Heads-up for Amazon 3P sellers: as of today Amazon no longer provides granular order and buyer information in the “Sold, Ship Now” emails in the UK and Canada. Amazon UK writes:

This is not a surprise following Amazon’s successful launch of their MP3 marketplace and considering it has been offering packaged software for a while. Now Amazon has partnered with Intuit to offer the popular tax package TurboTax for download from Amazon. Available via the new Software Download Center, users must first fetch a small application [...]

Amazon announced this morning that it has invested in payment super star Bill Me Later (formerly known as I4Commerce), in my opinion the leading and easiest-to-use credit payment method. The aim is to offer Amazon buyers in the US Bill Me Later as an option so that they can get 90+ days financing for qualifying [...]

Amazon has launched an eCommerce payment widget that allows online retailers to offer their buyers the ability to pay via their Amazon accounts. The fee structure is pretty standard with credit card transactions running at 2.9% + $0.30 for any sale over $10.
The New “Pay Now” Widget now complements similar offers from PayPal (PayPal Storefront [...]

Amazon officially released this morning its Yahoo! Answers competitor, Askville.com. The site, quietly launched in beta in December 2006, takes a game show approach, rewarding smarty pants with points and temporarily Amazon gift cards.

The holidays brings out the best and worst in people. If you’re eager to only see the best in your Amazon.com buyers then the new Final Holiday Order Date feature is a must-do. When configured in your Shipping Setting within your store’s Information & Policies section, the Product Detail Page (if you own the Buy [...]

Amazon this week rolled out a cool new feature that will make it easier and cheaper for international buyers to purchase products on Amazon.com. The Amazon Currency Converter, at checkout, will offer qualifying consumers from select countries (paying with a MasterCard or Visa credit card) the option to pay in their local currency or in [...]

Last year’s “Customers Vote” event during Q4 brought Amazon to its knees with the site temporarily going down. Amazon.com is bringing the feature back starting today with six rounds of voting for 18 “ridiculous deals”. Head on over to www.amazon.com/customersvote to participate in:

Round 1 “Game On” – Prices [...]

Very good news for Amazon-crazy UK shoppers: Amazon UK today launched the Amazon Prime program with an announcement from Jeff Bezos himself on the home page. Introduced in the US in February of 2005, Amazon Prime offers Amazon customers fast shipping for a flat monthly fee for qualifying products.
£49 / year gets you “unlimited Free [...]

The upcoming holiday gauntlet is about the most dreaded time of the year for this father of four monkeys. That extends from finding the right toy, ordering the mountain of temporary excitement, financing it (I didn’t say “paying for it” as the amount typically exceeds the joint liquid assets of the ZIP code I live [...]