Vendor Chargebacks Deep Dive - Episode 202
INTERVIEW WITH CAROLINE ADAMS
DESCRIPTION
Today we have the pleasure to chat with Caroline Adams, one of the Project Managers here at Bobsled Marketing. Caroline recently contributed to one of Bobsled's most popular white papers - Amazon Vendor Chargebacks, A Guide to Avoiding Unnecessary Charges & Increasing Profit on Amazon, and today she’s sharing with us the most important takeaways from this resource.
Make sure you tune in to find out more! This resource was compiled over the course of the past few years, working with more than one hundred Vendor Central clients.
Caroline spent the majority of her career as a Product Marketer across various industries from consumer product goods to publishing to not-for-profit. As a true proponent of learning, she morphed into the eCommerce world and was trained by an ex-Amazon employee. Caroline joined the Agency side of the business about 4-5 years ago and loves working with clients to help them reach their Amazon goals.
“Document everything. You only have 30 days. Keeping that repository will allow you to quickly go back and dispute chargebacks in that time frame. After that 30-day window, the opportunity is not there anymore.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A lot of times, accounts or clients on Vendor Central don't know how many chargebacks there are, what the impact that chargebacks are having on their accounts, or don't have a real understanding of chargebacks in general.
The Vendor Central platform is very nuanced, and chargebacks are one of the most complex parts of it.
Amazon has a lot of chargebacks, and often they come as a surprise to brands, who really don’t understand where charges are coming from, or even why those charges are occurring.
The biggest issue is uncovering chargebacks and how to lay your strategy and foundation going forward to mitigate all those issues.
A lot of clients see fees becoming more and more every month but they don't understand why it's happening and how to resolve it.
Understanding chargebacks starts with performing an audit, knowing what to look for, and how it is calculated and what's possible to clawback versus what's not.
The most common root cause of chargebacks is simply not understanding them all.
In order to dispute a chargeback, you need to have the documentation.
In some of the clients chargebacks are piling up into tens of thousands, and most brands work on a small margin already on Amazon, so that is just more money eating profits unnecessarily.
Strategies that are available to brands to prevent and resolve chargebacks are:
Education and understanding chargebacks
Having one person as a point person to really understand and stay on top of them
It’s also important if an account is getting hit with a lot of different kinds of chargebacks
Looking at the chargebacks that are costing the most money, and putting steps in place to mitigate those first.
You have only 30 days to dispute chargebacks and for invoice chargebacks a year.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Connect with Kiri Masters
Learn more about Bobsled Marketing
Connect with Caroline Adams
Download Amazon Vendor Chargebacks Guide