Amazon Sellers Stuck with Pending Orders, Inventory Lockdown Suspected

Amazon sellers in the UK are grappling with a mysterious phenomenon where high-value orders get stuck in pending status, tying up their inventory and preventing legitimate customers from purchasing affected items.

The issue began to surface on September 20, with some vendors reporting unusually high numbers of pending orders involving products priced at £100 or more. These orders remain pending while Amazon processes and verifies the purchase, deducting the ordered quantity from the seller's available stock, but sellers cannot cancel these transactions themselves.

While Amazon says that orders often remain pending due to issues with payment authorization or customer approval for business purchases, some merchants suspect that this is not a glitch but rather a deliberate attempt to lock inventory. They have compared this tactic to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, where bogus orders reserve stock without completing payment, preventing genuine customers from buying it.

One seller reported 30 pending orders in about 52 hours, with 15 of them associated with just seven delivery postcodes. Another vendor said that they received 72 pending orders worth around £25,000 in three days and wondered if competitors were using cards without sufficient funds to interfere with their inventory.

When asked for comment, Amazon had not provided an official statement on the cause of the pending orders or whether it considers this activity malicious. However, a forum message posted after we contacted Amazon said that the issue has been escalated to the company's 'partner teams' for investigation.