FBA shipments (domestic) closure after 45 days - using Amazon Partner carriers LTL

Fulfillment by Amazon Shipping to Amazon
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Hello all,

I have question regarding new Amazon rule of 45 days shipment closure (domestic). We have 6 big shipments approaching this period (currently on 40th day).

We are using Amazon LTL Partner Carriers for pick up from US address. It was mentioned in Amazon forums by Amazon support, that shipments are considered arrived (and will stay open) once the shipment status changes to in-transit, checked-in, delivered, or receiving. Shipments with the statuses of working, ready to ship, and shipped are subject to the automatic closure policy.

Here is what is not clear: when scheduling Amazon LTL Partner Carrier, you can get 2 options:

  1. Amazon Logistics: in this case, once pick up date is confirmed, status of shipment will go to “in transit” within 24 hours, and thus it should be considered ARRIVED and will be not closed (even if it arrives after 45 days).

  2. Amazon partner carriers other than Amazon Logistics (Estes, Central, etc): in cases of these carriers, once pick up date is confirmed, shipment will not go to “in transit” status automatically. It will be in status “shipped”, and will stay in status “shipped” even when picked up by Amazon Partner Carrier (Estes, Central, etc) and only after carrier book appointment with Amazon, it will go to status “in transit” (it can be anything between 1 and 14 days since pick up date based on experience).

My question is: what happens, if Amazon Partner Carrier other than Amazon Logistics (case 2) will pick up the goods on day 42 after creation of shipment (so within schedule), and status of shipment will go to “shipped”, but they will want to book appointment day 47 after creation of shipment (outside of 45 days window), as apparently shipment will be already on status “closed”. Will they be able to do that, as they are Amazon Partner Carriers and shipping fees in Seller Central was already charged to our account?

Seller never knows what carrier is he getting (case 1 or case 2) until shipment/carriers/charges/pallets are approved.
Does anybody have experience with this?

Thank you.

Kind regards,

MP

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:wave: Hi @Peky and welcome to SellersAskSellers! I moved your topic over into one of our Fulfillment by Amazon categories so that your fellow FBAers can get eyeballs on your good questions.

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Welcome to the Sellers Ask Sellers (“SAS”) Forum, @Peky - I am hopeful that you will find it to be, as so many of us have, the BEST Seller Forums Experience.

The SAS Community has more than a few resident experts in matters of FBA Inbound Shipments; please allow me to tag a couple of them who have long-demonstrated a superior knowledge of FTL/LTL scenarios:

@VTR, @ASV_Vites - may I ask if you can shed some light upon this subject?

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Never been in the situation and don’t know enough about it to intelligently comment with actionable / reliable advice.

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