#525 – Amazon Upgrades Seller Support & Walmart Sales Surge | Weekly Buzz 5/28/26
Audio version above. Video version below
We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Manager of Education and Strategy, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.
Upgrades to Customer Service by Amazon help sellers save time and reduce refunds
https://sell.amazon.com/blog/announcements/upgrades-to-customer-service-by-amazon
New Feature Alert! Helium 10’s new Category Reviews and Returns feature uses Amazon’s official Selling Partner API to display category-level review topics and return reasons, helping sellers understand what customers like and dislike, and why products are being returned. Sellers can use these insights during product research or listing optimization to compare them with top-category products, identify major pain points, and reduce returns before they become a bigger issue.
Scale product discovery with AI-powered Sponsored Brands collections
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-brands-collections/
Walmart online sales in Q1 grow more than 20% for fifth straight quarter
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/walmart-online-sales/
Protect your shipments from U.S. Customs holds with AGL
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHRFpHSEZNMkRHSEFNUEtC
Walmart, Instacart, and others see ecommerce delivery race as a revenue opportunity
Before we wrap up, one last thing for all of you getting ready for Prime Day. We have a Prime Day Prep Checklist that’s packed with ideas, strategies, and action items to help you make this your biggest Prime Day yet.
We’ll drop the link below so you can download it, go through the checklist, and start optimizing while there’s still time. Whether it’s your listings, keywords, promotions, inventory, or advertising strategy, this checklist is designed to help you get prepared and maximize your sales during one of the biggest shopping events of the year.
Get the Prime Day Prep Checklist: https://pages.helium10.com/2026-prime-day-checklist
That’s all we have for this week’s Weekly Buzz. Thanks so much for watching, and we’ll see you again next week to see what’s buzzin’.
In episode 525 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Carrie talks about:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 00:42 – Amazon Upgrades Customer Service
- 02:59 – See Why Customers are Returning Products Before They Hurt Your Business
- 11:24 – New AI-Powered Sponsored Brands Collections
- 13:08 – Walmart Online Sales Continue to Grow
- 15:14 – TikTok Product Finder & Hot Videos Tool
- 18:45 – Protect Shipments from US Customs Holds with AGL
- 21:01 – The Delivery Speed Race is On
Transcript
Carrie Miller:
Amazon upgrades customer service to better support sellers, new AI-powered sponsored brands collections, and Walmart Q1 sales grow more than 20%. This and more on this week’s episode of The Weekly Buzz. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the AM/PM podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Carrie Miller, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give you a training tip of the week. So let’s get started and see what’s buzzing.
Carrie Miller:
Okay, let’s go ahead and get into the first article, and that is about Amazon just announced several upgrades to customer service by Amazon, and this could be really important updates for FBM or fulfilled by merchant sellers and seller fulfilled prime sellers. One of the biggest changes is that Amazon says it’s reducing returnless refunds, meaning that customers will no longer automatically get refunds without returning products in many situations. According to Amazon, returnless refunds will now mostly only apply to late deliveries, unsafe returns, or damaged non-returnable items.
Carrie Miller:
And honestly, I think that a lot of sellers are going to be happy to hear this because return abuse has become a real issue on Amazon. In some cases, customers could request refunds and not even have to send the item back, which obviously creates opportunities for abuse. I know, for example, I sell skateboards and we’ve had so many instances where basically we’ve sold like a brand new longboard or something like that and sent it out. And then we get a return that’s a broken old skateboard that is definitely not ours. There’s definitely an issue with abuse like that. Other sellers have also dealt with customers swapping out the products, returning damaged items after clearly using them or trying to keep products while still getting refunded.
Carrie Miller:
And historically, it’s been very difficult for sellers to fight some of these cases. So Amazon is also automating more reimbursements. So if sellers use claims protected shipping through labels like Amazon by shipping or vehicle, Amazon says it will automatically cover certain delivery issue claims. They are also automatically reimbursing goodwill refunds, which could save sellers a ton of time instead of constantly opening cases to recover money. Another major update is that customer service by Amazon is now easier to qualify for. Amazon removed the 95% valid tracking rate requirement and low volume sellers with under 30 orders per quarter can now use the service for free.
Carrie Miller:
Amazon is also adding more AI powered support features, including improved AI generated contact categorization and bringing customer follow ups directly into buyer seller messages. So sellers can manage FBA, FBM and seller fulfilled prime communications all in one place. So overall, I think this looks like Amazon is continuing to push more towards AI driven seller support while also trying to reduce friction for self-fulfilled sellers. And honestly, anything that helps reduce return abuse and make reimbursements easier is probably going to be welcomed by a lot of brands now. OK, next, I’m going to pass it along to Shivali and she is going to share Helium 10’s new feature alert with you.
Shivali Patel:
Up until now, when we’ve talked about doing product research or even optimizing your own listings, we’ve referenced review insights. And it’s been amazing for figuring out what do customers really like or dislike. However, now we’ve got a new feature that isn’t meant to replace review insights, but rather to give you additional context. We’re introducing category reviews as well as returns. Oftentimes when I go to conferences and I speak to you guys, you have asked me, is there a way to see other people’s returns? Well, my friends, now you can figure out why people are returning things as well as what exactly is happening at a more holistic level.
Shivali Patel:
Let’s get into it. Now, the first thing as I pull this up here is going to be this is powered directly by Amazon’s official selling partner API. So anything that you’re seeing is directly from Amazon’s data set. It is trustable and you cannot find this with any other scraping tool that you’re using. And you can’t find this in our previous version either, because that was all at the ASIN level view. If you’re looking for returns data, this is going to be so invaluable for you. If you just take a look at the top header, even on the search term results page, you’re going to see it says category reviews and returns. Now this doesn’t always appear, but it does if the API is connecting the keyword to an actual category, in which case for this whey protein powder, which is a very well-known and wide market, it obviously is. So I can click into analyze reviews right from this page, or I can pull this up when I’m on a product page like Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard, 100% whey protein powder.
Shivali Patel:
I can click the Chrome extension, select category reviews and returns, which will only show up again if the API is connecting that product to a category level view. At the very top, you’re going to have the past six months, which time frame it’s showcasing all the data from. And then right underneath it, you’ve got the top customers like and dislike sorted by the mentioned volume and star rating. As you can see here, we’re seeing two for what customers like and what the two most attributed for what customers dislike is. However, this is not the whole picture again, guys. This is just sorted by what’s being mentioned the most as well as a star rating impact. And then the top product return reason was the overall taste. As we go down into the first tab here that says category reviews, what you’re looking at is up to 10 topic cards per pro and con. Each one has four different aspects to it.
Shivali Patel:
You’re seeing the topic name, you’re seeing the mentioned percentage, the few attributes that fall into this category, for example, for taste overalls, people are saying, hey, there’s clean taste. These are like actual snippets from what folks are using inside of reviews, as well as the trend line over the last 30 days. Okay. Both sides are sorted again by mentioned volume and star rating impact. As you go through, you’re going to notice there is in the top right hand corner, something that says top 25% products in category. This is toggled off by default. You can toggle it on if you just want to see the comparison of what exactly is going on for the category products versus the top 25%. And as you can see, it’s showcasing to you right here for taste overall. This is higher than the top 25% of products, meaning the category products are beating higher than the top 25% of products.
Shivali Patel:
Okay. As we take a look at the dislike section, we’re seeing taste overall is sitting at about 17% of mentions in their reviews, which is lower than the top 25% of products. Still, we’re seeing some subtopics, bad flavor, inconsistent flavor, flavors, very weak. You can actually go in and each of these main topics has these five subtopics, which you can just click the down or up arrow. If I close it out, I can put it away and just continue on with my day or take a look at it, right? Very artificial flavor. I didn’t realize when I ordered this protein powder that it contains a mix of both natural and artificial flavors. And I don’t understand how a company that touts its product as being grass-fed dairy and designed for those who demand maximum quality without soy gluten or artificial sweeteners and free from GMOs, artificial fillers, hormones, antibiotics, and unnecessary additives can then add artificial flavors and call it a clean product. I agree with this person.
Shivali Patel:
I’m pretty heavy into protein powders and this one is one of the ones I will not use because of the sucralose that shows up in it. So it’s interesting that something like this can be marketed as clean and then you’re seeing exactly where people are divvying up. They love it because of the taste or maybe because there’s a really high percentage of protein showing up in the powder, but they’re not liking that the marketing is actually not aligned with what’s in the actual product. And you wouldn’t necessarily know this unless you’re going in and taking a look at your review insights. But that is not even the best part. The best part is you’re seeing these stars showing up next to anything that actually is one of the top return reasons, okay? So the star shows up when you are seeing something that is mentioned a lot in what customers dislike. It’s the topic insight. However, it’s also something that is causing a heavy return.
Shivali Patel:
And this would be naturally very difficult to pinpoint unless you were taking a look at something like this. So if you’re a Helium 10 user and you are on one of our top tier plans, make sure that you go in and you take a look at this because it’s not available anywhere else. It’s not being scraped from Amazon. It’s directly from Amazon. It’s telling you, hey, this is what’s causing returns. So whether you’re doing this in product research phase, you can make sure that you’re actually getting your products inspected for these things. And even designing it to make sure that you are not doing the same mistakes that your competitors might be in your category. And alternatively, maybe you’re taking a look at this later on when you’re trying to optimize your products. You can now go in and get ahead of those returns or those reviews before they actually stack up. What we just took a look at was the topic review insights. Right below that, we’ve got the star rating impact. And this is going to show you which ones are actually leading to a hike in your ratings, as well as what’s leading to a drop.
Shivali Patel:
You can compare this again to the top 25% products in the category. As you hover over it, you’ll be able to see what that layout looks like between the category products as well as the top 25% of products alongside the mentioned percentages and exact reviews. All right, let’s scroll up to the top and go into the second tab, which is return insights. You can select up to four topics right now. So let’s go ahead and select taste overall, flavor, solubility, and maybe nutritional content. And as you can see, check out this. The taste overall has had a drop in mentions, meaning maybe they’ve gone in and tweaked what’s going on with the actual taste, or they have gotten better with their marketing. It’s more aligned, right? You’ve got your nutritional content is kind of up and down. In any case, you can check this out over the last six months, okay? So again, use this data, guys, to go in and make sure you know why you’re getting returns. You are getting ahead of those things, so you’re not getting a bunch of them like your competitors might be or like you’re presently getting right now.
Shivali Patel:
And you can also just take a look and have a better understanding for what’s going on at a category view. This is available so long as the API is pulling the category level insights. This is going to show up directly if the API does pull it when you click that Chrome extension, as well as anytime you are taking a look at the summary up top, the category reviews returns will show up. And you can do this on search term pages as well. It doesn’t have to be just the product pages. With that, back over to you, Carrie.
Carrie Miller:
Thank you so much, Shivali. So let’s go ahead and keep moving forward. Amazon just announced a new AI-powered sponsored brands collections ad format. And this is another example of Amazon pushing deeper into AI-driven advertising automations. So with this new format, advertisers can promote multiple related products inside a single sponsored brands ads. And Amazon’s AI can now automatically decide which products to show shoppers based on things like shopping behavior, search intent, and browsing history. Sellers can still manually choose products if they want more control, but Amazon is clearly encouraging brands to move towards more automation here. So what’s interesting is that this could make cross-selling and catalog discovery much easier for larger brands. So instead of manually building dozens of separate sponsored brands campaigns for different product combinations, Amazon’s AI may dynamically assemble collections for shoppers automatically.
Carrie Miller:
But at the same time, I think this continues a much bigger trend we are seeing across Amazon advertising, where sellers are gradually giving up more creative control in exchange for automation and scale. So according to reports, Amazon is already removing some custom creative elements from these collections style ads and relying more heavily on AI-selected visuals and product groupings. So for some brands, especially those with strong branding and merchandising strategies, that could be a little more concerning because sometimes Amazon’s AI does not necessarily showcase products the way the brand would want them presented. So that said, for sellers with large catalogs, this could potentially improve discoverability and increase average order value if Amazon gets good at surfacing complementary products together. Overall, this looks like Amazon continuing to push towards AI-managed advertising where the platform handles more of the optimization, merchandising, and product selection automatically, while sellers focus more on feeding Amazon strong listings, creative assets, and conversion data.
Carrie Miller:
All right, up next, and this is actually really exciting knowing that I’ve been teaching about Walmart for a few years, and that is that Walmart online sales in Q1 grew more than 20% for the fifth straight quarter. So they really are continuing to accelerate upwards. And according to Digital Commerce 360, and that’s what this article is, Walmart’s e-commerce sales grew 24% in Q4 and officially surpassed $150 billion in online sales for the first time. So what is really interesting is that e-commerce now represents around 23% of Walmart’s total sales and the company says online growth continues to significantly outpace the store growth, which is, I mean, Walmart’s been around for so long, it’s pretty amazing. Walmart is also heavily investing in faster fulfillment, AI shopping tools, and marketplace expansion. The company says 35% of store-fulfilled orders are now being delivered in under three hours, and they’re increasingly using stores almost like mini-fulfillment centers to compete with Amazon’s on speed. But one of the biggest takeaways of e-commerce sellers is that Walmart is no longer just competing on low prices.
Carrie Miller:
They’re building higher margin businesses around advertising memberships, fulfillment services, and AI-powered shopping experiences. In fact, Walmart says customers using its AI shopping assistant, Sparky, it’s kind of like the Rufus on Amazon, Sparky are generating baskets that are about 35% larger than normal shoppers. And honestly, this is a pretty major shift in e-commerce overall. We are watching retailers move away from being simple online stores and towards becoming AI-powered ecosystems where discovery, recommendations, advertising, and fulfillment are all deeply connected. So for marketplace sellers, this probably means a few things. First, Walmart marketplace is continuing to become a much bigger opportunity for brands outside of Amazon. But second, it also means competition is likely going to increase as Walmart gets better at driving traffic, improving fulfillment speeds, and building more sophisticated ad tools. So overall, Walmart looks very focused on becoming a serious long-term e-commerce and advertising competitor to Amazon. And based on the growth numbers we are seeing right now, they are making a lot of progress. All right, so now I’m going to pass it on to Bradley, and he is going to share a Helium 10 strategy with you.
Bradley Sutton:
Do you want to be able to find your first or next product to sell on TikTok shop? Or maybe you’re looking to see what are just the trends? What are hot videos? What kind of videos are really working for your products? Well, this is where the TikTok product finder is going to come in. This is a tool, our newest TikTok tool here at Helium 10. So how I would use this is maybe I don’t have something specific in mind, but I’m like, hey, what are some products that have a price range of between $30 and $80? Maybe in the last 14 days, there have been at least, let’s just say, 400 units sold. And then maybe, hey, new videos, there has been no more than 20 new videos. So there’s a lot of sales, but not many videos. Is there anything that comes up like that? And here, there’s 355 products that come up here.Like, look at this. Here is a storage TV stand. All right. Here are some dark acid wash jeans. Here’s a portable speaker.
Bradley Sutton:
All right. In the last 14 days, 7,000 of these portable speakers have been sold, generating almost a half a million dollars of revenue. Yet there’s only 17 active videos. That’s crazy, right? So that could be like a potential. If I’m like, man, there’s not even that many influencers making content about this product and it’s still doing well. There’s not like zero new influencers here. Here’s a product that has only one new video, this furniture piece here. So there’s all kinds of different filters here that will allow you to kind of like search the product database for top TikTok products and what has a lot of videos. There’s also a tool here called TikTok Hot Videos. I could say, hey, what are people doing in like the Halloween space and which category? Maybe I’m like, are people doing something in the furniture section of Halloween? And I could actually go even a step further and do different categories here in the last seven days. And then now this is going to all right. Here are all the hot videos that are showing up that have the word Halloween somewhere around it and in the furniture category. All right.
Bradley Sutton:
And then so I could start maybe getting some ideas like, look at this. This is called Halloween activities. And I could see, all right, what are some of these videos that are actually generating even sales? Like I could do a search here. I’m like, hey, here’s a video that somebody made that actually generated $583 worth of a GMV for somebody. All right. So the possibilities are endless here, guys, of how you can use this tool. But especially if you are new to TikTok shop and you want to start seeing what is working for videos, what is working for products, there might be a trend that you can find that you can just hop on right away where it might be saturated on Amazon. But on TikTok, it could be an opportunity for you. So make sure to use the only TikTok product finder that is in the Amazon all in one kind of like feature and tool world. We’re the only ones that have something like this. If you have access to Helium 10, you got Platinum Diamond plan, you’re going to have access to this. So make sure to leverage TikTok shop product finder.
Carrie Miller:
All right. So let’s go ahead and get into the next article. And this is about Amazon warning sellers about different customs enforcement. So this is actually an article or kind of a news piece that they put out on Seller Central. And Amazon is actually warning sellers about a new U.S. customs enforcement program called 5H that is leading to more shipments being held or even returned at U.S. ports. And honestly, this is something sellers should probably be paying very close attention to because these holds can become extremely expensive very quickly. According to Amazon, shipments with documentation issues, undervalued cargo declarations or invalid importer bronze are now facing increased scrutiny from Customs and Border Protection. In some cases, sellers are getting hit with hundreds or even thousands of dollars per day in fees while containers sit at the port. Amazon is basically positioning Amazon Global Logistics or AGL as a solution to help sellers avoid these issues.
Carrie Miller:
They say AGL reviews declarations, invoices and packing lists before shipments even leave the origin country instead of waiting until products arrive at the U.S. port. So that kind of helps to deter any issues that happen at the port. You can solve them while they’re in the origin country. Amazon also says that AGL handles customs documentation, bond processing, declaration filing and customs clearance as part of the shipment process. And honestly, I think this highlights a much bigger trend we’re seeing in e-commerce right now where importing products into the U.S. is becoming increasingly complicated and compliance focused. A lot of sellers historically relied on freight forwarders that may not have caught documentation mistakes early enough, especially when sellers were trying to move inventory quickly or reduce costs by undervaluing shipments. Very bad idea to undervalue your shipments. But now customs enforcement appears to be tightening significantly. Amazon is also encouraging sellers to build inventory buffers through Amazon warehousing and distribution and use faster replenishment options like AGL air freight if inventory becomes delayed.
Carrie Miller:
One thing Amazon does make clear, though, is that even if sellers use AGL, the importer of record is still financially responsible if a shipment gets held. So this is not a guarantee against customs issues, but Amazon is clearly trying to position AGL as a more compliance focused logistics solution during a period of increasing enforcement and supply chain risk. OK, let’s go ahead and get into the next article, and that’s about the e-commerce delivery race. OK, so this delivery race is officially heating up and it’s creating a massive revenue opportunity for companies trying to help retailers compete with Amazon and Walmart. According to eMarketer, companies like Walmart, Instacart, FedEx and logistics startups stored are all aggressively expanding fulfillment and delivery capabilities as brands look for faster and more flexible shipping options. Walmart recently announced new supply chain features designed to speed up inventory movement.
Carrie Miller:
So Instacart launched a new enterprise delivery management software and stored just raised two hundred and fifty million at a three billion valuation to help brands compete with Amazon level fulfillment. And honestly, this is becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages in e-commerce right now. Amazon has completely changed consumer expectations around shipping speed, and Walmart is rapidly catching up by using stores almost like mini fulfillment centers, like I mentioned before, for same day delivery. But what I think is really interesting is that this is no longer just about delivery speed. It’s about customer retention, order of frequency and lifetime value. So retailers are realizing that convenience keeps customers coming back.
Carrie Miller:
And once consumers get used to a fast delivery, it becomes very difficult to go backwards. And at the same time, many brands do not necessarily want to rely entirely on Amazon or Walmart infrastructure because those companies are also their direct competitors. And that is why companies like Stored and STRD and Instacart are trying to position themselves as neutral e-commerce infrastructure partners that can help brands offer fast fulfillment without fully handling without fully handing over customer relationships to major marketplaces. We’re also seeing a much bigger shift happening where fulfillment itself is becoming a major profit center. Walmart’s advertising business is growing rapidly. Instacart’s ad revenue grew 16% year over year, and both companies are increasingly monetizing logistics, delivery, memberships, and retail media together as one ecosystem. So overall, I think this shows that e-commerce is entering a new phase where logistics, advertising, AI, and customer experience are all becoming deeply connected. And for e-commerce brands, the pressure to offer fast fulfillment and better delivery experiences is probably only going to continue increasing from here.
Carrie Miller:
All right. The last thing I want to mention is that we have a Prime Day prep checklist, and this gives you a bunch of ideas and strategies to make this next Prime Day your biggest. So all you have to do is we’re going to put a link below, and you can go ahead and download that Prime Day prep checklist. And it’s going to give you strategies that are going to help you to increase your sales, hopefully, when you are selling this upcoming Prime Day. So if you haven’t checked that out, go ahead and check it out, download it, utilize it. You still have some time before Prime Day, so it’s a great time to start optimizing. So that is all I have today for the Weekly Buzz. We will see you again next week to see what’s buzzing. Bye.
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