Amazon will never learn their lesson in this regard. A LOT of unforced errors in inbounding.
There is a better way to do this and it starts with account performance and who is allowed to do what and when.
There is zero reason to lock down inbounding for 3 months during the busiest time of the year and force every seller to jam their inventory in for 3 months in 1 month.
It didn’t used to be this way as I am sure you know, and it seems, at least to us, to have worked better.
It also sucks for cash flow, especially when sellers are hit with 4X storage charges and Q4 fee increases.
FBA receiving doesn’t seem very backed up. These were shipped on Fri UPS. Granted, there are 16 other shipments that haven’t been checked in yet from last week but at least some of them are being checked in…
Couldn’t get anything out after Dec 12, but I too didn’t see major delays in receiving during early December. (SPD to East Coast)
Dec 6 shipment started receiving on Dec 11;
Dec 12 shipment starting receiving on Dec 16;
I’d say they’re actually doing a pretty good job.
From our experience using non-partnered service actually gets the products in faster. The few times we used partnered UPS all took way more time.
The most recent one was in September, shipping from CA.
Exactly. Someone please remind me what IPI is for?
I really hope they can prioritize seller with good sell-through performance instead of screwing everyone not using their partnered carrier.
I’ve been trying to create LTL plans and even when I pushed the freight ready date past 1-1-25, still no good in getting a pickup appointment.
Guess we all need to create our shipping plans at 12:01AM 1-1-25 if we want any chance of getting our stuff picked up within 2 weeks…
I understand the lockout from 12-15 - 12-31 but I can’t wrap my brain around the fact that they will not let us proceed into next year. You know, beyond 12-31…
We don’t have experience with LTL shipments as we only do SPD, but it’s surely surprising to hear that they won’t let you book an appointment in Jan. I wonder if that suggests Amazon plans to extend the “no inbound” period or if there’s a backlog on LTL shipments.
Not sure how things work on the LTL side but can you create and save a shipping plan prior and just try every other day to see if you can get an appointment? I mean it’s kinda hectic to have to create shipping plans on New Year’s Day…
We created 2 SPD shipments (non-partnered carrier) going out on 12/26 and 12/27 (figure if we ship on these dates the shipments will probably arrive around 1/1) and were able to select 1/1/2025 as the start of the delivery window. Nothing we can do now but wait and see how things will turn out.
The 12/26 shipment (non-partnered carrier) ended up being delivered yesterday 12/28. The original estimated delivery date from our carrier was 12/31~1/2. This could only mean that when getting an appointment, Amazon themselves instructed our carrier to deliver on a date they said they ain’t receiving anything.
Billy in the warehouse must have had too much free time on his hands.
I guess we are now expecting a warning from Amazon (again) soon blaming us for delivering early as per their instruction.
I think that is why they do this… more cash inflow for them. After all, us peons have too much margin so we need to give them more and more.
I think that next year, I am not going to go as crazy stuffing as I did this (and last) year. I know every business is different but for me, I just set a ■■■■-load of hundred dollar bills on fire. I’ll probably space it out a little more. Then again, I do SPD and not LTL.
I haven’t tried in 2 days. I’ll try again tomorrow but we def want to use Amazon Freight or another partner because it’s 1/3rd the cost and we are still in stock…
This particular item is the only one we sell that is heavy and somewhat big so we can’t SPD it. We can fit 144 units in a 18X14X14 shipper of everything else. This item, maybe 24 if we are lucky…
We did exactly what you are planning to do next year because we wanted to avoid the storage fees as much as possible. We calculated the stock we needed for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and planned to replenish in December. The result? As you can see above, Amazon refused to receive inbound shipments without announcement.
As you said every business is different but Amazon will always F with us one way or the other. Every year is a gamble with Amazon.
Finger-crossed for you.
Your To-Do list on New Year’s Day, if anything, should be celebrating with Ollie, feeding Ollie, playing with Ollie, fixing anything Ollie breaks, acting as a human-shaped cushion for Ollie, and most definitely not creating shipping plans! LOL
From what I saw, the refusal of receiving of shipments was from Dec 15 to Dec 31. Did you have any problems in late October or November? I didn’t see any serious problems on my end. Yeah, some things took longer as I added inventory but I didn’t experience any major delays as long as product arrived at the respective FCs before Thanksgiving.
We also didn’t encounter any problems in October and November.
Sent in a few shipments here and there during that period for products that were selling well as we wanted to make sure they would not sell out. But we did not send in a ton cuz of the storage limit and the storage fees, and again, we were under the impression that we would be able to replenish in December, where our limit was 3 times compared to Oct/Nov. Did we know they would prioritize outbound? Sure. But never had we imagined they would refuse delivery with no official announcement, and all that December capacity we had went to waste…
December 2024 was not a bad month for us but I think we’ve definitely lost some sales in late December due to our low stock level when ppl spent their gift cards. So next year we may just bite the bullet and go “crazy stuffing” as you did.
I wouldn’t call it stuffing. Just followed Amazon’s lead based on a couple of years of data that we had. Made a plan, did the calcs, built the inventory, and sent it off.
Wasn’t great for cashflow but the alternative was not something we wanted to worry about and it all worked out. Pretty much hit the numbers we forecasted and are in the zone we like to be post Q4 on our inventory levels now.
It almost feels like Amazon does this partially to collect on the storage fees. Our normal 180 bucks a month on 40K units ballooned to $1200 a month at the inventory level we needed to get to.
