What are currently unavailable items you see on Amazon?
In short, the items are not available to purchase. So you cannot buy the product. This problem is devastating for sellers since it would cause their customers not to purchase it. It will be worse if they are buying the same product from other sellers. You would lose your hard-earned money supplying your products and displaying them on Amazon.
Usually, this issue of currently unavailable items occurs when people search for Amazon products. Still, Amazon shows them that it is not available for purchase.
Why Amazon Currently Unavailable Items Happens?
To identify the issue, you must find out why currently unavailable items on Amazon happen in the first place.
If you are a seller, you would have a greater chance of fixing this problem. There are quite a few issues you can address when getting the state currently not available:
- New Products
Did you list these items in recent times? The product listing process might take up to 24 hours to let Amazon show these items when users search for the product. - Stock and Price
Make sure you have these right. Invalid price and the empty stock would also make your products unavailable as “Quantity” and “Your Price.” Amazon requires these two fields correct. You can again try adding the product using the ASIN code from the inventory menu. - Violation
Listing violations might also be the cause. You might want to confirm that you don’t violate any conditions by looking at your product in the “Inactive Inventory” list. You can tell if it has been suppressed by looking at the indicator next to it. When it happens, you can also see why Amazon does that. There a couple of reasons; it might be because of restrictions or condition violations. However, if your product is in “Active Inventory,” you might want to check other factors. - Fulfilled by Amazon
If you are an FBA seller, the unavailable status might be because the Amazon inventory has not received your product. Amazon will lift the unavailable stock status when they have received the items, processed, and ready to ship to customers. Amazon will update the quantity as well when it happens. - Sale Date
If you mistakenly populate Start Sale Date on the Offers section of the listing, you might want to remove it. You don’t need to use this if you’re going to sell the product now. On the other hand, if you plan on selling your products later, you can have this Sale Date on your listing. - Bugs
Bugs rarely happen, but very annoying when it happens. In that case, you need to contact Seller Support at the bottom of the page.
How to Find Product that is Currently Unavailable on Amazon
As for spying on other sellers on Amazon, the ability to see what your competitors are selling is crucial for your Amazon FBA business. You can tell if the seller has run out of the product when a product they sell has unavailable to be purchased. The product itself already has reviews and ratings. New products won’t have these two, so this is a goldmine for you if you are researching products and plan to sell them on Amazon.
One way to do this is by using Google.
Suppose you are searching for a “Christmas tree” to sell on Amazon. You would type this combination of keyword into the search box of Google:
Google will show you the result of this keyword. You can then click on one of the search results with the text “currently unavailable” in it.
There is one huge problem when doing your research this way. It is way too long to get the result, and you should populate the products manually. Imagine if you need to do this regularly. I can show you a better way just below, so keep reading.
For step by step how to do this, I made this video years ago, but the first part is still relevant without using the software.
Another way which is faster to do your research is by using a piece of software. I recommend you use ZonASINHunter for its simplicity and quicker to get these unavailable products on Amazon.
Different than using Google as your base research, this time, we will use Amazon search instead.
You would do the same, using a keyword as the primary research factor. Once done searching, you can see a bunch of products displayed. So which one is unavailable? By default, Amazon doesn’t show it. You will need to use a filter to reveal these products so they are visible on the search results.
If you look at the navigation sidebar, you will find an option called “Include Out of Stock” Check to enable the filter to see products unavailable to purchase.
Once you enable the filter, keep scrolling down and browsing to other pages until you see currently unavailable products on the search results. To guide you faster, you can turn on the find and replace function on your browser. Usually, it’s Ctrl + F. Enter the keyword and enable “Highlight All” to see the ones with that keyword on the page visually. After a couple of pages, you will start to see these products.
Very time-consuming. If you don’t have the time to do this kind of work, you can use ZonASINHunter instead. Here’s a video demonstrating how to speed up that research process:
Currently Unavailable Amazon Seller
Another great thing about using software is finding your direct competitor apart from the unavailable item on Amazon.. ZonASINHunter can find the Amazon seller name that wins the buy box so you can track their inventory and make appropriate decisions. You might want to copy their unavailable products that are not available for purchase, track their stock, or even scrape their price.
Conclusion
Finding currently unavailable items on Amazon requires quite a bit of time. If you are a seller and have this annoying issue, you’d better fix it as it would make your sales drop and not getting the traction you expected.
However, suppose you are an FBA seller. In that case, you can use this knowledge to gain faster research for a new product you haven’t sold or already sold by your competitor. This way, you will get some sales, so you don’t risk not getting revenue in the first place. Inventory is expensive; you would rather have high turnover instead of items sitting in Amazon inventory without getting sales.
