🚨 West Coast Congestion Alert: IXDs and AWD are full

Fulfillment by Amazon Deciphering Amazon’s inventory management
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Put this in the wrong category and can’t figure out how to change it but the context is more important than the category.

Explains why our Stockton pallet sat for almost 3 months before it was force-checked-in with our SAS manager.

:rotating_light: West Coast Congestion Alert: IXDs and AWD are full :rotating_light:

If you’re sending inventory to West Coast facilities, it’s time to pay close attention.

The situation is critical, and it might just change how you navigate the rest of Q4.

Amazon’s West Coast facilities are facing severe congestion. To sum it up, AWD and all West IXDs are completely filled up, and backup options have reached their limits.

This has forced Amazon to take some drastic steps, including temporarily halting inbound shipments to certain facilities and others like:

• Reduced Fees for East Region: to encourage sellers to send inventory there, they lowered the inbound placement service fee for shipments to the East region by $0.05 per unit.

• Extended Shipment Closure Windows: For shipments created between August 7 and October 31, the automatic closure window has been extended to 90 days, and the abandoned shipment window is now 45 days.

So, if you don’t plan on sending certain shipments, cancel them to avoid unnecessary impacts on your capacity limits.

Digging Deeper: The real issue stems from Amazon’s cross-dock (IXD) network, which handles the distribution from national and regional cross docks (nIXD, rIXD) to fulfillment centers (FCs). With the high demand on the West Coast, these IXDs are now heavily congested, adding weeks to the inbound process.

Amazon’s solution? Redirect shipments East, but that comes with its own set of challenges.

Additionally to the bad news, I found that Amazon is launching and reconfiguring multiple warehouses in the middle of Q4 … right when sellers need things to run smoothly, which adds to the complexity. And remember, they said that the appointments in November and December will be (more) limited :roll_eyes:

This means the “just in time” inventory strategy many sellers rely on might not be the best option this season. If your shipments get stuck in this bottleneck, it could mean late deliveries, stockouts, and lost sales opportunities.

So, it might be time to adapt if your business relies on fast turnaround during the holidays. Will your inventory arrive on time?

And that’s what happens when you rely on Amazon for all your supply chain :upside_down_face:

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Looks like this applies to SPD shipments as well. Our last 2 shipments got a heavy discount to East coast warehouses, and the oldest one took over a month to get checked in. We shipped several cases and an entire shipment got sent from Florida to LAS1, and then took an eternity to show the units as Prime when they finally reached the correct placements. It’s gonna be a bumpy Q4 I think.

@ASV_Vites thanks for posting this information. At least we don’t feel alone :roll_eyes:

-Ana

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I can’t speak to the East Cost cross-docks but the central ones aren’t much better. I have a shipment that was picked up 10/17 and is already loaded on a trailer for delivery to Lansing, MI. The earliest delivery appointment they can get is 11/22 so my pallets are going to sit at the carriers hub for a month or so, then it’s anyone’s guess when they will be actually be checked in for receipt. The carrier said they have 40 full trailers in their yard waiting for appointments. Who knows how many trailers that facility has sitting in their yard that they haven’t checked in yet?

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What do you think the issue is? Labor shortage? There’s been concerns at Amazon about their warehouses burning out the local workforce and not being able to hire sufficiently for a while now. Is that finally happening?

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Most employers: The employee pool isn’t unlimited.
Andy Jassy:

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Probably a combination of factors. Why slave for Amazon on a timer, when you can doordash/uber as your own boss on your own schedule at 23-25$/hr in major metro areas. I was at an In-N-Out in Mill Valley last week, and the sign on the window was saying “now hiring full time at $25.50/Hr.”, but then again you have to commute an hour to get there because the average home price in Tiburon is probably in the $3M range.

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Well, doordash/uber is kind of apples to oranges since you have to use your own vehicle for it, and there’s also some safety concerns for being an uber driver, especially for women.

Regardless, Amazon’s a pretty terrible place to work (they do some pretty shoddy things even to their white collar staff) and I wonder if that’s starting to catch up to them.

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I seriously wonder if Amazon knew these planned reconfiguring activities were going to screw everything up which is why the limits were cut 50% more sharply this year over last. Also, the major push for AWD they made.

Could Amazon really be that stupid to screw around with their network in Q4??? I think it’s a good possibility.

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If AI says it will be better… well…

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Engage!

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Why should their stupidity regarding changes in Q4 be limited to those directly affecting sellers, such as the new Manage Inventory and Add Product pages?

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Amazon Vendors > Amazon Sellers. They both use the same facilities but our loosely associated competitor, has no reduction in inbound shipments nor do they have serious delays for their West Coast vendor inbound shipments on their recent PO’s.

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Are you trying to tell us that Amazon doesn’t treat everyone the same?

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I opened a case because I wanted to send a couple things to liquidations to open up capacity for other things. Can’t do so because items are in a “temporary location that cannot process removal orders”. So I did a little digging…

About 90% of my SKUs have a good chunk of inventory at one of these temporary locations that cannot process removal orders.

If these items are in a temporary location and I can’t create a removal order, then how can these same units be retrieved when someone wants to order something? They can’t. Which means that my potential sales can’t be made because Amazon ■■■■■■ up when it came to planning this ■■■■ pile of nonsense. So I am paying peak fulfillment fees for inventory that is just going to sit there until Armageddon hits. All this after we were told to “stock up and have six months of inventory ready to go for the holiday season”.

This completely explains the decrease in sales compared to the last couple years. As a seasonal seller, this blows.

■■■■ Amazon

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How do you identify these temporary locations? I had a shipment delivered and received 90 days ago that is still in reserved status, and not available for sale. Have opened 3 cases on it and get the same BS template answers. I’m wondering if they are in a ‘temporary location’.

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It appears from my chat that there is no room inside the actual fulfillment centers so I am assuming they are sitting in a trailer or some other location that is in their possession but are not actually in the warehouse itself. She was very vague about it and couldn’t give me any more information.

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OK, I’m suspicious that my shipment is either misplaced or sitting in one of those trailers.

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The inventory shows that it is “available”… however it’s not really “available” in my opinion if I can’t create a removal order.

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