Here’s a good one.
Sent several cartons of product to an FC, which counted and confirmed the items, and sent one carton of 48 units to another FC. Its been stuck in “receiving” status for a while, so I made a call to support.
It turns out that, according to the rep I spoke with, the destination FC (DET6, Detroit MI) rejected the shipment, claiming that their “warehouse is full”. And they made up a REMOVAL ORDER all by themselves, and are sending the carton back to me. Because THEY say that they are “full”.
I see none of this of course, I just see what they choose to show a seller.
This raises several questions, like “huh?” and “wha?” and “rhut rho…”
Has this happened to anyone else? Am I just out the shipping fees I paid to send it in?
No, not exactly, the shipment was sent to TEB9 (in NJ), which seems to mostly be a place where shipments are allocated into trucks that go to OTHER fulfillment centers, rather than being stocked there. So I was told to send it to TEB9, and THEY sent it to DET6, not me.
Yes, TEB9 is mainly (but not entirely) a ‘DC’ (‘Amazonese’ for “Distribution Center”) rather than an FC; it was originally designed to ease traffic @ the nearby ABE8 complex, but its rushed deployment during 2020’s Covid-19 Goods Prioritization Initiative threw monkey wrenches into the works right from the get-go.
Many of those kinks were ultimately worked out, and reports of problems with that facility, so-common for the last 3 quarters of 2020 & the first one or two of 2021, largely died down until the recent uptick of the 2nd quarter of 2023.
Well, that’s certainly a possibility, but not one that I can in good conscience recommend, as there exists a good deal of credible evidence to suggest that such manipulation can trigger Amazon to impose the penalties for that practice it outlines in published policy.
When situations such as you describe happen to us, I have learned to let the string play out before opening a Seller Support Case - more often than not, Amazon’s checks & balances eventually make us whole w/o any active interaction on our part, even in light of the “Shadow Inventory Stash” & “Negative Inventory Receipt” phenomena.
That being said, were we to ever to face the exact scenario which you’ve described, and the inventory was actually returned, and the shipping charges (pro-rated for the single carton in question) weren’t automatically reimbursed, I wouldn’t hesitate in the slightest to open up a case demanding in explicit detail exactly why we were entitled to a commensurate refund.
Wut in the bloody sunshine is this new clusterbilge?