I knew this was coming, so I shipped on Feb 28.
I was charged $41 for a shipment of 960 items of 60 lbs to NY (from LA)
(side note - the Base $41 is 50% more than in 2023, and 100% more than 2022)
Today, I uploaded the same data to test
No - Optimized, NO Partial Shipment Avail. Only Minimal Splits
East $202 ( .21¢ each) plus $41 = $243
Central $250 ( .26¢ each) plus $28 = $278
West $280 ( .29¢ each) plus $16 = $296
It is not. It is merely a hedge against poor FBM performance on average. One could make a moderately strong argument that Amazon uses it as a profit, but I know many friends and relatives who will not buy FBM as their first choice because they ALL have had to deal with that one seller. It is a cesspool of mediocrity and amateur trash because there is zero vetting, which is 100% Amazons fault.
I wish I could even come close to paying as little as Amazon does, making people work a grueling schedule till they burn out, and still have people lined up ready to take their place. Very few businesses have that kind of market power to do that. If it wasn’t for FBA my business would not exist. If I had to pay people reasonable wages to pick pack and ship stuff at a reasonable hourly quota I would’ve gone bust a long a time ago
The communities they move into are usually the ones WalMart has already destroyed.
Yup our warehouses are all in major metro areas. The math/economics, is not something I have ever had anyone make a valid counter assertion against.
This makes sense, Amazon has the ability to research the labor market and pick the most desperate communities to move into. Most businesses can’t just pick up and move to a crap neighborhood to save money on labor.
Someone did a test to ship from china to us, and it seems the Chinese Vendors are not paying the placement fee.
Is this for real?
This is nothing new, I think it’s been cheaper to ship from china to the US with AGL than it is to ship LTL to a warehouse next to your facility for a long time now.
It’s the American way. Find the poorest americans and exploit them instead of making them better.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/corporate-accountability/when-amazon-expands-these-communities-pay-the-price-a2554249208/
Confused.
weez not talking about cheaper freight. weez talking about the placement fee
The option selected with no placement fee is the AGL equivalent of “5 shipment split” for US based sellers I guess.
It says that the placement costs are part of the “all in” fee.
And it seems like the “least split” options are just traps to spend a ton of money.
It’s no secret that they do this, but I’m not one to complain about them trying to keep FBA costs rock bottom. If they treated workers fairly we’d see at least a 20 - 30% increase in fees.
This implies they won’t run out of employees by burning through the cheap labor…
They are ending up just like WalMart.
I tried a test shipment of 15 boxes like that seller simulated (14 lb boxes, 108 units per box). I am being offered a few options:
5 shipments: No placement, $152 SPD
3 shipments: $210 placement, $180 SPD
1 shipment:
East: $372 placement, $161 SPD
Central: $453 placement, $137 SPD
West: $550 placement, $78 SPD
This is for a ship from address on the west coast btw
IDK why that poster wasn’t offered a split for 15 boxes.
Respectfully you are missing the point because it does not matter what any other 3pl does because if you want the buy box you cant use anyone but FBA.
FBA can charge any damn new fee they want, they can call it whatever they want and if you want to successfully sell on Amazon, you need to accept it or quit. That to me is most definitely the definition of a monopoly.
How does that 5 shipment split without fees compare to the old normal in terms of the freight charge? I suppose it’s much higher because you are going further.
This is not completely accurate. You simply have to offer a better price for the same product to make it worth the risk to Amazon and the consumer. We regularly have SF offers take the buy box for pennies or a dollar. Their reviews clearly demonstrate the risk.
You also MUST have geographic coverage. If a SF seller has inventory in PA and I only have FBA inventory in a handful of locations on the West Coast, the buy box in that region will default to the SF seller. We see this all the time when our inventory gets low.
I am guessing you do not have several locations across the nation allowing you to meet even the most basic logistics comparisons in your assertion???
same
You are correct in everything you are saying, indeed making my point for all the reasons you mentioned. 90% of sales need to be thru fba if you are not a private label, which we are not.
So please explain how fba is not a monopoly or at least very very close to one?
That is a problem between you and your vendor, not Amazon.
Simple, it is a logistics system you choose not to use like UPS or FedEx. That does not make it a monopoly because your competitors choose to use FBA when you don’t.
It is a robust internal logistics system that works extremely well with high accuracy all while providing step by step data from bin to door. That piece of mind to the consumer is what sellers are paying for, and what Amazon relies on for its brand.
I got 3- 20’ cat6 cables and 2 SFP-RJ45 adapters in less than 16 hours ON A SATURDAY! Nope not a monopoly when the services exceed what others are capable of providing.
so, 152 / 15 boxes is about 10 bucks a box
my last shipment of these sizes boxes was 97 boxes $467 SPD, about 5 bucks a piece.
I’m not seeing any rebate on that shipment, no idea if there was one originally or not, but it doesn’t show up now.
