I have a feeling that fees are going to go up to cover this after more states smell blood in the water.
It’s a drop in the bucket for Amazon but that never matters anyway!
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Wonder when they are going to get fined for failure to register their facilities with the FDA because they ship / store perishable products. They skate by this with some BS that they are a single store or grocery store or some BS loophole like this.
- Amazon has no controls in place for proper storage temp / humidity.
- Amazon has no controls for rotating inventory with a shelf life.
- Amazon has no lot traceability in place for what is shipped to whom for cases of recalls.
All 3 of these (AND OTHERS) are hard and fast requirements / laws for any logistics operation that handles perishable products with lot #'s. Lot Traceability.
Everyone else is doing the above and it’s regulated. Amazon obviously has the resources to do all the above and more but refuses. Not good for the precious consumer or despised selling “partner”.
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Darn. It would be too bad if someone with enough knowledge (NOT me) would let all the states (and the Feds) know about that happening.
After I left one company (escorted out) the NASD got a well detailed letter about WHY the company was in violation of many rules despite the NASD having determined that there were no violations.
End result was a $1,000,000 fine for the company, the head of their “compliance department” that they refused to call ‘compliance’ was fired from their probably $250,000 or more/year job, and the salesman that was teaching the sleazy method was suspended for 6 months (as I recall) and forced to pay $100,000 or more.
I smiled when I was notified of the end result. They should have just kept me on the payroll. It would have been a lot cheaper for them.
But I’m not TOO vindictive… 
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Everyone is well aware of what’s going on.
The feds keep knocking on their door with this issue and they keep getting away with it because of a loophole in the law that’s meant to protect mom and pop operations against overly burdensome and costly implementations.
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The NASD knew about this situation as well and had ‘thoroughly investigated’ it ( more than once).
It took a step by step letter explaining everything that they had missed/misinterpreted – like a ‘loan’ against a policy is NOT ‘tax free income.’
It wasn’t rocket science but regulators seldom actually understand the industries they regulate (in depth) in my experience.
Sometimes it’s necessary to dig deep and show what the original legislative INTENT of the rule was and how the current situation is an abomination of that intent.
If it ever stated in the records that the intent was to protect small operations it could be used as a pile driver.
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Amazon’s legal strategy is just to file as many extensions as possible which drags things along…think they’re doing that with the current FTC case
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This made me wonder… I understand that they “inventory” within any one warehouse pretty much at random, sticking things in where they fit. So odds are no two items of the same type are near each other very often. But they do have the ability to track which shipment each item came from, and they do have expiration-dated stuff. The fact that they require FNSKUs (rather than UPC code alone) for expiration-dated stuff means that they have the ability to ship “first in, first out” from any one warehouse if they want to.
But do they? I suspect not, as the one unique “oldest” item may not be in a convenient place within the warehouse in regard to the picker/boxer that needs one now. But they can at least attempt to ship out the OLDER items first.
I would not trust them with perishables like fresh strawberries, as Amazon would put me… (wait for it, wait for it…) in a jam.
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@dwat0870 it’s a good question: How can bodies who discipline companies (like Amazon in this case), protect punishments from merely being shuffled to “partners” and “customers”? This isn’t a standard cost of business or COLA or supply chain issue for Amazon; this is specifically punitive damages for breaking the law.
How can the law ensure that the wrongdoer actually shoulders full responsibility, without shirking? 
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They absolutely do not. For some reason, Amazon likes to pull their SAS managers from their logistics operations. 2 of the 3 we have had came from there and walked me through the process, which can be found in the link below. It’s pretty sad / lame…
ETA - If you are a brand owner, you don’t need to use a FNSKU for perishable products.
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OK, I’m a brand owner, how can I enjoy this privilege? I’ll read the link, but I may not be bright enough to work it out from the article.
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I got this email from Amazon.
You may also be able to select manufacture barcode in your inbound shipping templates.
I don’t recommend not using an FNSKU for FBA on basic principal to avoid potential competitor tampering with comingling.
Just because we can do it, doesn’t mean we do. 
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OK, this all raises some questions for me. Full disclosure in that I do NOT do FBA and have really no plans to do any.
I have read all the stories about comingled inventory and how sellers get screwed all the time with another seller counterfeit item getting sent out.
Not to give all you guys actual nightmares or panic attacks ( ) BUT do any of you FBA sellers have any actual PROOF that Amazon does an actual segregation of your items if you do not use comingling?
From what I see more and more, Amazon has lost control of almost everything.
Strange things I ponder when I can’t get back to sleep at 4am…
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Many moons ago as a pharma rep each one of us had to provide and demonstrate samples were being properly maintained. We were carefully monitored (climate controlled storage units, inventory management) whether we were detailing RX or OTC as both were dated and perishable.
Truly unbelievable there are no checks and balances within Amazon . Even harder to believe - no one has blown the whistle on them yet!
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We had a “competitor” for a brief period on Amazon, and I told him to cut it out, or I would not ever sell him ANY of my product ever again. But we had fun with him first, creating size variations, and making sure that the ASIN he was offering was reclassified as a 250-Gallon Tote size (complete with photo!), as opposed to the normal 8oz size of a veterinary product. Now, there never was a 250-gallon tote, so he was technically obligated to deliver 250 gallons of the stuff, as he apparently never looked at the listing.
To make matters worse, I had all our mutual friends send him messages asking about liftgate deliver of the totes, as they all lacked loading docks. A good time was had by all.
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No need to blow any whistles. They have been contacted and warned but keep getting away with it because of loopholes in the regulations / laws.
In their response, they claim to have better than industry standard SOP’s in place. LOL - sure.
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It is a unique barcode so you would have to believe that they are following through on it.
With that said, the listing may have been set up with a UPC code (most likely). All FNSKUs for that listing could be associated back to the listing and cominingled.
The reality is that even when something is “comingled”, it really isn’t in terms of the pick location.
Items are not assigned picking locations. They are placed where there is space when received. Higher volume listings are placed closer to the hot item pick slots to make it easier / faster to pick. Slower selling items get buried.
If we both sold the same listing and you sent your inventory in 2 months ago and mine today, Amazon will never do a lookback, see where your inventory is, and pile mine into the location your inventory is in. That’s not how FBA works.
Learned this from 2 of our 3 SAS managers who previously worked at Amazon logistics centers in manager roles.
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Now I know why they have to keep building warehouses. If they just consolidated it all they could probably sell half of them.
Of course then it would take the buyers an extra hour to get their stuff…
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It really is mind boggling that 1 product could literally be in 20 or more locations per facility.
This is how things that have a shelf life expire, selling thousands of units per month. They don’t send the picker or robot to the location that has the closest exp date (EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE THAT DATA FROM THE SHIPPING PLAN).
They send them to what’s fastest based on the other orders they need to pick or what other item is in that particular buyers cart.
Picking efficiency = $ = profit
Building lots of warehouses = capital expense - Amazon’s specialty. Wallstreet never really cared about all of their zero profit / high capital expense qtrs / years as I am sure you know.
It’s all about the stock price and never really about anything else or doing the right thing or common sense.
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Of course that is the case. Any other strategy would require hiring people who had experience in other companies who would not fit the Amazon company culture.
BUT few other companies have shown the growth Amazon has and the government scrutiny Amazon receives. And perhaps the passes by some regulators.
I remember some years back during one of the unionization attempts, one of the FCs was pointed to for extreme temperature conditions which were negatively affecting the workers. That FC was not built by Amazon. It was a former J.C. Penney warehouse. Those extremes existed before Amazon and were not an issue. I suspect that warehouse held HBA sold by Penney as well as hard goods and soft goods, and I suspect enforcement of conditions the HBA were stored in were not compliant with regulations.
I suspect any company with the number of MBAs Amazon has is likely to ignore good business practices - the don’t appear on a spreadsheet.
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Ay, THERE’s the rub.
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