Before we dive more into Amazon dropshipping specifically, let’s first give a quick refresher on what dropshipping is.
Dropshipping is the process of selling products without holding their inventory or being responsible for shipping yourself.
Essentially, a customer will buy from your store and you will place an order with your manufacturer to send the product directly to the customer that just ordered from you.
The job of a dropshipper is to maintain your online store, ensuring customers get their orders, and handling all complaints. Your supplier/manufacturer will handle the products.
Amazon Dropshipping
Dropshipping has always been a popular selling method on Amazon. This is because you are able to start your business much faster than private label or wholesale because it requires no inventory or inventory risk. You also get to leverage Amazon’s 300 million active shoppers which is near impossible to do with your own dropshipping store.
Is Amazon Dropshipping Safe?
The answer is it depends. For the most part, a majority of sellers are operating against the terms of service and it is only a matter of time before they get suspended. Their rules state that you must always:
- Be the seller on record of your products
- Identify yourself as the seller of your products on all packing slips and other information included or provided in connection with them
- Be responsible for accepting and processing customer returns of your products
- Comply with all other terms of your seller agreement and application Amazon policies
Examples of dropshipping NOT permitted:
- Purchasing products from another online retailer and having the retailer ship directly to customers
- Shipping orders with packing slips, invoices or other information indicating a seller’s name or contact information other than your own
Almost every dropshipper on Amazon falls under the first bullet point under NOT permitted. This is because they are listing products from retailers like Walmart or other online retailers and shipping to their customers from them. Amazon doesn’t like that because the customer feels “duped” as they ordered a product only to receive and find out that they could have purchased this product cheaper somewhere else.
Amazon Dropshipping Automation
As you can see now, almost every company (except us) that offers Amazon dropshipping is doing so against Amazon’s terms of service.
This doesn’t mean that you will get caught right away. You might not get caught for a few months but just know that your store is a ticking time bomb.
You will eventually get caught and lose everything. Amazon will also hold all of your sale money which means you will be stuck with your inventory credit card bill.
If you are doing Amazon Automation, you need to find a company that has a strategy to do dropshipping legally and within the terms of service.
At Lunar Automation, all of our clients take advantage of the benefits of dropshipping but also have a store completely within terms of service so you never have to worry that your account will get shut down.
You get the best of both worlds.
If you would like to see how it works, visit us at www.lunarautomations.com