The expiration date on Amazon FBA could sometimes be very confusing and some of those who sell ingestible products on Amazon sometimes get it wrong. To add extra confusion, sometimes Amazon will ask for an expiration date for products that don’t actually expire, or they may not allow you to input expiration dates for products where it is relevant.
Officially expiration dates on Amazon are supposed to apply to all topical and ingestible products. While the guidelines might be clear, Seller Central doesn’t actually appropriately mark products that should have expiration dates and products that should not. There also isn’t a way for sellers to always correctly input this information on Seller Central. There are other situations where the expiration dates on the bottles might confuse buyers even when labeled correctly. By avoiding some of these common issues, you can avoid good products being destroyed by Amazon, unnecessary customer complaints, and costly logistical fixes that could have been avoided.
What if Amazon Asks For An Expiration Date But My Products Don’t Actually Expire?
According to law, not all products can actually be marked with expiration dates. If Amazon doesn’t ask for an expiration when creating an FBA shipment for your product, then no action is needed. If an expiration is asked for in Seller Central, then you can mark your products with a “sell by” or “best by” date. This will be considered the equivalent by Amazon and will ensure Amazon doesn’t dispose of your product for not having expiration dates.
Customers Confused About Expiration Dates
There are instances when you get a complaint from a customer because of an issue with the expiration date. Unfortunately, when this happens, even if the customer was proven wrong, Amazon will consider this to be your fault for not properly indicating the expiration date. Here are some best practices you can do in order to avoid if not lessen the probability of confusing your customers.
- Spell out “MANUFACTURE” when showing the manufacturing date, don’t just use “MFG” – When labeling the manufacturing date do not abbreviate the labels. For example, instead of writing “MFG” and then the date, write the entire word MANUFACTURED Date. This will help lessen the chance that a customer might mistake a manufactured date for an expiration date and complain to Amazon. It is very common for customers to confuse manufacturing dates as expiration dates.
- Always write the complete date, especially the FOUR-DIGIT YEAR – When labeling the products’ expiration, manufacturing, sell-by, or best-by dates, write in the complete date. Some manufacturers will shorten the date by truncating the year. For example, instead of writing 08/16/2020, they would write 08/16/20 or sometimes when they only place the month and the year they write 08/20. Customers may confuse these “08/20” as “August 20th” instead of “August 2020”
- Note that Amazon’s official policy requires a four-digit year.
A Product has an Expiration Date but Amazon does not provide an option to put it in.
There are some instances when your products do have an expiration date, however, Amazon doesn’t actually let you input the expiration dates when you are creating shipments for the products into FBA.
In some cases, there may be a field in the “edit” section where you can indicate that the product has an expiration date. Sometimes that field will not be available. When this occurs, send your inventory into FBA, however, you’ll need to monitor the “inventory age” report and make sure that inventory doesn’t get anywhere close to expiring.
Failure to follow these requirements from Amazon can jeopardize your sales. So it is best to ensure that every aspect of the expiration date requirements is met. When a customer claims they received an expired product, or a product close to expiration, it counts as a “product safety” complaint on your account. Keep your account standing excellent by following these guidelines on expiration dates. If you have extra questions about expiration dates, feel free to reach out to a Five Star Commerce expert to help in your specific situation.