Some shipping carriers require a phone number, so I believe that Amazon transmits your ship-to phone number with the explicit requirement to use it only for logistics purposes. I'd complain to Amazon for a seller who used the number for any other purpose and certainly for one who called me for a review.
Amazon provides the phone number for all orders. It's whatever phone number you have listed on your account, or saved on one of your delivery addresses.
Sellers are supposed to use them to fix order-related problems, and can be helpful for the case when a customer does not respond to emails (such as when you've provided an invalid delivery address).
I don't think this is right... I've been selling on Amazon for years and have never seen buyer phone numbers. I just logged in, and it doesn't show it when viewing an order on the site, nor does it come through in the order management software I use. (In case it matter, I'm talking about Amazon.com not one of the non-US ones, and I have a Professional seller account.)
Edit to add: If there really is a way to get the buyer's phone number, I'd love to know. Some shipping methods need a phone number, and thus far I've always just put my own in when this happens since I didn't have the buyer's one, and hoped it didn't matter.
It previously came through the MWS order API. My custom order management software would pick it up. So you could only get it if you have a professional account.
However, I believe that amazon has discontinued the practice of giving out phone numbers as of early 2014 to sellers due to some idiot sellers harassing their customers.
But if you have someone's name and address, there is a decent change you can find it by googling their name. Especially if they have a land line.
edit: Yes, I also logged in just now and it does in fact show phone numbers. Not sure why I stopped picking them up through the api. They may have changed the field name. Also, it is strange that there are multiple complaints about not being able to see buyer phone numbers any longer in the seller forums. I think maybe they went away for a time and are back.
I just logged in, we can still see customer's phone numbers. Maybe it's because we have an olderish account? We're on V2 of the Order Manager pages in Seller Central...
Edit:
> Also, it is strange that there are multiple complaints about not being able to see buyer phone numbers any longer in the seller forums. I think maybe they went away for a time and are back
Amazon experiments with Seller Central a lot - it's possible some people were getting phone numbers and some weren't for a long while. We also signup for many of their "beta" programs, so perhaps that makes a difference...?
Weird. I definitely haven't seen phone numbers in our Pro account in 5+ years. I'll have to see if I can pull it from the API, but there's definitely no where on the site that shows me phone numbers.
I'm unsure why you don't see them. For us, it's on most order pages right below the customer's address. I've just always assumed when it's not there, the customer didn't provide one. Most seem to have a phone number, however.
We have a Pro account as well, and we see the phone number both in Seller Central as well as over the API (we currently are using a MWS API version from 2011, if that makes any difference).
Regarding putting your own number on the package - that is what we do with 100% of our shipments from our warehouse, and we've done it that way for more than a decade without issue.
The phone numbers are supposed to be mainly used for when there's an issue with delivery, but in our experience the carrier never calls (although it would be nice if they did sometimes... but I digress). We even put our phone number on international shipments (where I'd expect the most hassle due to customs), and never had an issue.
Whether your phone number appears on the shipping label is variable. Based on the 5 fulfilled-by-Amazon (sometimes sold-by-Amazon) packages in my hand, it appears on all the Amazon-as-trucker packages and neither of the USPS packages. I suspect the rules are even more complex than simply "what carrier", but it clearly varies.
Some folks generate their own custom labels, and may omit things like that. The data is still sent to the carrier during the "End of Day" task (or equivalent) in whatever shipping software the shipper uses.
I have one simple rule: unless we've seen each other naked, or you've paid me money, the only phone number you get when you ask me for my phone number is the number of a pay phone at a gas station in Forks, Washington that was torn down a few years ago to make room for a new highway.
If you give your cell phone number out to random companies on the Internet, then yes, you can expect to get spammed. What in the world makes that seem like a good idea to so many people?
We all like to joke about mailbox spam, but it's certainly a serious issue - and the worst part is there's little to zero incentive for USPS to stop stuffing our mailboxes full of garbage.
As long as the junk mailer companies pay their postage, USPS is more than happy to deliver the junk to you.
I don't have any data, but I'd wager junk mailers are a sizable portion of annual USPS revenue...
