FBA is slow to put products on shelves! Many Amazon warehouses are overwhelmed

There has been a lot going on with Amazon logistics recently!

As the peak sales season approaches, it is also a period of frequent incidents. Recently , various problems have occurred in Amazon FBA, and more and more sellers have found that remote warehouses are always used when building warehouses, among which ABQ2 and PSC2 are almost unavoidable warehouses. In addition, with the update of the warehouse configuration fee policy, a previous method of avoiding box separation has become invalid, and sellers' shipping costs have inevitably soared.

Slow listing has become a common problem. After the goods are registered in the warehouse, they are always transferred and reserved but not put on the shelves. Many sellers have 0 inventory on sale, and products with good sales are forced to be out of stock.

FBA is slow to put on shelves! A large number of goods are in transit

The problem of slow listing continues to ferment. Some sellers have not been able to list their goods for nearly two months. As a result, problems such as lost items and difficulty in claiming compensation have also increased. Sellers who have been affected have complained a lot:

TMB8 warehouse, signed for last month, but still not on the shelf.

Several express deliveries signed for are not put on the shelves or are always reserved.

The package was delivered to ABQ2 warehouse in mid -August , but I haven’t received it yet . It was still delivered by express .

Either they don’t accept the goods, or they accept them but don’t put them on the shelves. This is the case in several warehouses.

After LBE1 was signed for , it was transferred for 30 days and the saleable items became zero .

Out of stock! You need to start preparing at least 1 month in advance.

ORF2 has not been registered for 20 days , please be careful in the future.

It's terrible. They have to pay warehousing defect fees and warehousing configuration fees .

…

The seller Xiao Zhang said that he sent out a lot of goods in July, but they have not been put on the shelves until now. Either they have not been registered and signed for, or they are in transit after signing for them. It is useless to open a case to urge them, and the customer service just said that they need to wait.

The seller Xiao Li also said that in order to get the new products on the shelves faster, the logistics chosen was air delivery. As a result, there was no follow-up action after the FBA warehouse received the products, and it was shown that they were always in transit. The warehouse's shelving speed was touching, and the front-end link was directly unavailable for sale (out of stock ) . Affected by this, there are basically no orders now, and the good new products are about to be scrapped.

It is understood that there have been many cases of goods being transferred recently. People familiar with the matter said that the goods have been reserved -processing, and they may have been placed in special warehouses. According to the customer service reply, the goods will be automatically transferred according to the available inventory, but some sellers found that this is not the case. The available inventory has been 0 for a while, and the goods are still not on the shelves.

The industry speculates that "Amazon's internal adjustments and the increase in sellers' shipments" are the main reasons for this slow listing. The 2024 Amazon Prime membership promotion will start in October this year. Many sellers are preparing for the autumn promotion, and some sellers are preparing for Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday and other promotions in advance. The increase in shipments has made FBA warehouses unable to handle it.

A freight forwarder said that warehouses such as TMB8 , ONT8, LAS1, XLX7, FWA4, MDW2, GYR2/3, LGB6, CLT2, SCK4, RFD2, ABE8, OKC2, and RDU2 were seriously overwhelmed. Among them, LAS1 and XLX7 were extremely overwhelmed and no appointments were made. Appointments for other warehouses were basically three weeks later.

The warehouse was assigned to a remote warehouse! The seller's shipping costs soared

In addition to the slow pace of listing, the fact that goods are allocated to remote warehouses has also been a focus of recent complaints.

More and more sellers have found that during the warehouse building process, no matter whether it is the East Coast , West Coast or Central Coast warehouses, the system almost always allocates remote warehouses , among which ABQ2 and PSC2 warehouses cannot be avoided.

The seller Xiao Wu said helplessly that for half a month in a row, the warehouses were assigned to ABQ2 and PSC2 when creating shipments . The locations of these two warehouses are very remote, which means that the logistics transportation time is slower and the delivery price is more expensive.

"The first-leg freight rate has increased again. Although it is to the West Coast of the United States, the price is already infinitely close to that of the Central United States..." After the warehouses of many sellers were assigned to remote warehouses, the last leg could not be delivered by truck at all, but by express delivery and sea delivery, and the logistics costs soared directly. According to the quotation of a freight forwarder before, the charge for PSC2 sea delivery is 10, and the charge for ABQ2 sea delivery is 11 , which is the same as the price in the East Coast of the United States . Add the configuration fee , and the seller's profit is bound to be further reduced . Although the price has dropped slightly with the increase in the number of ABQ2 and PSC2 warehouses , the seller's profit is still inevitably affected. Xiao Wu believes that the best way to break the deadlock is to raise prices to maintain profits , but looking at the current situation of internal circulation, it is unlikely that product sales prices will rise collectively.

It is worth noting that Amazon recently updated its warehouse configuration fee policy . According to the latest regulations , the platform requires at least 5 boxes, and the products and product quantities in each box are exactly the same to be exempt from the warehouse configuration fee . Sellers have found that "the products and quantities in boxes 1 to 5 are exactly the same, and box 6 is mixed." This situation is no longer eligible for optimized shipment splitting and cannot be exempted from the warehouse configuration fee . " Today , 6 boxes of goods were shipped . The first five boxes were mixed with the same SKU, and the sixth box was placed with another SKU, so the configuration fee was not exempted. " A seller said.

Due to the new charges such as warehousing configuration fees, a large number of Amazon sellers have seen their profits fall. In summary, high-profit products are less affected, but low-profit products have become difficult to sell. FBA fees are combined with discounts, promotions, advertising fees and other cost expenditures. In many cases, low-profit products are basically not profitable or even lose money.

Xiao Zhang calculated that the profit last month dropped a lot year-on-year. These previously non-existent expenses began to dilute the profit margin, bringing great challenges to the company's operations. Xiao Li also said that the company paid nearly 100,000 yuan in low inventory fees last month . Affected by problems such as warehouse division and slow shelf loading , the period of time for collecting low inventory fees is longer than before .

Regarding operational issues such as profits, sellers also need to know the following issues:

1. If the shipment arrives more than 30 days before or after, Amazon will charge the warehouse configuration fee. Even if there are force majeure factors such as FBA warehouse explosions and customs inspections, the platform is still likely to charge. In addition, the fees for the three warehouses in the West Coast of the United States have increased and are now the same as the two warehouses in the West Coast of the United States.

2. You will only send as many shipments as you create. If you create 5 shipments and only send 3, you will be charged the warehouse configuration fee and may also receive performance.

3. Amazon's inventory management backend page has been adjusted. Although sellers have complained that the new version is not friendly to products with multiple variants/a large number of SKUs, the new version will officially replace the old version on September 16. Sellers need to adapt to the new page as soon as possible during this period.

Final Thoughts

As the logistics charges on the Amazon platform increase year by year, higher requirements are placed on operational capabilities. Sellers need to do more refined supply chain management to gain a foothold on the platform. Otherwise, the logistics factor alone will be enough to discourage a large number of novices.

After all, Amazon is no longer suitable for small sellers without any advantages to enter the market.

Amazon Platform