Less Functionality for some Amazon Pro Merchant Accounts

As a follow-up to my last post, I called Amazon Customer Service for sellers.

It turns out that the button that customers have to click on to initiate a sale, namely, "See all buying options," cannot be relabeled "Add to Cart" when you are Pro Merchant seller on Amazon.com. This is an issue for a Pro Merchant I know, because he has received e-mail from customers who are looking for the "Add to Cart" button with which all Amazon.com customers are accustomed. The only buttom that reminds his customers of the "Add to cart" button on Pro Merchant pages is the "Add to Shopping List" button.

Unfortunately, the button labeled, "Add to Shopping List," is not active and cannot be activated for items listed by Pro Merchant sellers. When you are a Pro Merchant seller, any items that you have listed and readily available for sale on Amazon.com customers instead show up as being "unavailable" when your customers click on the "Add to Shopping List" button. This confusion between the two buttons leads to lost sales.

The customer service representative walked through these issues with me. When it became apparent that these issues could not be resolved, the Pro Merchant (on whose behalf I was calling) had to institute a work-around by using space otherwise dedicated to the description of his item to instead provide instruction to his customers about the "See all buying options" button.

Before I ended my call with the customer service representative, I asked for an e-mail account, where I could describe my feedback to these issues, so that these observations and recommendations could reach the appropriate department.

I was told to contact Seller-Suggestions@amazon.com.

If you are a Pro Merchant seller, please note these current limitations on your
Amazon.com account. If you want to help encourage Amazon.com to improve your customers' experience with their Pro Merchant program, please contact Amazon.com at (877) 251-0696 and/or Seller-Suggestions@amazon.com, and share with them your own stories.

I know that Pro Merchants who register with Amazon.com want to be able to collaborate with the most important Internet retailer. Pro Merchants are seeking to create a valuable and reliable sales channel, one where they can rely on Amazon.com's eCommerce technology to be able to create hassle-free sales.

Let's hope that Amazon.com's Pro Merchants are important enough to it that Amazon.com will come up with a solution.

Desperately Hunting for a Customer Service Representative; Eager to Wait On Hold, Even

After running a couple of Google searches, I found the Amazon Customer Service Phone Number on a similarly titled blog.

(This information was previously available on another blog, Amazon.com Customer Service Phone Number, but it is most certainly not on Amazon's own website.)

If you find yourself in a situation needing to contact Amazon, as have I, please feel free to try looking on these two links. I promise to report which phone number works.

My issue has to do with technical problems that obstruct sales on Amazon sales plages. My main issue is: why doesn't the "Add to Shopping List" button work for third party listed items on Amazon? If part of Amazon's recent success is coming from "its fast-growing (and high margin) merchant market, which allows merchants to sell goods alongside Amazon," why isn't the full functionality of the website's features available to third party sellers?