Hi,
The item arrived customer broken. He emailed me with pictures and shipping address asking for a replacement. I have lots of this item in stock with Amazon (I do FBA). Normally I could do this easily at FBA Inventory page. The option is in the “Restock Inventory” dropdown. Today I couldn’t find it. Amazon must have moved it to somewhere else.
Can someone guide me to the new location or how to send one unit out of FBA stock manually? Thank you.
For FBA you don’t. He contacts Amazon and they will do a replacement order.
You “could” do Multi-Channel fulfillment to submit an order, but that’s expensive. Refer them back to their order page and there should be instructions for Arrived Damaged in the return options, and they can do a replacement order there.
You’ll see a new order (when they do) with 0.00 as the price.
Thanks for your reply. Is there anyway that I could ship the replacement manually without the customer doing anything? There are 2 reasons for this:
(1) Some customers get upset when I tell them to contact Amazon for the replacement. They consider it as pushing the responsibility/work to somebody else. I can see their points. Some got upset enough, they returned instead of getting a replacement. Some threatened to leave a one star review/feedback for bad customer service.
(2) When we send out the item manually ourselves, Amazon doesn’t know the reason. Every time when a customer contact Amazon for any problems, it’s a negative point on our record. Amazon keeps score on everything.
For the 2 reasons above, I try to do the little extra work manually send a replacement myself. Did Amazon completely taking that ability away from us? 
If that’s the case, I would have to keep a tiny inventory at my house and manually ship them myself in the future. It’s most convenient when I could do it from Amazon warehouse like in the past
You can do all that. And the customer can return the original for full refund, so you’ll be out of luck.
I usually don’t say “contact Amazon” but "here’s how to get this done the easiest and fastest way:
then give them the steps.
Just remember that if you decided to do this for the customer, you might ship them a replacement and they might still contact Amazon to get a refund. You could be out twice.
Thanks for the reminder about customers still could return the item and get the refund. I accept that risk in exchange for the possibility of less negative points on Amazon scoreboard.
Thanks for the reminder about customers return for a refund. I accept that risk in exchange for the possibility of less negative points on Amazon scoreboard.
Since you received the photo of the broken unit, it’s probably legit but most buyers would not contact the seller for FBA but would report the problem in their “orders” and most would probably assume you already have their shipping address. Just putting my suspicious mind to work.
Thanks for another thought. I agree with you. I always for photo for proof. I put a big insert paper within the package to let customers know that if they want they could contact [email protected] for any problems. I do this to reduce the amount of complaint that customers would give to Amazon.
It is my understanding that sellers don’t get to see the address for FBA orders?
If that is the case, this puts you in the position of having to ask the buyer for “personal” data (address).
You’re correct. Amazon conceal shipping address… I believe since 2018 or 2019. Yes customers give me the shipping address for the replacement to be sent. All are happy with the replacement.
Hi @HumbleWarrior. I was not sure if you found the link to use the mentioned Multi-Channel Fulfillment method provided by aerides in Post 2 above.
Here is a video on how to use Amazon FBA inventory to send products directly to people at your cost.
Multi-Channel Fulfillment: Create fulfillment orders Instructions [link]
and here is a link to create an MCF (multi-channel fulfillment) order, if needed.
Create MCF order [link]
Thank you so much for providing both the direct link and the instructions. You’re correct that I wasn’t quite understand MCF mentioned by aerides. I ended up using my personal Amazon Prime to order and have it ship to the customer.
The link that you provided is exactly what I was looking for. It used to be under FBA Inventory menu. I hate it when Amazon moves things around every 6 to 12 months. A lot of things have worked well and need no updates. Glad that they let go of many software engineers at the headquarter. Obviously they have too much free time to keep changing things that work well.
You can absolutely not do this. If somehow you got this off without Amazon noticing (and suspending your account), never do this again.
I hope this doesn’t end badly for you, because as far as amazon is concerned you “bought your own item” which is considered a form of sales rank manipulation. Hopefully they never find out.
Thank you for the warning. Sure I won’t do it again. I don’t know that Amazon is serious about this. After all, it’s for the sake of customer service.
Thank you for your warning. I don’t know that buying my own item is not allowed. Yeah I won’t do it again. However if I were Amazon, I would spend more time catching those black hat Chinese sellers.
Amazon is eager to deactivate any FBA account, at any time. Never assume that “Amazon isn’t serious” about a policy.
There is nothing too trivial for Amazon to punish (if in the right mood) and almost nothing too dreadful to ignore (most of the time).
I think we all know this is something they have no interest in.
So sad, so very sad. 
