Product Images Are Being Changed To Wrong Product Images On Nearly A Daily Basis - It's Completely Out Of Control (for me anyway)!!!
I have noticed there are lots of other Forum Threads lately that talk about Wrong Images for products, so pardon me for bring up a similar topic again. But just what the hell is going on with Product Images currently?
I sell mostly used VHS home-media products (you'd be surprised at how this is still a viable market), and within the past few weeks the original Product Images (that were already saved on Amazons system before I listed mine for sale) have started changing to all kinds of different images - nearly every single day I see something that is totally messed up:
Often the changed images don't match the product - not even close, like a product with a similar title - I've had all kinds of incorrect images appear - like an image of a "HAT" or an "ANTI BARKING DEVICE" instead of a STAR TREK VHS! And even if the changed images do match the product, they are often of very poor quality and/or don't have clear white backgrounds which I think is a violation when listing Images on Amazon. Before these images started changing, the original images might have been a bit small and often only showed one side of the VHS covers, but at least they were clear enough and showed THE CORRECT products!
I thought that maybe this Product Images being changed thing was isolated to VHS listings somehow (since VHS are kind of out-dated + still being available to list them on Amazon is frankly a miracle as it is). But I have just spotted in my listings a DVD Product Image that has changed too. Luckily the new image still matches the DVD Product, it's just one of many variations of images this particular DVD title has had over time with multiple re-releases. But could it be evidence that all kinds of Product Images are slowly becoming completely messed up? In some cases I am literally the only person listing some VHS titles, so it's not like another Seller has changed the images to try and list their own products (and I certainly have not changed the images to the kind of junk I am now seeing appearing across my listing pages).
How and why in the hell is this happening. I bet it's some useless Amazon A.I program changing things on its own or something.
If anyone else is starting to see multiple Product listing Images of your own randomly becoming changed recently, please start posting on this thread - I want to see just how much of this nonsense is going on throughout the whole of Amazon on all kinds of products.
Product Images Are Being Changed To Wrong Product Images On Nearly A Daily Basis - It's Completely Out Of Control (for me anyway)!!!
I have noticed there are lots of other Forum Threads lately that talk about Wrong Images for products, so pardon me for bring up a similar topic again. But just what the hell is going on with Product Images currently?
I sell mostly used VHS home-media products (you'd be surprised at how this is still a viable market), and within the past few weeks the original Product Images (that were already saved on Amazons system before I listed mine for sale) have started changing to all kinds of different images - nearly every single day I see something that is totally messed up:
Often the changed images don't match the product - not even close, like a product with a similar title - I've had all kinds of incorrect images appear - like an image of a "HAT" or an "ANTI BARKING DEVICE" instead of a STAR TREK VHS! And even if the changed images do match the product, they are often of very poor quality and/or don't have clear white backgrounds which I think is a violation when listing Images on Amazon. Before these images started changing, the original images might have been a bit small and often only showed one side of the VHS covers, but at least they were clear enough and showed THE CORRECT products!
I thought that maybe this Product Images being changed thing was isolated to VHS listings somehow (since VHS are kind of out-dated + still being available to list them on Amazon is frankly a miracle as it is). But I have just spotted in my listings a DVD Product Image that has changed too. Luckily the new image still matches the DVD Product, it's just one of many variations of images this particular DVD title has had over time with multiple re-releases. But could it be evidence that all kinds of Product Images are slowly becoming completely messed up? In some cases I am literally the only person listing some VHS titles, so it's not like another Seller has changed the images to try and list their own products (and I certainly have not changed the images to the kind of junk I am now seeing appearing across my listing pages).
How and why in the hell is this happening. I bet it's some useless Amazon A.I program changing things on its own or something.
If anyone else is starting to see multiple Product listing Images of your own randomly becoming changed recently, please start posting on this thread - I want to see just how much of this nonsense is going on throughout the whole of Amazon on all kinds of products.
17 respuestas
Seller_ZVAz3d5lZuGid
I too still sell some VHS, and this has happened to me too. I think the problem is that VHS are seen as a defunct category, and some sellers 'hijack' /re-use the barcode of items they see as old, and use the old barcodes to list their own items. I have had images for VHS changed to children's shoes, other clothing items etc.etc.
I may be completely wrong of course !
Seller_HMxMRdomHkjHi
I have had to de list a lot of my Rowan magazines as the image is for a totally different magazine than that shown on the listing.
Rowan issue 2 magazines a year, winter and summer, the winter ones have even numbers and the summer ones have odd numbers. The winter magazines are more in demand and consequently sell for more. Currently all of the summer magazines show the image of the winter magazine of the same year. I cancelled an order last week as the correct magazine was not what buyers would expect to receive. I don't know who makes these changes but I suspect the culprit is one of the mega sellers.
Seller_zWpliaCE34XT0
Its an absolute nightmare and is happening across the media categories in the UK and the USA. Products which were best sellers now have the wrong image, description, search node and even title and I struggle to get anything fixed by seller support even when we have created the original catalog entry. Our products are not old releases, they are current. The only ones not being changed are products we have an exclusive on with a separate supplier issued UPC which we are the only sellers of.
If it is frustrating for us image how the buyers feel. I am really not surprised some of the bigger sellers buy their own barcodes and create duplicate listings even though it is against Amazon policy it is the only way to maintain a decent listing.
Seller_MDeur8lj1A0rr
One thing you could check is the size of your images to make sure they meet Amazon's guidelines:
"The optimal zoom experience for detail pages requires files to be 1600px or larger on the longest side. Zoom has been shown to help enhance sales. If you are unable to meet this requirement, the smallest your file can be for zoom is 1000px, and the smallest your file can be for the site is 500px."
We had the same issue as you in one of our own listings and this was down to the main image being under 1000px but once we'd corrected it the correct image showed again - I'm thinking the Amazon bots probably randomly came across it and then suppressed our image for another that did meet the criteria, even if it wasn't the right product!
My advice would be to give it a go yourself and if after verifying the size of your images they still don't show then raise a case in SC - I'm assuming you do own the listing and you're not selling on someone else's (which might complicate things)?
Seller_GEHZMwzY2hkWm
We have the same issue - but we sell t-shirts. It's the AI to blame for the whole issue. No point talking to Seller Support - the only option is to delete the item and then relist after a few days.
Seller_TufyJDtetbrlU
Worst thing is aswell once you sort it out, it'll happen again a week or 2 later, never ending cycle
Seller_0wbY6R2bi7Z3w
I sell mainly in health and personal care and this has been an absolute pain with a number of products that we sell - images changed from OTC products to fly zappers or something completely irrelevant to the product - we had one listing effectively killed off due to this and SS were unable to do anything - joke really especially when the call centres are in countries where they have no clue whats going on at a local level. I agree it must be the AI going mad...
Seller_2hS4s2SbSs4On
OK, I've done some checking, and I think what @JillyB said at the top of these posts is correct about some products becoming "hijacked" in some way. More specifically I think multiple different products are becoming incorrectly merged / superimposed on one another.
At least one of my product listings is being used by at least two different Barcode EAN products:
PRODUCT TITLE: From Russia With Love [VHS] - EAN BARCODE: 5014780554580
PRODUCT TITLE: Frauds - EAN BARCODE: 5012957070048
If anyone were to type both the above mentioned EAN barcodes into Amazon, they would both take you to the same product listing page. And this is blatantly wrong since they are clearly two different products. I think the ASIN product listing page B00004CZGI should be allocated to "From Russia With Love [VHS]" (the title and descriptions showing on the page fit this product), however because the page is being used by two different products, someone somewhere has uploaded images about the product "Frauds" that I mentioned above.
I have TONS MORE product listings that are showing incorrect images, and I bet all or most have been similarly affected by different product EAN barcodes being WRONGLY merged into one ASIN product listing page. When I started this thread I thought it was just someone or something (like an A.I program) messing up the images - but incorrectly merging products is a whole different problem. And for my listings this only started a few weeks ago - before then (most) were all working fine (the images for some of the products might have been a bit small and simple, but at least they were correct).
So everyone, if your images are being changed to different products - try to investigate to see if another product (or) products have been incorrectly merged / superimposed over your product listings - which is probably why your images are changing:
(1) Go to one of your products where you know the images have been changed to a different product, and see if the incorrect images show a Barcode on them. If there isn't a Barcode on the incorrect imagest, you're kind of stuck at this point. Apart from just going to Seller Support (which probably won't work), I'm not sure there is a way for us to actually see all the multiple product Barcodes being used on one ASIN product page.
(2) If there was a Barcode on one of the incorrect images, copy that Barcode then try searching for that Barcode on Amazon (either in the "Add A Product" page, or the normal "Buyers Search" should work).
(3) If the Barcode of the wrong product shows up using the ASIN product page you know should not be using the incorrect image - then this I think is proof your ASIN product page has been merged / superimposed with an incorrect product, and ultimately that is probably why your ASIN product pages are showing the wrong images in the first place!
I am currently in contact with Seller Support trying to explain this for the "From Russia With love [VHS]" listing I mentioned above. So far I have not had much success unsurprisingly. First few times my emails to them got AUTOMATICALLY CLOSED before anyone even got a chance to look at them (probably because I used the word "merge" in the emails), and the responses were for me to go to the AMAZON MERGER/UNMERGER section. Well I went to the MERGER/UNMERGER section and tried to use it but that's utterly useless in these circumstances. There is the option to "unmerge" products that have been merged, but to do so Amazon requires TWO ASIN product page codes of the two merged products. Sorry am I misunderstanding something here, but how in the hell am I or any of you other Sellers supposed to know what "the second" ASIN product page code of the superimposed product is/was meant to be? I mean, take my my listing / ASIN product page above, "From Russia With Love [VHS]" the ASIN code for this is B00004CZGI - assuming this page IS meant to be allocated only for "From Russia With Love [VHS]" and not the other product "Frauds [VHS]" then just how in the hell am I or any of us supposed to know what the ASIN code for "Frauds [VHS]" is/was meant to be? This is the kind of ridiculous paradox of how Amazon works - something messes up and they expect us the Sellers to deal with it! Anyway, I deliberatly avorded using the word "merge" anywhere in my emails to Seller Support, then I got a response from them saying the same basic thing about how I must provide them with "two ASIN codes" before they can procede with unmerging (again no use whatsoever). So I then got really annoyed and emailed back "yelling" a few times (in CAPITAL LETTERS) that I want to speak to a Manager or Director or somebody, and that Amazon needs to look into this problem more deeply. As I have been typing this, I had emails saying they would get back to me, and just now I had another email saying I must send them images of the products - WHICH I HAVE ALREADY DONE ONCE - GAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!
And like I said above - I have tons more listings all probably similarly affected with incorrect mergers messing up the product images - and I'm having enough trouble dealing with Seller Support with just ONE PRODUCT currently!
Seller_RAXEWLxQ2dbmN
At the very least, Amazon should alert us when any of our ASINs are radically altered in this way.
I have some obscure VHS titles that have been mysteriously altered to other products (I only have a few VHS still in stock and they are all very obscure/rare).
One was changed into a very popular Bluray that is not actually available from any other seller (including me).
Had I not spotted it early it would almost certainly have sold, leaving me with a a defect on my metrics and a nightmare trying to get SS to intervene (or even understand the issue).
As Jillyb says, I think it is possible that the EANS/barcodes have been reused or re-assigned.
