FBA Inbound Shipments - All Is NOT Lost!

Fulfillment by Amazon Discrepancies in Shipment and Receiving
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I learned something today… Amazon has lost roughly 1/3 of FBA shipments, all of it on “FC Transfer”, so each shipment appears by shipment number in the inventory ledger as received, scanned, counted, and confirmed, and then is lost (showing a negative number in the inventory ledger) upon transfer to another FC.

So, no question - they misplaced the inventory, so Amazon reimburses me what I’d have made if they sold what they lost.

But one or two shipments were stuck in a loop of denial - they’d keep saying the same boilerplate:

“After our last communication with you on 07/10/2023, you appealed to us to consider the documents that you provided. In response to your appeal, we compared the information you sent to us with the pickup date, delivery date, and parcel counts stated on the delivery documents provided for this shipment. In addition, we searched our systems to confirm that the units described in your claim were not located elsewhere in our network. We found no record of these units being received at, or present in, any of our facilities…
…This concludes our investigation of this matter. Additional appeals related to this claim will not be considered. We appreciate your patience and understanding throughout this process.”

It was like they were ignoring the inventory ledger, despite my repeated references to it.

So, I called, and got a cluefull Amazon rep, who explained that there are TWO separate groups - the “inbound” group and the “FFT” or “transfer” group. I was getting boilerplate from the “inbound” folks. For some reason, my inquiry was not routed to the “transfers” group.

So, if you hit a brick wall, it may help to mention that the “transfers group” should handle your claim. I clearly stated that the inventory ledger showed that the shipment (a single carton) was lost ON TRANSFER, so I don’t know how much clearer I could be, but this is just another handy household hint for dealing with Amazon annoyances.

Punchline - the lost carton contained 48 units… they say they found 63 units. I’m never going to be able to reconcile each and every shipment, all I can do is try to keep a running total of shipped vs FBA sold vs lost.

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EXCELLENT advice, Packet.

The “Defective By Design” model for provisioning Customer Service, originally perfected by Ma Bell nearly a century back, has been all the rage in corporate culture since the earliest graduates of the so-called ‘MBA Revolution’ began advancing to the boardrooms in the late 70s.

Being able to speak ‘Amazonese’ in terms the lower-tier echelons of its support infrastructure can easily understand is concerning a matter that requires escalation above & beyond their constricted bailiwick IS a Pearl Of Great Price.

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Smile when you say that, cowpoke.
The Bell System worked better than anything humanity has ever seen. Everyone, rich and poor had a phone, and the service was dirt cheap as compared to today’s equivalents in wired services (internet and cable TV). It had incredible uptime, and even if nothing else worked in a hurricane or earthquake, the phone likely did, as every central office was equipped with battery banks sufficient to keep the phone system up and running for weeks without external power.

Lilly Tomlin made her “Ernestine the phone operator” jokes as, and some of it was fairly accurate, but most of it was certainly not at all true. I worked at Bell Labs, and there simply was no better employer anywhere, then, or since. It barely seemed “work” to most, as they were continuing to do the research they had done in college in many cases, only driving a BMW, and living in a house with a pool.

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Having once worked in a maintenance-billet capacity for Western Electric (way back in the pre-divestiture/pre-VoIP days), I can attest to the truth of that.

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Completely off topic, but one of my favorite museum exhibits ever was this now-closed exhibit, at the Pointe-à-Callière in Montreal. Actual fun, for the whole family.

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Oh, Bell Canada… the inventor of “Barbed Wire Tip-and-Ring”, where they would save a few bucks on wire and poles by hooking up to a farmers wire fence. If the fence wire broke, the farmer would get no dial tone, and this was sold as a benefit - “a warning that your cattle are out”.

The unmitigated gall of those Canadians… that’s OK, the Stanley Cup was won by a team from Vegas this year. Vegas. I did not even know that they had ice beyond that found in cocktails.

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Thanks! Used this advise today. Amazon reporting shows one of the boxes in a shipment from last month received nothing, even through confirmed delivered. They did the whole we completed our investigation and confirm no units received. I searched the inventory ledger and show they received all units on 8/11 at MEM1, transferred them out on 8/12 and then show ‘Inventory misplaced’ on 8/22 at ABQ1. I replied back to the inbound group working on the case and asked them to forward our claim to the transfer group. Hopefully we will have more success in getting our units located or reimbursed…

Fortunately, we only have a few more cases of product to send before we are done with Amazon FBA. It has been one problem after another, along with continued increases in fees, over the last few years to where it is not worth it to continue with this line of business. :smirk:

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Funny, ABQ1 lost only one unit of my product, and was not anywhere near a “biggest loser”.

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Well, that was a better outcome that this poor soul has experienced over in the NSFE (partially redacted original post, emphasis added):

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/1c969d02-6e96-4685-ab6a-1d5e9f92adc4

Hey, Andy - how’s that warm embrace of AI workin’ out fer ya, there, bud?

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And thus, the world land-speed record for a “removal order” was set, never to be broken.

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