Hi,
I’m creating an inbound shipment. Amazon presented 3 options: 4 shipments, 3 shipments, and 1 shipment. See the screenshot below:
According to Amazon Help page, this started on March 1st. Basically Amazon is passing the inventory distribution costs to us. I guess there is no way to minimize this extra cost, right? This placement fee is also charged on a 1 pallet shipment 
This increased cost would affect the price of our products. Do you guys increase your price? I’m considering.
This has been a topic of ever-increasing concern over in the NSFE & and related discussion venues ever since the 5Dec`23 Amazon News Headline first brooked dawn; it has also found no little play in the SAS Forum itself.
Much ink has been spilt on the topic here and there - including workarounds touted by some extremely-experienced sellers who I’m quite sure know what they’re talking about - but as far as I can tell, it’s unlikely that the dust will settle before Q4 of 2024.
I would look here at my example. I haven’t put into practice yet but there are ways to avoid this and actually make more money if the stars align starting on 4-15. We loaded FBA up the week before March 1st on purpose to let the dust settle / take the biggest advantage of the rebates which are also now gone.
If your products aren’t large, and you do decent volume, you can work this with just a little more work on your end.
Hi Dogtamer, glad to see your reply as always 
Do you have a link to the workarounds that they have?
Ah ok. So this topic wasn’t discussed much here. I guess most people here are FBM. Hence this doesn’t affect them.
Oh… It’s being discussed. Haha
Check my link upthread
That’s smart. Sadly in my case, the rebates weren’t enough to offset the extra costs. Also I forgot to load up my inventory before March 1st
Thanks (most of my products are standard size tier). This has to be done before March 1st, right?
There are some of us here, in the SAS, who exclusively make Offer-Listings upon Amazon Global Catalog PDPs (‘Amazonese’/‘Amazonish’ for “Product Detail Page”) via the FBM/MFN (“Fulfilled By Merchant”/“Merchant Fulfilled Network” in ‘Amazonese’) avenue.
There are some of here, in the SAS, who exclusively make Offer-Listings upon Amazon Global Catalog PDPs via the FBA/AFN (“Fulfilled By Amazon”/“Amazon Fulfillment Network” in ‘Amazonese’) avenue.
There are more of us here, in the SAS, who might utilize both of those options if the number-crunching calculations make sense for the bottom line.
Absolutely not. Results will vary and I haven’t tested out my example above just yet. I have a feeling it will work most times but not always.
Careful planning, trying to appease Amazon’s will and understanding why they are doing this, coupled with the reduced FBA fees come April 15th should result in a mostly margin-neutral experience.
That’s a glass half full thinking which is hard for me to do. It’s rare that the stars align on Amazon but I also want to believe that the programming isn’t perfect and I don’t believe it was even tested in real-world scenarios very well, if at all. There may be some further tweaking done by Amazon to make this a little better.
With that said, Amazon’s #1 goal is to make money and to shape the Amazon selling community, who sells what, where, and how, and drive this marketplace in one direction, the direction Amazon wants.
I don’t have a crystal ball but I know that relying on Amazon to be your partner, and a significant amount of your revenue is a terrible idea.
There were lots of people on the OSFE that used to spout this off on every other post they wrote, some of those people have come to Seller’s Ask Sellers. I used to laugh it off and dismiss it. Years later, I came to the realization that they were 100% right. I’m sure we haven’t seen the worst of what Amazon has instore for their “partners”.
I’ll close with; fool around with different qty’s and shipping templates with this new system, THINK about ways around what’s being presented to you, and take every possible advantage you can to exploit any hole you might find in how this has been set up. Also, never give up! Not saying that in terms of Amazon, but in life and biz in general.
Be Well,
Steve
Sometimes, you don’t have a choice. I sold exclusively through dealers for decades, but when one dealer violated his agreement, and started selling on Amazon, I had no choice but to step in and do the job right, as he could not keep up with the demand, and the product went out of stock on Amazon multiple times. The number of emails asking me why the product was out-of-stock on Amazon convinced me that a significant number of customers preferred to buy via Amazon, rather than from the dealers.
One assumes that these are “prime” subscribers, who enjoy free shipping.
But Amazon just IS a significant fraction of the sales, not equal to the larger dealers, but large enough to be a respectable “dealer” in their own right.
One strategy some companies use to manage Amazon is to allow their dealers to sell on Amazon provided they follow MAP. You’ll see this quite often when there’s 10 - 20 people on a listing all at the same price. The brand owner can still manage detail pages through brand registry. This way it pushes off the headache of dealing with Amazon onto their already existing distribution network.
For brands that distribute outside of Amazon it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start pushing off this stuff to dealers as Amazon becomes worse and worse to deal with.
