What is an Amazon Andon Cord- and how should you react?
If you’ve received an email like the one above, you probably have some questions- and you want to know how to restore your products to buyable status as soon as possible. Luckily, we have answers. TLDR: Don’t stress. Reply point-by-point to the issues in the email and the ticket will be resolved quickly and painlessly.
What is an Andon Cord?
An Andon Cord is the name for a manufacturing principle used to notify management (or, in this case, suppliers) of a quality or process concern. Andon Cords were pioneered by Toyota as part of the Toyota Production System; they gave every employee the ability to stop all or part of the production process when they noticed a quality issue on the line.
Andon Cords were adopted by Amazon around 2012, and give any Support agent the ability to issue a warning or pull a product from buyable status if they notice a real or possible quality or safety concern. Immediate Buy Box suspensions are typically only issued in the event of a safety complaint, while a warning (or “notification only” Andon) can be “pulled” for something as small as a single one-star review.
How should Amazon Vendors and Sellers react to an Andon Cord?
There is a human element behind each Andon Cord- namely, the Support agent who “pulled” it. That means every situation is unique, and some Andon tickets might be harder to close than others.
However, we’ve found that 95% of Andon cords can be solved by following a specific format: the number one most important strategy for resolving an Andon cord is to address each bullet point in the notification directly and separately.
For example, here’s a portion of a recent Andon cord email one of our clients received:
Action required from your end to resolve the issue:
Please confirm whether the units in your inventory are free from the above mentioned defect. If defect is confirmed, kindly share the RA number and shipping address so that we can return the on hand inventory
Kindly test the product from your warehouse and provide us the test reports.(mandatory in case of relevant prior pulls)
Kindly share us User Manual (PDF Version, less than 15 MB) or other documents (Trouble shooting steps, Specs sheet or video) that provides necessary information to the customer).
Kindly confirm if there were any updates made to the product recently, if yes, please provide the details and updated documents (manual, instructional videos, etc)
And here was our response:
Please confirm whether the units in your inventory are free from the above mentioned defect. If defect is confirmed, kindly share the RA number and shipping address so that we can return the on hand inventory
All inventory in our facility is free from the above mentioned defect.
Kindly test the product from your warehouse and provide us the test reports.(mandatory in case of relevant prior pulls)
Current test reports are attached.
Kindly share us User Manual (PDF Version, less than 15 MB) or other documents (Trouble shooting steps, Specs sheet or video) that provides necessary information to the customer).
Instructions are available in the A+ content page for this ASIN.
Kindly confirm if there were any updates made to the product recently, if yes, please provide the details and updated documents (manual, instructional videos, etc)
There have been no updates made to this product since its introduction.
The Andon cord above was immediately resolved based upon our reply.
Receiving an Andon cord notification can be stressful, especially when a high-volume ASIN has its Buy Box suspended. You don’t have to go it alone- we can help with Andon cord resolution as part of our full service Amazon management for Vendors and Sellers.
Click here to learn more about TurnKeyAMZ and how we can grow your Amazon business.