Amazon Buyer-Seller Communication Email Changes Are Now Complete
Sometimes I receive emails from Amazon customers who need assistance with the delivery of their package or who have questions about the items they received and how to make them work properly. Most of the time it takes only one or two emails or a quick phone call. However, there are times when the Amazon customer and I email back and forth more than a few times.
Unlike in the past, whenever I communicate with Amazon customers now the full email traffic is included in each correspondence. Also, at the bottom of the emails is the following message (warning) from Amazon. The message is provided both in a text only format and then a bluish-grey box with the same warning right below the text.
For Your Information: To help arbitrate disputes and preserve trust and safety, we retain all messages buyers and sellers send through Amazon.com for two years. This includes your response to the message above. Amazon.com uses filtering technology to protect buyers and sellers from possible fraud. Messages that fail this filtering will not be transmitted. We want you to buy with confidence anytime you purchase products on Amazon.com. Learn more about Safe Online Shopping (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=10412241) and our safe buying guarantee (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=537868).
It was back in February of this year that the announcement was made notifying users that Amazon was changing up the way buyer-seller communications were conducted. The appearance of this warning message may cause some sellers to question whether their responses to customers are “within policy”. Below is a portion of Amazon’s Communication Guidelines (Directly from the Amazon website:)
In general, you may contact a customer who has purchased from you on Amazon.com (Amazon.com customers) only to complete an order or to respond to a customer service inquiry. You may not contact customers in any way for marketing or promotional purposes (including via e-mail, physical mail, telephone, or otherwise).
If you send a permitted e-mail to an Amazon.com customer, your e-mail may not include any of the following:
- Links to any website
- Seller logos if they contain or display a link to the seller’s website
- Any marketing message or promotion
- Any promotion for additional products or referral to third-party products or promotions
Merchants must include the Amazon order ID in customer communications about orders and on the packing slips included in shipments. If you have questions on Amazon.com’s policies regarding communicating with customers, you can contact us by clicking the “Contact Seller Support” link found at the bottom of most Seller Central pages.
As an Amazon seller, I actually appreciate having access to the email communications for 2 years. For any seller who has not yet accessed it yet, all emails can be found by clicking on the MESSAGES link at the top right hand corner after you have signed into your Seller Central Account. Our messages go back only as far as April 2010, the time it appears that Amazon began capturing and saving these buyer-seller communications. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any way to sort or search through the messages other than by date.
One important tip: whenever we call a customer to assist them we always follow up with an email summarizing our conversation and making note of the fact that we called. That helps us later should we need to recall what it is that we discussed and/or agreed to over the phone.
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