Why does amazon punish FBM when i am way more efficient than they are?
I have been selling on amazon for a very long time. Up until a month ago i was 100% FBA. But my business has suffered the entire time i was on FBA. Now that im on FBM im thriving. But their metrics are unrealistic for FBM sellers. Why am i penalized if the customer receives their package early or late if i drop it off when im supposed to? I should not be responsible for a delivery time after i drop it off. I should only be responsible if I promise a handling time and dont meet it. I have no control over a package when i had it over to a shipping carrier.
Here are a lot of the issues i faced with FBA that i no longer have to deal with:
- in the last 12 months Amazon has lost over $6000 of inventory that tracking clearly shows as arriving to their fulfillment centers. They require "Proof of Purchase" but all of my items are used. I dont have receipts for any of it because it all cash transactions or trade ins. But since i cant show that they say sorry, not sorry, then close the case and my $6000 of inventory disappears into the wind.
- It takes 1-2 weeks for my FBA items to arrive at a fulfillment center, another 1-2 weeks to check it, 2-4 weeks for FC transfer before it become available for sale. It takes 1-2 weeks to sell and then it takes amazon another 1-3 weeks to ship the items. THEN i have to wait 7-14 days after it arrived to the customer before i get paid. That entire process takes 2-3 months. What business can operate with that much of a delay in cash flow. Under my own fulfillment the items go out the day they are bought and then if it arrived early i get an OTDR strike. What is up with that lol. I am able to get it to customers 2-3 months earlier than amazon does but im the problem?
- Amazon damages so many of my items when they finally ship it to the customers. They require that i not use bubble wrap or bubble mailers to protect video games like PS1 games that are in solid plastic jewel cases that are very easily broken if not protected well. I have not had a single FBA PS1 game not be broken by amazon. I stopped selling those because they were always returned. They have also broken multiple video game consoles when sending it to the customers and also when sending it back to me. They once put 5 FBA returned video game consoles into a big box without any protection at all. The consoles were in pieces when it arrived back to my shop. They were completely ruined and it was $600 of inventory that i lost. Seller support did not care either. They told me that i cannot prove that the items arrived like that even though i provided pics of the box it arrived in before i even opened it. You could clearly tell that no steps were taken to protect my inventory before the box was even opened.
- A customer once claimed that an item i sold was counterfeit and amazon froze the ASIN from being sold on my account. They required "Proof of Purchase" but again, all my items are used so i didnt have it. The item i sold was 100% authentic, we check every item for authenticity before it goes out and get rid of fakes. I know the item i sold was 100% real. Amazon seized the other items under that ASIN that i had for sale and held them until i could provide the "Proof of Purchase". After the deadline passed and i wasn't able to provide that they destroyed the items they seized instead of sending them back to me. How are they even legally allowed to do stuff like that? They did not even check the item themselves to see if they were counterfeit, they just took the word of the customer. They issued a refund and let them keep the item and i lost $600 of inventory as well as getting a negative mark on my account health page.
- Sometimes FBA items just randomly disappear from inventory without a trace. Then a few months later my software that tracks inventory discrepancies submits a lost inventory claim to amazon where they respond with the good ol fashion "Proof of Purchase" request. It seems intentional. There is no way that $200 games just disappear. Its never cheap games, there has to be an employee or something taking the items.
-I have multiple "Shipping problems" on my account which i know are 100% false because we label the items with amazons barcodes as we are loading the boxes. There is absolutely no way that we "Forgot" an item or sent too many in. We print all the barcodes of the items going in those boxes before packing them and then fill the boxes with the items printed out. If there are labels left over at the end then we update the inventory shipment to remove the extra items from the list. If there are extra games on the table then that means it was not properly added to inventory when we clicked "Add Product" and we need to do it again. The people checking in the items lose a lot of my inventory and i never see it again.
-(This is the issue that broke the camels back for me and made me switch to 100% FBM): 2 months ago I shipped in over 1200 items in 12+ boxes. They all went to the same fulfillment center. Those 1200 items got stuck in "Transit" for over 4 weeks even though tracking showed it had been delivered 4 weeks prior. It made cashflow go down to 10% of what it should have been because none of those items could be sold. It put my business is a terrifying spot and it threatened the entire thing. I was not able to make payroll because of this issue. The cashflow crisis caused by this spilled over into different aspects of the business that were not related to Amazon. It was a panic moment and I swore off FBA forever because i don't ever want to go through that again.
There are a lot more examples of how FBA almost ruined my business but i cannot think of all of them right now. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Have you had to change to FBM too. I feel like the unrealistic demands put on FBM sellers is a potential threat to my business too but only time will tell. I think going forward i am only going to use FBA for overstock items. I dont know how companies operate using FBA as their primary market. Its a cashflow nightmare. Amazon cannot even meet their own standards. They take 1-2 weeks to ship an item. It takes me 0 days but im the one that needs to improve?
Why does amazon punish FBM when i am way more efficient than they are?
I have been selling on amazon for a very long time. Up until a month ago i was 100% FBA. But my business has suffered the entire time i was on FBA. Now that im on FBM im thriving. But their metrics are unrealistic for FBM sellers. Why am i penalized if the customer receives their package early or late if i drop it off when im supposed to? I should not be responsible for a delivery time after i drop it off. I should only be responsible if I promise a handling time and dont meet it. I have no control over a package when i had it over to a shipping carrier.
Here are a lot of the issues i faced with FBA that i no longer have to deal with:
- in the last 12 months Amazon has lost over $6000 of inventory that tracking clearly shows as arriving to their fulfillment centers. They require "Proof of Purchase" but all of my items are used. I dont have receipts for any of it because it all cash transactions or trade ins. But since i cant show that they say sorry, not sorry, then close the case and my $6000 of inventory disappears into the wind.
- It takes 1-2 weeks for my FBA items to arrive at a fulfillment center, another 1-2 weeks to check it, 2-4 weeks for FC transfer before it become available for sale. It takes 1-2 weeks to sell and then it takes amazon another 1-3 weeks to ship the items. THEN i have to wait 7-14 days after it arrived to the customer before i get paid. That entire process takes 2-3 months. What business can operate with that much of a delay in cash flow. Under my own fulfillment the items go out the day they are bought and then if it arrived early i get an OTDR strike. What is up with that lol. I am able to get it to customers 2-3 months earlier than amazon does but im the problem?
- Amazon damages so many of my items when they finally ship it to the customers. They require that i not use bubble wrap or bubble mailers to protect video games like PS1 games that are in solid plastic jewel cases that are very easily broken if not protected well. I have not had a single FBA PS1 game not be broken by amazon. I stopped selling those because they were always returned. They have also broken multiple video game consoles when sending it to the customers and also when sending it back to me. They once put 5 FBA returned video game consoles into a big box without any protection at all. The consoles were in pieces when it arrived back to my shop. They were completely ruined and it was $600 of inventory that i lost. Seller support did not care either. They told me that i cannot prove that the items arrived like that even though i provided pics of the box it arrived in before i even opened it. You could clearly tell that no steps were taken to protect my inventory before the box was even opened.
- A customer once claimed that an item i sold was counterfeit and amazon froze the ASIN from being sold on my account. They required "Proof of Purchase" but again, all my items are used so i didnt have it. The item i sold was 100% authentic, we check every item for authenticity before it goes out and get rid of fakes. I know the item i sold was 100% real. Amazon seized the other items under that ASIN that i had for sale and held them until i could provide the "Proof of Purchase". After the deadline passed and i wasn't able to provide that they destroyed the items they seized instead of sending them back to me. How are they even legally allowed to do stuff like that? They did not even check the item themselves to see if they were counterfeit, they just took the word of the customer. They issued a refund and let them keep the item and i lost $600 of inventory as well as getting a negative mark on my account health page.
- Sometimes FBA items just randomly disappear from inventory without a trace. Then a few months later my software that tracks inventory discrepancies submits a lost inventory claim to amazon where they respond with the good ol fashion "Proof of Purchase" request. It seems intentional. There is no way that $200 games just disappear. Its never cheap games, there has to be an employee or something taking the items.
-I have multiple "Shipping problems" on my account which i know are 100% false because we label the items with amazons barcodes as we are loading the boxes. There is absolutely no way that we "Forgot" an item or sent too many in. We print all the barcodes of the items going in those boxes before packing them and then fill the boxes with the items printed out. If there are labels left over at the end then we update the inventory shipment to remove the extra items from the list. If there are extra games on the table then that means it was not properly added to inventory when we clicked "Add Product" and we need to do it again. The people checking in the items lose a lot of my inventory and i never see it again.
-(This is the issue that broke the camels back for me and made me switch to 100% FBM): 2 months ago I shipped in over 1200 items in 12+ boxes. They all went to the same fulfillment center. Those 1200 items got stuck in "Transit" for over 4 weeks even though tracking showed it had been delivered 4 weeks prior. It made cashflow go down to 10% of what it should have been because none of those items could be sold. It put my business is a terrifying spot and it threatened the entire thing. I was not able to make payroll because of this issue. The cashflow crisis caused by this spilled over into different aspects of the business that were not related to Amazon. It was a panic moment and I swore off FBA forever because i don't ever want to go through that again.
There are a lot more examples of how FBA almost ruined my business but i cannot think of all of them right now. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Have you had to change to FBM too. I feel like the unrealistic demands put on FBM sellers is a potential threat to my business too but only time will tell. I think going forward i am only going to use FBA for overstock items. I dont know how companies operate using FBA as their primary market. Its a cashflow nightmare. Amazon cannot even meet their own standards. They take 1-2 weeks to ship an item. It takes me 0 days but im the one that needs to improve?
25 replies
Seller_CW0P5hgbsiqWX
Well, it looks like you learned your lesson the hard way.
While all the hype about FBA encourages sellers to use it, the reality is FBA is a product BY DESIGN, for Amazon to extract as much of a seller's profit as they can get.
FBM sellers on the other hand do make much more in profit. They only pay one, per-known up front commission per sale.
If the business is managed correctly, staying within the parameters of the rated areas is easy. We only use FBM selling and after 2.5 million sales, our metrics still remain within the parameters as the first day we started.
Seller_RBhUBoAVfCNRG
My biggest grip is Amazon oversells my FBA listings (yes I verified that I had pending sales but 0 units, not even units on the way). They also pre-sell FBA listings when you do send units in, creating multi week delays in fulfillment (Ive gotten around this by messing up my fair market pricing so the FBA listing gets deactivated).
I do FBA/FBM for all my listings. I just wish they would re-route FBA orders to FBM when they cant fulfill correctly. Amazon still gets paid. Instead, the order goes unfulfilled until the custom cancels.
Seller_zZsW8dK4Cx378
On the product disappearing from their warehouse, threaten to file a police report. Give a deadline, and what you are going to send to the police if you are not reimbursed according to Amazon terms and conditions.
I had a similar issue years ago when I used to sell to Amazon (not FBA). I submitted to them all the information of the product, weight, dims as processed from my warehouse, what their shipper (UPS in this case) had for weight and dims internally, and what the weights dims were received at the different warehouses that had product "short shipped". They all matched up. The items received were off, but the weights and dims matched up. So we had more than reasonable suspicion to file a police report for theft.
That was enough information to file a police report for suspected theft in their warehouses by their employees. The secret is not to indict Amazon, as you will lose that battle on lawyer fees. Go after their warehouse employees, they do not want police showing up at their warehouse.
I did call the police department in the town of the largest Amazon warehouse issue I had. I ended up never hiring a lawyer, and never had to file the police reports. I just must have found the people at Amazon that knew I would follow through on my threats of what I will do. I was paid in full on every single short paid invoice. And then legally cancelled Amazon's account due to late payment, which was according to the terms and conditions of their account with my company.
Important to note, I was never a jerk. I was firm, but not a jerk. You can't make it personal if you want a good business outcome. A lot of phone calls (to individual warehouses as well) and emails. Now I just do FBM, mostly to just get rid of inventory and to protect the brands that I do business with that are still on Amazon.
Seller_8tIiPf8FDl1dC
What is TRULY amazing to me is that nothing is ever done about these problems.
I constantly face the same issues that you listed - I'm sure that EVERY SINGLE FBA MERCHANT would agree. It's a constant thing. Yet Amazon not only does NOTHING to address these problems on their part, they blame them on us. Worse still, they are doubling down by relying more and more on bots and AI, which only increase the error rate. I guess they figure that they don't need to care, the cost for their errors is borne by us, and they cut their costs by doing so.
I wish I could do like you did - switch to FBM - but we sell brand new name brand goods, so we're one of many sellers (often several dozen) that sell the same items. When most of them are FBA, FBM sellers rarely (if ever) get the buy box. As a result many FBA sellers are stuck with this terrible service that bleeds us at every turn.
Seller_4a0fT0P2nCPQq
Yes, same here with almost every issue you listed. We all go through it...and I'm a small time seller. We are seriously considering going mostly back to FBM....FBA is a mess!
Seller_Ha6JyVvDK6Ybs
Went from 99% FBA to 1% FBA and 99% FBM last year and to 20% Ebay and 80% FBM in 2024 as it is clear how Amazon business is pushing small sellers out in favor of Alibaba Knock Off product sellers with made up garage branded items.
Seller_W5lcjiX4XULId
We've tried FBA in the past and its just not something that works with large items. We do FBM, and do it well out of 2 warehouses.
After attending Accelerate this year, its shocking how much they push for FBA and all other Amazon services. I can see it working for small items, just not for ours.
Seller_W6vNnb9Dv4v3c
Gamerz---Excellent topic and I thank You for spending the time to educate all of us. I am totally FBM and have been for close to two decades. I have never used the service of FBA. I do not trust Amazon or their employees one little bit.
The fact that you have two thumbs down shows there are still some dimwits in the Amazon forum.
Seller_uJo8XNzWYLBfo
FBA has gotten horrible in the past 2 years. I am not sure what has changed in the last 2 years. They constantly lose products shipped in to FBA. They say you ship in more than you buy from the manufacture, they refuse to refund lost product, they ship late, they relabel your products wrong so buyers are getting the wrong products.
Not sure whats going inside their warehouses.
Seller_1mZVNsmAStisR
I have been a mix of FBM & FBA since I started. We make more $ on FBM, but lose the algo love on FBA/Prime. Most of our items are longer that 18" so it's better to ship from our own barn.
If I were you I would sign up GETIDA ASAP to scan your account to get that $6K+ back. They take 25%, but it's better than nothing. Do it ASAP.
Also, I have noticed that if you send FBA inventory, send it UPS. It may cost a little more than pallet shipments, but they get checked in MUCH faster.
