What are the Amazon MWS Limitations?

InventoryLab, and all other 3rd party services, communicate with Amazon through Merchant Web Services (MWS) Application Programming Interface (API). There are some limitations to the information Amazon provides to third party service providers.

The key limitations are:

• Restricted Categories – Amazon does not give InventoryLab live information about a product being restricted until after the feeds have processed. This means that you have no way of knowing whether a product is restricted before listing it to a batch. The listings will not become active at Amazon, however, in order to avoid sending in something that you cannot sell, scan items with the free Amazon Seller App or lookup the item using the “Add A Product” feature in seller central. While it is not always 100% correct, it is the best way to check on your restrictions on products you intend to list on Amazon.  We have added a hotlink to Seller Central within the application to make this easier.  Please see: How to Use the Amazon Restrictions Tool (Video)
• “Competitive” Offers – Amazon only shows items that are deemed “competitive” and not necessarily all lowest offers on a given product. InventoryLab will show you the buy box offer, and several other “competitive” offers, but if you need to see a full look at the offers in any given marketplace, please view the prime comparison icon during product lookup.
• Amazon annotated as a merchant on an ASIN – While InventoryLab does try to make a very educated “guess” as to when Amazon is a merchant on a listing, it is not always 100% correct. Amazon does not provide details on merchant names, and therefore InventoryLab is not 100% accurate when showing when and when not Amazon is a merchant on an ASIN.
• Hazmat Review – The API prevents items from showing if a product is under Hazmat review during product lookup, although InventoryLab does block items under Hazmat review while you are listing.  Please see: Under Hazmat Review
• Warehouse Splits – In private workflow, warehouses can change by the time you land on the FBA Shipping page, the warehouses may be much different than your sort from the List & Prep page. You can prevent this by creating your shipment within 24 hours, even it if it just a partial shipment and then starting a new batch if you still have items you want to add to the existing working shipments you created with your partial.  Please see: Tentative Destinations and Shipments Getting Split Into Multiple Destinations
• Sub-categories – The API does not give sub-category specific commission information for all parent categories. The result is that commission amounts can be off because we can not see the sub-category specific commission rates.