An hour ago, you were happy, content. You had just placed an order for another dozen or two of that hot selling ASIN that you can’t seem to keep in stock. You printed off the invoice, maybe even added it to your purchase tracker to be sent to your prep center, and continued sourcing those valuable replens.

And now you’re sitting there reading the dreaded email of OA Amazon sellers:

“Your order has been cancelled” it reads. “We apologize for the…..” blah, blah, blah.

You quit reading before you get to their reassurance that you will either not be charged for the order, or that the purchase price will be refunded to the card used to make the purchase. And in an instant the anticipation of sending in another shipment full of 200% ROI goodies, is gone.

In an effort to make up for the let down you frantically search Google for the product in a desperate attempt to regain some of the profit you were hoping to have ordered that day. But page after page of “this item is out of stock” starts to take it’s toll and you abandon the product that day altogether.

Sound familiar?

The online arbitrage model for Amazon is getting harder. Competition is high. Item availability is low. And some retailers have really started putting the screw to suspected resellers. So how do you avoid or at least reduce the chances of getting “cancelled”?

Strategies to Help Avoid Cancelled Orders

Unfortunately, there isn’t a sure fire way to avoid the situation, but we have found a few strategies that work for us.

Retailer Size Matters

The first thing to take note of when ordering large quantities is the size of the retailer. Placing big orders and often with a reseller friendly store like Walmart will be much easier than placing an order for 12 bottles of vitamins from a small supplement brand’s website.

Large retailers utilize multiple fulfilLment centers across the US and fulfill tens of thousand of orders a day. Smaller retailers usually have a more hands on shipping department that will notice “larger than normal” and even multiple orders to the same address.

Spacing out orders of “consumable sizes” usually works best to avoid issues with these smaller retailers.

Don’t Over-Use Discount Codes

Something else to take note of with retailers of all sizes is the number of times you use discount codes, promo codes, or coupons. They don’t want to lose money as much as anybody else. So if they see a large amount of discounts being used multiple times, they usually don’t have an issue canceling orders.

Avoid Using Multiple Credit Cards & Shipping Addresses

Although popular among some sellers, avoid using multiple credit cards and shipping addresses in an attempt to purchase as many units as fast as possible. Not only will this usually set off red flags within their payment system and most likely end in not being able to purchase that product at all but will leave you feeling “dirty”.

Source a Distributors or Wholesalers Instead of Retailers

Being able to reduce cancellations is nice, but being able to get your hands on as many profitable products at once is even better. When you’ve finally found that replen or product that you could sell out of every day, sometimes the best thing to do is to start looking for a distributor or wholesaler of that product. You can even contact the brand itself to inquire about being a reseller of their products.

Conclusion

Being able to diversify your product offerings instead of relying on a few very good sellers will allow you to space out those orders and ultimately make you a better seller.