I misunderstood it the first and thought that they only required a “Team lift” sticker on each carton. So I asked the factory to add a “Team lift” sticker. It took the second warning (this time) to make me realize that the problem is weight. It went over 50 lbs by a few pounds. Unfortunately a week ago, the third shipment of this product was already on the boat from China to the US. So I couldn’t stop it. Hence I’m pretty sure that I’ll get this defect again soon. How bad is it to get the same defect 3 times in a row? I’m scared that they would suspend the inbound shipping ability especially when Q4 is right around the corner . Any advise?
After I acknowledged the problem, the shipment creation was activated (sigh). I wonder if this would work again after the 3rd defect. Has anyone had this experience? Please share. Thanks.
I had something similar happen quite a few years ago. I didn’t realize my master cartons were over by 1 lb until FBA caught it. I already had another shipment picked up and on the way before I knew about it.
I got in touch with the account health people and told them what was happening in advance. Nothing they could do about it, but at least it shows you are aware of your issues and will fix it in the future. I would do this as looking proactive is better than looking like you don’t really care.
I only had 2 errors and they suspended my ability to send products into FBA for 30 days. They didn’t kick me out of FBA, just couldn’t create shipments. That was years and years ago, so who knows what there policies might be now but I would take this seriously.
If you can intercept this shipment and redo it to meet the 50 lb weight limit I would suggest doing it. I wouldn’t want to be suspended from FBA in the 4th quarter.
That’s a great idea. Thanks for sharing. Did they help when FBA suspended your ability to ship for 30 days?
I’ll try to ask the freight forwarder but most likely it’s not going to be possible because it was a small shipment that got shipped with shipments of other people in the same container. They cannot open a container before it reaches the destination for one person (me)
Perhaps another proactive action is to create a bunch of shipments in advance; enough for 30 days before that 3rd overweight shipment arrives. In case if FBA suspends the shipment creation for 30 days, I would have pre-planed shipments to use until the 30 days is over. What do you guys think?
Yes, I normally don’t pack more than 48 lbs. This is an old product. I forgot that lately I increased a tiny amount of weight (20 grams) for each piece and forgot to recalculate the total carton weight
Have you heard or experienced this 3 strike event? Or that was a prediction?
Thanks.
I’ll let you guys know how it goes. I was hoping to hear more people sharing their experiences about this issue. So I could try to guess what would happen to me
We ran into this a few years ago. We package our own items here in America and send them to Amazon. Someone here thought it would be ok to go over a little bit. It is not.
We responded with, “We made this error, we will not allow this to happen again. We have put in a procedure to package and make sure that the weight is under 45 pounds in the future. We have two team members that will audit this, one to package and a supervisor that will verify the weight is 45 pounds. We do apologize for this error. It will not happen again.”
Thanks for sharing this experience. Is it recently that you heard or experienced this coaching call policy?
Totally agree. Too bad I don’t know how long the FBA shipment creation suspension would be. If it’s only 30 days, I could manage because I normally ship inventories worth about 60 day of sales.
Nope, it’s not new and I had one after a few issues that weren’t our fault. Granted, that was almost 2 years ago. I assume it’s still a thing but can’t be certain.
Updates. Split shipment is killing my shipment performance. The current shipment was split into 3 shipments. So far, only 2 arrived with Overweight defect (see the 2 spikes in the graph. The 3rd shipment is coming soon and will have this Overweight defect like the first two
Also, the last shipment that I just shipped last week from China (currently on the boat) got split into 5 shipments! which means that I will have 5 more Overweight defects to come. I wonder if Amazon would ban me from FBA for life for having that many Overweight defects
That’s going to be an issue I think. Doesn’t seem like it can be fixed either without cancelling the shipment, eating the freight, redirecting to a 3PL or elsewhere to be re-worked into compliance and re-shipped in.
If Amazon is a meaningful part of your business, you might want to consider doing just that IMHO.
I wouldn’t mind doing that at this point. The problem is that my shipment is in the same container as other shipments from China. I don’t think the freight forwarder could open the container and search for my pallets just to remove it.
I wonder if I should flood FBA with more units to “dilute” my inbound defect rate percentage…
Yep, 120 days is too long. Frankly I’m not trying to be perfect (0%). I just have to be below the average, what Amazon calls APR. If the shipment creation suspension is only 30 days and not 120 days, I’m ok with that.
I hope someone here have gone through what I’m about to go through; 9 overweight defects in 120 days. I’m going to scout Amazon Seller forum to see if anyone has been though this before. So I know the consequences in advance. Hence better prepare.
ouch, 8 safety violations (which overweight is) does not sound good. That sounds like a “suspended until they receive acceptable appeal” situation where they may or may not accept your appeal.
If there’s any way to intercept the packages and cure the problem prior to it arriving at FBA, regardless of the cost, you should do that.
I wouldn’t go this far. There will be a coaching call initiated at some point by Amazon. From experience, those calls are handled by US-Based Amazon employees.
The person I spoke to was reasonable and took care of our issue for us. The OP’s problem now is out of control sadly because of what’s inbound.
I think if a call is initiated, the Amazon associate will understand and lift any restrictions on the account with assurance from the OP that the problem has been identified and fixed, and won’t happen again once the backlog of shipments are checked in.
Something tells me that the OP’s account is a decent one. That will also factor in when a real human looks at the situation.
. Any advise?
