Amazon Pending Orders Problem

Amazon's official time for expiring and re-listing pending orders has been increased from 3 to 7 days. In reality, many sellers have been reporting that it can take up to 12 days or more for the pending orders to expire. From other Amazon sellers' comments and my own experiences we now know that:

• Pending orders are not cancelled by putting stock on vacation.
• Pendings can still convert into orders after 11 days.
• It can take 12 days for pendings to expire and re-list automatically.
• Customer Service refuses to cancel pendings at any time.

So, if I want to be sure that I don't get any orders while I'm on holiday, I need to put my books on vacation 14 days before I go - even if I am going to be away for only a couple of days. I will, of course, continue to sell my stock on other sites - which don't have Amazon's pending policy - until 48 hours before I leave.

Alternatively, I could take the pending items on holiday with me, ready to post if a pending converts into an order.

Or, I could carry on as normal, apologise to the customer if any problems result and take the hit on feedback and metrics.

I would be very interested to hear of other sellers' and customers' experiences. I would also like to see a copy of the email that Amazon sends to a customer when an order goes pending.

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