Your Amazon repricer is lying to you: 5 examples (with proof)

The secrets, lies, and coverups around Amazon repricing software: The top 5 things your repricer doesn’t want you to know.

Video: All the evidence your repricing tool thinks you’re stupid

 

Your Amazon repricer is lying (sorry)

Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time studying Amazon repricing tools. And I have some bad news.

Most repricing tools are making dishonest claims, committing major lies of omission, or overtly lying to you.

Am I an unbiased researcher? Absolutely not. I run my own repricing tool (that doesn’t lie) and I am extremely biased on this subject.

However every example of repricing tools being less-than-honest that I’m about to cover is documented and can be easily verified. I’m only dishing out facts here, not opinions.

Why does this matter if your repricer is hiding facts from you?

When you think about it, there’s only two aspects of an Amazon business that actually directly convert into profits:

1. Sourcing inventory
2. Repricing inventory

If you find profitable inventory, you know you’re going to make money. And once that inventory is listed, the only want to convert it into a sale faster is through repricing.

So repricing is 50% of an Amazon business. The stakes are high.

How I compiled the research for this article

Last year, I set out to make a list of every Amazon repricing tool. Turns out, no one had ever done this before. And it was a daunting task. I was pretty surprised to find out that over 30 repricers were on the market.

Next, a few months ago, I set out to actually review all 30 of these repricers. Some more in depth than others, but I wanted to at least review their features and get a sense as to what the “claim to fame” for reach repricer was. What did they claim made their repricing tool better than other repricing tools? What are their features? How much to they cost? Etc. It was a huge undertaking.

What I learned is that there’s a bizarre level of omissions, lies, and unchecked claims in the repricing world. If you’re using any Amazon repricer, I encourage you to read what follows and do a full audit on your current repricer.

When it comes to repricing your Amazon inventory, the stakes are high.

Lie #1: Your repricer is mispricing your FBA inventory

It’s true: Your repricer is telling you that it’s comparing your price to the lowest competing FBA offer. It’s not. And almost none of them admit this.

The reason is something called “the FBA blindspot.”

To understand why this blindspot exists, you first have to understand the how repricing tools get their data and reprice your inventory. This is done through something called the “Amazon Selling Partner API.” This API is a convenient way for software tools to communicate directly with Amazon, request all sorts of data, and carry out various actions on a seller’s behalf.

And Amazon has certain rules about what data they will share via their API. And one of the most secretive and little-known is this:

Software using Amazon’s API cannot “see” any FBA offer if it is not priced among the lowest 20 offers.

It is very common for FBA offers to be priced higher than non-FBA, and be priced outside the bottom 20. For example, you might have 40 sellers selling a specific book. And the lowest 20 offers might range between $10 and $13. And the lowest FBA offer is $15. Since this is not among the lowest 20, the lowest priced FBA offer is invisible to your repricer.

What does this mean for your repricing? It means that since your repricer can’t “see” that $15 FBA offer, it’s going to do one of two things:

1. Reprice your inventory too low. In other words, your pricing rules might call for matching that lowest FBA offer. But if its invisible, there’s nothing to match. Which would invoke some sort of “fallback” logic, that would result in that book being priced too low – costing you profits.
2. Not reprice that item at all. Alternately, since there is no FBA price to match (your repricer can’t see any), it may just skip repricing that item altogether.

This is a serious for your profits as this sounds.

Here’s what’s insane: Almost no repricers admit this is happening.

There’s no debating this is real – it’s right there in the Amazon Selling Partner API documentation. Any developer familiar with it can confirm. But the official stance from most repricing tools is that this isn’t happening.

In fact, I did a min “sting operation” where I contacted most major repricers and asked them about this blindspot. I wanted to see how many were honest about it, and how many denied it existed.

The final tally went like this:

• Repricers I contacted: 22
• Repricers who did not admit they had blindspots: 15
• Repricers who were honest: 2
• (Repricing companies who didn’t respond: 5)

(Only two repricers – RepriceIt and Sellery – admitted to the FBA blindspot).

How is it possible to be this brazen and simply deny this is happening? My theory is this: When you think about it, all repricing happens in the background and out of view. So when you’re repricing inventory that has competing offers in the blindspot, there’s no alarm bells that go off or “warning” messages you’ll see. That item will quietly get mispriced, and you’ll never know. Since it’s so difficult to document, repricers probably just assume you’ll never notice.

It’s a staggering thing to keep hidden for so long. The losses to sellers is incalculable.

And even after releasing the results of this audit, not a single repricing tool discloses the FBA blindspot on their website (or anywhere else).

The lie continues.

Lie #2: Claims the repricer will raise your prices

Any repricer that claims they raise prices more than any other repricer is guilty of a major lie of omissions.

Fact: Every legacy repricer in existence cannot raise prices in any meaningful way, because they are forced (by Amazon) to only compare your offer to the lowest price competitor.

This is a limitation (again) of Amazon’s API, the prevents repricing tools from “seeing” the 2nd or 3rd (or beyond) lowest competing prices. Amazon hides this data by only showing repricers “price groups” instead of individual prices. So no repricer (except one) can confidently say “this is the second lowest priced offer” or “this is the third lowest priced offer,” etc.

Anytime you see Amazon pricing data, it can look like you’re seeing a list of individual offers. What Amazon (and repricing tools) don’t tell you is that you’re only seeing “groups” of offers, bundled together by condition. So if you’re using any tool (repricing tool or not) that shows you a list of prices like this:

• Lowest price: $11
• 2nd lowest price: $12.50
• 3rd lowest price: $12.75
• 4th lowest price $13
• 5th lowest price: $16

If you actually looked at the Amazon page, it might look like this:

• Lowest price: $11
• 2nd lowest price: $11
• 3rd lowest price: $12.10
• 4th lowest price $12.50
• 5th lowest price: $12.51
• 6th lowest price: $12.75
• 7th lowest price: $12.75
• 8th lowest price: $12.75
• 9th lowest price: $12.99
• 10th lowest price $13
• 11th lowest price: $13.02
• 12th lowest price: $16

This has a tremendous impact on repricers, preventing them from raising prices in any significant way. Since they can’t “see” anything above the lowest priced offer, your price can never be compared to the lowest offer. It’s simply impossible for your repricer.

This makes any claims of raising your price more than another repricer dubious, since they are all bound by the same limitations. They are literally forced by Amazon to only price against the lowest priced offer.

Yet repricers are still making claims like this:

Lie #3: Claims of proprietary features with funny names that they won’t explain

You’ll notice something weird if you start reviewing websites for Amazon repricers: Most of them make claims about one or more proprietary features they have that no other repricer has. The pattern usually goes like this:

• They claim to have a special feature.
• The feature has a flamboyant (often goofy) name.
• They claim this feature sets them apart from other repricers.
• They claim this feature will boost your Amazon sales or profits.
• There is very little transparency into how this feature actually works or what it does.

Here are some of the more comical examples:

• “Buy Box Hunter”
• “Amazon AI Algorithmic Repricing”
• “Profit Climbing Technology”
• “Amazon Buy Box predictor”
• “BuyBoxCatcher”
• Or try this for a mouthful: “Outsmarts competition by continuously learning market dynamics, competitive pricing patterns, and price-change frequencies.”

Very common terms you’ll hear to promote repricing tools include “Game Theory,” “Algorithmic,” and “AI.” There is certainly a legitimate application for AI and algorithms (not sure what “game theory” means) in Amazon repricers. The issue comes when repricers are unable to clearly spell out what exactly these features are doing, and how exactly they convert to increase profits.

If you are choosing a repricer based on claims it makes about a proprietary feature, make sure the repricing company is transparent about exactly how it works, and exactly how it will translate into more profits or sales.

If they can’t answer in a clear and verifiable way, you are being lied to.

Lie #4: Clams they “win” you the Buy Box more than other repricers

Review repricing tool websites, and you’ll notice the #1 way they try to distinguish themselves from other tools is claims about “winning the Buy Box” more than other repricers. The vast majority make this claim. But they can’t all be right. So who is lying?

Here’s the hilarious part: Comparing your price to the Buy Box price is literally the most basic function of a repricer. There is literally nothing noteworthy about “winning the Buy Box, and touting it as a claim laughable.

To get more specific, here are the two reasons repricer Buy Box claims are so absurd:

#1: Competing against the Buy Box price is the most basic function of a repricer.

This is why I call “winning the Buy Box” to be the “participation trophy” for repricers. Oh really, so you can price for the Buy Box? isn’t that the most basic function of a repricer? Isn’t that what literally every repricer does? Isn’t this the absolutely bare minimum function of literally any Amazon repricer?

The anwers are: yes, yes, and yes. There is literally nothing special or celebratory about editing a price to get the Buy Box.

That’s literally all repricers do.

#2: Most factors that contribute to “winning the Buy Box” have nothing to do with repricing

While pricing is the most important factor for getting the Buy Box (and extremely simple to accomplish), most factors have nothing to do with repricing.

Factors such as your account health, feedback score, and numerous other factors known and unknown contribute to getting the Buy Box. Suggesting it’s solely at the control of a repricer is a dishonest claim.

Bottom line: Claiming to “Win the Buy Box” more than other repricers is what you say when you have no actual unique features to offer. There is no other reason for a repricer make this their most prominent claim.

Lie #5: Claims about being the “fastest” repricer

If you use a repricer that claims to be the fastest – run.

This is another claim that is so easy to refute, it’s hard to believe any tool is so bold as to make this claim. Here’s why…

All repricers are subject to the same speed limits of Amazon’s API.

Amazon has certain request limits (also called “rate limiting”) that every repricer is bound by. No one gets special treatment. These request limits cap the number of price changes any tool can make.

Apparently repricing tools don’t think you’ll take the time to read Amazon’s developer documentation and notice that there’s no way to “reprice faster.” Every tool is rate limited just the same.

The reason they get away with this is that repricing happens in the background, where we (the repricing tool customers) have no ability to audit the actual speed. This makes any speed claims unfalsifiable.

If you’re using an Amazon repricer that claims to be the fastest – ask them these questions:

1. How can I confirm you are repricing faster than other tools?
2. How are you repricing faster than Amazon’s API allows?

They wont’ answer these questions.

Audit your Amazon reprice and hold them accountable

Choosing a repricing tool is an extremely high stakes decision for every Amazon seller. If you’ve made a decision based on claims that you haven’t (or can’t) fully verify, ask your repricer to provide verifiable proof of their claims.

If they can’t do it – don’t use them.

-Peter Valley

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