Good news! Amazon lowers the threshold for determining "price gouging"

Ever since epidemic prevention supplies became popular on Amazon, more and more sellers have been identified as price fraud by Amazon, and their products have been removed from the shelves or even their stores have been closed on the grounds of "violating the principle of fair pricing." Now, almost every day you can see sellers discussing the issue of "price fraud" in the group.

Everyone knows that there is a knife of "price fraud" hanging over our heads, so why do some sellers still take risks and have their stores closed? The main reason is that Amazon does not disclose the criteria for determining "price fraud". Everyone is crossing the river in the dark and has no idea what price to set before stepping on the landmine.

In addition, the cost of domestic epidemic prevention materials is indeed high, which has led to a steady stream of sellers having their stores closed due to unclear red lines.

What kind of pricing is not considered "price gouging"? Amazon finally gave sellers an explanation last weekend by optimizing its algorithm to detect price gouging.

Price Gouging Algorithm Update

This announcement states that Amazon has taken into account the rising cost of goods, labor, and logistics costs when factoring into its algorithm (which means it didn’t have them before?!), and will also implement a dynamically changing “price fairness principle” in conjunction with the relevant laws of the place of sale.

Amazon seems to be admitting that the previous "price gouging" algorithm was not reasonable and did not fully consider that sellers' costs have risen across the board. Now that the algorithm has been updated, the number of sellers who are delisted and banned for "price gouging" will be greatly reduced.

Now there are more and more sellers of epidemic prevention materials. Both new and old sellers can benefit from Amazon’s changes, reduce their pricing risks, and try higher prices.

Amazon still did not announce the detailed crawling mechanism and pricing red lines this time, but pointed out another identification standard in the announcement - local relevant laws and regulations.

All states in the United States have now entered a state of emergency, which includes policies announced by state governments that "sellers of emergency supplies are not allowed to raise prices arbitrarily." Each state's department of justice will set a price increase, and price increases exceeding the set value will be considered illegal.

(For example, the increase in Arkansas is 10%)

The government's requirement for price increase is very exaggerated, which is basically equivalent to not allowing price increase. Now logistics and commodity prices are soaring, and none of the increases are less than 10%. The price of goods is several times that of last year. Therefore, this government regulation can only be a reference for Amazon's algorithm. You can find this policy on the official website of the state government of each state.

Now that the United States has declared a national state of emergency, people are semi-forced to stay at home. Online e-commerce sales have also been gradually rising since the outbreak in the United States in March. According to foreign media data, online sales in March increased by a quarter compared with the same period last year.

Among them, 89% of consumers are willing to choose Amazon as their online shopping platform.

And after Amazon adjusted the "price fraud" algorithm, there will be more pricing and profit space for epidemic prevention products. The best time to develop epidemic prevention products is February, and the second best time is now when the official threshold has been relaxed .