Across our client base we hear and see stories of frustration and resignation about trading with the online giant, albeit tempered by the fact that for most, the size of the problem is tiny in relation to their trading elsewhere. But this does not mean trying to get them to work and do things properly is not relevant, or worth working towards.
This is where we have been able to help on the retrospective audit, where they (perhaps unsurprisingly) already have up to four audit teams at work and submitting claims which remain all but impossible to identify by our customers because of the way the online marketplace works. This is a breach of GSCOP, only now they, as a designated retailer, must explain their behaviour.
With the help of at least one client, we have been engaging with the CCO in order to establish with him what the process for audit claim submission, validation and settlement should be. It is a case of the ‘computer says no’ but with careful strategic pressure we are inching towards some clarity on this vexed subject.
If you have payment/deduction issues with the ecommerce platform and want to explore an alternative to ‘vendor central’ for resolution, then do get in touch to see if our experiences can be of value? For the record, we did get 30K of audit claims repaid by them (a mix of sales audit and GFR claims that should never have been deducted), albeit it took 2 years to resolve…
