Delivery delays at more than 10 Amazon warehouses! Snowstorm hits US logistics hard

By the end of February, spring had already arrived in southern China with flowers blooming and birds singing, but many countries in Europe and the United States were still experiencing blizzards and howling cold winds.

Recently, some parts of the United States have been hit by severe snowstorms. A freight forwarder issued an emergency notice saying that Amazon warehouse delivery time is greatly delayed. eBay also issued an announcement to remind sellers that snowstorms will cause transportation delays for items that have already been shipped.

The cold weather not only affects the United States, but also Spain in Europe and Morocco in South Africa. Recently, due to the cold weather, the agricultural products of these two countries have been delayed in maturing, resulting in a tight supply of fruits and vegetables in the UK, and a significant increase in prices. Residents have begun to become self-reliant, and Amazon's fruit and vegetable seeds have ushered in a wave of hot sales.

Snowstorm warning sounded in the United States, logistics and delivery were delayed over a large area

The shadow cast by the snowstorm in the United States at the end of last year has not yet dissipated for sellers. It is the season of spring when flowers are blooming, but the snowstorm has returned to the United States, and the destructive power of this time is even greater than that at the end of last year.

Since February 22, local time , the snowstorm has been raging in the northern plains and Midwest of the United States, causing serious damage.

More than 2,500 flights were canceled in the U.S. last week because of the storm . As of Sunday night, more than 215,000 homes in Michigan were still without power. Hundreds of schools and several highways were closed, and residents could barely move around in areas with deep snow.

Southern California, known as the "Sunshine City", has welcomed warm spring weather in February and March in previous years, but this year it has seen rare snowfall. Los Angeles, which rarely sees snow, received its first blizzard warning since 1989. Winds in some parts of California were even close to hurricane force. The Highway Patrol closed parts of Interstate 5.

The United States' neighbor "Canada" has also been affected by the snowstorm. Currently, most parts of the country are under weather warnings, and some areas are even facing extreme cold warnings with temperatures as low as -40C. As of last Wednesday afternoon, Canadian airlines canceled about a quarter of their scheduled flights.

In addition to snowstorms, secondary natural disasters such as hail, floods, heavy rains, and tornadoes also followed.

The bad weather has had a significant impact on the tail-end logistics and delivery. Many freight forwarders have issued emergency notices saying that due to the snowstorm in the United States, all roads to Northern California have been closed. More than 13 Amazon warehouses in Northern California have been delayed to varying degrees, including:

SMF1, SMF3, SMF6, SMF7, SJC7, SJC8, OAK3, OAK4, XEW2, XUSD, SCK1, SCK3, SCK4, etc.

Not only that, some freight forwarders stated that overseas warehouses also reported that there would be delays in recent warehousing appointments.

Recently, eBay also stated in an announcement that due to severe weather in many parts of the United States, items that have already been sold may be difficult to deliver to carriers, and items that have already been shipped may experience transportation delays.

Delivery delays will definitely affect sellers' performance, but during this special period, eBay has urgently launched seller protection measures. Specifically, they include:

1. Automatically protect the seller’s service indicator rating (including delayed shipment rate; valid tracking upload rate; as long as the seller uploads valid tracking information before unpacking and obtains physical scans from the carrier, the “not received items” caused by delayed shipment can be avoided; INR defects caused by canceled transactions).

Second, any relevant negative and neutral feedback will be deleted to prevent it from affecting the seller's service index rating.

However, the most distressing thing for sellers due to the snowstorm is not the delay in logistics and delivery, but the impact on order volume. Some sellers on the US site are very helpless in the face of the "cooling down" order volume : "The order volume in February was already bad enough, who would have thought that a snowstorm would come and completely cool it down. It's cold, and Americans don't like shopping anymore?"

Cold weather causes shortage of fruit and vegetable supply in the UK, and seeds are sold out on Amazon

Last year, due to soaring energy prices, many British growers found it difficult to bear the rising costs, so they chose to close their greenhouses in the autumn, resulting in a sharp drop in vegetable and fruit production.

To maintain normal supply, the UK began importing from Spain and Morocco. For example, a quarter of the UK's tomatoes are imported from Morocco, one of the four largest tomato exporting countries.

However, what is unexpected is that the two countries suffered extreme weather such as snowstorms this year. The low temperature delayed the maturity of agricultural products. In addition, floods caused by heavy rains blocked transportation. The supply of fruits and vegetables in the UK suddenly became tight.

Having just experienced the plight of not being able to eat eggs, the British are now having problems eating fruits and vegetables. The fruit and vegetable shelves in supermarkets are empty or the purchase quantity is limited.

For example, Asda, one of the three largest supermarket chains in the UK, announced that it would implement "temporary purchase restrictions on a small number of vegetables and fruits", with each customer being limited to buying no more than three of each product. The restricted products include tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, head lettuce, bagged salads, broccoli, cauliflower and raspberries.

Scarcity makes things valuable. With tight supply, the price of fruits and vegetables has been greatly pushed up. Six tomatoes used to cost less than 2 pounds, but now it costs 25 pounds (about 207 yuan), a 10-fold increase in price. So much so that British netizens joked on social media, "I'm not sure whether to eat our last tomato or sell it on eBay (e-commerce platform) to pay off the mortgage?"

Of course, the tight supply of fruits and vegetables in the UK is not only due to the weather. In fact, most European countries have sufficient supply of fruits and vegetables to sell to the UK, but suppliers in these countries are reluctant to do so because bilateral trade flows are not very free after Brexit.

Philippe Binard, general representative of Freshfel Europe , the European fresh produce association, said that a large number of trucks carrying fresh produce to the UK are now often returning to the EU empty. Drivers are worried that the return trip will be subject to control, and they will then bear the risk of delays in the return of the truck, so shipments to the UK are not popular.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) warned that the current shortage may be just the tip of the iceberg and will be even worse in the future. In this case, it is better to rely on oneself than on others. The British people decided to grow their own vegetables, which triggered a wave of vegetable and fruit seeds rush to buy. This wave of enthusiasm has spread from offline to online, and now some e-commerce platforms have sold out.

On the website of Waitrose , tomato seeds are the best-selling vegetable seeds, with some varieties sold out. Mini tomato seeds are also sold out on the website of Tesco.

On Amazon, vegetable seed packages have also seen a surge in orders, even making it onto the BS list. They rank among the top in the garden category and often rank in the top 10 in the vegetable seed category .

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