Amazon warehouses will stop receiving goods for 17 days?

More than half a year has passed, and the problem of Amazon warehouse overload still exists, and with the arrival of the peak season, it has become more and more serious.

Will Amazon warehouses not receive goods for a long time?

Since last week, the news that Amazon warehouses will not accept shipments for a long time has been widely circulated in the industry. The incident started when a seller received the following prompt when creating a shipment in the background ↓

Amazon stated that due to high demand for warehousing and limited appointment slots, it will temporarily be unable to accept sellers' products from December 15 to December 31.

It is reported that Amazon did this mainly to cope with the order processing and delivery requirements during the Christmas shopping peak season. Currently, Amazon warehouses are already overloaded and cannot handle more goods entering the warehouse.

Inventory is the foundation of Amazon sellers. Once there is a problem with inventory, the continuity of product sales, as well as rankings and traffic will be affected. Moreover, Amazon’s warehouse explosion problem has lasted for half a year, so when the news of stopping receiving goods came, the seller community immediately complained:

“——There are so many things to do, and they are different every year. It’s better for Amazon not to do this;

——Amazon is really a bummer, they charge a lot of money but provide poor service;

——It was just slow to receive before, but now it doesn’t receive at all.”

At the same time, many questions lingered in their minds.

A seller asked: "The shipment I created before has a reservation number during this period. Can I still receive it normally? Does "not receiving the shipment" refer to the delivery status or the received status?"

Some sellers also asked: "Are you accepting shipments transferred from AWD to FBA during this time period?"

Not only that, after receiving the relevant message, some sellers tried to create shipments, only to find that the problem became more complicated.

One seller said suspiciously: "I can choose this time period. Is this a smokescreen by someone, or is it only in certain warehouses?"

Another seller also reported that he tried for two consecutive days with different results. On the first day, he could not select the US Central, US West, or US East regions during the time period, but he could select it again on the second day.

As of press time, Amazon has not released any announcement or notification related to this matter. However, an Amazon freight account manager replied that from December 15 to December 31, all Amazon facilities will continue to receive goods normally. If there is a backlog of goods, they will transfer the goods to other distribution centers or operation centers.

Based on the above information, it can be determined that Amazon warehouses have indeed stopped receiving goods, but it is possible that this only occurred in some warehouses and did not affect a large area.

In addition, it is worth noting that the warehouse suspension status may be "dynamic", because when a seller opened a case to Amazon to verify whether the warehouse was suspended from December 15 to December 31, the customer service replied that "it depends on the actual storage situation at that time." This also explains why some sellers tried twice and the results were inconsistent.

Sellers do not need to worry too much about the warehouse stopping accepting. Because the shipments created now will basically take a month to be delivered to the United States by sea, which is long past this time period. As long as the estimated arrival time does not select this time period, the shipment can still be created and shipped normally.

In addition, sellers have basically completed their stocking for the peak season, so the warehouse not accepting goods during this period will not have a big impact on peak season sales. The overall efficiency in January is more likely to be affected, because the goods during this period will be accumulated to a certain extent in January, and then delivered to the warehouse in the first half of January.

Freight forwarder: I didn’t understand this year

Amazon has a peak season every year, but this year there are particularly many problems with its warehouses. Even senior freight forwarders exclaimed: "I don't understand!" A freight forwarder who has been deeply involved in the US inbound logistics market for many years said that this year is very different from previous years. In previous years, the same batch of goods would usually be rejected once, and the second time they were sent, they could basically be successfully delivered to the warehouse.

However, this year, for the same batch of goods, they had to wait until the fourth time to successfully deliver it. "Now, we have to make repeated appointments to deliver the goods to the warehouse, but they are rejected. We have to make another appointment and deliver the goods again, but they are rejected again, and the cycle repeats."

In this case, the cost of the freight forwarding company will increase indefinitely, and for the seller, the warehousing time will be extended a lot, which will affect the subsequent sales plans and even trigger a series of chain reactions.

However, what is puzzling is that from Amazon's perspective, the number of warehouses is increasing.

According to data from supply chain consulting firm MWPVL International, as of the first quarter of this year, Amazon had a total of 1,363 facilities in the United States and is expected to open 170 warehouses in the future, of which 103 will be such small package delivery stations. In the first five months of this year, Amazon leased, purchased or announced plans to build more than 16 million square feet of warehouse space in the United States.

According to the feedback from sellers, MIT2, GFU3, XLG1, PSC2, ABQ2, FSD1, JOT1, QXY5, etc. are all newly added warehouses by Amazon in the West Coast of the United States this year. In addition, there are 8 new warehouses dedicated to large items during the peak season in the West Coast of the United States.

In October, Amazon officials also announced that it would launch a next-generation distribution center driven by artificial intelligence and 10x robots in Shreveport, Louisiana. The facility has five floors and an area of ​​more than 3 million square feet, equivalent to 55 football fields, making it one of Amazon's largest sites. At the center of the facility is an advanced multi-layer container inventory system that can accommodate more than 30 million items.

At the same time, with the introduction of robots and artificial intelligence, warehouse operation efficiency is also rapidly improving. The company's blog post shows that Amazon's number of robots will increase from 350,000 in 2021 to 750,000 in 2023.

However, even under such circumstances, warehouses have frequently been overwhelmed this year. The freight forwarder mentioned above said that there are still a large number of shipments from the United States in September that are stranded in overseas warehouses and have not yet been delivered.

The latest Amazon delivery situation shows that MIT2, GEU3, IUSP, TEB9, SCK4, SBD1, QXY5, ONT8, IAH3, and RMN3 are all in serious overcapacity. Some warehouses have stopped accepting orders and the rejection rate is very high. It takes 2-4 weeks to make an appointment at other warehouses. In addition, RDU2, LAN2, HGR2, AVP1, RMN3, SWF2, ORF2, ILG1, FWA4, ORF2, MQJ1, ABE4, CLT2, DET1, DET2, IAH3, IND9, RFD2, RDU4, SWF2, TEB9, XLX6 and other warehouses all have varying degrees of overcapacity, and most of them are approved 1-2 weeks late.

In response to this situation, sellers must have adequate response measures, including stocking up in advance, using third-party overseas warehouses, and coordinating with Amazon customer service.

Amazon stops shipping