This morning when I tried to create a FBA inbound shipment to replenish inventory, I noticed that Amazon assigned warehouses way further away. Ok it’s not as bad as inbound Oversize tier but it doubled the inbound shipping cost Here’s the evolution of the inbound shipment for this product:
Original. 2018 to September 2023 → 1 closest destination warehouse. Usually in the same state
Step #1 September 2023 to December 2023 → 2 a little further warehouses e.g. from Pennsylvania to NY or NJ or VA.
Step #2 Today → 3 further warehouses e.g. from Pennsylvania to FL and TX and IL
I notice that this change doesn’t apply to my other Standard size tier products. Only this one. I triple checked the size tier and absolutely sure that it’s still standard size. For oversize product, the 3 split destination warehouse are usually worse because they could go as far as California (from Pennsylvania where I ship from). I couldn’t ship pallets since the shipment gets split to 2 and 3 destinations
Has anyone experienced this or know what make this product special that it has to be shipped far away and split? Or know the workaround? Thanks.
I think I found it. It’s “Multiple Destinations program”. I ship from Pennsylvania. It used to go the 3 warehouses in the green rectangle. Now it only goes to far away warehouses in TX, FL, etc. Not sure what went wrong. I’ll try to opt out. Amazon doesn’t offer any shipment rebate anyway…
Thanks for pointing out. Yes I saw the date. I replenish every few weeks to maintain good IPI score. So I will be sending many shipments before March 1 next year.
There are 2 ways to opt-out: email fba-ops-mipo or contact seller support. I just sent an email. I’ll report here how it goes.
Given the widely-reported poor performance of the Merchant Inbound Team which uses that email address over the last 18 months or so, it will be interesting to learn whether or not they’ve finally gotten their act together.
What do you mean that on March 1st, it’s going to cost 27 cents extra per unit? Did I misunderstand something? My understanding is that by opting out the shipment will not split and I will not receive rebate (which is fine). When March 1st arrives, the split shipment program will be over.
When I do the math, the rebate that they offer me doesn’t even worth half of extra cost from splitting…
Has your split become worse (see my Step #1 and Step #2 in my original post)? I can accept the evolution step #1, but when it became Step #2, the extra cost is too much
No it won’t. It will be mandatory, and you will pay a min of 27 cents a unit transfer fee if you don’t agree to the split or opt out.
Luck of the draw - stars need to align kind of thing. This is a bad time of year to be shipping to FBA if you can avoid it. Amazon wanted all inventory in (through Jan really), by 10-26. We all got an email about that.
You will be getting unfavorable splits this time a year as Amazon will shift shipments to wherever they have the resources at the moment. Most workers have been shifted to pick / pack / ship for customer orders per Amazon.
With that being said ,our last shipment, 2 weeks ago, which was done to clean up some inventory at our warehouse primarily, went quite smoothly and quickly thankfully.
Right, and it’s being replaced with that link on the bottom there.
The concept is the same except it won’t be optional anymore. Splits = no placement fee. No Split (or agreeing not to split) = a min of 27 cents a unit for Amazon to move it.
No more rebates - surprise surprise… Someone in the ivory tower must have noticed how much money Amazon was actually losing with that one. We had a shipment once that had a $600 rebate and a $159 freight charge… LOL That was like winning the daily numbers at the NYS lottery.
Yea but did you see the Low Inventory Fee that’s coming in April of 2024. Ship too little and you’re getting charged a min of 97 cents a unit fine for falling under 28 days of inventory. That might actually work out to be less than the storage fee in Q4 but you should check that new policy out too.
Maybe there’s just some confusion here and you knew about all that. If so, my bad.
No, it’s never your bad. Thanks for sharing your view Originally I understood that this split is just temporary because of the Q4 congestion and will revert back to normal after March 1, 2024. Now after reading your post, maybe you’re right that the new shipping plan that they mention before the link at the bottom could be replacing the old shipping plan before the split happen. Frankly I think they could have written it more clearly. I guess we’ll know after March 1st, which way it’s going to be.
Wow, you must be shipping a ton. The biggest rebate they offered me was around $70 to split a 13 cubic meters to two destinations. They gave me 2 options though: (1) ship to 1 destination without rebate (2) split to 2 destinations with $70 rebate. I picked no split because it would cost me more than $70 to ship to 2 destinations.
Yeah that would be really stink. Not looking forward to that I haven’t read the details yet. Is the low inventory fee going to be per unit (min $0.97)? That’s very high. For small items, it’s ok to let them charge storage fee. However for larger items, that would be very yukky Frankly I’m discontinuing a number of products that don’t have enough profit margin and try to discount to sell out larger items before that low inventory fee get into effect. Sad but it must be done…
Here’s the evolution of the inbound shipment for this product:
Oh, I totally missed that news. Maybe I should have opened a case with Seller Central. I need to restock inventory and ship out tomorrow.
Originally I understood that this split is just temporary because of the Q4 congestion and will revert back to normal after March 1, 2024. Now after reading your post, maybe you’re right that the new shipping plan that they mention before the link at the bottom could be replacing the old shipping plan before the split happen. Frankly I think they could have written it more clearly. I guess we’ll know after March 1st, which way it’s going to be.