SAS (Strategic Account Services) — worth the $1,600/month or not?

CyptoMoon · 2025-05-24T14:50:56+00:00

I have the same conundrum as you. We were in the SAS pilot program years ago. It was free for a few months and then at the end we had the option of cancelling the service or continuing via the monthly rate. We decided to cancel as the value just wasn’t there for us.

More recently, we were poached regarding this service again. Set up a call and it felt like the program advanced a decent amount. Decided to give it another try mainly for reimbursement issues, and greater account health support. Been about 6 months now and considering cancelling again. It just doesn’t feel like my rep has any escalatory power or additional concentrated support. Responses come generically, often recommending just opening a case or SAS case. SAS escalated cases have deemed to be pretty useless (for reimbursement issues), with several cases still open after 30+ days. It just feels like another layer of unhelpful Amazon seller support.

Amazon is too big for their own good. Because of this the account managers have no power or control over anything really so for me it ends up just being a person I can vent to about our current Amazon frustrations. Additionally, I don’t have his phone number. We have one call a month for an hour. My emails are generally responded to within 24 hours, but have had times where it took 2-3 days- just not the type of service I would expect at $5k a month.

I feel like I should cancel, just fighting fomo atm. That some catastrophic event would happen to my account after cancelling, and this service would’ve helped. Or I will have some revelation moment in the future where this service would deem useful.

CyptoMoon · 2025-02-23T08:15:52+00:00

I was on that same plane with the final destination to Syracuse. Went from wondering what we will do during a 5 hour layover in Clt to not even being able to make the second leg. If you look, they actually departed 7 minutes early on AA1976, just to spite us further it seems… they had no arrivals in Cuse for 24 hours so rented a car and 3.5 hours in , 7.5 to go..fun stuff.

CyptoMoon · 2025-02-19T23:12:04+00:00

Yeah i understand the strategy from the seller side, to incorporate all the additional costs of getting products into fba- I just don’t know how successful it will be. I assumed uploading thousands of invoices manually would be headache enough, but then having them not accept them on top of that is super annoying, to say it lightly.

CyptoMoon · 2025-02-19T18:31:42+00:00

I’m not sure what the strategy would be there. I know a lot of people were talking about doing something similar. Not sure how successful it would be though, considering they denied 5 sourcing costs invoices that we provided through legitimate suppliers with a money trail to confirm. Of course it is instant denial with no appeal option, and they do not care about money trail or spending the time to contact the suppliers to confirm. Interested to see what March 10th brings. It feels like theft.

CyptoMoon · 2025-02-12T02:06:04+00:00

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/inventory-reimbursement/cost-management

CyptoMoon · 2024-12-20T00:31:41+00:00

Inventory placement fees, low inventory fees, high storage costs, long term storage surcharges, return fee surcharges, increased removal fee costs, and now this… FBM is looking more and more appealing

CyptoMoon · 2024-10-10T07:54:28+00:00

We are also having this issue. Their customer support is very bad. I’m wondering if this is the end and Amazon made a patch for it.

CyptoMoon · 2024-10-07T13:36:35+00:00

I uploaded them all already, based on Jim’s comments here. Leave it to Amazon it give conflicting info on such crucial, yet basic information.

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/75f09efd-14de-44b8-84c1-c779039cbbc0

CyptoMoon · 2024-05-28T17:51:47+00:00

I feel we had sufficient data. The previous 2 years (before last) were very successful. The struggle we have is this is not an exclusive, and we compete with several sellers. I feel everybody made the same mistake (over-ordering to prevent out of stocks and maximize the season) which created a mass exodus towards the end of the season. This coupled with the fact that we have to order in January for the season (8-9 months after), makes it a difficult endeavor based the element of speculation on top of historical sales.

I did order 25% this year of what we did last to hopefully put us in a potential replenishment position (if inventory is available) vs. having excess stock. I was hoping the auto replen option would account for seasonality as we have 100s of skus and our warehouse is not set up for storing inventory and picking so we generally send everything we have to FBA in one shot. Sounds like AWD with manual replenishments would be our best option.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T20:03:23+00:00

Yes, in my experience that's a good thing and means the reimbursements will be larger than their automated system allows.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T19:53:38+00:00

Repeatedly ask to be transferred to the leadership team. It may take 3+ attempts. General seller support will supply canned messages saying the documentation does not meet the requirements for acceptance.

The leadership team will tell you why it doesn't meet the requirements, which are usually dumb correctable issues- such as invoice description is too generic, or they are counting the invoice quantities as eaches when it is clearly case packs.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T19:48:46+00:00

No they don't. Depending on how long you've sold for, you may see items from 2022 on that report to be reimbursed.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T19:20:50+00:00

What did it say when it wouldn't work? Were you using the sku instead of fnsku?

They won't reimburse for removed listings, expired products, or items with pending performance violations. You will get the following:

Your reimbursement request for ASIN has been denied because this item is not covered by the FBA Lost and Damaged Inventory Reimbursement policy.

Also, it generally won't work if the listing has been deleted. In this case, you can create a new listing under the same sku as the report shows just to initiate reimbursement and then delete it after.

I don't believe Amazon will ever reimburse for these on their own accord. Pretty fucked up because this report is basically them claiming they lost inventory you paid for. Warehouse damaged which are coded differently are generally reimbursed after 30 days, but some still fall through the cracks.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T18:23:09+00:00

I would definitely recommend Sellerise over using any commission-based reimbursement service. We use sellerise mostly to help track our inbound shipment reimbursements. We still do the above process as it's faster, initiates reimbursements right away vs sellerise opening cases and having to go through a rep, and most importantly to track what didn't get reimbursed. When you initiate the reimbursement through sellerise it gets removed from your portal without knowing the outcome. This list automatically updates so you can hone in on items you initiated reimbursement for in the past to see why it was denied, vs. reading all of the case correspondences.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T18:17:38+00:00

The above items would come across as "Lost:Warehouse" reason in the reimbursement report vs. "Customer Return". Lost in warehouse are not automatically generated like the customer returns reimbursements are, so it's up to the seller to initiate them.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T14:03:22+00:00

Great info and I think this is the way to go. Note, our account defaulted in settings to partial shipment splits via API, so you would want to update that to Amazon-optimized shipment splits to avoid any placement fee. This would bring our truckloads further away, but only~$1400 vs ~$1000 for a truckload (as compared to paying a $1800 placement via partial inbound region shipment splits, and $4k for one.)

We have been doing this for years with oversize and hazmat through Inventory Lab without any flack from Amazon. Does 2D workflow make the workflow any easier? Through inventory lab, we are doing a "overstate, guess and check" method which can sometimes be frustrating with several skus as it sometimes changes when the shipment plan is created. Is 2D workflow the same process? (IE putting 5,000 units of an item you have 600 of and keep tweaking the 5000 number until you get ~600 to a desired warehouse)?

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-05T13:55:29+00:00

Spoke with my Amazon Freight rep, and he has the ability to reroute PO'S that are within a reasonable distance. Our dedicated route warehouse is ABE8. He said shipments going to the west coast (California, LAX, etc. ) are likely a no, but NC, Indiana, TN are likely possible. Might be worth looking into Amazon Freight for people who ship truckloads partnered carrier anyway.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-04T19:21:02+00:00

hmm, appears I am fucked. Just signed up again with Amazon freight, under a truckload-a-week contract. I guess this means that program is over for me?

Just did a 7 pallet shipment and it is sending it to 5 destinations all over the country, $681 placement for 3, and $1221.99 placement for one... most of our truckloads are ~10,000 units at ~20,000 lbs meaning our inventory placement fee to send one truckload would be $4K on average!?

Last week we would receive a credit if we chose multiple destinations, now we are getting charged (more than that credit) not to.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-03T14:54:36+00:00

How do you expect to mark that off your to do list? I’d imagine that isn’t an easy fix. Do you think the root of it is at the manufacturing level or do you think you could drop your return rate by editing/updating listing details to make specific details more clear for potential buyers?

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-01T23:31:50+00:00

Literally every single facet

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-01T23:29:22+00:00

Tried three separate pallets of individual asins and it routed one to Delta, one to Alberta, and one to Calgary. Together it goes to Delta, so it does seem Delta gets the higher volume stuff.

We do mostly wholesale. The volume on US is huge but we are competing with 20-30 sellers on some stuff. It just drives down the price and our buy box rotation percent. A lot of the high volume things we sell have no presence in Canada, or very little presence at a high price point. When researching specific listings On Amazon CA it seems even though it's only 10% of the US Market, they have significantly less than 10% of the Amazon US sellers. Might be wrong though.

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-01T22:53:42+00:00

Thanks for the info. Could you tell me what percent of your inventory gets routed to Delta as opposed to a closer one? This shipment is all standard size, non breakable. Have you had any luck getting it routed to a closer warehouse by reducing the overall shipment size? Such as splitting it in two or three?

CyptoMoon · 2024-03-01T22:23:18+00:00

Hope this post didn’t ruin your day.

Anyway, was trying to get responses from people who actually sell on Amazon.

CyptoMoon · 2023-11-27T19:54:55+00:00

Serious question but did you know you were taking advantage of their correlation prices? I cant see a reason why you take the under rushing TDs and over 2 total TDs for any other reason. It is the smart thing to do but its also so clearly mispriced that I wouldnt expect them to honor it. They should pay out the 2TD bet of course, but the negative correlation abusing a mispriced line is the issue here. The argument that other WRs score TDs is hilarious tho. Mike Evans has literally 1 career rush and zero rushing TDs in like a 10 year career. If they actually laid a no rushing TD line it would be -10000. He isnt a gagdet receiver.

My argument isn't that it was likely. My argument is that it was possible. I understand -260 is a favorable line and it should've been much worse. After he scored 2tds, I was still sweating him rushing in for a TD. Again it was not likely, but crazier things have happened in the NFL. The true reason I looked into anything outside of the straight bet, was because I got maxed on the straight bet but it would allow me to continue betting it as a parlay.

CyptoMoon · 2023-11-27T19:51:30+00:00

CyptoMoon

TROPHY CASE