Seller Fulfilled Prime
What are your thoughts on this?
After spending some time trying to make sense of it, in what way is it beneficial to sellers? The cost of the postage is much higher and so just takes all the profits on low value items. Increase prices to cover this and you can’t compete.
I don’t see it adding sales, they have died.
Seller Fulfilled Prime
What are your thoughts on this?
After spending some time trying to make sense of it, in what way is it beneficial to sellers? The cost of the postage is much higher and so just takes all the profits on low value items. Increase prices to cover this and you can’t compete.
I don’t see it adding sales, they have died.
63 replies
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
The advantage is that you can sell things as Prime, that you normally wouldn’t.
i.e. a slow selling item. An overlarge item and so on.
Holding stock yourself, rather than having it at Amazon’s warehouse, thus enabling you to sell on other sites without holding extra stock.
There are advantages to it.
Small and light is far better for small items, so I wouldn’t even consider SFP for that kind of item.
Even some smaller fast moving items are much more economical via standard FBA.
But as to prices for postage, that very much depends on the courier that you use for SFP.
Just because it says that they do it for you, doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate prices.
I’ve just been approved and am looking much more closely at it at the moment.
They have basically told me that I will using RM tracked. Already have an account etc, so no real issue to use them. For overlarge items, they are happy for me to use Parcelforce.
So keep looking, it may still be worth it for you.
Seller_EJIX7rqDNQJi2
I have been doing seller fulfilled prime for almost 2 years. I do not know how are the rules different for UK, sellers, but I am able to set my own shipping cost for the 1 day delivery or second day delivery. I charge 120€ for shipping.
Seller_YE40LRis5d3lq
Yesterday I converted all my SKU’s to Prime…and free shipping for all customers…I have not sold a single thing…I sell CD/DVD music.I have NEVER not sold a unit in a day…eg 9 years I have always sold…I am the exclusive seller (as we are the creators of the product) we win the buy box 98% of the time…worst sales day ever…what have I done wrong?
Seller_YE40LRis5d3lq
I’m off…its crazy. I raised a case with Amazon they emailed me saying we had a telephone conversation but go cut of…??? we didn’t have any conversation??? Any no explanation for sales dropping through the floor but a long list of criteria I have to meet… The contracts with Royal Mail for tracking plus 24 & 48 hr. The main one though is the stipulation that we have to have a collection daily??? Last time I enquired you have to be shipping 2000 items a month or was it a week…this is totally ludicrous. Some days I ship as little as 5 CD’s…RM aren’t going to come up 3 flights of stairs in a town centre to pick up 5 CD’s…None of this was really explained…Why offer it to sellers like me…they know my shipping habits. Waste of time.
Seller_YE40LRis5d3lq
You get price Amazon pricing alerts making two items different prices… I’ve had them…they de list until you fix them.
Seller_3nYDEKuPvlpTC
As the postage costs will eat all the profit. Amazon SFP is no good for small low value items. Also it means that amazon will collect the prime subscription from buyers and you will pay all costs and will have the hassle of meeting the criteria.
Therefore FBA is much better in this situation.
SFP is good for expensive items such as TV, laptops, jewellery…, the seller will be able to save £20 or more on FBA fee and may pay extra few ponds for postage so the saving is huge and worth it, also is good for controlling the fragile expensive items. Otherwise FBA is much better.
Moreover, I found that all the instructions about the criteria and the help from Amazon seller support regarding understanding of the programme and how meet the criteria, is rubbish, messy not true and not helpful
Seller_saK5Ah2SaNYjL
We were invited and accepted for SFP. I was thinking of using if for some of our higher priced items.
They did say that Tracked 24/48 were the only options.
It’s a shame because some of our items are too large for RM and we get excellent next day rates with our current courier. Also, I used Tracked 24 in the past and found the delivery time was often much longer than First Class post and less reliable. We had one small TR24 parcel take 9 days.
Seller_saK5Ah2SaNYjL
Does anyone here use other carriers than RM TR24 / TR48 for SFP?
I just wondered as I had recently bought some “Prime” items on my buying account where I have Prime membership. I didn’t look closely when buying but both were SFP.
One item came with APC and the other has just arrived with DPD. Both packages were 1 to 2kg.
We sell 95% FBA at the moment but it would be nice to sell our personalised items with a SFP option. It’s not possible to sell those items FBA.
Seller_tA6LDnoadbRLf
hi, I am about to set up a royal mail business account due to my hermes putting the price up for the 1-2 kg category and having to use tracked 24 / 48 for prime.I phoned royal mail and they suggested the click and drop service for me, will amazon accept this to sell through prime?What is the average weight that you normally send as I am going to have to check if it is all worth doing,it sounds a bit of a nightmare to set up as I thought it might be,a lot of your thoughts crossed my mind,prices may have to go up but then you can’t raise them due to competition and some sellers sell ridiculously low,I’m sure they do not work out their costs properly as sometimes its not far from the wholesaler price,I’ve also concluded fba is not worth doing for my business,I hope sales are picking up for you after all the effort you have put in 
Seller_3nYDEKuPvlpTC
Only Rm tracked 24/48 accepted, the reason is that at the moment amazon only able to integrate tracked 24/48 on seller central which gives amazon a full integrated tracking for each order. Amazon will integrate more services and carriers in the future.
