Amazon Marketplace Updates? Miva Non-Compliance Notification

[delcorsets]

We received an email today:

This is an important notice regarding a third-party application from developer Miva, Inc. Marketplaces. Our records indicate you have authorized an application from this developer to operate your Amazon selling business.
For your reference, the Developer IDs associated to this developer are: xxxx

Amazon regularly reviews developers to ensure they are following our data handling policies. Through this review, we have identified that the above mentioned third-party developer is not compliant with our Amazon Service API Developer policies and has not responded to our requests to improve their system.

As a result, they will not be able to maintain access to our API services, and we will deactivate their access on January 25, 2022 which will stop their application from connecting to the Merchant Web Service (MWS) API. This deactivation will disrupt any applications or services you receive from them.

Before we take any action, we wanted to inform you of this so you may be able to take any necessary precautions to ensure your Amazon-related business is not disturbed. Please note, unless otherwise notified, this will not affect other applications you have authorized to use in connection with Amazon MWS or the Selling Partner API (SP-API), including any API credentials assigned to your own account.

I remember hearing that updates were supposed to be in the works for all Marketplaces, are these updates still being planned?

[Rick Wilson]

Hey Psydde,

We've been talking to them for a long time, we're mildly caught off guard by this move on their end, but we're aware.

Here's our formal reply: "We are working with our partners at Amazon on the issue and will have more information shortly"

[technicalScott]

Hey Rick, can you give us any details on exactly what the issue with data handling policy is and where Miva is failing compliance? How likely are you to get this resolved in a week?

Thanks. --Scott

[Rick Wilson]

I can't provide any (useful) details and I am not sure if it will be able to be resolved in a week or not. We will post as soon as we have anything to share. I can say it has to do with GDPR type laws and how they want us to handle data related to that.

[technicalScott]

Thanks for the quick response. Is this related to all the warnings in our Amazon log console for Fulfilled-By-Amazon orders? If not, it would be good to know why those warnings exist as well.

Thanks again. --Scott

[Rick Wilson]

It is not related to anything with FBA. Since Miva doesn't have a native FBA integration, I can't help with that.

[oliverands]

Following. (And really hoping my marketplace connection doesn't get shut down next week....)

[[email protected]]

Also following. Really hoping for an update. Surely you could offer us a bit more insight!

[Rick Wilson]

I don't have any particular insights to share that can't be inferred.

Depending on who you ask it ranges from trivial to impossible for a US company to actually comply with GDPR and Amazon has threatened this in the past 12 months and then changed course, so we don't have a lot of clarity.

There were 3 roadblocks they presented us with (without going into details as they're not relevant to the outside world), one was purely procedural and has now been successfully completed, one is a matter of debate and can either be procedural or literally impossible depending on how Amazon views it and we're waiting on their feedback, if it turns out to be procedural we'll get that done, if it turns out to be impossible it could kill our Amazon integration with no path to fix it. The final issue requires a core software change which we're capable of doing but have requested an extension on the time required to get it done.

If we can solve for the middle issue, we'll ultimately get all of them rectified, if we can't then we'll end up deprecating this feature (like Shopify did) and see if we can offer it via a third party partnership.

[Rick Wilson]

Also worth noting, there's no point in putting resources into the software change unless we can get over the legal hurdle, so we're in a wait and see pattern on that issue.

[Brennan]

I just wanted to close the loop on this thread. As of today we have completed all of the items required from Amazon Marketplaces for our continued access of their API. There will be no disruptions in API access around Marketplaces and things will continue to work as they do today.

[harpkit]

I've been getting emails from Miva lately about Amazon Marketplace integration. One email says the integration will stop working on July 31. Another email says we will lose the ability to pull inventory quantities from Amazon orders. I guess I'm confused. Will the Marketplace integration stop working completely - i.e. it won't pull orders from Amazon? Or will it continue to work but it just won't update inventory quantities?

Miva's suggested workaround is to use SkuVault where we can get 33% off the growth plan. That works out to about $220/month. We sell a small amount of inventory on Amazon mostly as a way to reach new customers. It would be a bit of a stretch to pay another $220/month for the privilege of selling our products at a discount through Amazon. Is there any other solution out there that doesn't cost $220/month?

[Rick Wilson]

Frankly we do not know for sure, because Amazon has threatened to deprecate this API for a long time and moved the date before. And they're not the easiest company to get information from.

But IF Amazon follows through and kills this API, then it will stop working (regardless of what version of Miva you're running).

As of now we have no intention of bringing this feature back directly with Amazon (as they have too many rules about customer data, that they often blame on GDPR etc... but really it's about not wanting you to know who you sold to after you ship) and the only way to use Miva as inventory for Amazon will be through things like SkuVault or possibly ShipStation.

[harpkit]

Roger that. Thanks for the info.

"not the easiest company to get information from." ha ha. No kidding.