The Belt and Road Initiative grows by leaps and bounds.
Thanks for sharing the screenshot. I also got the hit with the same high placement fee for shipping only one pallet a few days ago. You’re right that FBA items will be more expensive or disappearing.
I’ve never thought of this but you’re right. Amazon will try to cap the price. Solution? Up the price at Walmart. Many sellers will have to do it (me included)
Nice follow up. This new placement fee is another revenue source for Amazon 
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I have believed in that statement since I started selling on Amazon in 2016. Lately I’m not so sure. Apparently Amazon is trying hard to squeeze every dollar out of FBA sellers by introducing new fees and pass on costs (such as this forced placement service fee). The new “low inventory” fee is going to hit us soon. All these new fees will increase the retail price. One day when FBA price is higher than FBM, FBA could lose the buy box too. I think Amazon is testing the limit to see how much they can squeeze out of FBA sellers before that happens. They’re trying to discover the sweet spot where Amazon could generate maximum profits and minimum profits for sellers (but enough that sellers would tolerate to sell on the platform)
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Nail, meet hammer.
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That’s from our point of view. From Amazon’s point of view, it’s 3X increase in inbound profit from just a one time tweak in the system
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That’s the trick I’ve been using for years. Worked every time. I’m hoping that it would continue to work.
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OK, one mans opinion here.
If this is an error per a friend, family or neighbor, of course this should be corrected.
But you have a business. And as such, it is not your problem.
UNLESS you are human, as we all are. So, most of the time, you and I, I believe would do what is right and inform.
BUT, in this case, you are talking about Amazon.
Now, personally when I started, for maybe the first year or two, I would have informed them of their error. Now. No. Why?
Because I have dealt with businesses for 40 years, and have dealt with maybe 500 medium, big, and ultra big companies, and Amazon is the worst - They “just do not care for my business bottomline”. So why should I care for there bottomline?
Now admittedly, I am old school, and came to sell on Amazon as a novice, after 30 years in mfg, and retail. Yes, I guess I “should have done my research”. But I didn’t. By the time I joined in 2015, most probably already knew Amazon was “different” than the way business was conducted for the past 50 years. I didn’t.
They knew how large, how mammoth Amazon had become. How no longer any seller was anything but a number. A new world, really. A company of such massive dominance, that history will write about it. A moment, where computer and commerce merged in the lap of Bezos. A place. A time, where one company suddenly had so much power over so many companies. (Off topic, but there are now many of the same now for sure)
But the result of this mammoth, is it is not human. Any any way. Common sense, problem solving, respect, interaction, solutions, vanished, replaced by an interface that could handle the sheer numbers of seller issues, but only by treating us as numbers. As profit centers, that has revenues to increase, and expenses to decrease. To discard, to delay, to test algorithms, and even to bury payout deductions.
But, we Voluntarily come, of course. Enticed by making money, we flocked by the droves to our riches. Amazon says 10 million now. I wonder if Amazon has already churned through another 10 mil.
And then there are us. Those that partake with the safety of a retirement or 2nd income, and those that Amazons revenue stream is essential to a core business we own or run. But we do so voluntarily.
We do so understanding that it is Amazons way or the highway.
If it cost you a day, or weeks sales on an Amazon created problem, you must fight it or accept it. Either way you will pay. so be it. Survive.
If it cost you redesigning the size of your packaging to make a new weight or size limit the Amazon honchos of the year concocted, you will, react, adjust and pay more, if you are to survive.
If you wish to get into the Amazon game, then when the mammoth roars, you must react, adjust and pay more, if you are to survive.
Because you are 1 in 10,000,000
So - after that long winded, preface…
If Amazon makes a mistake, I would not inform, as I am simply treating them in the same business way they have treated me. That seems fair to me.
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IMO, Walmart’s placement fees are harder to get around and they started in Jan. Further, I haven’t read anything about reduced WFS fees there so it’s a double whammy.
On LTL at Walmart - I haven’t found a way, nor does Walmart offer pallet splits to get rid of or reduce the 25 cent a unit placement fee of their own. If you’ve done this, or know how, please advise because we will be sending a pallet there soon OR biting the bullet and doing lots of FedEx shippers which I know will be cheaper (with 144 units in each shipper), but still a major PITA for the folks in the warehouse…
The savings at Walmart for each one of our shippers to avoid the fee is at least $20, far exceeding any extra freight costs. Fact remains that sending a pallet to Walmart using their partners is a min of 3X as expensive vs. Amazon. It’s close to, if not more than using our own carrier. I’ll never understand that.
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Well I have noticed one thing that is a benefit to what appears to be just our business model.
For oversize, in the past each and every shipment would be sent all the way across the nation regardless of volume. Today, I made a 10 pallet shipment and the option to pay Amazon to distribute and freight was cheaper than our previous inbound freight costs for shipments, because they let us send everything to SMF or SBD instead of all the way across the nation to FL, NJ or TN. It was $952 in distribution costs, but only $512 in freight. Historically it has been split between 2-3 warehouses at ~$1.8-2K. We have only had 4-5 shipments to West Coast FC’s for oversize EVER and ONLY with shipment splits so we still had to ship across the nation.
It’s Amazon though, so probably a fluke.
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I’m sending in my first shipment prepared under the new workflow, I chose the 5-way shipment split to avoid fees. While confirming carrier and pallet details for each, I noticed the option to select different freight-ready dates for each shipment within the workflow. This allowed me to plan to send two shipments now, two next week, and the last one the following week, which helps spread things out. The system accommodated this, and all the Bills of Lading (BOLs) reflected the dates we entered.
However, tonight I received our nightly email detailing tomorrow’s truck arrivals and the shipment IDs scheduled for pickup. To my surprise, the email indicated that all 5 shipments would be picked up tomorrow, contrary to my plan of having only two picked up. My initial thought was to email [email protected] with the correct pickup dates for each shipment.
But now I’m wondering if Amazon is still going charge an inbound placement fee since not everything is going to be picked up on the same day? I couldn’t find any exclusions against setting separate freight-ready dates for each shipment within the same workflow. According to what I’ve read, additional fees would only levied if a shipment isn’t sent out entirely (ie if we only ship out 4 of 5 shipments) or if any remain undelivered after 45 days from shipment creation. I can’t find anything saying that all shipments within a workflow must be picked up on the same day to avoid having to pay the inbound placement fees.
When I contacted seller support, they concurred with my understanding, stating, “Sending shipments on different dates does not impact the FBA inbound placement service fee.” However, given the occasional variability in their responses, I remain cautious…
Thoughts?
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Seller support just responded to the case again stating the only extra fees I may incur would be inbound defect fees:
"Inbound defect fees may be incurred for the following problems:
Deleted and abandoned shipments: Your domestic shipments didn’t arrive within 45 days of shipment creation and your international shipments didn’t arrive within 75 days of shipment creation. In a multiple destination shipping plan, your additional shipments didn’t arrive within 30 days of the first shipment.
So I guess I’ll be fine? Only one way to really find out I suppose.
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You will be fine. I’ve encountered what you did a few times since Jan where we split shipments for rebates with varying destinations. All picked up by the same truck.
Ran into a bit of a nightmare here 
most likely because of this situation so keep your eyes on these shipments.
https://sellersasksellers.com/t/learned-something-new-today-on-how-an-fba-shipment-gets-lost/3595
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Maybe I missed it but what about mixed SKUs in a single shipment? Here is what I am getting for 4 different SKUs for a total of 520 units… WTH
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Has anyone figured out if one shipment can include multiple cases with different expiration dates?
Same ASIN. I have one case remaining of the prior exp date and my last delivery has an exp date further out (Jan 2025 and May 2025). I want to send them all without placement fees.
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I think any time there is only one box there will be placement fees because they have to distribute it to other locations.
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$110 worth of placement fees??? I get it that there might be some. But $110 worth of effin fees?
Dang Amazon… at least buy me dinner first.
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Can you run a scenario where you split it into 4 boxes? Some have identified 5 as the magic number to avoid placement fees but I recently got rid of fees with 4 cases in one shipment.
You might want to put some of each sku in each box to meet their geographic placement goals for each sku.
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You have it all packed as 1 box though. You can’t split a 1 box shipment, the laws of physics don’t allow that.
Early on we ran a test of 4 cases, each of a different sku within the brand. It did avoid placement fees but it doesn’t fit with their desired outcome of distributing products for faster deliveries. I expect there will be a tweak on that to spread out each sku, if they haven’t already tweaked it.
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So I made everything split into 5 boxes. Same amount of each product in each box. I was able to add two other SKUs I had and ended up with
A lot nicer.
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