Yep, do this. ASAP. It’s like moving to the new house before you sell the old one in its motivation and relief.
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Used to be, not now…
Example of shipment from two weeks ago…
80 units per case…
Today to the same exact receive center.
This is to mid from West.
And East from West…
$.16 inbound logistics cost for a small item versus $.46. That is 3x increase in inbound logistics costs for zero change or increase in performance.
What are they doing now that they didn’t do for the last decade? I will give you one guess and a hint… there is no lube to go with it.
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So I played around and put 3 cases in so I can send one to each region, therefore I should not have any placement needs right??.. NOPE. Not an option. You have to send all three cases to one location and pay fees on all of them.
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What about 5?
It seems like it’s a minimum of 5 now to get the no placement split. Even a 3 split is a partial placement fee now, since they want 5 locations for no fee (I saw 5 locations as no fee for a test I did, and seen it on screenshots from others)
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Thank you.
That was a very nice thing to say.
We have done this a lot for some ASIN’s as well.
Never considered it “gaming the system” but rather a method to
meet other inventory metrics and keeping our inventory fresh and lean.
It also seemed to help in the receiving process as just one shipment
with one SKU was much more likely to be received correctly.
I’m afraid we will be going through the same process.
Our concern, as always, is that as Amazon continues to increase
fees on several fronts and we continue to compensate with higher
prices… just how high can we go until we are priced out of consumer demand?
The shipment we created last night had a standard size per
unit increase of .97 to 1.75.
Result: We raised our per unit price by 1.00
We are already on a slim margin on Amazon even with the
higher prices so what other viable choice do we have?
Yes… then there is this where in some instances Amazon
retaliates claiming a lower price on a venue where the fees
are not as high or the price is a temporary sales promotion etc.
by taking away the “Featured Offer” to incentivize a seller to,
in many instances, sell at a loss while they still profit from their fees.
Then adding insult to injury Amazon posts the following message
to potential buyers basically explaining that the item / seller they
are considering purchasing from are rip offs.
As others have posted, this is definitely a good idea.
We’ve been doing it for a while.
We can sell the same items for much less, our profits
are decadently higher and we can provide much better
customer service.
The age old problem is that Amazon has a lot more eyeballs
on the products than our site does and mitigating that over
time has a cost as well.
It’s not instant high volume sales at least it wasn’t for us but
it has continued to improve over time.
In any event this change will take some time and study for
us to determine how, or if, we use the FBA system in the future.
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So, as a bookseller, things will work a bit differently for me.
But there are two things I have to ask:
Can I find out what the fee will be BEFORE I create the shipment? Depending on how much it is, some books may no longer be suitable for FBA due to the increased cost.
Secondly, by paying this fee, will Amazon get my books available quickly, rather than the often 4-6 week delay between receiving and showing to customers as shipping in a normal time frame?
If the fee is small, I don’t mind paying it if it means that my books will no longer show such extreme lead times ( such as the current “Delivered By” dates on my latest shipment, received Feb 29, showing dates ranging from March 25 to April 1).
But I still need to know at least approximately what it is up front.
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Got it split at 5 cases… Still bad because every destination is across the entire US. Why am I paying the logistics cost of Amazon shipping back to the West and mid states?? Not all the customers are in NJ and IN the only two states the shipments are going to.
Cheapest Amazon 1 shipment is…
Now it is $ 0.16 to even more at $0.51 per unit for 5 cases.
Full split, no fee is now $0.37/ unit
Partial split option is $0.42, both of which are to West Coast FC’s that we were already shipping to anyway.
The problem is 5 cases puts us well over the 90-120 days of inventory.
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Which 5 states is it having you send to for a 5 way split? Logically it would be spread across the entire US, but I’ve seen 3 shipment splits all go to FCs all within 1 state of each other so I know logic doesn’t apply here.
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Only 2 states.
FWA4 x 1 - FORT WAYNE , IN
IND9 x 1 - GREENWOOD , IN
TEB9 x 1 - SOMERSET , NJ
ABE8 x 2 - Florence , NJ
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I was just looking at the NSFE. Wow, guess we are all in for a world of hurt… That sucks.
Every 3rd thread is about this…
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Ya, I am having a fun time watching YouTubers explain it without getting the post adult labeled for language.
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Looks like Amazon may have pushed it a little too far with this one.
It would be nice though if our competitors are forced to raise their prices to a more normal market rate to make up for this…
The fact that Amazon is apparently not offering the split, even for large quantities, is borderline libelous… I mean they can do whatever they want but if they tell you X to avoid Y, and don’t offer X, that’s sort of breach of contract in a weird way…
What’s even crazier is Amazon was more than paying for the freight in most cases for us with rebates for splits and now the rebate is gone and the splits aren’t being always offered for the same sized shipments? I don’t know if that’s true for us, because we haven’t created a shipment yet, but I assume that will be the case with everything being reported here and on the NSFE.
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And your state is west coast by your “across the country” comment I’m assuming?
It seems like east coast FCs are being favored irrespective of the split (the single shipment placement fee shows higher for west coast for me) because the west coast FCs are flooded by AGL shipments from china.
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Ya, If I were in GA, TN, OH, I would not be able to say that without looking like someone geographically challenged.
Yes, but the argument was to get the inventory closer to consumers. Most of our stuff is warm weather and farm/ag items. Not too many farmers or loggers in NJ compared to the rest of the nation.
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HAHAHAHA, for giggles I made the same shipment from our GA warehouse, and they want two shipped to CA, and IL in the same split.
They just want to F sellers for more money or they would have had us ship from CA to IL and CA to cover the nation.
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If you’re not using a partnered carrier maybe you can game this by trying different pickup locations to see which one gets you cheaper locations to ship to.
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Ya, then you play with fire when your tracking does not match for reimbursements.
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And you pay more for freight which is the same as the placement fees or higher. And it takes longer to get in, get checked in, and you get banged out for the low inventory fee.
Amazon figured out these tricks already @GGX
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Well, the tracking will show delivered. Where it goes in transit shouldn’t be relevant
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I only mentioned it because he mentioned that not all their shipments go through a partnered carrier.
Obviously for most sellers the partnered carrier is infinitely cheaper.
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