1500% increase to ship products to Amazon Warehouse? Really?
I realize that on March 1, 2024 Amazon made some placement fee/policy changes for sellers. But I went from paying less than $10 to ship a 20x20x20, 40 lbs products package to amazon warehouse to now paying $150 to ship the same box, including the new "minimal shipment splits" placement fee. That's 15x more to ship to Amazon! 1500% more! That's just insane. This obviously really kills our margins.
Anyone else struggling with this new fee structure as well? I can't wrap my head around how outrageous this is.
See below, placement fees went from 0 to $123. Carrier cost went from 9.74 to 25.91. Exact same package.
1500% increase to ship products to Amazon Warehouse? Really?
I realize that on March 1, 2024 Amazon made some placement fee/policy changes for sellers. But I went from paying less than $10 to ship a 20x20x20, 40 lbs products package to amazon warehouse to now paying $150 to ship the same box, including the new "minimal shipment splits" placement fee. That's 15x more to ship to Amazon! 1500% more! That's just insane. This obviously really kills our margins.
Anyone else struggling with this new fee structure as well? I can't wrap my head around how outrageous this is.
See below, placement fees went from 0 to $123. Carrier cost went from 9.74 to 25.91. Exact same package.
154 antwoorden
Seller_DbcsSDaMHenTu
I am not getting placement fees since I split shipment but the shipping cost now is almost 80% higher than before. I will stop using fba and ship myself..
Seller_RgYWPYrMonzKq
Same here. I'm not sure how many more Amazon fees we can absorb and still stay in business.
Have already raised our prices to try and off-set some of the fees. Higher prices will mean lower sales.
Seller_ouo9WDmWKw2sY
Was thinking of utilizing FBA again. Now not so much.
Seller_kPYn2eaKfbniK
But just think, they lowered the fee of standard size items by .20! See, FBA isn't all that bad.
Ive switched to mostly FBA for most stuff. Im not shipping in 1000 items anyways, but i use the 2nd shipping option to get my shipment to the same warehouse ive always used. It ends up being about 10$ more. Im lucky where I can not worry about a charge like that. Seeing people like you have to pay 150$ is absolutely insane, and this isnt the highest ive seen people have to ship now. They are pushing everyone to FBM, and its unfortunate, but at least theres a little more margin.
Dominic_Amazon
Hi @Seller_GvTxrjwpRZeC8,
Dominic from Amazon here, would like to weigh in on this. It looks like the placement fee is about .13 cents per unit. Starting April 15th, on average, we will decrease FBA fulfillment fee rates for standard-sized products by $0.20 per unit and for Large Bulky-sized products by $0.61 per unit.
This fee decrease should offset this placement fee and the overall cost for shipments should not increase.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Dominic
Seller_LVZcgxAgZ2xBv
This directly contradicts Amazon's own announcement of what we sellers can expect after April 15.
You just said that "we will decrease FBA fulfillment fee rates for standard-sized products by $0.20 per unit and for Large Bulky-sized products by $0.61 per unit."
However, Amazon's own announcement says inbound placement fees are on average 35% greater than the supposed FBA fee decrease for standard items, and 159% greater for bulky items.
Here's what the Amazon announcement said about the average size of inbound placement fees:
"... $0.27 per unit for standard-sized products and $1.58 per unit for Large Bulky-sized products."
In other words, according to Amazon's own words, inbound fees are far greater than the decrease in FBA fees.
And we haven't even begun to feel "low inventory" fees on April 1 ... in addition to existing fees for too much inventory, and ever-rising PPC costs.
Seller_GvTxrjwpRZeC8
Spot on. Dominic_Amazon, please address this response of inbound fees being much higher than the decrease in FBA fees....
Dominic_Amazon
Hi @Seller_GvTxrjwpRZeC8, @Seller_LVZcgxAgZ2xBv,
This is one single shipment with a placement fee. Not all shipments will have a placement fee. Sellers can qualify for Split Shipments that will decrease the overall inbound placement fee or get rid of the fee all together. This occurring, along with the FBA Fee decrease would lead to a net decrease in fees.
Dominic
Seller_vVd1bWm3E084w
The worst part is you can split the shipments where you can have 5 shipments. Then amazon still tells you to ship to 2 warehouses instead of 5 and you are hit with a placement charge. If there was a way to know how to split the orders to erase this placement charge then it would not be nearly as bad. You can spend many hours splitting your order to try to get the right configuration and get nowhere.
Seller_rr45B3vDsauwa
Yes sellers can qualify for splite shipments if you do everything right, spend more time figuring out how many boxes, what goes in each box, etc because Amazon refuses to tell us. You make us find the magic sauce to get rid of the fee. Making our labor go up. So while your statement is true, it's leaving a lot out. What you mean to say "sellers can qualify for split shipmetns that will decrease the fee's if yo uguess what we want in each box, and how many boxes....if you can't then pay the fee'. that would be more accurate and is the big problem with all sellers right now. You guys are not transparent on how to eliminte the fee's. That's like Amazon telling shareholders "you'll get a dividend if you own the right number of shares....good luck guessing the number".
Seller_WsdULSSIajCRd
Umm, check my shipping history, nearly all of mine do since the change, not matter how we break up the shipment or what we select as our shipping options.
Seller_uJo8XNzWYLBfo
This is NOT true for you to tell Sellers on the forum. We have shipped 3 shipments in the past 2 weeks and every single one had a placement fee. Amazon was kind enough to offer us a $1.00 discount to ship to 2 different locations.
We have paid $550 in just Placement Fees in 2 weeks.
Sorry but there ARE and WILL be placement fees for almost everyone and every order.
Seller_57YnZnUTp8VfB
Yep Amazon is really penny pinching me from all sides. I sell low priced items and back in December they lowered the small and light price point to < 10 whereas before it was <12. Completely destroyed a lot of my SKUs and had to stop selling them.
I pivoted to slightly higher priced point products but they are heavy so I figured I rent a small warehouse and ship pallets instead of boxes as it'll be more cost effective.
Now with this new product placement fee they are having me ship 5 pallets vs 1 pallet all the way to the east coast when I am in California. 1 Pallet would usually cost me $100-150 but now with this new inventory placement, it cost me $200-400 per pallet.
I wish I can just "Raise the prices" but the products I sell, I am not the only seller. It's bad enough with constant pricing wars, but now I have to deal with this and next month the low inventory fees.
On top of this, you have the high return rate, the lost inventory when sending to FBA, the replacement products sent without your approval because Amazon employees don't package your product correctly so it breaks and they send a replacement on your behalf EVEN THOUGH you sent it to FBA completely new and unbroken.
I think I will stop focusing on Amazon and figure another route this year.
Seller_x6o9Gvi16YLhJ
@Seller_GvTxrjwpRZeC8how many boxes are you sending in this shipment?
I am also studying it with my own products on what could be better optmized:
- Create a new Master Carton with a lower amount of units so I can spread those shipments avoiding the Placement Fee
OR
- Increasing the amount of units per Carton and actually paying those fees (if it's cheaper of course).
Have you checked about that? What are your thoughts?
Seller_WrMwp7lazozxc
Amazon wants domestic sellers to raise prices so the Chinese sellers can go from 75-90% of their 3rd party market place.
It's working.
They want to be Ali-Amazon.
The consumer loses every time they raise prices for domestic sellers.
Seller_WyTu6txIp3Iju
We are moving to Merchant fulfilled on many of our products because of this. If you have master cartons with lots of units because they are smaller items, and you only need to ship in 1 carton at a time, Amazon is going to now charge this dumb fee....and if you ship in the required FIVE shipments you then get stuck with excess inventory fees. They are basically screwing over the sellers again because they want us to pay for the cost of moving product between their distribution centers.
Seller_yQopcgdElry96
I am no longer going to restock my FBA listings. My shipments went from $10-$15 to $192. And then to get word that Amazon will begin implementing low inventory fees next month? I'm done with FBA. I will sell down the remaining inventory I have at FBA, bring back whatever doesn't bef it hits storage fee and just leave up listings for FBM.. I will look at other places to sell bec I'm tired of footing the bill for Amazon's global expansion..
