Helium 10 Buzz 8/15/24: Prime Exclusive Discounts Now Cost $50 | Amazon Prime Big Deal Days Coming

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Let’s take a closer look at the anticipated Prime Big Deal Days and speculate on the potential dates for this high-stakes event. And just when you thought Walmart was keeping quiet, they’ve rolled out Walmart Cross Border, a service designed to challenge Amazon Global Logistics with efficient port-to-door shipping for goods manufactured in China. Tune in to understand how these changes might alter your business strategies in the upcoming shopping seasons.

Walmart opens ocean shipping network to marketplace sellers
https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-china-cross-border-shipping-service-marketplace-sellers/724202/

But that’s not all—AI is revolutionizing the way we shop and sell online. From helping consumers find the best deals to potentially reducing the advertising burden for sellers, AI-powered search tools are transforming the e-commerce landscape. Whether you see AI as a friend or foe in your selling journey, it’s crucial to stay informed. I’ve got all the insights you need, along with a must-read article linked in the description for a deeper dive.

Recent Google Ruling May Open Door to More AI-Powered eCommerce
https://www.pymnts.com/news/ecommerce/2024/recent-google-ruling-may-open-door-to-more-ai-powered-ecommerce/

Don’t miss out on this week’s buzzing news roundup that’s packed with actionable advice and expert insights.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

• 00:54 – Prime Exclusive Discounts FREE
• 02:56 – Prime Big Deal Days
• 04:38 – Walmart Cross Border
• 05:48 – Amazon Inbound Fees
• 08:55 – FBA Returnless Resolutions
• 11:45 – AI E-commerce

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon makes the free Prime exclusive discounts not free anymore. Amazon big deal days is coming. Walmart has something that’s similar to Amazon Global Logistics. These stories and more on today’s Weekly Buzz how cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the e-commerce world, we give you training tips of the week and we give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let’s see what’s buzzing. All right, we’ve got a number of articles that we’re going to be going over today. It’s actually a special episode for those watching this later on the podcast. I’m actually recording this live for a live studio audience here, even live on Instagram.

Bradley Sutton:

But let’s get into the top news stories of the week. The first story if you guys have not checked, you probably have an email in your browser Gmail, whatever you guys have for email that talks about something that is going to have a fee, all right. So prime exclusive discounts has always been what before? Free. Now there is a fee, all right. Take out that are All right. So this is says on August 14th, a fee for prime exclusive discounts will be introduced for US deal events, starting with the big deal days. All right. So, first of all, prime Big Deal Days is back. I’m going to talk a little bit about that before, but that’s like a little soft drop that Amazon did. It says Prime exclusive discounts that run during non-event days will continue to not be charged a fee, but days on high traffic events here, such as Prime Day, prime Big Deal Days, black Friday, cyber Monday will now incur a $50 event fee.

Bradley Sutton:

That kind of sucks. I mean. I don’t know about you guys, but for me I really made a killing with my Prime Exclusive discounts on Prime Day this year. I was able to do tons of those. I didn’t do any of those lightning deals or or deals of the day and it was free. Right Now there is a $50 fee. Some other details here that it says it says a prime exclusive discount on 20 products or 100 products would both be charged an event fee of $50. Now if you, if your event does not have one, even one sale, it says there will not be a fee. Now if you look at the new page, there was like the help document about that. It has a little bit more information. But again, those deals that the $50 fee is going to apply, you can see here Prime Big Deal Days, black Friday, cyber Monday and Prime Day starting in 2025. So I am pretty sure that most of you guys are not happy about that. But hey, not all good free things last forever. I hope you guys were taking advantage of those Prime exclusive discounts. Well, you could. I’m not saying don’t do Prime exclusive discounts. I mean I hope you were taking advantage of it while they were free.

Bradley Sutton:

Next news article that we have here is not really a news article, but it’s about how Prime Big Deal Day was announced right, kind of like softly in that message. So it is coming back and then I see here that you can actually create it. Like there’s another notice in your Prime Exclusive Discount page that says you can now submit Prime Big Deal Day’s discounts on a single product. Now Amazon didn’t say yet when it is. Now you remember I predicted Prime Day. I don’t think I’m going to be able to predict it this year, but if, again, I had to pick a date, it would be around October 9th. Now let me show you why. Again, I could be way off on this because Amazon is being very tight lipped about it, but I noticed here that one of my products was eligible for prime big deal days window. So when I went in there, you’ll notice you guys probably have seen this yourself is that there’s weeks for regular deals right All the way up to October 6th, okay. And then the very next one it says is prime big deal days window. So, first of all, it pretty much guarantees that prime big deal days is not going to be before October 6th. Now, historically, prime big deal days, I think there was another it was called something different in 2022. It was kind of like on the second Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the month. So that’s why I’m thinking that, hey, it could be around October 9th, 8th, 9th, 10th, around there. We’ll see. You’ve got a lot of time to plan, but at least again, it is now confirmed there is another prime big deal days coming, so you might want to start getting your deals in if you are going to be taking advantage of that.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, in the past, we’ve talked about how sometimes Amazon might come out with something and then Walmart might come out with it later or vice versa, sometimes even in the same week. Well, this one took a while. You guys know how, a few years ago, amazon launched Amazon Global Logistics, right, where Amazon will pick up your inventory in factories overseas and then they will go ahead and import them. So now Walmart is doing that too. So this is an article from retaildive.com and it’s entitled actually, I don’t even know what the title. Oh, here it is. It says Walmart opens ocean shipping network to marketplace sellers. All right, so this is going to be called Walmart cross border, and it says it’s a port to port or port to door, I should say full container load freight service from China to the U S, according to Walmart marketplace website, and it’s only available, obviously, just like Amazon global logistics is only available for FBA sellers, this one is only available to Walmart fulfillment service sellers that manufacture goods in China, and it says all cargo must be shipped from Yanchan, shanghai or Ningbo ports. It says cargo imported to the US is then directly transported to a Walmart fulfillment center. So if you’re starting to do kind of like big loads and maybe you have a Walmart only SKU and you’re not sending it to Amazon, you can now maybe look into this to see if that can save you a shipping time and money.

Bradley Sutton:

Another email that came out today from Amazon. For those of you sending replenishment or speaking of inbound freight, this email said to offer you more control over FBA shipment plans, we’ve added a new guideline that ensures that you receive the Amazon optimized inbound option. Now remember, amazon earlier this year started with the inbound placement fees. Right, like, if you try to ship to less than four Amazon warehouses, you get a per box surcharge. And I don’t know about you guys, but this is what’s happened to me a lot. I have my own warehouse, so I try and keep things pretty tight. I don’t want to send, you know, like 30 boxes at once because I don’t want, you know, overage fees. So something I’ve been doing is I try and keep it tight. I’ll like okay, let me do four, let me do four boxes, let me do five boxes. And have you guys ever noticed that sometime it still does not give you the four locations and that means that even if you ship five, six boxes, amazon is still charging you that inbound placement. Like you didn’t get that optimized. Well, if I’m reading this correctly, it’s now saying that no, hey, if you include five identical boxes or pallets per item, okay, the each box or pallet has to contain the same quantity per item and the same item mix. If you do that now, it’s saying that they’re ensuring that you will get the Amazon optimized inbound option. So I’m going to start trying that. As long as I ship five identical boxes, is that going to completely always a hundred percent guarantee that I get that Amazon inbound fee? So? So that’s something to be thinking about.

Bradley Sutton:

One more minor notice here in Seller Central Dashboard probably doesn’t apply to too many of you, but I’ll go ahead and bring it out, since there wasn’t too much in the news this week. But it says now you can select your preferred carrier when shipping to Amazon. So for those who are doing LTL or FTL shipments to US fulfillment centers, maybe you have to choose from this drop down menu of like a million carriers. Well, if you’ve got a favorite one that you always want to use now, you’re going to be able to set that up. Now one quick kind of like on a funny note. Sometimes you guys ever think that there’s got to be some comedians at Amazon. And don’t get me wrong, guys, I’m about to throw Amazon under the bus here make fun, but you guys know that nobody loves Amazon more than me. Did you guys notice last week that there was a super funny notice? You know, you know those seller polls that go on in seller central. Anybody see this one last week?

Bradley Sutton:

All right, seller poll question I can count on seller selling partner support to understand my issues. Strongly agree, agree. Neither agree or disagree. Disagree or strongly disagree Like I think a lot of you probably chuckled when you saw that Right, and there’s some funny ones. Or strongly disagree, like I think a lot of you probably chuckled when you saw that right, and there’s some funny ones. Like sometimes, don’t you think that you know what? There’s gotta be a comedian working who are making these polls, like they cannot be serious, that they think that there’s gonna be somebody who says I strongly agree that Amazon seller partner support is gonna understand my issues. Now don’t get me wrong. No, seller support is, you know, 100% perfect. Obviously there’s miscommunications, but I think we all agree that there seems to be more problems than not with Amazon seller support.

Bradley Sutton:

But, that being said, another department that sometimes I swear they’re doing like some tongue in cheek humor is the department that does the announcement, sometimes seller central, about new return policies. Like you guys ever seen those messages today? Spoiler alert, there’s going to be the most funny of them all, but anyways, sometimes you’ll see those messages right and it’ll say something like hey, in order to make sure that your customers are happier and to make sure that you’re not having to process so many returns, we’re going to go ahead and automatically approve returns from customers without you having to approve it. Right? Do you guys remember that one? And it’s like oh, this should ease the seller’s mind so much. This is what sellers want. You know, like, basically, it’s sellers were like what in the world? Like why I want to approve returns? I don’t want these. You know, customers just returning anything and everything. Well, guys, they have outdone themselves.

Bradley Sutton:

This latest news report right here in Seller Central I don’t know if it was today or yesterday. It says streamline returns with returnless resolutions. It says when you enroll in FBA returnless resolutions, you’re going to benefit from lower fees associated with returns and an increased convenience. What is this? First of all, scroll up here, guys. It says this is a new program that helps you streamline returns by offering customers a full refund without having to return the item. All right. It says this is a streamlined return management process that removes the need to handle returns of physical items. All right, I’m like what in the world? I’m going to just repeat this part. When you enroll in this, you’re going to benefit. Benefit from this. Look at the plus minus. You know how there’s thumbs up and thumbs down that Amazon sellers give to news articles. This is one of the worst I’ve seen 18 gave it a thumbs up and 163 people gave it a thumbs down. But that’s that’s kind-boggling to me.

Bradley Sutton:

Listen to some details about how it works. I started doing some research on this. It says, by default, customers are required to return your FBA inventory to Amazon Fulfillment Centers where it’s evaluated for sellability. But when you enroll in FBA returnless resolutions for your FBA inventory, you grant the customer a full refund and allow them to keep the item, saving you the fees associated with high return rates and customer processing and storage and removals. I’m not sure about you guys, but this gave me a chuckle. Like seriously. I like now we’re just going to go ahead and opt into this and say you know what, any of my customers who want to return a product for any reason, all you know what? Just keep the product. All right, that’s going to benefit me, the seller. Just keep the product, get your money back, no worries, come on, guys. Anyways, I hope I’m misreading this, because that’s what it seemed like to me. It sounds like everybody else thought it was that too, because that’s why I had the 163 downvotes.

Bradley Sutton:

Anyways, last article of the day, switching away from and walmart for a second. This was about google. It’s from paymentscom and it’s entitled recent google ruling may open door to more ai powered e-commerce. Now, this is a long read, I can’t go through all of it, but basically there was a federal court ruling against amazon’s search monopoly and it says it could usher a shift in online shopping, potentially reshaping how consumers discover products and businesses and how businesses market them. So read this article, guys. There’ll be a link somewhere in the description below where it doesn’t mention like Amazon directly, but it’s basically saying that, hey, you know, when you’re searching online, instead of just Google for everything, there might be multiple AI powered things that help you find you know what you’re looking for. There might be, like these new bots that are going to go and help you find the cheapest deals, and so some of those things it could hurt sellers, you know, like if it’s always finding cheaper alternatives. Sometimes it could help sellers. The more AI intuitive some of these search engines get, maybe that means the less advertising you have to do. I don’t know. That’s something that the article said, but make sure to check that out. All right, guys. That’s it for the news this week. We’ll see you next week to see what’s buzzing.

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