three million. So we had to create the solution for ourselves to make sure that it works well at that scale. So we did that. That was kind of the premise of it. That was the reason why it was created, this capability. And then we’re kind of friendly people. So we told a few of our friends from the industry that we have these capabilities. So they told us, help us. We’ll pay you. And that was the early genesis of Getida as a business back in 2015.

06:04
And then over the years, it was just kind of growing organically because the value proposition is very appealing because it’s free to join. There’s no subscription. We’re purely performance-based. So only if we get your recovery, then we charge a fee. So it was growing organically for a few years. And then we made a strategic decision to cash out of retail so we can really focus on the sellers and make sure that they really get the number one priority. And the moment we did that, all of our energy, focus, motivation, creativity was focused on one direction.

06:34
And from that point I would say we kind of took leadership on the niche. It’s still a niche. It’s not the main function of selling on Amazon. But it’s definitely a function you should know of, you should be educated about, and realize it’s an opportunity for you to recover funds that you never imagined that are yours. And hopefully once you are flush with these funds, you’re able to reinvest it in the business. Spend more on PPC, or source a new product, or launch a new product. So that’s kind of the premise that we have here in the industry.

07:00
So I’m in contact with lots of sellers, both DTC and Amazon. I know this has been kind of a hard year for Amazon and sellers. You guys are unique and you have kind of like this high level overview of the entire Amazon landscape. What are you seeing and like what trends are you noticing right now? Right, so I would say there’s a few things. It’s a lot to unpack, but I’ll touch the main components. So the pandemic gave a push to the e-commerce industry, gave it, you know, it was a boom era.

07:27
It propelled us maybe five to 10 years into the future. But now we’re kind of having the hangover. It’s like a pendulum swing. It swung our way, which is great. It gave us a lift. It gave us a tailwind, but now it’s giving us the headwinds. the entire market, Amazon itself, is growing, but not as quickly. So if it was growing 20%, 30 % a year, this year it’s going 7 or 8%. So in other words, thinkers are slowing down. The growth is being slowing down, which is all of sudden people are like, whoa, we’re doing horrible. What’s going on?

07:56
I know it’s because we got propelled and now we’re of slowing down. It’s almost like I had a good party. There’s a hangover, right? You’re gonna have a little bit of a dizziness, but hopefully you still have good memories. In other words, you made some good profits in these past two years, but now it’s time to kind of decompress, realize, okay, things were in our favor. Now there’s a regular friction. Let’s become more efficient. And another interesting scenario is that during the height of the pandemic, there was an inventory shortage. It’s really hard to get inventory.

08:23
factories were shut down, global supply chains were shut down or really, really slow, the ports, the cost of shipping containers exploded. because of that, and then the demand was growing. So it was really, really a choking position. So a lot of the sellers felt like they can’t maximize the revenue and the profit with this momentum. So they start ordering more and more in bulk here. So they did it for a while, it worked okay. And then they order in bulk here. In other words, like a snowball where now they’re peaked at

08:53
up in their position where they order a lot of inventory and all of sudden, boom, the demand decreases. So in other words, now they have the pendulum swing where it’s, you know, instead of being short of supply, they’re overstocked in supply. So they have an inventory glut. So their money, their cash is tied up to this inventory. So that’s kind of the pinch and pain that they’re feeling. So how do you get rid of it? What do do? So this is something that I can see that a lot of the sellers are experiencing. So to recap, things are growing, but not as quickly.

09:21
They’re slowing down. A lot of them are stuck with inventory glut. And this Q4 Christmas is going to be a very, very interesting junction that will hopefully give them the opportunity to cash in most of their positions. It might be even critical because if they’re just going to drag their balance sheet with all this inventory and not cash out of it, they might just go belly up. So I don’t want to see that happening. So hopefully, shop. Whoever’s listening to this shop, shop well. And hopefully, the discounts will be good and aggressive.

09:50
Because they have to, even if they take a loss, but it’s better to have cash in your pocket with the loss and just put that money into good money or just sit on the money, it’s fine. But we’re all together on this. What’s ironic is we had the opposite problem. So the container prices were shooting up to 20,000. So we actually ended up buying less because it’s like ridiculous, right? Because our items are cheap and the cost of shipping would have like exceeded like the product cost. So we waited. So this past year we actually…

10:19
we’re out of inventory, whereas last year was like the greatest year ever. So yeah, we have the opposite problem. So we’re not sitting on a lot of inventory. But for the people that are sitting on a lot of inventory, what are you seeing them like, where are they storing it? Because I know that Amazon, at least for us, they’ve been limiting, they’ve reduced storage requirements. Yeah, so yeah, so that’s another type of pinch. So if you already had inventory there, or you’re about to send more inventory, think of the past two, three weeks.

10:48
one clear day, a lot of sellers are waking up and their FBA storage limits have just been cut to half. So if you’re able to store 200,000 units, now you can only store 100,000 units and you’re about to stock up for the holidays. Nothing, mean, except trying to open cases and crying to Amazon and complaining and trying to maybe have them consider increasing it. There’s not a turnkey solution that I heard of or understand. you’re stuck in that position, I do apologize.

11:16
But the alternatives are just to keep dripping into FBA. So have a good 3PL partner that’s able to kind of keep dripping your inventory on time demand to FBA because you already have, hopefully, your products within the United States ready for Christmas and everything. And as the holidays get, or I’ll put it this way, if you’re about to stock out and you do, just make sure have FBM, Fulfilled By Merchant Backup, with your 3PL.

11:41
You know, all of a you’re have a great day, you never expect it, so kind of shift around your whole calculations and projections. So always have an FBA listing skew that’s set up on FBA, and a secondary skew, always. It should be probably a golden rule no matter in which time of the season. But a secondary skew which is on FBA fulfilled by merchants, so you never stock out or lose rank or anything like that. That should be the default setting, but especially in the holidays, just to make sure that you don’t lose on the momentum.

12:10
And of course, if you have this inventory limitations with FBA, that’s part of the solution. So hopefully works out for some of you guys. looking forward beyond this holiday season, what are you seeing for 2023? Yeah, just hopefully an opportunity to get out of the turbulence. It has been a very turbulent years for e-commerce with the slowdown of growth. The economy, the macroeconomics has been very difficult. Inflation is kind of all around, right?

12:39
A lot of the cheap or easy money that was around is no longer there. So if you’re taking loans or taking debt to finance your business, it’s costing you more. Market’s more competitive, so you’re making less margin. The whole exit boom, you’d have all these aggregators that raise billions of dollars from a lot of institutions in the past few years, and they were kind of fighting to buy Amazon-born brands and businesses so they could make an exit that also slowed down. You if it started from a 2x multiple two and a half years ago,

13:08
it mushrooms all the way to seven or eight multiples. Today it’s lying on the three, three and a half, maybe four percent multiples aggregate on average. Of course, you have always the ones that might get a 15x and the one that will get a half an x. It depends on the health of the business and how strategic it is to the buyer. But the opportunity to get out at a premium on Marfa is shrinking. So this is the turbulence of 2022. know, 2023 will be hopefully with all these layers from the micro to the macro, including the economy to just get out of it.

13:38
So we could touch macro a little bit. If the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates again and money becomes cheaper, businesses and Amazon sellers hopefully will be more risk averse and they’re going to invest more in their business. And hopefully if they do well, they’re going to grow and stimulate the whole market. It’s all kind of tied up together. But for now, it’s just going to be hopefully the bounce back or the rebound from the turbulence. Yeah, I mean, we’re not done raising yet. Just the question is when it’s going to end. But I don’t see them reducing it.

14:07
anytime soon. Yeah, they might stay on it for a few quarters or if they, because they’re saying, you know, they use a sledgehammer, you know, to cool off the economy. And I heard something about how in the 80s they did the same thing, but in the 80s, they facing 14 or 15 straight years of inflation. So they really had to kind of pull the big hammers and really raise interest really quickly and dramatically. But here you had only a time of maybe less than a year, maybe 15 months of inflation. Right?

14:35
that was creeping up. So if you use the hammer too hard and you cool off the economy in such a way where it’s just gonna be too hard to bounce back, it might be very challenging because you can already see it at the big tech firms. Meta is laying off, Twitter’s laying off employees. So these are high paid employees that we’re giving a lot of booms to lot of communities around the country and that helps the whole economy and all the wheels of it turn around from the local shopping malls to buying stuff on Amazon.

15:02
So you don’t want to hurt it too much. They’re doing it because inflation is still high and the employment rate is still low, meaning unemployment is low. So people have their jobs. So if all of a sudden you hit it too hard and from 3 % unemployment, it’s going to go to 7 or 8%, then you’re stuck in a big recession. It might take years and years to get out of that. So they might have to all of sudden really drop the rates really quickly to stimulate the economy. So you don’t want things to be too aggressive. And it’s very hard with macro because it takes

15:30
to three quarters to see the impact. we’re in this turbulence in transition. So it’s going to go out into 2023. It’s going be interesting to see. I know for myself, I’m anticipating the worst. I know you’re cautiously optimistic. So I’m just buckling down, removing as many expenses as I can. We actually just bought a warehouse, so we’re in control of all that now. And just trying to eke out whatever profits that you can. to ask, sorry, where’d you buy the other warehouse? In the West Coast, East Coast?

16:01
West Coast, yeah. ironically, our landlord was going to raise our rent 28%. One shot. then we were just like, forget this, we’ll just buy one. How big is it in square foot? It’s 3,000 square feet. Yeah, it’s expensive out here. But that’s like a story in itself. We ended up paying cash for it because there were multiple bids. Apparently, warehouse space around here.

16:28
at that size is actually pretty scarce. So while office space is like really crashing, the warehouse space actually is still stable. 3,000 foot is like a sweet spot. It really is for the small business entrepreneur, you know, doing stuff. It’s really high demand in the country, would assume California even more, because all the ports are coming in. So it’s a big hub for imports. Because it’s so competitive, cash was the king. So it helped you get the bid. Yeah.

16:59
So I want to switch gears. We get emails from you guys all the time about lost inventory. Would you say the problem is getting worse or better? That’s a good question. I think it balances out. There’s lots of variables here. It depends on what kind of products you’re selling. If you’re selling something that’s fragile, glassware or stuff like that, it’s more prone to get damaged. But if you’re selling cloth stuff like mittens for the oven, they don’t really get the…

17:29
damage. So we have less issues. It also depends on the way your factory or 3PL sends it to Amazon, how well it’s padded or how organized they are. But also on the other side, the receiving side, Amazon’s teams, they may be really good on the California side, but they could be not as efficient or organized on the Kentucky side. So in short, it’s very, it’s lots of variables to say this or that. But like I said earlier, the spectrum is between 1 to 3%.

17:58
So for every 100 units… Let’s talk about best practices. You just rattle off a number of things, right? So packing, if your thing is fragile. The other one was not including multiple skews or how you package it. Can you kind of elaborate on that? Yeah, so first of all, when you tell Amazon I’m shipping a thousand units, make sure you’re really shipping a thousand and not more, not less, because that can skew everything. Because if you tell them you ship a thousand and you ship 1,100, they’re going to receive a thousand.

18:29
And that 100 that you shipped and you over shipped, you might have no data, no way to tell them, hey, what about the extra 100 I shipped? They where? We only expected 1,000. We scanned in 1,000. Your 100 is gone. That can be a simple mistake that your 3PL is doing, your factory, whoever. So just keep it very, very strict on the quantities. For better or worse, if you’re over shipping, make sure you don’t do that because that can hurt you. If you over ship with 100 units, that can be material, depends on your price point.

18:58
But of course, don’t try to game the system. you’re telling them that you’re going to ship them 1,000, you’re only going to ship 900. And there’s going to be 100 units missing. You’re going to say, hey, where’s my missing units? And try to basically get a recovery for that. It might work a few times, but eventually Amazon will strike you out. So keep it honest. Keep it very firm. There is a scan. mean, back in the day, I don’t sell on Amazon anymore. But back in the day, we used to use a software called, what was it?

19:26
think it was called Scan Power, if I’m not mistaken. It’s like $25 a month. basically, when you create the, you can give it to your 3PL or your factory. When they kind of scan the units into the boxes, it tells them, it gives them red light when to stop. So you don’t overship. So if every box is supposed to have 50 units or whatever, when you hit 51, boom, it kind of flags the red light. Or on the opposite, if you were supposed to have 50 units in the box or the whole shipment, and you only kind of marked in 49, it’s not going to let you continue until you add the missing one.

19:55
So I guess in short, make sure you have the right systems in place to make sure that everything is very accurate on the unit level, you’re telling and reporting to Amazon that you will ship them. For better or worse, just be very accurate and honest. And of course, if you’re selling fragile stuff, make sure not to be cheap and stingy. Make sure that it’s a good shape because, okay, even if it got received by Amazon, even though it was damaged, it got received and it’s selling. What about the consumer? They’re going to get a damaged product. You don’t want that. Then it goes to negative review.

20:20
And then your ranking goes down, then it’s a whole spiral on the wrong direction. But even if it’s not a fragile product, but the packaging is very cheap and it can crumble. So imagine you get that the product is fine, but the box itself is all crumbled. It’s not a good experience. This is discord with the experience of the consumers. So use high-end materials. Don’t be cheap. Invest in your product. Invest in the experience of your consumers. It’s just going to reduce all the handling afterwards and all the reconciliation.

20:48
and hopefully put you at the lower edge of the spectrum of discrepancies because 1 to 3 % in other words means for every 100 units you ship into Amazon, 1 to 3 units is going to experience some sort of an issue or discrepancy throughout its lifetime or its life cycle and their fulfillment centers. And in nutshell, here’s the laundry list of the issues. It could get lost. It could get damaged. It could get destroyed. It could disappear. Or it could get overcharged with fees. So right now, we kind of touched more on the damage side of things.

21:16
or the loss because you’re not reporting properly or they just simply didn’t scan it properly or there was a little chaos in the wire so it got lost. So if we want to change gears, can also talk about if it gets overcharged with fees.

21:31
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23:27
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23:39
I want to go to both places actually. So first off, let’s just at a high level, where are the most common places where Amazon owes you money? Inbound. Inbound is a major, major thing. So once again, when you a thousand, there’s always these interesting discrepancies. That’s definitely the entry line. That’s like the entry level issue that most sellers understand that happens. You know, I ship a thousand and they receive a hundred and ninety, they realize, oh, that can happen. Okay. But the secondary ones are when units get lost or damaged,

24:09
Inside Amazon’s fulfillment centers after they got received that’s where sellers don’t realize they’re like, okay I know if I ship out thousand units they receive 190. I need to reconcile it. I’ll get my money and it’s done fine That’s just the beginning In the warehouses that could get lost or damaged also between the warehouses Amazon might ship your products from Kentucky to California California to Nevada to give one or two a day prime shipping Same things happen units get lost or damaged from the fulfillment centers to the consumers units can get lost or damaged consumers back to

24:38
the fulfillment centers with all the returns and refunds, same thing, and the fulfillment centers back to you guys, the sellers, if you do FBA removal orders. So all these logistics friction points, you have these units that get lost or damaged, and Amazon allows the sellers to go back 18 months on all the data and all the transactions to really reconcile the mathematics properly to see if there’s an opportunity or any discrepancy that you’re eligible to get a recovery. So that’s definitely the secondary layer that would say that it’s out there available for sellers.

25:08
How do you figure this stuff out? Like, there’s a lot of moving parts there, right? Inventory moving all over the place. And you know how much you’ve sent in, but presumably you’re sending in, because you’re trickling in inventory into Amazon FBA across multiple shipments as your stuff sells now, right? You can’t like ship the entire container, unless you do lot of inventory, a lot of sales, I guess. But what reports do you pull and how do you sort all this stuff out by hand? It’s a beautiful question because this is like an Amazon classic.

25:38
Right now Amazon is actually in the midst of a transition. So I can tell you what the reports of the old school days, and this was the truth for a few years, maybe the past seven, eight years, but now they’re transitioning to a brand new set of reports. So let me actually step back a little bit. The way to reconcile it through reports, data analytics. Like straightforward mathematics, data analytics, crossing data together in the report. So one unit came from here and then went to there and then…

26:05
It’s really messy. It’s really like we started the episode. We said it’s very unsexy. Very unsexy. I’ll give you old version. Today there’s a new version. But back in the day, had to basically download the, if you go to Sell Essential, you go to Reports, Fulfillment. And then you go to Inventory Adjustment Reports. And that report or that data set, you find all the code, all the entries that has a code of loss or damage. Each one has a different separate code. So that’s the first layer. find a unit that got lost. Great.

26:36
Then you take a secondary report where it’s called, I think it’s Inventory Event Detail Report. You take that, and then you see if in that report the unit got found. If it got found, you stop. You’re not eligible for a claim. But if it got lost in the first report, the second report never got found, you go to the third report. And the third report is reimbursement report. You’ve got to see if they already automatically gave you reimbursement. And if they did, you stop. You don’t file a claim. But in the first report, it got lost. In the second report, you see it never got found. In the third report, you see it never got

27:06
reimburse, boom, minus one, eligible for a case, you open a case, they’re gonna reconcile, and of course if you’re eligible, they’re gonna give you the reimbursement. That’s in a high-level nutshell, the logic of it. But the thing is, is Amazon doesn’t always admit that they’ve lost or destroyed something, right? Which means you have to do your own calculations, don’t you? Yeah, so they’re telling you, if you look at their terms of use, terms of service, they’re telling you, here’s all the reports you need to do, we are gonna automatically reimburse you.

27:36
for anything that we think it’s eligible, you, the onus, it’s your responsibility to still grab these reports and see if we missed out on anything. And if we did, open a claim, we’ll take care of you. And they do. most sellers, 80 % of sellers are not even aware that they need to do this. And the 20 % that are aware, they don’t know exactly how to do it or they try to do it. And it’s a struggle because, once again, this is not the business. The business is sourcing products, launching it.

28:04
advertising and marketing it, building a brand, all these beautiful stuff. And you’re not in the archaeology business, because this is like digging into the past, So this is where we live and that’s where we excel. I always laugh about this. say, if you want to talk to me about sports, I know nothing. I want to talk about reimbursements, I can talk all day. But yeah, so that’s a logic, that’s a data set that they give you, and you have to of crunch it out. And that’s it. So they open a case, and then they’ll kind of do their own mathematics.

28:32
And if your mathematics is good and your minus 1 is really minus 1, they’re going to make it 0 by giving you a plus 1. So typically, that means a reimbursement. I’m just talking the auditing language. Hopefully, What documentation do they ask for when you file So right now, the logic that I gave you is for loss and damage units inside their fulfillment center. So you don’t need any documents because it’s their data. The documents are typically needed.

28:58
for the first level, when you actually ship your products to the fulfillment centers, the inbound shipments or inbound receiving, when they receive their products. So back in the day, if you ship 1,000 units, they receive 190, 10 units are missing. You were able to go to Seller Central and find the shipment. Actually, I’m going to tell you how to do right now, so hopefully it’s helpful for you guys. So you visit Seller Central. You go to inventory, manage FBA shipments, and then you look over the shipments and you see the ones that are under received.

29:25
You go into them, and then over there, you’ll see inside the shipment, the units that are minus with the red. And then you have three options. One of the options is please research. That’s what you want to do. Back in the day, that was enough. You do please research, and they research, and if they see it’s lost, they give it a reimbursement. It was pretty turnkey. But in the past two, three years, they made it more sophisticated. So they are requiring documents. And if you don’t have these documents, you’re not going be able to

29:51
create investigation and they’re not going be able to research the issue for you. typically they might ask for two types of documentations. One of them is called Poo, proof of ownership, P-O-O. And then that means there can be two options. One option could be an invoice. They want to see that you really own the product, so you your invoice. But that’s typically for the resellers. Is that the invoice from your factory? So exactly. You’re touching the point. So you’re jumping the gun. If you’re a reseller.

30:19
You have a supplier, distributor, whatever they give you, boom. But if you’re a private label seller with brand registry, this is like a aha moment for many sellers if they’re listening. You don’t need to give an invoice. You’re exempt. So instead of an invoice, you can give them a packing slip. And a packing slip is a simple document that says, hey, this is my company information. This is the shipment information. I ship this. And you sign on the bottom, that’s it. So it’s a declaration of ownership.

30:46
Because you’re the brand, which means you’re the factory, which means there’s no invoice. It just doesn’t work that way. You’re the producer. So as a producer, it just says, this is me, this is my product. I declare that they’re mine, which they are. And I give you that document. It’s called proof of ownership. So it can be two formats. Typically, the invoice is more for the resellers. The package slip is more for the brands out there with brand registry. But of course, if you have a factory, you can give them that invoice if you want. Not a problem. You can do it.

31:14
But just clunkier. You have to go in, and this and that. Giving them a packing slip is just much easier. And by the way, in our platform, Getira, it’s not only a solution, it’s a platform. And in the platform, we have baked-in tools that help you with all this workflow, all this document flow. It will tell you which shipments need which documents. And if you need a packing slip, we have a tool that can help you generate that in a click. So you don’t have to go back and scramble. It’s right there for you. We have a patent on it. So it of saves you a tremendous amount of time. You or your VA, your virtual assistant.

31:44
And also it’s formatted in a way that Amazon and Stanford is going on. It’s the way they like to see it. And hopefully it will save you all the time and make sure that you get the refunds in the maximum impact. So that’s the first document, Poo, proof of ownership. So just to be clear, this proof of ownership document, this is different than the package slip you use to ship the goods to Amazon. Is that correct? Yeah, so if you created a package slip when you ship your products to Amazon and they’re inside the box, that’s great.

32:10
That’s not going to help you reconcile the shipment because the one investigating it can’t see it. So they’re going to ask you for the document on a digital format, a PDF or a JPEG, whatever. So if you have that already, give it to them. All good. If you don’t have it, you to go back and set it up. You can do it. But if you’re a member, if you’re using Getira in our platform, you can do it within the platform very easily. And it’s kind of a…

32:32
You know, it’s turnkey. So it’s essentially the same document that was in the box. Yeah, same thing. Yeah. Same, you know, company information. This is shipment information. This will ship and here’s a signature. Yes. A classic package that you see with any wholesale distributing, you know, a transaction, you know, regular business for sure. So that’s the first layer of documents. And then the second one is POD, proof of delivery. Okay. Now I’m going to help out. I’m going to unpackage this a little bit. If using Amazon’s partner carrier,

33:00
In other words, you buy your shipment and your tracking inside Sale Essential, you don’t need it. OK, why they have the tracking? They already have all the data. They know it got delivered. But if you’re outside carriers, which are not in Amazon’s partner carrier, that’s when they’re going ask you for a POD, a proof of delivery. So whoever you’re using, whatever third party carrier, a freight carrier, whatever it is, freight forwarder, make sure they have POD documents. They have tracking, they have POD documents, proof of delivery documents, because if they don’t, you’re not going be able to reconcile a shipment, even if it’s worth

33:29
hundred million dollars and use the cheapest know free forwarder that basically doesn’t have any proof of dog delivery documents nothing nothing at all Amazon’s not gonna reconcile your shipment is not gonna give you any help so that’s also kind of a point that we discussed earlier how that common though because Amazon’s rates are so cheap yeah I mean so statistically speaking it would get here I see that about 80 % of our users in our platform they use Amazon’s partner carrier it makes things very easy and turnkey and it’s very competitive

33:57
But the other 20%, for whatever reason, they don’t. I think they might have access to larger accounts or that has like legacy prices or stuff like that. Or they do it directly from China, from the factory at a super bundled deal. I don’t know. It is what it is. But because of that, they’re outside Amazon’s network. they typically do have actually POD proof of delivery. Some of them don’t. And they got stuck and they took major losses. So we recommend them going forward.

34:24
just how to use Amazon’s partner carrier. So pay that extra premium because you’re trying to maybe save a few dollars, but then you’ll be able to reconcile your shipments properly. Or if using outside of Amazon’s carriers, make sure they’re reputable and they have enough of a healthy setup so they can give you a proof of delivery, which is a simple document. So hey, here’s a shipment. Amazon, we delivered it. Sign it. And typically has Amazon’s signature on it with the logo. And you’re good to go. But if they’re just dumping your container at Amazon’s Performance Center and leaving,

34:53
without getting a proof of delivery, you have an issue because whatever, they’re not professional, they’re not in appetite. So it’s something to look out for. Okay. I would think that that first order tracking is fairly straightforward, right? Because something’s getting there. You know how many units you shipped. You know how many are gone into inventory. It’s the destroyed inventory that gets a little hairy, right? Because if they report destroyed inventory, but the numbers still don’t match up, that’s when you need to step in. That’s the pain point.

35:24
Once again, the way we said is that every seller and every product has a different life and different struggles. So yeah, if your products are more prone to being destroyed, that’s a pain point. But some of them never really have that issue. It’s more about being lost because of their carriers, their factories, Amazon. So wherever your pain point is within the spectrum, make sure that you have the right setup to reconcile properly. And of course, if you’re old and you’re eligible to get a recovery, you’re to go.

35:52
You patch it up and move forward. That’s kind of the attitude we have about it. Yeah. Let’s talk about other savings outside of just Amazon losing inventory. I know I’ve had experiences where like my box mentions were right on the border and then they rounded up and then all of sudden I was oversized and I didn’t even catch it for a long time. What are your recommendations on?

36:16
along those lines in terms of saving money. Yeah, so now we’re switching gears from the logistics discrepancies, all the laws damage, all the stuff that really is all physical. Now we’re transitioning to the financial, right? Right. So what does this mean? So here’s the premise. Your ace in your product on Amazon has weight in dimensions, right? And then based on these weight in dimensions, that data, Amazon will charge you a fee because they’re tiered into weight in dimension. So the larger and heavier the product is,

36:45
with weight and dimensions, the more they’re going to charge you in fees. That’s kind of the basic rule of logistics anyway. Same thing applies with FBA and Amazon. So what happens is that if Amazon has, for whatever reason, the incorrect data on your product, they can start overcharging you with fees on the fulfillment fees, but also on the storage fees, on the monthly storage fees, long-term storage fees, stuff like that. So it’s very, very important that, A, that you always kind of keep track and an eye on the fees and what Amazon thinks your weight and dimensions are because

37:15
It could be that, I’m going to give a simple example, but there’s many others. It could be that after a weeks or after a few months, Amazon will change the data. And then they’re going to start overcharging it with fees. So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you’re selling a handbag. And the handbag, you sold it, and then it got returned by a customer. And the customer added the strap into the handbag. So now that strap is adding 30, 40 inches to the dimensions of the product. So Amazon has this big machine called Cubic Scan Machine that every once in a while, they scan your products through that machine.

37:44
that machine will scan your handbag with the strap that’s adding another 30, 40 inches. Now it’s going to recalculate the dimensions. from that point on, it’s going to start overcharging you. And that’s a discrepancy, right? A financial discrepancy where they’re overcharging you with fees financially because of incorrect data. So what we recommend is, of course, obviously, now this type of recovery is limited to 90 days. So for the whole year, let’s Amazon

38:11
charge you, $100,000 in fees extra, fulfillment fees and storage fees because of this discrepancy, because of the incorrect data. But in the last 90 days, they only overcharge you $30,000. That’s where you’re going to get back, $30,000 for the last 90 days. So the $70,000 for the rest of the year, you’re not going to get back. So education is key with this. So first of all, you got to know the game. Now that you know the game, set up yourself properly for the game. And run an audit at least every quarter, every three months, because if they overcharge you for whatever reason.

38:39
You’re ready to go. You’re ready to open the case. They’re going to remeasure, see, we’re sorry. And then they’re going to go back and give you that recovery. And of course, if this is too much of a headache, you know where to begin. There’s service and solutions out there to help with this. We happen to be one of them. But just set yourself up. Whoever is watching and listening, just make sure you have a good setup for this because unexpectedly, it can really drain your profits. I’ll give another example, actually. You might be attacked or being targeted by a competitor. I sell the same thing as you, So if I want to hurt you financially speaking,

39:10
I can just take your ASIN, I’m my seller central, I can list the product, I will never offer it. But all I do is change the data. I say, instead of three ounces, it’s 30 pounds. Instead of being six inches, it’s 60 inches. And from that point on, the system absorbs that data, and they start recalculating your fees, and they start overcharging you. So we’ve seen customers and sellers that have been attacked this way. But the competitors say, you and I sell head to head, and then you’re not savvy enough, and I make all this profit. You’re being drained with fees.

39:37
and you’re making less or no profit or even losing money and then you kind of get out of the race and you don’t know what hate you because you only reconciled your books once a year for your tax return. Right? you can’t… How does that work? Sorry, walk me through that. So let’s say we sell widget A. You create a listing for widget A but you use… No, no, I take your ASIN. Your widget A has an ASIN. So I take that ASIN. Just like a reseller, know, resellers… Oh, like you piggyback on a listing. Exactly. Yeah, I’m like a reseller. You I can go, I can always go to, you know, an Adidas listing.

40:06
on Amazon to take that Adidas Asyn and change the information there. Right? So that’s what they do maliciously. The ones who can do it. Obviously there’s more nuance to it. It can be restricted by category, this and that. But let’s say me and you are in the same category head to head. Obviously I have access to all the categories and stuff like that. And your brand does it’s not really restricted. I can do that. So the ones who could, they actually do. And that’s how you in a very sophisticated way you attack financially attacking competitors and drain them out. Is there a bulk way to check all this stuff?

40:37
Yeah, so if you go… is it literally just going down each of your Ascent and checking the dimensions? I mean, it depends on your catalog and how many Ascent you got. If you have like, I don’t know, 5 to 10 Ascent, you just go to Cell Central and you should be able to see the fees right away. So let’s say all your products are the same, one of the dimensions and they’re all supposed to be charged $4.12 and all of you go over your inventory and see, this one is being charged $7.80. That’s an anomaly. That’s one crass way to do it. Very, kind of bare knuckles. But if you want to be more professional about it, once again, you visit Cell Central.

41:07
reports, fulfillment, and then over the fee section over there, I think it’s called fee preview, I believe, and they’ll give you a preview of all the fees that Amazon’s supposed to charge you across all your ASINs, especially if you have a large catalog with a lot of ASINs. And over there, you can match the weight and dimensions they think your products are with your own weight and dimensions chart from you or your factory, whoever it is. if this is like, you know, news to you and hazy, you never kind of thought about these dimensions, yeah, this is part of stuff you’re supposed to be savvy enough about.

41:35
selling on Amazon to make sure you you’re you stayed in the right position. That’s just one way. Another way is if you want guys for free, it’s not gonna cost you anything. I don’t want to plug myself in but just register to get gettita it’s free of charge. You get access to the platform over there we have a pick and pack module and over there you’re gonna have all the data. It’s just there you’re gonna see every ASIN and skew that you have and all the data of the winning dimensions what Amazon thinks they are it’s just gonna be right there for you. you’re gonna be so instead of going to sell essential and scrambling with all the data

42:03
Is there a few who can take action based on that? So just free data there.

42:08
What is your take on Amazon’s announcements that accelerate with their warehousing and distribution? Have you heard anything about it? Yeah, so I think it’s called AWD, Amazon Warehouse and Distribution, right? So this is a new format. I think it’s okay. I think it’s good. Basically, let me give you the backstory as far as I understand it. Once again, going back to the pandemic, the boom, Amazon has tremendously increased their warehouse capacity and everything like that.

42:36
And now that there’s less demand, they have all this empty space and all these warehouses. So you’ve got to figure out a way to monetize that. So what do do? You say, hey, let’s create this program where you ship your products to us in bulk, containers, and then we’ll charge you different rates and different fees than just a regular FBA. So in other words, they’re entering the 3PL game where you ship huge amounts of

43:02
of inventory to them there and then they hold it and then they can drip it to FBA or send it to wherever. Let’s say you’re selling wholesale to JCPenney or Macy’s, they can ship that also. Once again, like any regular 3PL. That’s how they’re packaging the solution. So you basically turn to Amazon for your 3PL, know, third-party logistics needs for your, in general, for your entire business. So they’re trying to compete with any other regular 3PL, but it’s a bit more optimized towards your FBA and especially, I think,

43:31
you should be able to set up like a pool system. So whenever your FBA is running out of stock, they drip it from AWD to FBA. It might be even the same warehouse, so it makes it easily available. So you can synchronize that. The pricing, I’m not too sure, but hopefully it’ll be competitive enough so sellers can get better results or better rates from regular 3PLs. It’s very interesting. Like you said, they announced it in Amazon Accelerated in September. We’re recording this in November, so this is eight weeks into the mix since they announced.

44:01
I don’t know. what I do know is that they had this program before for many of the Chinese factories that sell on Amazon US. They had this kind of global, AGL, Amazon Global Logistics kind of environment with AWD where they were able to ship in bulk a lot of inventory to Amazon’s firm centers and then drip it into FBA and then regular stuff that they needed to do. I think they realized they can roll that out and open that up and see how that helps them with their excess warehouse.

44:29
Maybe they should have sold you 3,000 square foot for a good price. Yeah, I’m sure all the same headaches with FBA are going to exist with AWD also in terms of lost inventory and all that stuff as well. Yeah, there’s going to be another layer that we’re going to have to see how it all transitions and alleviates and pin if there’s going to make things more confusing. Correct. All right, Yoni.

44:55
Where can people find you and learn more about your unsexy business that most people would never want to do? Yeah, so I’m pretty active on Facebook and LinkedIn to be honest. Just look up Yoni Mazor, which is Y-O-N-I-M-A-Z-O-R. I’ll give you guys also my direct email. So any questions, thoughts, ideas about anything eCommerce, feel free to reach out. I’m pretty open. It’s YoniM at gatila.com, which is Y-O-N-I-M.

45:23
at gettida.com, which is getida.com. That’s pretty much where I’m available. Of course, visit the website. We have a friendly chat, you know, team in the chat if you need some human interaction. We have a nice team as well. And I’ll just make a plug here. I mean, this isn’t something that you want to be worrying about with your business. I mean, there’s so many things to be worrying about on Amazon and your own DDC store.

45:49
When I said unsexy, I meant it like these are things that like we hate doing. So it’s it’s kind like a no brainer. It ends up feeling like free money actually. That comes back because you wouldn’t have done the work. Yeah, somebody told me that some analogy where you know how sometimes you pick up your old jacket from the know, the your closet from you you haven’t worn like six years. And then in the side of the pocket, there’s like $100 bill there, you know, it’s like, oh man, free money, even though it’s your money.

46:16
But all of sudden, let’s have a nice lunch or dinner or something like that. So to make it short, there’s an opportunity to look back 18 months and recover funds for you guys that you never expected that it’s there. Now you heard this episode, so you know all about it. Take action. Hopefully some of the stuff we told you here can help you. But if it’s too much for you, too complicated, reach out for solutions. They’ll be happy to help. And take that money that you recover. Just fuel your business. it. Thanks for coming on, Yoni. Appreciate it. Thank you,

46:46
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now Yoni was kind enough to give $400 in free reimbursements to anyone listening to this episode. To redeem the bonus, go to gettida.com and use promo code MYWIFEQUITTERJOB to get 400 bucks. It’s like free money. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 449. And once again, I want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button,

47:13
You can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash div. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash div. I also want to hang out with you in person in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So grab a ticket to Seller Summit and let’s meet up. Go to sellersummit.com. That’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T dot com. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog

47:42
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifecooderjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and it’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.