The problem we encountered was that Amazon did not notify us of inventory being subject of LSF, or that inventory would be blocked from being sent in if we removed it. No notice whatsoever. We have been on Amazon for many years and this never happened before despite being our regular practice since we started. That’s why an Amazon internal team is involved and working with us to correct it. I offered our experience as a keep in mind point for others.
I never heard anything regarding FBA blocking inbound have anything to do with long term storage fees.
I have seen various removal fee promotions where you don’t get charged a REMOVAL fee for the removal order, where if you benefit from that you are not allowed to send that inventory back in for a period of time.
I used to get periods of free removals to clear up space, I haven’t seen that one in a while, but if you got a similar offer and removed, the same restrictions would likely apply:
I don’t know if they’re still running these but these free removals came with strings attached.
It could also be possible that if you’re removing too big of a % of inventory that you’re sending in Amazon just doesn’t like that because it’s creating too much work for them without generating enough sales.
Amazon doesn’t do anything for free anymore.
Makes sense. Wasn’t sure if anyone else was still getting those offers or not. Guess not.
@belessence that is horrifying to hear–and I’m sure to experience, too!
No Seller should be punished by Amazon in any way for managing their FBA inventory to best delight customers (and prevent accidents, illness, and injury!).
That is honestly egregious, and definitely something the FTC should be looking into, in terms of weaponizing inventory and fulfillment processes in opposition to basic product safety practices, and being deceptive with 3P Sellers.
If Amazon wants a minimum standing FBA fee, then Amazon should charge that and be transparent about it, and then let businesses decide if they want to pay it.
Funny you should say that papy, because that is exactly what we did - sent this to the FTC with screenshots. It’s bad enough they slap sellers with fees, but when they don’t tell you that they are going to charge you a fee, or when, or on what inventory - ding, ding! - you lose, Amazon. This may be why we heard from a special internal team after I informed seller support that this may violate trade laws. Boy we heard back fast!
LOVE THIS! #accountability
We’ve always paid for removals, that’s not the issue. It was specifically stated by Amazon AFTER we removed inventory that we were being blocked because we denied them LSF.
I’ll bet someone wasn’t supposed to say that part out loud… 
Thank you for sharing your experience and making us aware, @belessence!
We’re like you - our product line is 30 different products on our website, but we only have 6 on Amazon. We sell through very quickly on most ASINs, and keep our warehouse inventory low so we are constantly sending in fresh product. Other ASINs have peaks and valleys in sales, which is why we sometimes have inventory hit the 91 day mark. We never ran into this problem before, we always called back aging inventory and sent in new, This is the very first time in all the years on Amazon that they decided to have a temper tantrum (mind you, the LSF would probably have been pennies). Just offering our experience as something to look out for.
Wait, seriously? They cited avoiding LSF as the reason for being blocked?
I thought you were joking that they were butthurt about losing LSF, and that you were unsure of the actual reason for the block, because that reason is asinine.
I could understand if they restricted the # of units you were allowed to send in, as you oversent last time, but being outright blocked for removing excess inventory to avoid LSF (which exists for the PURPOSE of “encouraging” sellers to pull stale inventory) is a little ridiculous since that’s WHAT THEY WANT.
I could be wrong but I thought there was a standing policy about removing inventory just to send it back again to reset the clock.
@belessence is doing it for the right reasons but Amazon has no mechanism to recognize right from cheating and using FBA as a storage facility, not a fulfillment center. There’s a difference and I can’t fault Amazon for doing what they are doing to those that try and “beat the system”.
This is another example of using a sledge hammer instead of a scalpel by Amazon.
I don’t think this is as sensational as it looks @papy
With all of this said, Removal order fees were so cheap in the past, cheating made sense. Now it really doesn’t with the new fee structure.
Yeah, especially with the new removal fees I’m surprised Amazon would get so pissed off about that. If they’re annoyed about people shipping/removing non-performing inventory because it’s costing them money, maybe they should institute some kind of receiving fee. (eg. reduce the fulfillment fee by 50 cents, and charge 50 cents for receiving a unit, so it balances out for most sellers but penalizes sellers who send/remove too frequently).
But, that would be the logical and transparent thing to do. Instead they have some internal logic to calculate the seller’s costing them too much money so they just block them.
We’re not trying to “beat the system.” Even the internal team at Amazon recognizes that we are making sure that newly manufactured product is available to customers, and following business practices that are a benefit to Amazon itself. When we remove inventory, it is destroyed by us and new inventory that we manufacture is sent in. I take exception to the implication that our business is reselling stale inventory just to avoid a few cents of LSF.
This is why Amazon is trying so hard to make this right and remove the block. There’s no cheating here. Even if we were charged LSF, it would amount to pennies, which again, Amazon itself is acknowledging. We keep inventory low. We don’t use Amazon as a storage facility, we use them as a fulfillment center and maintain inventory levels for a maximum 3 month sell through.
The issue is the lack of clear policy and notice on the part of Amazon which may qualify as a legal issue for them, and in this respect, again, even the internal team at Amazon acknowledges it and is why they are working to correct this. Please do make comments that cast aspersions on other sellers’ businesses.
@belessence I think that @ASV_Vites was saying that although you are not doing anything wrong, Amazon is so messed up and paranoid about all the other sellers who are trying to “beat the system”–unlike you–that you got caught up in the same net, in error. 
I partially agree with @ASV_Vites, in that I agree that you clearly were not doing anything wrong.
Where I’m not sure that I agree is that Amazon should be penalizing any sellers–whether with account restrictions, limited capacity, or fees–for doing something that Amazon does not explicitly prohibit, without transparency.
And if Amazon does explicitly prohibit…whatever they think this is…then it is wrong and possibly illegal of Amazon to not have a process to differentiate between prohibited deceptive behaviors and those undertaken by @belessence.
It is quite surprising to me that this happened, from a consumer safety perspective–not trying to “sensationalize” anything, but I am speaking up in support of @belessence for doing the right thing, even if other FBAers might have been content to tolerate Amazon’s misbehavior in this area in the past.
No Seller working to protect Buyers from expired product should be treated as if doing so is somehow inappropriate or suspicious by Amazon.
Yup - 
with both of you on this. It’s another example of Amazon punishing those of us who like to do things right and do right by the consumer.
The problem is that there’s a big % of sellers that are scam artists on Amazon so they just assume we are all bad actors and put things in place like this that just punish everyone.
I’m not sure where in my post I wasn’t on your side but whatever. 
@ASV_Vites I think there was just a misunderstanding.
I think that you and @belessence are very much on the same side.
And I agree. 
I always thought this was policy too. If I remember, you can’t send the same inventory back in for something like 90 days. Stupid - I know, and it causes issues for us as our stuff doesn’t expire, but it can get pretty nasty in the warehouse over 180 days. We learned the hard way years ago when I customer posted a photo of the nasty looking stuff in a review. I was shocked as we have some product for our personal use on the shelves for years without any signs of aging , but the warehouse environment is not climate controlled like it is in our local storage.
We have one ASIN I just removed only 13 units from and I’m afraid to try to send any more in because of the policy you described. It’s one of our best sellers, but I have others that I can concentrate on for a while and we are a 2 man shop so we can only produce so much per day.
-Ana