In the past, if you shipped out say
8 boxes of 100
1 box of 40
It would always offer you the 5 way split. Now if you include the 1 box of 40 in the shipping plan, sometimes it’ll tell you that it’s not eligible for a no placement fee split. So you have to create 2 separate plans, one for all the identical boxes, and one for the odd lot so you only get hit with the placement fee on the odd lot box.
At least you have a way to avoid it.
As a used book seller, I have only one of any title I’m sending in, so have to pay the placement fees on every shipment, which nearly doubles the cost.
This I guess is to pay for the expense of taking the book of Family Hikes in Maine, and rather than leaving it in NJ where I shipped it, sending it instead to Nevada, so that it will be farther away from any potential customer (and keeping it unavailable for over a month after sending it in).
In typical Amazon fashion, it appears to be a poor implementation of a questionable idea.
Well if you only have 1 unit, or 1 box of stuff, it’s reasonable to expect to pay the placement fee. But when you’re sending in > 5 boxes and they refuse to offer a 5 way split and want to stick you with the placement fee on the entire shipment, that’s kind of unreasonable.
I think the idea of a placement fee is actually a good one, it’s just the way they implemented it is kind of a disaster. The charges are too high IMO (the charge should reflect their actual cost for shifting stuff around, which can’t possibly be higher than what UPS charges). The excessive charges caused people to split LTL shipments into SPD shipments, which has been causing massive receiving delays all year for SPD. And there’s a bunch of other implementation problems.
That’s only if you assume that the placement fee is reasonable to begin with.
I agree it makes sense with items that should ideally be spread across the distribution system. But with one-off items, you can at best only guess at which FC might be close to a potential customer; there’s rarely any benefit to shipping it across country, and especially ironic when it’s a regionally relevant book and they send it as far from that region as possible. I would personally prefer that my books stay where I send them (or nearby), rather than having them take up to a month to become “Available”, even if it meant that a customer in California might see someone else’s copy instead of mine (but I’ll get the NYC buyer).
And as you say, the implementation is poor, at least from the examples I’ve seen here and on NSFE. Too many things at Amazon get implemented without really thinking them through, or running past a department that might have a clue; this is just one of them.
ETA: I will say that this is still better than the way it was 5+ years ago, where a shipment of 30 books would get 29 going to one FC, and one book going elsewhere, with no option to pay to put them together. Then taking out the one oddball book would result in a new break, with 27 books going nearby, one to AZ, and one to Seattle. I sometimes spend up to an hour getting a reasonable shipment together.
I think “placement fee” is a poor choice of words.
It should be a more generic “receiving fee” or something else.
Though the terminology is a minor issue, it does support the idea that this wasn’t thought through that well.
But then that should apply wherever it is sent, right? I disagree that “Placement Fee” is a bad term; that’s what it’s paying for isn’t it? “Placing” your products in other FCs that you shipped it to?
Well placement fees implies that they’re actually placing your products elsewhere. There’s situations where they don’t actually move the products from where you sent it in. So there’s no “placing.” Maybe FBA incurs additional shipping costs from all inventory being in 1 location, but there’s no “placing” occurring.
Like when you send in 1 unit, they may or may not do any actual placement, but it certainly costs them more to fulfill than a mass market good.
I’m surprised this is new for you. It’s always been “All Matching” to avoid the fees on a 5-part split.
Every seller with a brain, and the volume to split to avoid the fees has cashed in on doing so. Amazon now makes less $ from us than ever.
Something tells me that they have a trick up their sleeve to stop the bleeding they weren’t expecting in the near future.
An AWD force for everyone is coming soon, I’m sure.
If I ship like 40 boxes + 1 odd box it’ll usually offer the 5 part split still.
I only recently encountered situations where I was shipping 8 + 1 odd box and it wasn’t offering it.
For us, this started around early May.
To avoid placement fees on SPD or deliveries to FBA via UPS packages, we seem to have to send multiples of 5 per item with the same quantity inside each box.
I like how AVS_Vites called it “All Matching”. That term will help me explain it to employees better.
To avoid placement fees on LTL or deliveries to FBA via freight trucking, we have to send at least send 5 of each master box but can send 6, 10, 22, 68, and they are still splitting them up differently inside the 5 shipments. But sending less than 4 master boxes will disable the Amazon optimized 5-split for LTL.
Yea, LTL is annoying, splitting 2 pallets into 5 to avoid the fees but when you do the math, the extra work and freight expense is WELL worth it. Our batches for our best seller are 11K units.
Fees for that would be 3000 bucks… The extra freight equates to $650-$800.
Take the difference and add in the reduced FBA fee (until 10-1) - and you get a big win.
Something that Amazon most likely is not all that happy about. I think this placement fee BS blew up in their face financially.
To make it up to us, they will force all FBA volume sellers into AWD. Wait and see. Would be so happy to be wrong on this one.
What great timing for this comment and the email they just sent saying AWD now accepts expiration dated products.
You wanna have some fun? Click this link below and read the feedback for Carlyle Nutritionals. Scott Rudolph (son of the founder of Nature’s Bounty), owns the operation. From what I understand, they use AWD (part of the BETA which was also offered to us for perishable products, which we declined).
10-20 feedbacks a day for melted softgels / gummies. You won’t find anything like it anywhere else. Granted, they do a quarter of a billion a year on Amazon so ■■■■ is going to happen but this is incredible. They all get crossed out so just click on 1 Star even though it shows zero percent.
I’ve sold softgels in the past so I know firsthand how it’s a problem in the summer.
It’s going to be a problem for anybody, not just Amazon (though FBA is probably worse on average). If UPS leaves a package on the porch and it’s a hot sunny day it’s going to get melted.
I do wonder how much of that is actual profit though. Seems like most of their products are right around 10 bucks. After paying Amazon their 15% cut, FBA fees, and advertising costs, there’s probably not a lot left.
This has also affected us when we get small surpluses of a product. When the inbound placement fees were introduced, if we added a box of any size or quantity to a shipment that had 5+ boxes of another SKU, we wouldn’t be charged those. However, now, even if we send 10+ boxes of a specific ASIN, we can’t add a small additional box for a different ASIN without getting hit by the placement fees.
When you make your own stuff, at those volumes, your cost for almost any supplement is a buck or two. They are making lots of profit. They don’t do any advertising. Everything is dirt cheap and ranks itself. We do the same, although not at that volume, LOL
They do the 10 buck thing on purpose - 10% referral fee.
They just bought a bunch of brands from Clorox - Calm included.
Piping Rock (Carlyle) is a multi-billion dollar company. Their Food / Drug / Mass brand is Nature’s Truth - in almost every store.