West, Central, and East Regions when sending to FBA
We are west coast sellers for about 8 years now and we normally send LTL pallets. In the past, we had gotten lucky to be requested to send inventory to California and Nevada, this saved us a lot of money. Cost about $90-125/pallet.
All of last year we were asked to send to Illinois ($175-285. Worst than California and Nevada but doable... Now with the new placement fees in effect, we are now asked to send to Pennsylvania, very costly.
Now our carrier charges are double and we are now also hit with a placement fee.
I can select WEST placement and the placement fee price obviously goes up (with carrier price also going down)... it's actually $67 cheaper overall doing it this way and will probably be what we will select doing since it will travel less distance and items be checked in faster.
My question is, why does Amazon always change where they want our inventory to go? What determines this?
We sell small and low margin items and these swings in inbound shipping costs kill us.
West, Central, and East Regions when sending to FBA
We are west coast sellers for about 8 years now and we normally send LTL pallets. In the past, we had gotten lucky to be requested to send inventory to California and Nevada, this saved us a lot of money. Cost about $90-125/pallet.
All of last year we were asked to send to Illinois ($175-285. Worst than California and Nevada but doable... Now with the new placement fees in effect, we are now asked to send to Pennsylvania, very costly.
Now our carrier charges are double and we are now also hit with a placement fee.
I can select WEST placement and the placement fee price obviously goes up (with carrier price also going down)... it's actually $67 cheaper overall doing it this way and will probably be what we will select doing since it will travel less distance and items be checked in faster.
My question is, why does Amazon always change where they want our inventory to go? What determines this?
We sell small and low margin items and these swings in inbound shipping costs kill us.
2 replies
Seller_z3XfkorVSmnEY
"My question is, why does Amazon always change where they want our inventory to go? What determines this?"
It's based on inventory levels at different fulfillment centers and where they think customers are that are going to buy your product(s). That changes all the time.
For some of our inventory we have decided it's better to FBM.
TaylorR_Amazon
Thank you for posting @Seller_tncoXy8ryDMeH. @Seller_z3XfkorVSmnEY is correct.
You can test a couple ways of building your shipments such as:
- Create separate shipments for standard-size items, non-standard-size items, and each special handling category
- Ensure that the item mix and item quantities are equal across all boxes
- Increase the number of boxes
