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?