One of the biggest mistakes we have witnessed Amazon sellers making lately is submitting their invoice WAY TOO SOON! Here’s what you need to know:

If your Amazon account is eligible for Ungating you will be able to make a qualified purchase and submit the invoice to Amazon (apply for Ungating). After you submit the invoice Amazon reviews the invoice and your account. If Amazon feels you are eligible to be Ungated in the brand shown on the invoice, they send the wholesaler an email that looks like this:

As you will notice, this email from Amazon does not tell us WHO ordered this merchandise from us however we are provided with an Order Number. We can then look up that order number and provide Amazon with the customers name and address. We also have to confirm that the merchandise shown in Amazons email is what the buyer actually purchased from us. We then reply to Amazons email and provide them with the information we have for this order number.

But I want you to pay close attention to the middle-part of Amazons email. It specifically says:

Yes, Amazon wants to make sure the buyer is IN POSSESSION OF the merchandise they ordered.

However, we have noticed a mass influx of buyers placing an order at 9am and rushing to submit the invoice to Amazon at 9:20am. What ends up happening is Amazon looks at the order date / invoice date as well as todays date and sees that there is no possible way the buyer could be in possession of the merchandise if the buyer is located in California and the wholesaler is in Michigan. On that note, I have yet to see a Michigan buyer pickup an order from our Michigan warehouse and submit the invoice the same day. I am not sure if Amazon would let this through because the buyer and seller are within the same state. If this situation presents itself I will be sure to write an update blog post to detail what Amazon decided.

So, what ends up happening is that the overly excited buyer too-quickly submits the invoice to Amazon and instead of Amazon contacting the wholesaler, they send the buyer this email:

As you will notice, the part I outlined in red says “You have provided an invoice that has not been fulfilled by the supplier. Please work with your supplier to obtain an invoice that has been fulfilled” - AKA “there’s no way you have this in your possession this fast”.

The worst part is that the buyer only gets a couple shots at Ungating before Amazon blocks them from ever being Ungated in that brand. Amazon doesn’t like wasting endless time with people who can’t follow directions because Amazon sees Ungating as a “privilege”, not a right.

SOLUTION: This is super, super simple! Just wait for it to arrive THEN submit the invoice. Providing your account is eligible for Ungating and providing Amazon is currently Ungating in that brand / category, you *should* have no problems being successfully ungated.  

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