August 12, 2024 • 34 mins
Did you know that overlooking Amazon FBA reimbursements could be costing you up to 3% of your revenue? Join us as we chat with Alex Ryan, co-founder and CTO of Refundify, who shares his expertise on ensuring Amazon sellers recover every penny owed to them due to inventory mistakes. Alex's impressive background in software engineering has enabled him to develop a robust system that helps sellers manage these reimbursements with unprecedented efficiency. We dive into the substantial impact these overlooked funds can have on profit margins and why addressing these discrepancies is crucial in the competitive world of e-commerce.
We'll guide you step-by-step through the labyrinth of Amazon's Seller Central, revealing the secrets to reconciling lost inbound shipments and successfully raising and re-raising cases to secure your reimbursements. Learn how to identify discrepancies, provide the right documentation, and navigate the often frustrating process of dealing with product damages. We also shed light on how Amazon calculates reimbursement amounts and what actions to take when those figures don’t add up in your favor. If you're tired of losing money to inventory errors, this episode is a must-listen.
Finally, discover the transformative power of automating the reimbursement process. We discuss the benefits of API integration, which streamlines data reconciliation, improves accuracy, and saves time. Alex shares common mistakes sellers make, like delaying claims and not providing adequate evidence, and offers valuable tips for selecting a trustworthy third-party reimbursement service. We also touch on Refundify's unique commission-based model and the importance of continuous training to stay ahead of Amazon's ever-evolving policies. Tune in to optimize your Amazon FBA reimbursements and boost your bottom line.
You can learn more about Refundify here: https://www.refundify.io/
Want to chat with us about this podcast? Send us a text message here
The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcement (00:00):
Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam
Shaffer, where we explore theworld of Amazon and other
e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Adam Shaffer (00:18):
Hello and welcome to Planet Amazon.
I'm Adam Schafer, and thanksfor joining us today.
Amazon, I'm Adam Shafer, andthanks for joining us today.
Today on the podcast, we haveAlex Ryan.
Alex is the co-founder and CTOat Refundify.
Refundify helps Amazon sellersrecover Amazon reimbursements
they deserve and are owed, butit's really hard work to be able
(00:39):
to figure out what Amazon doesowe you and how to actually get
it from them.
We want to discuss theimportance of FBA reimbursements
in a world where margin matters.
So let's bring out Alex andlet's start talking about this
awesome, important area ofAmazon that I don't think enough
people focus on.
But if you're not, you're goingto probably be bleeding profits
(01:04):
.
So with that, welcome Alex.
Alex Ryan (01:08):
Thanks for joining.
Yeah, thanks so much for havingme on.
Adam, Appreciate it.
Glad to be here to chat.
Adam Shaffer (01:17):
Hey.
So before we get into thewonderful world of
reimbursements, first I just gotto understand a bit more about
you, because it's not often wehave the co-founder and CTO, so
you're more of the technicalwizard behind Refundify, right?
So tell us a little bit aboutyourself and about the company.
Alex Ryan (01:32):
Yeah, yeah, so I'm the co-founder and CTO of
Refundify, as you say.
So easiest way to become theCTO is found the business right.
So I've got a background insoftware engineering, so I've
got experience in developinglike SaaS applications.
So I worked in kind of a fewdifferent industries like
hospitality, e-commerce, supplychain, quality control quite
recently, and then most recentlyI've started with Refundify, so
(01:55):
entering into the Amazon space.
So with Refundify, what we'vetried to do is basically what
you're saying right Try to raiseawareness about the
reimbursement opportunities thatyou have as an FBA seller and
build out a solution there toactually help sellers reconcile
all of those issues and then goaway and actually get them their
money back in a fully managedservice.
(02:16):
So minimal effort on theseller's part and just money
comes rolling back in.
Adam Shaffer (02:22):
No, that's, I mean , super important, and I don't
think enough people think aboutit until they start trying to
figure out where some of themoney's going.
And also, when you try toreconcile an Amazon statement,
good luck, because it's not thateasy, and I do think that most
sellers on Amazon do lose moneyI'm going to say bleed but just
(02:45):
are losing profits that shouldbe rightfully theirs, because
it's really hard to follow.
It's like a shell game in a way, and I was hoping first you
could just start with explainingwhat an Amazon reimbursement is
and why it is important.
Alex Ryan (03:03):
Yeah, absolutely so.
An Amazon reimbursementessentially is when Amazon has
made a mistake.
They owe a seller some money.
So Amazon is shipping like 1.6million packages a day, right?
So that means they're receivinga bunch of inventory in their
warehouses, they're storing it,they're picking and packing it
and shipping it out.
Mistakes are guaranteed, right,and within Amazon's terms of
(03:27):
service, they actually promiseto reimburse sellers for any
lost inventory at retail price.
And that's pretty key.
They will reimburse at retailprice.
So it's like making a sale,right.
So, yeah, you said bleed kind ofbleed profits.
So, yeah, you said bleed kindof bleed profits.
(03:58):
I think that's actually apretty good way of saying it,
because typically what we see islike a revenue loss of like 1%
to 3%, right, which is, you know, 1% to 3 of climb up a bit
higher.
So if you're on a profit marginof, say, like 30%, which is, I
think, a pretty good margin,then if you're losing 3% of your
revenue, that can be about 10%of your profit.
That's lost.
Likewise, if you're on a 20%profit margin, which is, I think
(04:21):
, more likely, that's kind of upto 15%.
So, kind of in the probablymost likely, most sellers are
losing between kind of 5% and15% of their profit.
That's just bleeding, justbeing lost every month.
So it really does add up andcan be quite painful.
Adam Shaffer (04:38):
So I mean, and it's you know, in a world where
margin does matter and I thinkit depends on what type of
seller and what kind of productyou're selling but once you
include advertising costs inyour cost of goods, if you're
making 20%, 15%, you're probablydoing well.
So to lose that much margin isdifficult, and so this is one of
(05:00):
the things you really need tobe disciplined about, because
there's a window of opportunityto go get your money back, and
we'll talk about that in asecond.
But let's talk about thedifferent kinds of
reimbursements.
And I know you say Amazon makesa mistake.
We never say Amazon makes amistake, but stuff does happen,
but stuff does happen.
(05:22):
And so the original issue that Iused to think about is and we
used to try and follow was weship 100 things up to Amazon FBA
and you're waiting, and you'rewaiting for them to receive it,
and then they receive some of it, but not all of it, right?
So maybe they receive 50, andthen you keep on waiting, but
(05:44):
only 50 ever show up.
That is one of the issues,right?
Like to me, that's like theeasy way, yeah yeah, absolutely
yeah, it's a really common one.
Alex Ryan (05:52):
So it's like a lost inbound shipment, right, happens
a lot.
So yeah, you ship 100, theycheck in 50 and you're kind of
left wondering, like hang on,where you know half my inventory
where it's gone, where's?
Like, hang on, where have youknow half my inventory where
it's gone?
Where's it gone?
Um, and then the onus is youknow, often amazon will
automatically reimburse that ortry and find the inventory in
open cases themselves, but notalways right.
(06:12):
And then the onus is on theseller, right, you have to go
and realize that you're missinginventory, go and reconcile the
reports, provide documentationand try and raise that case and
get the money back.
So, yeah, your lost inbound isis a big one.
Um, another really big one is isjust like warehouse issues.
So you know, if they're storingyour inventory in their
(06:34):
warehouses, right, they canbreak it, they can lose it, they
can dispose of it when theyshouldn't be, you know, um.
So you've got that one.
You've got that, yeah, lostinbound warehouse issues and
you've got things like, uh,mishandled returns, maybe.
Uh, you've got that one.
You've got the yeah, lostinbound warehouse issues and
you've got things like, uh,mishandled returns, maybe, uh,
you've sold an item.
A seller said, hey, I want toreturn this, and they return an
empty box, but amazon'sreimbursed them.
Right, they know, they know youthat money, um, or maybe even
(06:58):
incorrect fees.
And this one, I think, is likethe silent killer.
The incorrect fees right, ifthey've got a measurement wrong
on one of your items, they'restoring that, charging you more
money.
They're shipping it andcharging you more money if
you're a high volume seller, youknow a dollar here, a dollar
there, that that really startsto add up um so, so I missed
that one, so I want to make sureI got that, so I got.
Adam Shaffer (07:17):
we talked about amazon damages it or they lose
the inbound shipment, but thethe fees like so that's they're
saying your product weighs morethan it does, or it's bigger
than it does, so they'recharging you more storage.
Is that what you're saying?
Alex Ryan (07:32):
Exactly.
Yeah, they're charging you moreand they're charging more for
the pick and pack as well.
So that kind of really adds upEvery sale you make, every item
you're storing, you're beingcharged just fractionally more
money than you should be.
And in those cases you need togo to Amazon and say hey, please
remeasure this, because thesemeasurements don't add up right.
Please remeasure this andconfirm.
(07:52):
And the real painful one aboutthis is actually you only get
it's the shortest window forreimbursements.
It's just three months.
So these issues can go on for ayear and you can only get three
months of it back.
So it's one of those ones youneed to move on quite quickly,
otherwise you are just losingthe money and it cannot be
recovered.
(08:12):
So that's the 3P window is youhave three months to get your
claims going.
Yeah, so it varies for each ofthe different claims.
So it starts at 18 months isthe best one, and that's for
kind of like the warehouseissues and mishandled returns.
But then it goes down quiterapidly to kind of six or nine
months for lost inbound shippingissues, based on if you're an
(08:32):
EU or North American seller, andthen, yeah, down to three
months for the FBA fees.
So, yeah, if you're not quickit's gone and Amazon won't
accept reimbursement claims.
Adam Shaffer (08:43):
Yeah, if you're not quick it's gone and Amazon
won't accept reimbursementclaims.
You know what I noticedSometimes and I don't know if
this falls into the world ofreimbursements, but sometimes
when you talk about fees, you'retalking about storage fees, but
what you know, there's thecommission.
They get like their fee, likeit could be 8%, 10%, 15%, and
(09:04):
I've seen things that are, say,10% categories and they're
charging 15% because it'smiscategorized or something.
Is that something that's partof this or not?
Alex Ryan (09:12):
I believe so, yeah, yeah.
So if they're miscategorizingyour item, yeah, actually a
pretty hard one to spot.
But yeah, you're right, ifthey're charging 15% when they
should be charging 10%, thatends up being a lot of money.
Yeah, so you can look at thecorrect item categorization and
get it recategorized and, yes,claim back that money.
Adam Shaffer (09:31):
So how do you guys do it?
When we first got into the biz,we were trying to do all this
ourselves because we assumed itwas mostly the stuff that we
ship off to Amazon.
So we just we review the stuffevery day and we make sure that
they receive what we have, andif they don't, we put a claim in
.
But you can't actually put aclaim in right away.
You have to wait, like there'sthere's a timing issue with the
(09:53):
claim, right, and I don'texactly know what it is, but I
think it's like you have to waitmaybe 90 days before you can
put the claim in.
I'm not sure I can't rememberanymore, but then there was all
the money we lost in between.
So let's say we were prettygood at that.
We had no way to figure outwhat was damaged and what was
(10:14):
lost, and they moved productsfrom warehouse A to warehouse B.
How do you guys, what's theprocess Like?
How do you do it and how woulda normal, regular 3P company be
able to do this without somekind of automation?
Alex Ryan (10:30):
Yeah, it's a challenge, right.
So we talked about kind ofthose kind of main categories,
but you're kind of you'recircling around it there, right,
it's not just those big mainfour, it's each one of those has
a whole bunch of subcategoriesand each of those subcategories
(10:51):
needs to be reconciled andfigured out in a different way.
Um, so we don't use the sellercentral anymore and we have
automations, but I think ifyou're doing it within seller
central, I believe you need todownload like eight plus
different reports, right, andpull this data down and then
reconcile and find all themistakes.
So there's loads of data youneed to pull down and loads of
different systems you need inplace to actually sort of
reconcile the discrepancieswithin those reports.
So it's a real challenge.
(11:11):
There's a lot to do there, butI can kind of walk you through
one just to give you an idea orfeel for it.
Adam Shaffer (11:18):
Yeah, please, please, please.
Alex Ryan (11:19):
Yeah, so that lost inbound one that you hit on,
kind of you ship them 100, theycheck in 95 or whatever.
So to reconcile that withinSeller Central, right, you're
going to log in, you justnavigate to your FBA shipments
page.
You can filter all of yourshipments by the closed status.
(11:40):
Then you can download that dataand just throw it into your
spreadsheet of choice.
You just need to create then afilter.
There'll be two columns inthere, kind of the quantity
received and the quantityshipped.
And you're looking for adiscrepancy there where it says
you've shipped more than they'vereceived and that indicates a
potential case.
So once you've identified thatshipment or more likely, if
you're a big seller, a number ofshipments you go back into
(12:02):
Seller Central and actually findthat shipment, navigate to your
Contents tab and you can justverify the discrepancy there.
And then Amazon gives you alittle dropdown with basically
options, things that you want todo.
So you click in that one andyou can click on Research,
missing Units.
And this is the process now ofraising a case with Amazon and
(12:23):
saying, hey, something's wrong,right, so they'll immediately
just give you some information.
They'll say that you need toprovide an invoice or a packing
slip and this depends on thekind of seller.
So if you're like a third partyseller, you're going to need to
provide invoices.
If you're like a brand owner,private label seller or
manufacturer, then you canprovide like a packing slip.
(12:44):
Owner, private label seller ormanufacturer, then you can
provide like a packing slip.
Um, if you're a refundify, wegenerate those for our clients.
So you don't have to providethe documentation, but you need
to provide that before amazonwill look into the case and then
a basic description just sayinghey, this is what I've seen
discrepancy here and here forthis item.
Please research the unit,either return it to inventory or
(13:04):
reimburse me the difference.
Now, the moment you hit save orsubmit on that case, what's
going to happen next is you'regoing to get a response from
Amazon saying no, nine times outof 10, they're going to
immediately reject the caseafter a short period of time.
I guess we both can and can'tblame them for this.
(13:25):
Right, they're getting a lot ofcases, um, but they'd much
rather just automatically rejectit with a can response and get
you to go away.
The key here is sellers need torecognize that and re-raise the
case.
Right, and you're looking atre-raising it like two to three
times, but you're saying, bydefault they, they knock it down
most, most times yes, oh, okay,got it.
(13:48):
Yeah, I mean so, as a kind of a,we're tied into their apis.
Um, as a service provider,we're explicitly told we cannot
automate this case raisingprocess.
Right, that's against the termsof service, because you know,
amazon's just going to beoverwhelmed by the number of
cases they have coming in, so wehave to have agents manually
doing it.
They want sellers manuallydoing it within their seller
(14:11):
central account.
They want to slow down thatflow.
But even with those kind ofcontrols in there, their first
response is still a rejectionNine times out of ten.
Adam Shaffer (14:24):
And then how long do you wait to get the money
back?
Alex Ryan (14:29):
So it varies.
So if you get kind of fromstarting a case going through
that process of re-raising, itsay no, no, really you owe me
this money.
You can look maybe around twoweeks you know it varies from
case to case and about two weeksbefore you're going to get it
kind of approved andeverything's okay.
But the actual money comingback into your account it goes
(14:50):
directly from Amazon and it'sjust in your normal disbursement
schedule.
So if you're paid out every twoweeks you'll come out in your
next payment schedule into yourbank account.
Adam Shaffer (14:58):
So you mentioned before they pay you the retail,
and I've had this happen severaltimes.
I'd say maybe 30% of the timethe money that we get isn't to
us what the retail is.
So say, we pay $100, sometimesthey'll reimburse us $75.
(15:20):
So the cost is even higher thanit's not even the price we were
selling it for.
So have you seen that and howdo you deal with that?
Alex Ryan (15:29):
Yeah, we have seen that.
So it can be the fees.
They'll take out the fees.
Right, they've still, like, uh,stored this item.
So they say, so you'll losefees from it, um, but sometimes,
yeah, they do just reimbursetoo low.
So the way amazon um determinesthe price for the reimbursement
is they look at your, your saleprice, um and it's not just
your sale price today, it's alsokind of your historical price
(15:50):
and then also look at the pricefor similar items as well, and
they'll come up with a pricethat they think is fair to
reimburse.
Now, it can be a challenge, butyou can fight that.
So if you get something backand you go, no, this is far too
low, you can actually re-raisethe case of Amazon and say
actually no, no, this isn't fair, this isn't a good estimation
(16:14):
of the value.
I think it should be this, andhere is my evidence those cases
can be a real challenge.
They can take a long time andthey're not always successful,
but it's definitely worth doingif it's kind of a large margin
that you're looking at.
Adam Shaffer (16:25):
So you can get that money back.
I mean, that's huge, becausewe've been like, oh my God, how
could this be?
And it was what you said, like,oh, they look back and the
average was this but some sellerwas on there for a while and
they were selling it below costand you know.
So that that happens.
I see that.
So we talked about the easy one.
I call it the easy one, whichis the.
(16:46):
We ship a hundred.
There's only 50.
We do our reconciliation andit's kind of straightforward.
But how in the world do youguys see and understand when
they damage your products orit's being lost in transfer or
something like that?
So how do you guys actuallymanage all that information and
(17:07):
how do you get to thatinformation?
Alex Ryan (17:10):
Yeah, so kind of, because we're tied into the APIs
, we can automate downloading awhole bunch of reports and then
we also tied into a bunch ofAPIs as well.
So we've got we download abouteight reports, I think, and then
we also download a bunch ofdata through the API.
We built like an automatedsystem then just reconciles all
of that data together, lookingat various different data
sources and bringing it togetherto actually find those cases.
(17:32):
Looking at various differentdata sources and bringing it
together to actually find thosecases.
Um, now, if it's a seller doingthat within seller central, it
is completely doable.
It's just a lot more manual.
You don't have to request thereport creation within a period,
within a window of data todownload.
Um, then you're putting it down,throwing it into various
spreadsheets.
Um, a real hard one is themishandled returns.
That one's a real challenge toreconcile, to be honest.
Um, because it takes I thinkit's three reports from Seller
(17:55):
Central.
You then need to reconcileagainst each other, so that can
be a real bugger.
But yeah, essentially it's justpulling data from lots of
different places, bringing ittogether and finding the
discrepancies throughout it.
Adam Shaffer (18:09):
So the data is there.
It's just buried in a bunch ofdifferent reports that you have
to pull all together.
Alex Ryan (18:14):
Yeah.
Adam Shaffer (18:14):
And if you have I don't know thousands and
thousands of transactions in amonth, it could be really time
consuming.
Yeah, maybe inaccurate, andbecause you have APIs, you're
able to pull this data together,all together and organize it in
a way that you can see what'sgoing on.
Alex Ryan (18:36):
And then do you guys actually go out and you put the
case in to go get the money backwith Amazon?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So we have this kind ofautomated system.
The API access is all throughAmazon.
So it's through the Amazonselling partner marketplace, app
marketplace, so sellersauthorized through Amazon, and
we get basically access throughAmazon.
They kind of gate it.
So once we download that, wethen our system kind of
(18:58):
reconciles the data, identifiesthe cases and we then raise that
to our agents.
Our agents are all likeex-Amazon reps.
They worked in reimbursementsfor Amazon.
Yeah, we poached them.
They know what's going on onthe inside and then they
actually go into the account andraise the account with Amazon.
They know how to structure themessage and everything, make
sure it's really clear, becausewe know we've had cases where we
(19:20):
look at a seller's accountThey've recently onboarded with
us and we look they've tried todo reimbursements themselves and
they've got these big, long,sprawling messages there's no
structure to it and they're justgetting rejected.
Because the agent on the otherside can't be bothered with that
.
I just close, close, close,reject.
So we make like a nice concisemessage raise the case and then
just keep following up andtracking that to make sure it's
actually actually reimbursed.
Adam Shaffer (19:45):
No, and I was just about to ask what are, what are
the mistakes, you see?
Because, again, we tried itourselves and then we wound up
using a third party, probablynowhere near as good as refunded
by.
But we didn't know, you then.
But but I guess the thing is we, we kind of gave up on this,
trying to do it ourselves.
What are, what are some of themistakes that you see, the, the
three-piece sellers making?
Alex Ryan (20:03):
yeah, yeah.
So, um, there's a couple right.
One is is waiting too long,that's probably the biggest one,
and if you wait too long you gooutside that period.
You know, like I say, it'sthree months is the shortest
period for those fba fees.
Um, if it goes into over threemonths, the money's lost forever
.
Um, so one is waiting too long.
Um, two would be not providingthe evidence that amazon asks
(20:25):
for.
You know we talked about inthose lost inbound shipments.
You need to prove that youactually shipped that inventory.
Some, some sellers, are justtoo lazy, they just don't do it
and that's why we kind ofcreated that packing slip
generation feature.
Right, because our sellersdon't want to provide the
information, they just want usto do it for them.
Yeah, so not providing thecorrect information, amazon
won't reimburse the case.
(20:46):
And also just not following up.
Like I said before, if you'retold're told no, I'm sorry, this
case isn't eligible.
Adam Shaffer (20:59):
No refund.
Most people are gonna go.
Oh, okay, so no isn't no.
Alex Ryan (21:01):
Always no is no isn't no yeah.
In this case, no is not no,yeah.
It means re-raise, um, raise itup and say no.
I really think there's a casehere and and we'll typically do
that a few times.
Occasionally, amazon will givea final word and it will be a no
.
Really, this is not happeningand you go okay, but that's very
(21:22):
rare, very rare, and that'sonly in, yeah, very rare.
Adam Shaffer (21:26):
And so when we started looking for companies to
help us, it was hard to tellthe difference.
Like what?
What makes one companydifferent or better and your
process better?
I and that might be an unfairquestion, so apologies to put
you on the spot but just like,like, why?
Again, why and I'm not actuallytrying to sell you service, but
(21:47):
what should people be lookingat when they're trying to find a
third party after they realizethat doing it themselves is
probably not the way to go?
Alex Ryan (21:55):
Yeah, which they're gonna.
Yeah, so in all honesty, Ithink if you go with any
reputable reimbursement service,we're all doing basically the
same things.
Like we see the differentreimbursement types.
You can Google them, you canfind them.
Now we have our own secretsource, but I can't guarantee
that the others don't have theirown secret sources too.
It's just we don't talk aboutthem publicly.
(22:16):
But really, what you'reprobably looking at is the
percentage.
What are they charging and whatother free services are you
getting with them?
So the industry average isabout 25%.
That's mostly what you'll find.
One of the things that we sawwith our competitors was they'd
advertised 25%, but then when wetalked to people, larger
(22:37):
sellers were able to negotiatedown.
The issue with it was everyseller we talked to would be
getting a different rate and noone knew if they were getting a
good rate because no one hadpublic rates.
So that was one of the thingswe did.
First thing we did, we justpublished public rates.
It's all based on revenue.
It goes from 22% down and itjust depends on your revenue.
(22:58):
And then we're actually a partof, or our company, Refundify
has come from Seller Candy Idon't know if you're aware of.
Adam Shaffer (23:05):
Seller Candy.
I know who Seller Candy is, buttell us about Seller Candy.
Alex Ryan (23:10):
Yeah.
So Seller Candy is essentiallylike a replacement for uh,
stellar support.
Everyone hates seller support.
So instead of talking to themto get your issues resolved, you
talk to seller.
Can you say hey, I've got thisissue.
Seller candy is full of xamazon reps.
They then go and fight for you.
They go fight seller, sellersupport for you to get that
issue resolved, so you don'thave to deal with it.
(23:30):
You just say there's a problemhere and that's it.
They go and deal with it.
So what we've got really isbasically a whole bunch.
We've got like 70 somethingemployees close to 80 now, I
think.
Um, most of those are ex-amazonreps.
So what we realized we could dois we could pull across
services from seller uh, sellercandy, integrate them into
refundify.
So one of the services webrought across was, um, free
(23:53):
asin reinstatements.
So if one of your asins goesdown, you know how much money
does that cost a seller, right?
Your top asin goes down for two, three weeks and you don't know
why, because I'm doesn't tellyou that that massively impacts
your bottom line.
Um, so part of our serviceswill just get up for you for
free is that part ofundify?
or is that part of Seller Candy?
(24:14):
So it's done.
It's the Seller Candy agentsthat will do it, but it's free
within your Refundifysubscription.
Adam Shaffer (24:21):
Oh really.
So one of the benefits ofRefundify is you have this ASIN
reinstatement.
Alex Ryan (24:28):
Yeah, exactly, and the cool thing about that is
because we're commission-based,you might not even be paying us
any money if there are noreimbursements to be had, but
you still get that service.
It's still there, but there'salways reimbursements.
Adam Shaffer (24:44):
I don't think there's any 3P seller that
doesn't have something that'sgone missing or damaged or the
returns are an issue.
It really is.
Now just how much is it?
And there were a couple offolks that we met back several
years ago that would say, hey,we could simulate how much money
(25:06):
we would get you back by theydo some kind of an audit.
Do you guys do that, or haveyou heard of that?
How does that work?
Alex Ryan (25:12):
Yeah, absolutely so.
That's actually something weoffer.
We offer a free audit.
So before you kind of sign upand enter your car details, you
just go through.
The basic onboarding takesabout 10 minutes and we'll then
kind of download all that data.
Our agents will look throughand verify it and then we'll
just send you a report andbasically tells you in all the
different categories how muchmoney you're owed, so you can
see exactly what we can get backfor you.
(25:34):
And if you decide to go ahead,you enter your card details, we
go raise it and we just charge acommission on it.
Adam Shaffer (25:41):
That was the best selling tactic, I think, because
when we saw the amount of moneywe were losing each month, we
were shocked and we thought wewere catching the majority.
And we were not at all.
We were catching, like I said,the easy ones, but the hard ones
were getting right past us, andit was definitely important and
valuable.
And again, the reason I wantedto talk about this today is
(26:03):
because I don't think that,especially new 3P sellers, but
even 3P sellers that have beendoing this for a while, some of
us are more organized thanothers, but most of us don't
have the bandwidth and thewherewithal to do this.
And it's got to be on a dailybasis.
Because you talked about windows, windows open, windows closed.
You're out the money, but alsothe different reporting and the
(26:27):
different things you need tolook at.
And why should you give up anyof that profit?
I mean, unless you're justprinting money somewhere, it's a
huge mistake not to be chasingthis and working with a partner.
I think is really important,because this is something that
this would take an army ofpeople to do internally, I think
.
Alex Ryan (26:46):
Yeah, obviously I'm an advocate of the service
Refundify, of course, but inreality you can hire a VA to do
it for you, right?
But that brings in thesechallenges, like you're saying,
how do you know that you'regetting it all, unless you can
get like an ex-Amazon rep, likewe have, and you keep training
them, because the policies arechanging quite frequently Every
(27:07):
couple of months there'll be achange, right?
So you've got those costs oflike constantly training them.
You need, right, um, so you'vegot those costs of like
constantly training them.
You need to keep them on staffwith their benefits.
You need to be running thesereimbursements.
We say that we think monthly isbest, um, but at least every two
months, because of thatthree-month window for the fees,
right, and if you've got areally large account, it could
(27:28):
take you up to a week to kind ofreconcile and start raising
those cases, and then that thenhas that frustrating effect of
like dragging out as Amazonrejects those cases and you have
to go and re re-raise them,right?
So it's kind of like anindefinite time period that's
going to take you to get it alland then still, at the end of
the day, you don't know ifyou've got them all, whereas
when you rely on a servicebecause it's commission-based,
(27:50):
itbased, it's in the service'sinterest to find every single
dollar, every single cent,because that's how they get paid
.
Adam Shaffer (27:57):
And when sellers work with Refundify and others,
but especially with Refundifyhow do they know what's going on
on a regular basis?
Is it that you send them astatement, or is there a portal
that they could see what's goingon?
How does it work?
Alex Ryan (28:11):
Yeah, so when you kind of go through the
onboarding flow and you sign up,you're presented with kind of
the report page.
We update our reports andbasically show you what we've
done.
So we'll say kind of the caseswe've raised, the amounts of
money that we've got back.
And one thing that we do thatmost other services don't do is
we'll actually tell you how muchmoney Amazon has reimbursed you
as well, Because Amazon does doautomatic reimbursements.
(28:34):
It's just they don't do themall.
So we'll actually tell you howmuch money was reimbursed by
Amazon.
And one of our key things aswell is we decided very early on
never to race Amazon.
And this is kind of a hush-husharea of the business, right.
But within this industry lotsof services will race Amazon, so
a discrepancy will appear andthey'll try and raise that case
(28:56):
as fast as possible.
So it counts as their caseraised, Whereas if you wait like
three, four days a week, Amazonwill automatically reimburse
that and you don't chargecommission on it because Amazon
did it right.
So we kind of display exactlyhow much money Amazon reimbursed
.
So you can see that we're not.
We're not being dodgy.
You can see the Amazon rate.
Adam Shaffer (29:16):
That's awesome.
I actually never realized.
I always thought we had a fightfor every dollar, so that's
great.
I didn't know theyautomatically did it, but it's
like you know, advertisingattribution, like you know,
you're letting, you're lettingAmazon try and solve it first
and then you're going after it.
Alex Ryan (29:32):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Yeah, just just delay by a week.
Let them reimburse itautomatically.
If they don't, then you come inand reimburse it.
Yeah, but we try not to do it.
We don't do it too early,because it's just costing the
seller money that it shouldn'tbe.
Adam Shaffer (29:47):
So this is?
This is a tough question, butyou know Amazon changes stuff on
a regular basis.
Are you having to updatemethodology on a regular basis?
Or on the returns reimbursementside, these things are pretty
static, I don't know.
You tell me.
Alex Ryan (30:04):
Yeah, it does change.
It's not super frequent but itdoes change.
So we have like monthlytrainings for our agents.
Our team leaders go in and diveinto Amazon's documentation and
any changes they bring out andthey throw them into training
materials and then we kind ofretrain our agents on it.
So yeah, there's kind ofcontinuous training.
Any changes we spot with thealgorithm that we need to update
(30:26):
, we go and make those updates.
So yeah, it's kind of acontinuous process.
Thankfully it's not too fast-momoving, but it does change,
yeah.
Adam Shaffer (30:34):
Are there other areas that you guys audit
outside of this?
Are there other parts of Amazonthat you're auditing, like
maybe advertising spend andthings like that, or is that not
part of what Refundify does?
Alex Ryan (30:47):
At the moment we're just reimbursements, but we're
looking at kind of building someinventory dashboards.
We do actually do thatinventory dashboards.
That's kind of part of theSeller Candy crossover as well.
A lot of our clients have thatfrom Seller Candy.
So that's just kind of lookingat how much inventory you have,
you know how much it's costingyou and when you need to restock
and that kind of thing.
So we're actually planning tobuild that into the Refundify
(31:10):
dashboard as kind of a freeextra.
But it's not there yet.
That's something in thepipeline.
Adam Shaffer (31:15):
But in the meantime, you're watching the
fees, the storage fees.
That's part of it, yeah, yeah,yeah, I mean that is huge,
especially with some of thestuff that they've been saying
they are going to be doing withregard to storage fees.
And they kind of pulled backfrom that a bit because it was
very hard.
I don't know how people weregoing to manage it, but it was
based on how many days ofinventory you had and they were
(31:37):
going to charge you certain feesfor having too little or too
much inventory, and I think theykind of chilled on that for a
little bit.
So we'll see what happens, butthat's got to make it more
complicated for sure.
So what other words of wisdomwould you give to the millions
of three-piece sellers out therethat might not be managing this
(31:59):
really important area?
Alex Ryan (32:02):
Yeah, well, I would say, go and get a free audit
right Like, head to refundifyio,sign up.
You don't need to enter anycredit card details or anything.
You can just sign up for thefree audit.
We'll go in, we'll check youraccount and we'll tell you how
much you're owed.
You know, if it comes back.
We had one a while back thatwas like $177,000, which just
blew my mind.
You know they had no idea$177,000.
(32:23):
And they were losing.
Bear in mind they were losingover $20,000 per month just by
delaying.
$20,000 gone can't be recovered.
I think it was $26,000, $27,000each month.
So go and get that free audit.
Refundifyio.
It's not a free audit.
It takes 10 minutes.
We'll tell you how much you'reowed, give you the price
breakdown for the commission.
(32:43):
It's no win, no fee.
So there's really no reason notto do it.
And if you don't want to gowith the service, fine, but do
this because it's affecting yourbottom line, right?
So you need to figure out somekind of system.
Adam Shaffer (32:58):
Well, you're a really cool CTO.
I have to say that, and I enjoytalking to you.
You definitely it's great tomeet somebody that's on the
technical side, that's also anentrepreneur, and that's what I
think is also great about theAmazon ecosystem is that you
(33:18):
meet so many people that arepassionate about different parts
of the business and sometimesthe entire business.
But it's great to see a, youknow, very technical person also
very interested in helping youknow sellers in this, in this
industry, try to profit.
I mean it's it's a tough game,man.
I mean it's so competitive, somany moving parts and Amazon is
so big that stuff happens everyday and we appreciate all the
(33:39):
work that you guys do foreverybody.
Alex Ryan (33:41):
Yeah, I appreciate it .
Thank you so much for having meon.
It's good fun to chat andhopefully educate everyone and
help just eke a little bit moreout of that store.
Adam Shaffer (33:49):
It definitely helped me out a bit, and then
again so they can go to refund.
Is it refundifyio?
Alex Ryan (33:56):
So yeah, refundifyio.
Adam Shaffer (33:59):
Don't forget that refundifyio, and could people
reach out to you?
Alex Ryan (34:02):
Yeah, absolutely.
You can reach out to me atalexrefundifyio or drop me a
message on LinkedIn, anythinglike that.
Happy to help.
Adam Shaffer (34:10):
Cool.
Well, let's stay connected.
I really appreciate you joiningand updating everybody on the
world of reimbursement Superimportant everybody.
So please take note.
And Alex thanks so much and wereally appreciate it.
We know it's late where you are, so thank you very much.
Alex Ryan (34:26):
Yeah, thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
And yeah, thank you everyone.
Announcement (34:30):
Thank you for watching another episode of the
Planet Amazon podcast, where wetalk all things Amazon.
If you want to learn about howto accelerate your sales on
Amazon, visit Phelps United'swebsite at phelpsunitedcom.
Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam
Shaffer, where we explore theworld of Amazon and other
e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Adam Shaffer (00:18):
Hello and welcome to Planet Amazon.
I'm Adam Schafer, and thanksfor joining us today.
Amazon, I'm Adam Shafer, andthanks for joining us today.
Today on the podcast, we haveAlex Ryan.
Alex is the co-founder and CTOat Refundify.
Refundify helps Amazon sellersrecover Amazon reimbursements
they deserve and are owed, butit's really hard work to be able
(00:39):
to figure out what Amazon doesowe you and how to actually get
it from them.
We want to discuss theimportance of FBA reimbursements
in a world where margin matters.
So let's bring out Alex andlet's start talking about this
awesome, important area ofAmazon that I don't think enough
people focus on.
But if you're not, you're goingto probably be bleeding profits
(01:04):
.
So with that, welcome Alex.
Alex Ryan (01:08):
Thanks for joining.
Yeah, thanks so much for havingme on.
Adam, Appreciate it.
Glad to be here to chat.
Adam Shaffer (01:17):
Hey.
So before we get into thewonderful world of
reimbursements, first I just gotto understand a bit more about
you, because it's not often wehave the co-founder and CTO, so
you're more of the technicalwizard behind Refundify, right?
So tell us a little bit aboutyourself and about the company.
Alex Ryan (01:32):
Yeah, yeah, so I'm the co-founder and CTO of
Refundify, as you say.
So easiest way to become theCTO is found the business right.
So I've got a background insoftware engineering, so I've
got experience in developinglike SaaS applications.
So I worked in kind of a fewdifferent industries like
hospitality, e-commerce, supplychain, quality control quite
recently, and then most recentlyI've started with Refundify, so
(01:55):
entering into the Amazon space.
So with Refundify, what we'vetried to do is basically what
you're saying right Try to raiseawareness about the
reimbursement opportunities thatyou have as an FBA seller and
build out a solution there toactually help sellers reconcile
all of those issues and then goaway and actually get them their
money back in a fully managedservice.
(02:16):
So minimal effort on theseller's part and just money
comes rolling back in.
Adam Shaffer (02:22):
No, that's, I mean , super important, and I don't
think enough people think aboutit until they start trying to
figure out where some of themoney's going.
And also, when you try toreconcile an Amazon statement,
good luck, because it's not thateasy, and I do think that most
sellers on Amazon do lose moneyI'm going to say bleed but just
(02:45):
are losing profits that shouldbe rightfully theirs, because
it's really hard to follow.
It's like a shell game in a way, and I was hoping first you
could just start with explainingwhat an Amazon reimbursement is
and why it is important.
Alex Ryan (03:03):
Yeah, absolutely so.
An Amazon reimbursementessentially is when Amazon has
made a mistake.
They owe a seller some money.
So Amazon is shipping like 1.6million packages a day, right?
So that means they're receivinga bunch of inventory in their
warehouses, they're storing it,they're picking and packing it
and shipping it out.
Mistakes are guaranteed, right,and within Amazon's terms of
(03:27):
service, they actually promiseto reimburse sellers for any
lost inventory at retail price.
And that's pretty key.
They will reimburse at retailprice.
So it's like making a sale,right.
So, yeah, you said bleed kind ofbleed profits.
So, yeah, you said bleed kindof bleed profits.
(03:58):
I think that's actually apretty good way of saying it,
because typically what we see islike a revenue loss of like 1%
to 3%, right, which is, you know, 1% to 3 of climb up a bit
higher.
So if you're on a profit marginof, say, like 30%, which is, I
think, a pretty good margin,then if you're losing 3% of your
revenue, that can be about 10%of your profit.
That's lost.
Likewise, if you're on a 20%profit margin, which is, I think
(04:21):
, more likely, that's kind of upto 15%.
So, kind of in the probablymost likely, most sellers are
losing between kind of 5% and15% of their profit.
That's just bleeding, justbeing lost every month.
So it really does add up andcan be quite painful.
Adam Shaffer (04:38):
So I mean, and it's you know, in a world where
margin does matter and I thinkit depends on what type of
seller and what kind of productyou're selling but once you
include advertising costs inyour cost of goods, if you're
making 20%, 15%, you're probablydoing well.
So to lose that much margin isdifficult, and so this is one of
(05:00):
the things you really need tobe disciplined about, because
there's a window of opportunityto go get your money back, and
we'll talk about that in asecond.
But let's talk about thedifferent kinds of
reimbursements.
And I know you say Amazon makesa mistake.
We never say Amazon makes amistake, but stuff does happen,
but stuff does happen.
(05:22):
And so the original issue that Iused to think about is and we
used to try and follow was weship 100 things up to Amazon FBA
and you're waiting, and you'rewaiting for them to receive it,
and then they receive some of it, but not all of it, right?
So maybe they receive 50, andthen you keep on waiting, but
(05:44):
only 50 ever show up.
That is one of the issues,right?
Like to me, that's like theeasy way, yeah yeah, absolutely
yeah, it's a really common one.
Alex Ryan (05:52):
So it's like a lost inbound shipment, right, happens
a lot.
So yeah, you ship 100, theycheck in 50 and you're kind of
left wondering, like hang on,where you know half my inventory
where it's gone, where's?
Like, hang on, where have youknow half my inventory where
it's gone?
Where's it gone?
Um, and then the onus is youknow, often amazon will
automatically reimburse that ortry and find the inventory in
open cases themselves, but notalways right.
(06:12):
And then the onus is on theseller, right, you have to go
and realize that you're missinginventory, go and reconcile the
reports, provide documentationand try and raise that case and
get the money back.
So, yeah, your lost inbound isis a big one.
Um, another really big one is isjust like warehouse issues.
So you know, if they're storingyour inventory in their
(06:34):
warehouses, right, they canbreak it, they can lose it, they
can dispose of it when theyshouldn't be, you know, um.
So you've got that one.
You've got that, yeah, lostinbound warehouse issues and
you've got things like, uh,mishandled returns, maybe.
Uh, you've got that one.
You've got the yeah, lostinbound warehouse issues and
you've got things like, uh,mishandled returns, maybe, uh,
you've sold an item.
A seller said, hey, I want toreturn this, and they return an
empty box, but amazon'sreimbursed them.
Right, they know, they know youthat money, um, or maybe even
(06:58):
incorrect fees.
And this one, I think, is likethe silent killer.
The incorrect fees right, ifthey've got a measurement wrong
on one of your items, they'restoring that, charging you more
money.
They're shipping it andcharging you more money if
you're a high volume seller, youknow a dollar here, a dollar
there, that that really startsto add up um so, so I missed
that one, so I want to make sureI got that, so I got.
Adam Shaffer (07:17):
we talked about amazon damages it or they lose
the inbound shipment, but thethe fees like so that's they're
saying your product weighs morethan it does, or it's bigger
than it does, so they'recharging you more storage.
Is that what you're saying?
Alex Ryan (07:32):
Exactly.
Yeah, they're charging you moreand they're charging more for
the pick and pack as well.
So that kind of really adds upEvery sale you make, every item
you're storing, you're beingcharged just fractionally more
money than you should be.
And in those cases you need togo to Amazon and say hey, please
remeasure this, because thesemeasurements don't add up right.
Please remeasure this andconfirm.
(07:52):
And the real painful one aboutthis is actually you only get
it's the shortest window forreimbursements.
It's just three months.
So these issues can go on for ayear and you can only get three
months of it back.
So it's one of those ones youneed to move on quite quickly,
otherwise you are just losingthe money and it cannot be
recovered.
(08:12):
So that's the 3P window is youhave three months to get your
claims going.
Yeah, so it varies for each ofthe different claims.
So it starts at 18 months isthe best one, and that's for
kind of like the warehouseissues and mishandled returns.
But then it goes down quiterapidly to kind of six or nine
months for lost inbound shippingissues, based on if you're an
(08:32):
EU or North American seller, andthen, yeah, down to three
months for the FBA fees.
So, yeah, if you're not quickit's gone and Amazon won't
accept reimbursement claims.
Adam Shaffer (08:43):
Yeah, if you're not quick it's gone and Amazon
won't accept reimbursementclaims.
You know what I noticedSometimes and I don't know if
this falls into the world ofreimbursements, but sometimes
when you talk about fees, you'retalking about storage fees, but
what you know, there's thecommission.
They get like their fee, likeit could be 8%, 10%, 15%, and
(09:04):
I've seen things that are, say,10% categories and they're
charging 15% because it'smiscategorized or something.
Is that something that's partof this or not?
Alex Ryan (09:12):
I believe so, yeah, yeah.
So if they're miscategorizingyour item, yeah, actually a
pretty hard one to spot.
But yeah, you're right, ifthey're charging 15% when they
should be charging 10%, thatends up being a lot of money.
Yeah, so you can look at thecorrect item categorization and
get it recategorized and, yes,claim back that money.
Adam Shaffer (09:31):
So how do you guys do it?
When we first got into the biz,we were trying to do all this
ourselves because we assumed itwas mostly the stuff that we
ship off to Amazon.
So we just we review the stuffevery day and we make sure that
they receive what we have, andif they don't, we put a claim in
.
But you can't actually put aclaim in right away.
You have to wait, like there'sthere's a timing issue with the
(09:53):
claim, right, and I don'texactly know what it is, but I
think it's like you have to waitmaybe 90 days before you can
put the claim in.
I'm not sure I can't rememberanymore, but then there was all
the money we lost in between.
So let's say we were prettygood at that.
We had no way to figure outwhat was damaged and what was
(10:14):
lost, and they moved productsfrom warehouse A to warehouse B.
How do you guys, what's theprocess Like?
How do you do it and how woulda normal, regular 3P company be
able to do this without somekind of automation?
Alex Ryan (10:30):
Yeah, it's a challenge, right.
So we talked about kind ofthose kind of main categories,
but you're kind of you'recircling around it there, right,
it's not just those big mainfour, it's each one of those has
a whole bunch of subcategoriesand each of those subcategories
(10:51):
needs to be reconciled andfigured out in a different way.
Um, so we don't use the sellercentral anymore and we have
automations, but I think ifyou're doing it within seller
central, I believe you need todownload like eight plus
different reports, right, andpull this data down and then
reconcile and find all themistakes.
So there's loads of data youneed to pull down and loads of
different systems you need inplace to actually sort of
reconcile the discrepancieswithin those reports.
So it's a real challenge.
(11:11):
There's a lot to do there, butI can kind of walk you through
one just to give you an idea orfeel for it.
Adam Shaffer (11:18):
Yeah, please, please, please.
Alex Ryan (11:19):
Yeah, so that lost inbound one that you hit on,
kind of you ship them 100, theycheck in 95 or whatever.
So to reconcile that withinSeller Central, right, you're
going to log in, you justnavigate to your FBA shipments
page.
You can filter all of yourshipments by the closed status.
(11:40):
Then you can download that dataand just throw it into your
spreadsheet of choice.
You just need to create then afilter.
There'll be two columns inthere, kind of the quantity
received and the quantityshipped.
And you're looking for adiscrepancy there where it says
you've shipped more than they'vereceived and that indicates a
potential case.
So once you've identified thatshipment or more likely, if
you're a big seller, a number ofshipments you go back into
(12:02):
Seller Central and actually findthat shipment, navigate to your
Contents tab and you can justverify the discrepancy there.
And then Amazon gives you alittle dropdown with basically
options, things that you want todo.
So you click in that one andyou can click on Research,
missing Units.
And this is the process now ofraising a case with Amazon and
(12:23):
saying, hey, something's wrong,right, so they'll immediately
just give you some information.
They'll say that you need toprovide an invoice or a packing
slip and this depends on thekind of seller.
So if you're like a third partyseller, you're going to need to
provide invoices.
If you're like a brand owner,private label seller or
manufacturer, then you canprovide like a packing slip.
(12:44):
Owner, private label seller ormanufacturer, then you can
provide like a packing slip.
Um, if you're a refundify, wegenerate those for our clients.
So you don't have to providethe documentation, but you need
to provide that before amazonwill look into the case and then
a basic description just sayinghey, this is what I've seen
discrepancy here and here forthis item.
Please research the unit,either return it to inventory or
(13:04):
reimburse me the difference.
Now, the moment you hit save orsubmit on that case, what's
going to happen next is you'regoing to get a response from
Amazon saying no, nine times outof 10, they're going to
immediately reject the caseafter a short period of time.
I guess we both can and can'tblame them for this.
(13:25):
Right, they're getting a lot ofcases, um, but they'd much
rather just automatically rejectit with a can response and get
you to go away.
The key here is sellers need torecognize that and re-raise the
case.
Right, and you're looking atre-raising it like two to three
times, but you're saying, bydefault they, they knock it down
most, most times yes, oh, okay,got it.
(13:48):
Yeah, I mean so, as a kind of a,we're tied into their apis.
Um, as a service provider,we're explicitly told we cannot
automate this case raisingprocess.
Right, that's against the termsof service, because you know,
amazon's just going to beoverwhelmed by the number of
cases they have coming in, so wehave to have agents manually
doing it.
They want sellers manuallydoing it within their seller
(14:11):
central account.
They want to slow down thatflow.
But even with those kind ofcontrols in there, their first
response is still a rejectionNine times out of ten.
Adam Shaffer (14:24):
And then how long do you wait to get the money
back?
Alex Ryan (14:29):
So it varies.
So if you get kind of fromstarting a case going through
that process of re-raising, itsay no, no, really you owe me
this money.
You can look maybe around twoweeks you know it varies from
case to case and about two weeksbefore you're going to get it
kind of approved andeverything's okay.
But the actual money comingback into your account it goes
(14:50):
directly from Amazon and it'sjust in your normal disbursement
schedule.
So if you're paid out every twoweeks you'll come out in your
next payment schedule into yourbank account.
Adam Shaffer (14:58):
So you mentioned before they pay you the retail,
and I've had this happen severaltimes.
I'd say maybe 30% of the timethe money that we get isn't to
us what the retail is.
So say, we pay $100, sometimesthey'll reimburse us $75.
(15:20):
So the cost is even higher thanit's not even the price we were
selling it for.
So have you seen that and howdo you deal with that?
Alex Ryan (15:29):
Yeah, we have seen that.
So it can be the fees.
They'll take out the fees.
Right, they've still, like, uh,stored this item.
So they say, so you'll losefees from it, um, but sometimes,
yeah, they do just reimbursetoo low.
So the way amazon um determinesthe price for the reimbursement
is they look at your, your saleprice, um and it's not just
your sale price today, it's alsokind of your historical price
(15:50):
and then also look at the pricefor similar items as well, and
they'll come up with a pricethat they think is fair to
reimburse.
Now, it can be a challenge, butyou can fight that.
So if you get something backand you go, no, this is far too
low, you can actually re-raisethe case of Amazon and say
actually no, no, this isn't fair, this isn't a good estimation
(16:14):
of the value.
I think it should be this, andhere is my evidence those cases
can be a real challenge.
They can take a long time andthey're not always successful,
but it's definitely worth doingif it's kind of a large margin
that you're looking at.
Adam Shaffer (16:25):
So you can get that money back.
I mean, that's huge, becausewe've been like, oh my God, how
could this be?
And it was what you said, like,oh, they look back and the
average was this but some sellerwas on there for a while and
they were selling it below costand you know.
So that that happens.
I see that.
So we talked about the easy one.
I call it the easy one, whichis the.
(16:46):
We ship a hundred.
There's only 50.
We do our reconciliation andit's kind of straightforward.
But how in the world do youguys see and understand when
they damage your products orit's being lost in transfer or
something like that?
So how do you guys actuallymanage all that information and
(17:07):
how do you get to thatinformation?
Alex Ryan (17:10):
Yeah, so kind of, because we're tied into the APIs
, we can automate downloading awhole bunch of reports and then
we also tied into a bunch ofAPIs as well.
So we've got we download abouteight reports, I think, and then
we also download a bunch ofdata through the API.
We built like an automatedsystem then just reconciles all
of that data together, lookingat various different data
sources and bringing it togetherto actually find those cases.
(17:32):
Looking at various differentdata sources and bringing it
together to actually find thosecases.
Um, now, if it's a seller doingthat within seller central, it
is completely doable.
It's just a lot more manual.
You don't have to request thereport creation within a period,
within a window of data todownload.
Um, then you're putting it down,throwing it into various
spreadsheets.
Um, a real hard one is themishandled returns.
That one's a real challenge toreconcile, to be honest.
Um, because it takes I thinkit's three reports from Seller
(17:55):
Central.
You then need to reconcileagainst each other, so that can
be a real bugger.
But yeah, essentially it's justpulling data from lots of
different places, bringing ittogether and finding the
discrepancies throughout it.
Adam Shaffer (18:09):
So the data is there.
It's just buried in a bunch ofdifferent reports that you have
to pull all together.
Alex Ryan (18:14):
Yeah.
Adam Shaffer (18:14):
And if you have I don't know thousands and
thousands of transactions in amonth, it could be really time
consuming.
Yeah, maybe inaccurate, andbecause you have APIs, you're
able to pull this data together,all together and organize it in
a way that you can see what'sgoing on.
Alex Ryan (18:36):
And then do you guys actually go out and you put the
case in to go get the money backwith Amazon?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So we have this kind ofautomated system.
The API access is all throughAmazon.
So it's through the Amazonselling partner marketplace, app
marketplace, so sellersauthorized through Amazon, and
we get basically access throughAmazon.
They kind of gate it.
So once we download that, wethen our system kind of
(18:58):
reconciles the data, identifiesthe cases and we then raise that
to our agents.
Our agents are all likeex-Amazon reps.
They worked in reimbursementsfor Amazon.
Yeah, we poached them.
They know what's going on onthe inside and then they
actually go into the account andraise the account with Amazon.
They know how to structure themessage and everything, make
sure it's really clear, becausewe know we've had cases where we
(19:20):
look at a seller's accountThey've recently onboarded with
us and we look they've tried todo reimbursements themselves and
they've got these big, long,sprawling messages there's no
structure to it and they're justgetting rejected.
Because the agent on the otherside can't be bothered with that
.
I just close, close, close,reject.
So we make like a nice concisemessage raise the case and then
just keep following up andtracking that to make sure it's
actually actually reimbursed.
Adam Shaffer (19:45):
No, and I was just about to ask what are, what are
the mistakes, you see?
Because, again, we tried itourselves and then we wound up
using a third party, probablynowhere near as good as refunded
by.
But we didn't know, you then.
But but I guess the thing is we, we kind of gave up on this,
trying to do it ourselves.
What are, what are some of themistakes that you see, the, the
three-piece sellers making?
Alex Ryan (20:03):
yeah, yeah.
So, um, there's a couple right.
One is is waiting too long,that's probably the biggest one,
and if you wait too long you gooutside that period.
You know, like I say, it'sthree months is the shortest
period for those fba fees.
Um, if it goes into over threemonths, the money's lost forever
.
Um, so one is waiting too long.
Um, two would be not providingthe evidence that amazon asks
(20:25):
for.
You know we talked about inthose lost inbound shipments.
You need to prove that youactually shipped that inventory.
Some, some sellers, are justtoo lazy, they just don't do it
and that's why we kind ofcreated that packing slip
generation feature.
Right, because our sellersdon't want to provide the
information, they just want usto do it for them.
Yeah, so not providing thecorrect information, amazon
won't reimburse the case.
(20:46):
And also just not following up.
Like I said before, if you'retold're told no, I'm sorry, this
case isn't eligible.
Adam Shaffer (20:59):
No refund.
Most people are gonna go.
Oh, okay, so no isn't no.
Alex Ryan (21:01):
Always no is no isn't no yeah.
In this case, no is not no,yeah.
It means re-raise, um, raise itup and say no.
I really think there's a casehere and and we'll typically do
that a few times.
Occasionally, amazon will givea final word and it will be a no
.
Really, this is not happeningand you go okay, but that's very
(21:22):
rare, very rare, and that'sonly in, yeah, very rare.
Adam Shaffer (21:26):
And so when we started looking for companies to
help us, it was hard to tellthe difference.
Like what?
What makes one companydifferent or better and your
process better?
I and that might be an unfairquestion, so apologies to put
you on the spot but just like,like, why?
Again, why and I'm not actuallytrying to sell you service, but
(21:47):
what should people be lookingat when they're trying to find a
third party after they realizethat doing it themselves is
probably not the way to go?
Alex Ryan (21:55):
Yeah, which they're gonna.
Yeah, so in all honesty, Ithink if you go with any
reputable reimbursement service,we're all doing basically the
same things.
Like we see the differentreimbursement types.
You can Google them, you canfind them.
Now we have our own secretsource, but I can't guarantee
that the others don't have theirown secret sources too.
It's just we don't talk aboutthem publicly.
(22:16):
But really, what you'reprobably looking at is the
percentage.
What are they charging and whatother free services are you
getting with them?
So the industry average isabout 25%.
That's mostly what you'll find.
One of the things that we sawwith our competitors was they'd
advertised 25%, but then when wetalked to people, larger
(22:37):
sellers were able to negotiatedown.
The issue with it was everyseller we talked to would be
getting a different rate and noone knew if they were getting a
good rate because no one hadpublic rates.
So that was one of the thingswe did.
First thing we did, we justpublished public rates.
It's all based on revenue.
It goes from 22% down and itjust depends on your revenue.
(22:58):
And then we're actually a partof, or our company, Refundify
has come from Seller Candy Idon't know if you're aware of.
Adam Shaffer (23:05):
Seller Candy.
I know who Seller Candy is, buttell us about Seller Candy.
Alex Ryan (23:10):
Yeah.
So Seller Candy is essentiallylike a replacement for uh,
stellar support.
Everyone hates seller support.
So instead of talking to themto get your issues resolved, you
talk to seller.
Can you say hey, I've got thisissue.
Seller candy is full of xamazon reps.
They then go and fight for you.
They go fight seller, sellersupport for you to get that
issue resolved, so you don'thave to deal with it.
(23:30):
You just say there's a problemhere and that's it.
They go and deal with it.
So what we've got really isbasically a whole bunch.
We've got like 70 somethingemployees close to 80 now, I
think.
Um, most of those are ex-amazonreps.
So what we realized we could dois we could pull across
services from seller uh, sellercandy, integrate them into
refundify.
So one of the services webrought across was, um, free
(23:53):
asin reinstatements.
So if one of your asins goesdown, you know how much money
does that cost a seller, right?
Your top asin goes down for two, three weeks and you don't know
why, because I'm doesn't tellyou that that massively impacts
your bottom line.
Um, so part of our serviceswill just get up for you for
free is that part ofundify?
or is that part of Seller Candy?
(24:14):
So it's done.
It's the Seller Candy agentsthat will do it, but it's free
within your Refundifysubscription.
Adam Shaffer (24:21):
Oh really.
So one of the benefits ofRefundify is you have this ASIN
reinstatement.
Alex Ryan (24:28):
Yeah, exactly, and the cool thing about that is
because we're commission-based,you might not even be paying us
any money if there are noreimbursements to be had, but
you still get that service.
It's still there, but there'salways reimbursements.
Adam Shaffer (24:44):
I don't think there's any 3P seller that
doesn't have something that'sgone missing or damaged or the
returns are an issue.
It really is.
Now just how much is it?
And there were a couple offolks that we met back several
years ago that would say, hey,we could simulate how much money
(25:06):
we would get you back by theydo some kind of an audit.
Do you guys do that, or haveyou heard of that?
How does that work?
Alex Ryan (25:12):
Yeah, absolutely so.
That's actually something weoffer.
We offer a free audit.
So before you kind of sign upand enter your car details, you
just go through.
The basic onboarding takesabout 10 minutes and we'll then
kind of download all that data.
Our agents will look throughand verify it and then we'll
just send you a report andbasically tells you in all the
different categories how muchmoney you're owed, so you can
see exactly what we can get backfor you.
(25:34):
And if you decide to go ahead,you enter your card details, we
go raise it and we just charge acommission on it.
Adam Shaffer (25:41):
That was the best selling tactic, I think, because
when we saw the amount of moneywe were losing each month, we
were shocked and we thought wewere catching the majority.
And we were not at all.
We were catching, like I said,the easy ones, but the hard ones
were getting right past us, andit was definitely important and
valuable.
And again, the reason I wantedto talk about this today is
(26:03):
because I don't think that,especially new 3P sellers, but
even 3P sellers that have beendoing this for a while, some of
us are more organized thanothers, but most of us don't
have the bandwidth and thewherewithal to do this.
And it's got to be on a dailybasis.
Because you talked about windows, windows open, windows closed.
You're out the money, but alsothe different reporting and the
(26:27):
different things you need tolook at.
And why should you give up anyof that profit?
I mean, unless you're justprinting money somewhere, it's a
huge mistake not to be chasingthis and working with a partner.
I think is really important,because this is something that
this would take an army ofpeople to do internally, I think
.
Alex Ryan (26:46):
Yeah, obviously I'm an advocate of the service
Refundify, of course, but inreality you can hire a VA to do
it for you, right?
But that brings in thesechallenges, like you're saying,
how do you know that you'regetting it all, unless you can
get like an ex-Amazon rep, likewe have, and you keep training
them, because the policies arechanging quite frequently Every
(27:07):
couple of months there'll be achange, right?
So you've got those costs oflike constantly training them.
You need, right, um, so you'vegot those costs of like
constantly training them.
You need to keep them on staffwith their benefits.
You need to be running thesereimbursements.
We say that we think monthly isbest, um, but at least every two
months, because of thatthree-month window for the fees,
right, and if you've got areally large account, it could
(27:28):
take you up to a week to kind ofreconcile and start raising
those cases, and then that thenhas that frustrating effect of
like dragging out as Amazonrejects those cases and you have
to go and re re-raise them,right?
So it's kind of like anindefinite time period that's
going to take you to get it alland then still, at the end of
the day, you don't know ifyou've got them all, whereas
when you rely on a servicebecause it's commission-based,
(27:50):
itbased, it's in the service'sinterest to find every single
dollar, every single cent,because that's how they get paid
.
Adam Shaffer (27:57):
And when sellers work with Refundify and others,
but especially with Refundifyhow do they know what's going on
on a regular basis?
Is it that you send them astatement, or is there a portal
that they could see what's goingon?
How does it work?
Alex Ryan (28:11):
Yeah, so when you kind of go through the
onboarding flow and you sign up,you're presented with kind of
the report page.
We update our reports andbasically show you what we've
done.
So we'll say kind of the caseswe've raised, the amounts of
money that we've got back.
And one thing that we do thatmost other services don't do is
we'll actually tell you how muchmoney Amazon has reimbursed you
as well, Because Amazon does doautomatic reimbursements.
(28:34):
It's just they don't do themall.
So we'll actually tell you howmuch money was reimbursed by
Amazon.
And one of our key things aswell is we decided very early on
never to race Amazon.
And this is kind of a hush-husharea of the business, right.
But within this industry lotsof services will race Amazon, so
a discrepancy will appear andthey'll try and raise that case
(28:56):
as fast as possible.
So it counts as their caseraised, Whereas if you wait like
three, four days a week, Amazonwill automatically reimburse
that and you don't chargecommission on it because Amazon
did it right.
So we kind of display exactlyhow much money Amazon reimbursed
.
So you can see that we're not.
We're not being dodgy.
You can see the Amazon rate.
Adam Shaffer (29:16):
That's awesome.
I actually never realized.
I always thought we had a fightfor every dollar, so that's
great.
I didn't know theyautomatically did it, but it's
like you know, advertisingattribution, like you know,
you're letting, you're lettingAmazon try and solve it first
and then you're going after it.
Alex Ryan (29:32):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Yeah, just just delay by a week.
Let them reimburse itautomatically.
If they don't, then you come inand reimburse it.
Yeah, but we try not to do it.
We don't do it too early,because it's just costing the
seller money that it shouldn'tbe.
Adam Shaffer (29:47):
So this is?
This is a tough question, butyou know Amazon changes stuff on
a regular basis.
Are you having to updatemethodology on a regular basis?
Or on the returns reimbursementside, these things are pretty
static, I don't know.
You tell me.
Alex Ryan (30:04):
Yeah, it does change.
It's not super frequent but itdoes change.
So we have like monthlytrainings for our agents.
Our team leaders go in and diveinto Amazon's documentation and
any changes they bring out andthey throw them into training
materials and then we kind ofretrain our agents on it.
So yeah, there's kind ofcontinuous training.
Any changes we spot with thealgorithm that we need to update
(30:26):
, we go and make those updates.
So yeah, it's kind of acontinuous process.
Thankfully it's not too fast-momoving, but it does change,
yeah.
Adam Shaffer (30:34):
Are there other areas that you guys audit
outside of this?
Are there other parts of Amazonthat you're auditing, like
maybe advertising spend andthings like that, or is that not
part of what Refundify does?
Alex Ryan (30:47):
At the moment we're just reimbursements, but we're
looking at kind of building someinventory dashboards.
We do actually do thatinventory dashboards.
That's kind of part of theSeller Candy crossover as well.
A lot of our clients have thatfrom Seller Candy.
So that's just kind of lookingat how much inventory you have,
you know how much it's costingyou and when you need to restock
and that kind of thing.
So we're actually planning tobuild that into the Refundify
(31:10):
dashboard as kind of a freeextra.
But it's not there yet.
That's something in thepipeline.
Adam Shaffer (31:15):
But in the meantime, you're watching the
fees, the storage fees.
That's part of it, yeah, yeah,yeah, I mean that is huge,
especially with some of thestuff that they've been saying
they are going to be doing withregard to storage fees.
And they kind of pulled backfrom that a bit because it was
very hard.
I don't know how people weregoing to manage it, but it was
based on how many days ofinventory you had and they were
(31:37):
going to charge you certain feesfor having too little or too
much inventory, and I think theykind of chilled on that for a
little bit.
So we'll see what happens, butthat's got to make it more
complicated for sure.
So what other words of wisdomwould you give to the millions
of three-piece sellers out therethat might not be managing this
(31:59):
really important area?
Alex Ryan (32:02):
Yeah, well, I would say, go and get a free audit
right Like, head to refundifyio,sign up.
You don't need to enter anycredit card details or anything.
You can just sign up for thefree audit.
We'll go in, we'll check youraccount and we'll tell you how
much you're owed.
You know, if it comes back.
We had one a while back thatwas like $177,000, which just
blew my mind.
You know they had no idea$177,000.
(32:23):
And they were losing.
Bear in mind they were losingover $20,000 per month just by
delaying.
$20,000 gone can't be recovered.
I think it was $26,000, $27,000each month.
So go and get that free audit.
Refundifyio.
It's not a free audit.
It takes 10 minutes.
We'll tell you how much you'reowed, give you the price
breakdown for the commission.
(32:43):
It's no win, no fee.
So there's really no reason notto do it.
And if you don't want to gowith the service, fine, but do
this because it's affecting yourbottom line, right?
So you need to figure out somekind of system.
Adam Shaffer (32:58):
Well, you're a really cool CTO.
I have to say that, and I enjoytalking to you.
You definitely it's great tomeet somebody that's on the
technical side, that's also anentrepreneur, and that's what I
think is also great about theAmazon ecosystem is that you
(33:18):
meet so many people that arepassionate about different parts
of the business and sometimesthe entire business.
But it's great to see a, youknow, very technical person also
very interested in helping youknow sellers in this, in this
industry, try to profit.
I mean it's it's a tough game,man.
I mean it's so competitive, somany moving parts and Amazon is
so big that stuff happens everyday and we appreciate all the
(33:39):
work that you guys do foreverybody.
Alex Ryan (33:41):
Yeah, I appreciate it .
Thank you so much for having meon.
It's good fun to chat andhopefully educate everyone and
help just eke a little bit moreout of that store.
Adam Shaffer (33:49):
It definitely helped me out a bit, and then
again so they can go to refund.
Is it refundifyio?
Alex Ryan (33:56):
So yeah, refundifyio.
Adam Shaffer (33:59):
Don't forget that refundifyio, and could people
reach out to you?
Alex Ryan (34:02):
Yeah, absolutely.
You can reach out to me atalexrefundifyio or drop me a
message on LinkedIn, anythinglike that.
Happy to help.
Adam Shaffer (34:10):
Cool.
Well, let's stay connected.
I really appreciate you joiningand updating everybody on the
world of reimbursement Superimportant everybody.
So please take note.
And Alex thanks so much and wereally appreciate it.
We know it's late where you are, so thank you very much.
Alex Ryan (34:26):
Yeah, thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
And yeah, thank you everyone.
Announcement (34:30):
Thank you for watching another episode of the
Planet Amazon podcast, where wetalk all things Amazon.
If you want to learn about howto accelerate your sales on
Amazon, visit Phelps United'swebsite at phelpsunitedcom.
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