Amazon Urges Sellers to Pack FBA Inbounds Carefully

Amazon issued a reminder to third-party sellers who ship inventory to its warehouses: pack your shipments properly so it can ship and process them more efficiently.

“We want to remind you to take care when you pack your pallets for your shipments,” it wrote. “If you pack according to our recommendations, we can fit more inventory in each truck and process your shipments to fulfillment centers more efficiently.”

The marketplace has undergone unexpected stresses in recent weeks at volumes usually reserved for the holiday shopping season due to the coronavirus pandemic. For several weeks, Amazon wasn’t accepting most inbound shipments from FBA merchants as it struggled to fulfill essential goods (household staples and medical supplies).

Amazon is known for its operational efficiency, and dealing with third-party sellers who come in all sizes and levels of experience, it must feel at times like they are herding cats.

Sometimes Amazon resorts to fees to get its message about FBA efficiency across, such as its long-term storage fees to improve inventory-turn in its warehouses – so merchants are advised to heed Amazon’s advice.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.