Unauthorized Merging of Two Parent ASINs

Situation: From time to time, Amazon will merge 2 variations and assign them to one of the two’s parent ASINs.

This is what it looks like on the Inventory Page:

This is what the parentage looks like in the Variation Wizard:

There is no known reason why this happens at the moment. But by observation, this generally happens when 2 variations are closely similar or almost identical. The problem here is if the missing parent ASIN has an active set of child SKUs as these child SKUs will appear inactive on the PDP–making the products unavailable to the buyers. This is an Amazon system glitch and we can only fix this using these 2 methods.

Method 1 - Rebuilding Variations with Seller Support Assistance

This is the best option when immediate action is needed:

Pros: Faster option
Con: Requires a lot of communication w/ Seller Support Catalog Dept, time-consuming

Keep the 2 merged Parent SKUs together so that all child listings will appear in the Variation Wizard. Seller Support will not see what our Inventory Page looks like, so they need to see what we’re talking about using the Variation Wizard.
File a case and document what happened. Attach a screenshot of your inventory page on the case.
Call Seller Support using the case you just opened and ask to be transferred to the Catalog Department.

Explain the situation by starting at “Amazon somehow merged 2 parent SKUs under 1 Parent ASIN. Please check the variation wizard so that you can see what I’m talking about.”

Ask them to manually delete the 2 Parent SKUs so that you can rebuild the entire parentage the way we want it to look. Do not accept their rebuttal when they say that you can delete these SKUs on your end. Simply lie and say that you’ve tried doing it countless times and it did not work. We want them to manually do it using their own tools and system so that when we rebuild the parentages again, we won't be picking up old parentage contributions.
After Seller Support deletes the 2 Parent SKUs, stay on the line. These changes will reflect immediately after 5 minutes. Do not end the call without seeing the two parent SKUs being broken apart or else you will have to start all over again.
Once you can see that the 2 parent SKUs have been broken up, you can now end the call and start rebuilding the variations, this time, under a different parent SKU. We need to create a different parent SKU in order to generate new Parent ASINs to avoid this incident from happening again.

Note: It will take you at least 2-3 calls before a seller support agent can really help you with the deletion. Do not give up after 2-3 tries.

Method 2 - Delete and Relist for 24 hours

We can use this method when immediate action is not needed.

Pros: We don’t need to get Seller Support involved, convenient
Con: It will take more than 24 hours to fix

If you’re not in a hurry to get this issue fixed, or if both parentages that got merged under 1 Parent ASIN have zero “0” inventory, we can opt for a delete-relist method. Ask the brand manager if they are okay in going through this method instead of method 1.

Simply delete both parent SKUs
Rebuild the 2 variations using new Parent SKUs using a full update flat file (including the children SKUs)

For Full Update:

We must ask for the client's permission to upload a full update feed file. Reach out to the POC or the client and ask for their permission. Explain why it is needed.
Before uploading the full update feed file, you need to submit it to the team leader for QA.

Important notes to remember:

Do not delete 1 SKU and leave the other. Both must be deleted and rebuilt using new SKUs
Make sure you wait for a little over 24 hours before relisting the products
Download a Category Listings Report for backup
Use a full update flat file when re-listing

Prepared by: Katrina Lazaro