FBA's new policy is here, and sellers' costs are going to rise again

Amazon announced a new policy this week, which will shorten the warehousing time for FBA shipments for domestic and international shipments, and overdue shipments will be closed. The platform will also reject shipments that do not meet the requirements (such as the destination is different from the planned location) or charge them a warehousing defect fee.

In order to deal with account problems that occur from time to time, some sellers have recently started to pay attention to the paid manager program, hoping to buy insurance for their accounts . "My friends have paid, and they will have a dedicated person to guide them through difficult problems until they are resolved."

New policy for FBA shipments entering warehouse

In the past two days, many Amazon sellers have seen a new policy reminder for FBA shipment entry in the background . Shipments that do not meet the requirements may be rejected or charged a warehousing defect fee.

First, Amazon has updated the time when shipments are automatically closed . For shipments created after February 1, 2024 , if the shipment is not delivered within 45 days for domestic delivery/75 days for international delivery (originally 90 days), the shipment will be automatically closed.

Second, Amazon may reject shipments that do not meet Amazon Logistics shipment requirements. If the platform accepts inventory that does not meet its shipment requirements or is different from the seller ’s shipping plan, the seller may be charged a shipping defect fee.

Amazon mentioned the issue of charging a warehousing defect fee when it updated the US Amazon logistics fees for 2024. For each item , if it is a small standard size, the delivery fee to the wrong location is $0.04, and the fee for deleted and discarded items is $0.02; for large standard size items, the fee for incorrect delivery ranges from $0.04 to $0.07, and the fee for deleted and discarded items is $0.02 to $0.04.

( Inbound defect fee per unit )

The following situations may result in the rejection of shipments or additional charges , sellers should be careful to avoid them:

1. The shipment was delivered to the wrong location : Your shipment was sent to a different fulfillment center than the one listed in the shipping plan.

2. Deleted and discarded shipments :

1) Your domestic shipment is not delivered within 45 days of shipment creation, and your international shipment is not delivered within 75 days of shipment creation .

2) In a multi-destination shipment plan, your other shipments are not delivered within 30 days after the first shipment is delivered, or you create a shipment allocation as a multi-destination shipment, only send part of it and delete the rest (delete warehouse).

Please note that if the seller wants to change an approved shipping plan, all shipments in the plan must be deleted before starting to ship any shipments in the plan.

In addition, Amazon not only shortened the delivery time of shipments, but also set delivery standards for domestic and foreign shipments . This has become the focus of sellers. " Is it true that the shipping address cannot be a US address? If a US address is used, it will be considered a domestic shipment and must arrive within 45 days? "

Seller @跨跨小汪哥 analyzed that Amazon will allocate warehouses based on the seller's shipping location to facilitate sellers to deliver goods nearby. Therefore, many domestic sellers will modify the shipping address when shipping, such as changing it to near ONT8, so as to have the opportunity to ship directly to ONT8 and significantly reduce shipping costs.

"But now, Amazon's policy does not allow you to fill in random shipping addresses. For example, if you are in China, you must fill in domestic address, otherwise the goods will not be warehoused when the expiration date comes. In the future, it will not be so easy to send goods to the three major warehouses. If you fill in the domestic shipping address, it is likely that they will assign you a remote warehouse, and the first-leg freight rate will definitely increase."

Changes in platform policies are limited. However, there are often various audits and emergencies on Amazon. Sellers may open many cases but still not know the crux of the problem. If there is a way to quickly obtain a solution and assist in clearance, it is hard not to be tempted.

Sellers "insure" their accounts, and paid managers become popular

Amazon Payment Manager has become a hot topic recently, and sellers believe that it is an insurance policy for their accounts. One seller said: "This year, the sales of an account were OK, so we hired an Amazon Payment Manager. We were afraid that the account or link would encounter any problems, so we could quickly find a Payment Manager to handle it."

Are paid managers very helpful ? In the eyes of sellers, their greatest value is to help solve account problems and improve the security of accounts, but their effectiveness in guiding other operations is limited:

“It helps a lot when there are problems with the link or account. If there are no problems, it mainly provides some help with category data.”

" My friend has paid for it, and if it's difficult to handle, there will be someone to guide you until the end. "

"The core role of a paid manager is to assist you when your link is spoofed or your account has problems. The specific role depends on the manager's ability."

A seller shared his own experience: "I signed a 3-month 20,000-yuan paid manager contract. To be honest, the biggest role I played was to help quickly solve some problems, such as the flash sale blacklist, underlined prices, signing up for flash sales, product delisting appeals, and slow warehouse entry. The progress of opening a case was very slow, and the response from them was relatively fast. Other help was rare. In short, paid managers can solve some problems, but it is very difficult to rely on this to improve performance."

Amazon has five major strategies in China in 2024, among which "improving local services" is achieved through exclusive account managers, etc. It can be expected that paid managers will be a key focus of the platform this year.

In 2023, Amazon will actively recruit paid project business development managers and exclusive account managers in Shenzhen, Hangzhou and other places. The former will be responsible for understanding sellers' needs and matching paid services, while the latter will provide development advice and guidance to sellers of different sizes.

Amazon currently offers two optional paid manager versions:

The accelerated version is aimed at small and medium-sized sellers, and can help solve key operational problems and break through sales bottlenecks. The service content includes performance and operational planning, product selection guidance, sales conversion guidance, advertising and promotion guidance, and provides high-quality seller support services. (The charging standard is a basic fee of US$700 + sales volume of the previous natural month x 0.3%, with a monthly cap of US$2,500)

The Ultimate Edition is for mature sellers, providing integrated planning to help them grow continuously. Based on the Accelerated Edition , this edition has added brand building guidance, logistics and inventory guidance, and business development suggestions. (Basic fee is $1,600 + sales of the previous month x 0.3%, with a monthly cap of $5,000.)

The fees for paid managers are not cheap. Therefore, even though many sellers have received invitations, they have considered it carefully and decided not to join because it is not cost-effective for them.

For the boutique model, especially for single-account or small-account sellers, this barrier is necessary. For example, the electric toothbrush brand Seaga sold more than 300,000 sets of its best-selling products in 2022, ranking first in the European children's electric toothbrush market. Seaga hopes to go further in brand layout and marketing, and this year it has joined the exclusive account manager project to strive for more support in category analysis and marketing resources.

However, small and medium-sized sellers need to consider costs and benefits more, such as only adding core large stores and doing what they can.