This came up today - I’m sure we got an email somewhere along the way. I sent FBA shipments the past 2 days and they were normal, today I get this:
For each option the Placement Fee differs, along with the Shipping fee. So East was a lower placement fee, but more expensive shipping. West was most expensive. Central was the middle placement fee and cheapest shipping fee (since it’s in-state).
Anyway - interesting change.
You may or may not have gotten an actual email - mileage varies - but it’s about changes announced in the 5Dec2023 News Headline “Update to US referral and Fulfillment by Amazon fees”.
There’s a bit of chatter going on over in the NSFE & related discussion venues, today (1Mar24, which was the specified rollout date), that various API integrations are throwing errors - probably because it hasn’t fully rolled out to everyone yet.
You’re not being offered an option to split the shipment and thus avoid those new placement fees that started today? That’s the way this is supposed to work…
We created all of our shipping plans for the next few weeks yesterday to avoid being part of this new experiment while they work the bugs we all know will be in it out of it.
Judging by the total fee amount, this looks to be a low qty shipment so splits probably wouldn’t be offered.
Curious to hear from the group how all this is going over the next few weeks.
Interesting, nothing has changed for us on our account. Still the same options we’ve had for months. Doesn’t show any placement fees even if we were to just send in a few units either.
I knew about this new fee, but I guess I didn’t comprehend the increase completely or to the extent, and I thought that they would still offer the shipping rebate.
your rebate will go away once the changes take place! Send items in now!
I didn’t see that but I am not surprised. I trust Amazon when changes take place (or in general), about as far as I can throw Jupiter.
That’s why we loaded up so we wouldn’t be part of their experiment. It’s not an experiment but it’s new which means it’s broken and totally untested. I don’t believe there was a BETA group testing this. Who the hell would sign up for no more rebates and problems???
Correct - I’m sending like 50 or fewer.
Nobody signs up for any betas, they randomly assign sellers to them. If other sellers have a beta and you don’t, you thank the amazon god that you weren’t chosen.
Amazon does typically follow that paradigm - but it must be admitted that some of the NSFE beta testers (including certain members of the SAS) actually did voluntarily sign up to be be guinea pigs - and that 2022 instance was hardly the first (nor the last) where this or that Amazon entreaty failed of its initial apparently-attractive promise.
Laocoön was right: Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts…
I can think of at least 1 we were chosen for that we had the option to do it or not. Sadly I can’t remember which one that was. It may come to me and I’ll report back. Wasn’t the forum though, it was some systematic change.
@LR72 did you have the option to send in multiple boxes to avoid this placement fee?
Sadly they wouldn’t. The qty is not large enough.
Just wrote something up about this here 
When the placement fee is 7 bucks it makes zero sense to offer a split that costs more.
If it was split 3 ways each additional box would cost 4 - 5 bucks a piece plus additional work and packaging.
I haven’t had this yet, but I might consider it in the future if offered. I seem to get a healthy amount of West coast sales, so getting my items at FC’s over there would show more 1-2 day delivery options to those customers. I’ll pay the extra $2 if it means a few extra sales.
They’ll transfer units all around the country no matter where you ship to, unless you’re shipping in an abysmally low number of units where they can’t do that.
Couple of caveats here:
That second point is a big one. The fewer FC’s you are in, the lower your sales will be due to time to home. Low inventory is an absolute conversion killer which is what did lots of damage to our business when the limits were at their most restricted.
If you want to win at FBA, you need to be prepared to take a risk and build your inventory up to a level that might not be so comfy. LTSF’s are low enough where the risk is worth the reward in our experience / testing / tinkering…
Every category is different though.
