That’s not entirely true.
My first and only shipment after the change was a 5 packages SPD split to GYR2 (AZ), LAX9 (CA), ABE8 (NJ), RFD2 (IL) & LAS1 (NV) and all those locations are inbound transfer centers.
So after the packages were checked in, all the units were transferred again. In addition, the transfers were not just to the FCs that are close by in the same region, but they were transferred all over the country, some went all the way across the country again.
Yes, you’re right. 1 of every 5-way split does seem to go to a DC we are familiar with like:
ABE8
TEB9
AVP1
The rest go to far away FC’s.
I will say that our Avg SPD box has gone from $8.25 each to $11.50, so there is an additional expense, but the splits, waving placement fees, coupled with 18 cents off the FBA fee still make it make a lot of sense to the bottom line.
Figured I would update this since it was the first LTL split we did and was curious on how it would go in terms of timing. Here’s how this worked out for us.
| Created 4-8-24 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Picked Up 4-11-24 | Location | Checked in | Check in Days after Pickup |
| Shipment 1 | ABE8 Florence NJ | 4/12/2024 | 1 |
| Shipment 2 | IND9 Greenwood IN | 4/15/2024 | 4 |
| Shipment 3 | Fort Wayne IN | 4/16/2024 | 5 |
| Shipment 4 | GYR3 - Phoenix AZ | 4/26/2024 | 15 |
May I ask how you populate the data in that table? Do you pull it manually from each shipment?
Did that manually for the purpose of this post. We don’t normally officially track it. Just visually.
Just keep playing around and making shipments at different times of day/night and you’ll get different output spit out. Just a two-hour difference resulted in SPD charges of $388.72 (5 shipments/$0 placement fee) to this…
From here in the forsaken state of Ohio… 5 shipments and no placement fee (Goodyear, AZ; Chesapeake, VA; Henderson, NV; Las Vegas, NV; Stockton, CA)
3 Shipments with placement fee (Chesapeake, VA; Charolette, NC; Somerset, NJ)
To one shipment (Chesapeake, VA)
Pretty bad when even with placement fee, cost is lowest with three different warehouses.
Agreed, with a caveat:
Even worse when it becomes obvious that “Prioritized Initial Placement” ain’t the mule she used to be.
Q.) Hey, Andy - how’s that warm embrace of AI working out fer you, “pal”?
A.) We’re working on it with our concerned teams. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
I’d love to see the count on cancelled shipments MTD vs. last year.
I bet it’s 50X higher because every smart FBA seller is doing this including this guy.
I think I’ve beat all of 2023 and 2022 combined 
First time I’ve seen this… choose an option with placement fees and will be experiencing “delays”. Nice manipulation, Amazon.
SPD is backed up big time. Everyone is splitting an Amazon wasn’t prepared for it. They thought sellers were just going to eat the fees.
The whole system is blown up and it will get worse. Prime Day is around the corner and Q4 - forget it. If they don’t get their ■■■■ together everyone is going to suffer - Sellers, Amazon, the consumer.
I think they got it wrong with a per unit placement fee.
The amount of money FC Transfer costs Amazon highly depends on how big your shipment is. Splitting up a 5000 unit shipment does not cost 100X more than splitting up a 50 unit shipment. There’s economies of scale there. There’s a reason why most fulfillment services have monthly minimums. Amazon made FBA more approachable by having no minimums and a flat per unit fee because they wanted to encourage everybody to use FBA regardless of how big or small they were. But now that strategy is backfiring when they’re making the fee structure more complicated but keeping the per unit fee for everything.
My latest experience sure hasn’t been promising. Since I have only a small amount in FBA any more, it’s always limited to a single box. Last shipment sent on May 4; on some of the books, if you order now, you can get it delivered by June 7.
And this is what I get for paying double to ship it in…
FBA’s always been terrible at handling single units and small quantities, but it’s gotten worse as they continue optimizing for mass market goods. That June 7 date also isn’t accurate but displaying that will certainly scare off your prospective buyers.
What I find strange is that two of the FC experiencing “delays” were part of my 5 split shipment to avoid placement fees and they are NOT showing any “delays”. Things that make me go hmm…
Might be worth it for me to consider fulfilling some items myself. More hassle but less headaches. Now, to find my Excedrin…
Yeah, the dates have almost always been shortened once the items are in their final place. But with paying nearly double the price for “placement”, I would hope for something better than the previous “takes a month for us to move it around” result.
4-5 years ago, delivery dates were usually within a week of receiving, even when the shipment went to the same facility as now. I’m paying double for less than half the service.
And I’ll note that my first comment about this new fee was that if paying a bit extra to get things showing up faster it was worth the small extra fee; but now I’m getting nothing for the extra amount.
I’m in the process of sending 14 items of 140 units (SPD) to FBA . I was going to do 5 boxes with same items and quantities in each box, (same as I did last time in late March, and was able to get the option of 5 split with no placement fee), but this time Amazon only give me the option to 3 split with a $16.80 placement fee. I play around a bid with different number of boxes and quantities, and keeps getting 3 splits.
Has anybody been able to get the option of Amazon-optimized shipment of 5 splits with no placement fee laterly? Is Amazon trying to do away the 5 splits, so we have no other option but to pay the Placement fee?
We were able to send pretty much everything yesterday with 4-5 splits without any added fees, but are having a hard time today getting the same, despite multiple combinations. This has happened to us before and we were able to get optimized splits without added fees the following day - you might want to wait until tomorrow if restocking that SKU isn’t urgent.
I did a 5-shipment (no placement fee) split on Friday.
