As more Americans stay home, voluntarily or not, in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, orders for goods from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) have soared. Customers who order goods deemed nonessential to the fight against coronavirus have been quoted shipping dates a month or more out.
Some of the nonessential items are, however, available more quickly directly from Amazon resellers, but those product listings have been hidden from customers, according to a report at Recode.
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The hidden listings are the result of an unintentional error in Amazon’s algorithm. In a statement, a company spokesperson told Recode:
To address the need for high-priority items and ensure customers are receiving deliveries as quickly as possible, we’ve made a number of adjustments to how our store works. In this case, some of these changes have resulted in an error which, in some cases, resulted in an unintended variation in how we select which offers to feature. We are working to correct it as quickly as possible.
Amazon’s algorithm favors products stored by its resellers in the company’s warehouses because orders for those items can be fulfilled more quickly. Since the pandemic has spread to the United States, the company no longer accepts nonessential items from resellers to store in Amazon warehouses as the company struggles to meet demand for essential goods. Last week’s announcement that Amazon will hire 100,000 warehouse and delivery workers is intended to get essential items to customers more quickly.
Resellers who store their goods in Amazon’s warehouses have run into another snag. Amazon has temporarily banned them from withdrawing their goods from the warehouses so that resellers can ship them directly, and more quickly, to customers. Amazon has determined that getting warehouses stocked with essential goods and delivering them takes precedence over moving nonessential goods anywhere.
The overall impact on some resellers has essentially stopped their businesses. They can’t withdraw their goods, Amazon won’t ship them and the algorithm even prevents their offers from being shown to shoppers.
Amazon’s proposed fix is expected to alter the algorithm from favoring Amazon’s own products and those stored by resellers in its warehouse to display goods available directly from the sellers. The so-called Buy Box, the boxed area on a product page that lists “New & Used” items, will be updated to include items that ship directly from sellers.
That will help if sellers have the items in their own inventory. If they don’t, they’ll have to try and get more, itself not an easy thing to do these days.
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