RESEARCHING: Missing Amazon Shipments?

1. 96

   Glenn Stokposted 9 years ago

   I have been keeping a close eye on my Amazon sales and shipments by displaying the Earnings Reports to show Amazon "All Time" and it shows that 10 items never were shipped yet. 
   
   Seven (7) of those 10 items are pending shipment for over two weeks now, and maybe much longer. I can't tell for sure because your report does not relate orders to shipments. 
   
   Prior to the HP Amazon program, when I had used my own Amazon Affiliate account, I was able to see which items were being shipped. That is not longer possible with the HP program. So I am left in the dark as to knowing what is missing. I can only see the numbers adding up for orders and the shipments, without a clear relationship between the two columns.
   
   Any thoughts on why so many ordered items are not showing up as shipped?

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   1. 71

      Matthew Meyerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Glenn.
      I know that we don't have very granular reporting from Amazon, so part of that is due to us now having the same details to provide.
      
      I am going to look into this further tomorrow.
      Thanks for reporting!

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      1. 96

         Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks Matt, it will be interesting to see what you discover.

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         1. 71

            Matthew Meyerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            @Glenn
            I took a look at your account and nothing seemed too wonky to me.
            
            I think this may just be one of the few drawbacks of the HubPages Amazon program, that the report data we have from Amazon is not as granular at that you received for an individual account.
            
            As SimeyC mentioned, it could be items that were ordered and returned/cancelled/etc.
            
            The data on this report might be a bit easier to parse.
            https://hubpages.com/my/earnings/amazon

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            1. 96

               Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Matt,  I always look at that report per the link you mentioned. It only shows the actual shipments. There still is no way to match the shipments to the orders.
               
               You say you don't see anything too wonky, as you put it. Then how do you account for the inconsistency of the two columns in the earnings report. Did you look at it with all history specified? If not, please do so...
               
               You have to change "All Programs" to "Amazon" and you also have to change "Last 7 Days" to "All Time" in order to see the Amazon totals at the bottom. You'll see a difference of 10 unless I get more orders or unless orders ship. This changes day to day. But it keeps increasing month to month, indicating more and more unshipped orders.
               
               As of today the are 10 orders pending to be shipped. If you follow backwards from the last date (on top) you'll notice that you can't find any consistency to the number of orders vs. the number of shipments.
               
               I can't imagine that I keep getting an increasing number of returns or cancellations, especially when that never happened before with my own affiliate account.
               
               As for SimeyC, he clearly mentioned that his issue was with an item that needed to be preordered. So it was not available when ordered. I agree that that can account for delayed shipments or for canceled orders. But that does not relate to the issue I am presenting here.

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               1. 71

                  Matthew Meyerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  @Glenn I'm doing some follow up to see if we can get any more detail regarding these specific pending items.  I'll let you know what we find.

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                  1. 96

                     Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     Thanks Matt. I appreciate the effort and I'll wait for your results. I have a feeling you may discover something interesting.

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                     1. 71

                        Matthew Meyerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        @Glenn,
                        
                        Can you identify a shorter time period in which you are seeing discrepancies?
                        
                        1 month would be good, but if we can get it down to a week, that would make it easier to research.

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                        1. 96

                           Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                           That's difficult to narrow down. It started with one missing back in March, and it grew from there. Since the report does not relate orders to actual shipments, there is no way to give you an accurate answer, but here are two examples....
                           
                           Example 1:
                           
                           Take a look at Aug 3rd. You'll see 13 items ordered. Throughout the next three days, 13 items were shipped (3+5+5). So I would think those 13 are the 13 ordered on Aug 3rd. That looks like a pretty good match, which leaves the question as to why the total shipments as of that date still showed several orders pending shipment from previous orders.   
                           
                           Example 2:
                           
                           This one may be easier to track since it's the most recent and there were no orders in the 9 days prior to this example:
                           
                           3 items ordered on Aug 31 and 3 items ordered on Sept 3rd. Then 3 items shipped Sept 3rd and 3 items shipped Sept 4th. That should bring things back to zero pending (you would think). But as you can see, there are still 7 items pending to be shipped.
                           
                           If those 6 items just shipped were the 6 ordered on Aug 31 and Sept 3rd, and nothing was ordered for 9 days prior to that period, then the 7 pending much be VERY old, or lost, or canceled. But there is no indicator of canceled orders.

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2. 89

   SimeyCposted 9 years ago

   I had the same problem with 4 missing items - which I assume were cancelled - it would be useful to have a column that totals the cancelled items so I know there isn't a problem.

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   1. 96

      Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      How long has it been since those 4 items appeared as orders? Did you see new orders and shipments that seem to match up, leaving those 4 hanging? Or may it be possible that they were shipped late and newer orders are now pending shipment?
      
      I mentioned in my first comment above that my missing orders are over two weeks old, but they may be two months old for all I know.
      
      It's impossible to determine if the missing items were canceled. I never had that problem on my own Amazon affiliate account. On HP, I can't even determine how old the unshipped orders are, since they may have been shipped and the difference may be due to new unshipped orders.  HP does not provide a reference to know which is which as Amazon does on their own affiliate reports.

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      1. 89

         SimeyCposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Mine were back in April and the order was never re-ordered - I assumed at the time that someone simply cancelled the order. I note that I don't recall being able to track cancelled orders on my main Amazon affilite - only orders that were returned...

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         1. 96

            Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            In all the years I had my own affiliate account with Amazon, I never had a canceled order. Only returns, and they showed up as returns as you said. But now on HP, my experience is different with orders going into oblivion. That indicates a possible problem, maybe lost data with reporting from Amazon to HP.

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            1. 89

               SimeyCposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               I had a lot of cancelled orders on Amazon - they were pre-orders; a lot of people pre-ordered the Kinect and then cancelled months later (I assume) when it came out.

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               1. 96

                  Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  Interesting. That may be a unique experience you had with cancellations due to the specific item you were listing.  Did the pre-orders show differently in your reports? Or did they just count as "orders" ?   
                  
                  Either way, I don't think this is what's happening here since the items I list are available items.

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                     TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     What I can't figure out is how there can be 0 orders but 4 or 5 shipped!

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                     1. 96

                        Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        Where did you see that?  Are you talking about your own reports? If you see shipments with no orders, change your report to "All Time" and look backwards.
                        
                        More importantly, look at the bottom totals. You may discover the same thing I am discussing in the thread.

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3. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 9 years ago

   @Glenn Stok
   
   I compared your HubPages orders report with Amazon's and they all match up.  There are 187 orders and 180 have been shipped.  So, what happened to the missing orders?
   
   Amazon's site says
   --------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Why doesn’t a product show on my Earnings report when it's on my Orders report?
   
   When you see more items on your Orders reports compared to your Earnings Reports, there are a variety of possible reasons.
   
   1. Your visitor cancelled their order: Fees are only earned once an item has shipped to the customer, so cancelled orders do not show in your Earnings Report.
   2. The item is a Pre-Order or Out of stock: Fees are only earned once an item has shipped to the customer.
   3. The item has not shipped: It can take several days for an item to ship to the end customer. Some variables include, payment processing, shipping speed, and item inventory.
   4. The order was marked as Ineligible for payment. Orders that have been marked by our system as Ineligible will not receive referral fees. This happens because items were purchased through your links either by you or on your behalf, or by your friends, your relatives, or your associates. You can view more information in the Operating Agreement under number 7 “Advertising Fees” as well as the Participation Agreement under number 29. In most cases, if you know the person who placed the order, it will likely be marked as ineligible for payment.
   
   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   
   My best guess is you have 7 orders that didn't make it through for one of those reasons.  However, the reports don't tell us why.  I've checked a few other accounts and they all seem correct.
   
   Just to be extra sure everything is functioning correctly, I've written our Amazon rep and asked her to take a look at your tracker results as well and to see if she can provide more details.
   
   I totally understand the confusion. It seems like there should be an invalid orders report we can use to offset our accounting. 
   
   It usually takes a few days to get a response on these types of questions, so I or Matt will report back as soon as we get confirmation.

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   1. 96

      Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Paul, 
      
      Thanks for taking the time to look into this. I appreciate your help, and the explanation from Amazon.
      
      I understand all those reasons why an order would end up not being shipped. The thing that concerns  me is the fact that I never had this happen with my own affiliate Amazon account. I was using my own Amazon account with HubPages since I began writing here four years ago, without a single missed shipment. This is a new experience, with failed orders, that I am having only with HP's Amazon program.
      
      It will be interesting to see what your Amazon rep says. I appreciate that you passed this on to her for further analysis. Have a good weekend. Thanks again.

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4. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 9 years ago

   This won't make you feel better, but it looks like you have more than most. I think it's a case of bad luck, but we will find out for sure.

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   1. 96

      Glenn Stokposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      LOL.  Now I really want to find out for sure! 

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