Q&A: How can I avoid repricing scams?

QUESTION: I'm concerned that unscrupulous sellers on Amazon Marketplace might scam Marketplace vendors who automatically reprice their inventory to meet the lowest price.

For example, assume the market price for a specific textbook is $80, but student X doesn't want to pay that much. He knows about automatic repricing, so Student X offers to SELL the book on Amazon for $45, even though he doesn't have a copy. He waits for the automatic repricers to match his price, then he buys it cheap. It seems like this could be just the sort of "insider tip" that could spread like wildfire across college campuses.

ANSWER: I think this type of thing is already happening and will only increase as more students buy books online. I wouldn't be surprised if some "real" booksellers are using this technique to see if they can outsmart (or even sabotage) their competition.

There are several ways to avoid this trap. It's smart for sellers to have a "rule" that any price change over a certain percentage or dollar amount won't be automatic. Here's another way to approach it: Set a minimum price for each item, so you're essentially preventing the price from going below your wholesale price or your target price.

Another safeguard is to eyeball the competing sellers. For example, any time I reprice a book over $20, I check the feedback of the sellers with lower prices. If someone without a track record is lowballing, I'll ignore that listing.

As third-party repricing software has gotten more sophisticated, they allow you to specify these types of rules. For example, AMan has a "Price Watch" feature which prevents major upward or downward deviations in price. And it has a graduated decline feature where you can specify that your price will be lowered by only by a certain amount.

Kevin O'Brien, who developed AMan, says there's another perhaps less-common shenanigan some sellers use. The seller will raise their price on a book temporarily, trying to get you to raise your price too. Then they'll come in at a much lower price, trying to get a quick sale while you're at an uncompetitive price.

If anyone has more techniques or tools for avoiding these kinds of scams, please add a comment.

Q&A: What software should I use for selling books on eBay?

QUESTION: I sell books primarily on eBay, listing books worth more than $10 in my Store. For less valuable books, I auction them for two seven-day periods, then the unsold books go into the store. When there is a promotion, I put almost all the expensive books on "live."

Each book is scanned and "written" up through eBay's Seller Assistant Pro software. I also list about 400 of my more expensive books on Amazon. This is very time-consuming, and Sellers Assistant Pro is being retired by eBay, which is going to require lots of relearning.

Is there a better way? eBay's ISBN listings are erratic, and many titles miss pertinent keywords. But eBay still provides a great venue for sales -- many times I'm the only seller with a certain title listed.

ANSWER: You can also use eBay's TurboLister software to list auctions, fixed-price core listings, and Store items. After you input an ISBN, TurboLister also allows you to change the book title, just in case you want to add a keyword or ensure the author name isn't cut off.

TurboLister allows you to quickly relist any group of auctions (or fixed-price listings) with the click of one button. You just highlight the ones you want to relist.

TurboLister is free, but it does have its idiosyncrasies. If you need more automation, you might want to look at the new version of eBay's Blackthorne software, which is supposed to improve the migration from Seller's Assistant.

Another option is considering third-party software that would enable you to automate your inventory management on eBay, Amazon, and the other major bookselling sites. These services manage your listings and delete the ones that sell, so you don't sell the same book twice. Here's a list of these tools hosted by eBay.

Of course these services will cost you a monthly fee and sometimes a percentage of your sales. But if it gets you a lot more cashflow it might be worth 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.

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.