We have finalized our due diligence and the impact of the recent bug affecting the shipment assessment fees.
On November 8th, we implemented shipping assessment fees to encourage sellers to use Bonanza’s integrated shipping which streamlines their fulfillment process while providing the lowest rates possible. Not wanting to interfere with a seller’s existing fulfillment process, we offered an exemption for those that utilize our API connection with one of our shipping partners. At that time, the opt-out process was manual with no checks and balances in place.
On Jan 25th, we implemented a change to automatically opt-out any seller who had an active API token on the platform and no longer required the manual opt-out process. When we made this change, we discovered three buckets of [URL removed]
1. We discovered sellers with an API token that had expired. Our system automatically made these sellers NON-Exempt as of January 25th, 2024, and they were erroneously charged assessment fees from this date.
a. Bonanza Response – 100% of assessment fees applied to this group from January 25th-January 30th have been removed. If their credit card was charged for the assessment fees, the amount will be refunded.
If their card was not yet charged for the assessment fees, the assessment fees have been removed from the balance due. This group is exempt moving forward.
2. We discovered sellers who never manually opted out of the program despite meeting the exemption criteria. Our system has automatically classified this group as exempt moving forward.
a. Bonanza Response – Any assessment fees charged to this group in December 2023 and January 2024 have been credited back to the seller’s account for use toward a future bill payment.
3. We discovered sellers who manually applied to be exempt, but did not have a valid API integration to meet the exemption criteria. The system automatically updated these seller accounts to NON-Exempt as of January 25th. At that time, an email that was scheduled to go out to this group, however we discovered that it was not sent.
a. Bonanza Response – This group is now non-exempt moving forward. However, because the notification email was not sent as expected, we are crediting any assessment fees charged to this group between January 25th – January 30th back to the seller’s account for use toward a future bill payment.
We take any situation like this extremely seriously. The first thing our team did was an impact analysis to determine how widespread the issue was, and, thankfully, this only impacted a handful of sellers, accounting for total credits in the hundreds of dollars (not thousands).
If any seller wants to review their personal situation, we encourage them to contact [email protected] directly. Our team has been properly trained to assist any seller who may have been affected.
As we mentioned prior to our release on November 8th, we strive to provide the cheapest shipping for ALL sellers, and we have even offered a low-cost guarantee. All a seller needs to do is provide our shipping team with previous invoices proving that their current provider is cheaper, and 100% of their assessment fees will be returned. To date, we’ve had several sellers take us up on this offer, and, in most cases, we were shown to be the cheapest. In cases that we weren’t, we immediately refunded the seller and changed their tier of shipping rates.
We are truly sorry to the sellers that we affected by this bug.
BonanzaBrandon Bonanza Staff See BonanzaBrandon's booth |
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