Placement Fees / Shipment Costs Issue for Small Business
Hello everyone!
It appears that we have to choose between HIGH placement fees or HIGH shipment fees. I can avoid the placement fees by shipping to 5+ warehouses, however shipping to that many addresses drastically increases my shipping costs. The .20 decrease in regular FBA fees doesn't come close to offsetting the cost of either of these options.
I even tried to set up an LTL shipment, but it doesn't help because I cant choose the warehouses as it is only cost effective for me to do LTL for about 15 specific warehouse or so.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this cost effective? Otherwise, I can only think of dramatically increasing prices which will probably dramatically hurt my sales.
Placement Fees / Shipment Costs Issue for Small Business
Hello everyone!
It appears that we have to choose between HIGH placement fees or HIGH shipment fees. I can avoid the placement fees by shipping to 5+ warehouses, however shipping to that many addresses drastically increases my shipping costs. The .20 decrease in regular FBA fees doesn't come close to offsetting the cost of either of these options.
I even tried to set up an LTL shipment, but it doesn't help because I cant choose the warehouses as it is only cost effective for me to do LTL for about 15 specific warehouse or so.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this cost effective? Otherwise, I can only think of dramatically increasing prices which will probably dramatically hurt my sales.
0 replies
KJ_Amazon
Hello @Seller_Zlm5rebvBCEmm Thank you for your feedback and questions about the 2024 FBA inbound placement service fee.
Many sellers are discussing these updates across the forums.
One thing to note is that starting April 15, 2024, we will decrease FBA fulfillment fees for standard-size products by $0.20 per unit and for Large Bulky-size products by $0.61 per unit, on average.
For an overview of all 2024 US selling fee changes, go to amazon.com/selling-fee-changes.
Factors that affect the number of inbound options include the following:
- Whether your shipment includes a mix of standard-size items, non-standard-size items, or special handling categories
- Whether each box contains the same mix and quantities of SKUs
- Quantities and number of boxes for each item
- Geographical demand
To maximize the number of inbound options, try the following:
- 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
Seller_0HWFyymdBDrkk
It is a very simple and basic was to AVOID the PLACEMENT FEES. There is not hidden science. It very simple if you send a single sku in less than 4 boxes you will be charged the placement fee. no matter how many boxes you send in and no matter how many are in each box.
Let me explain it this way. If I have 4 sku. A, B,C,D
ONE sku needs to be in 4 boxes just by itself
Box 1 Sku A
Box 2 Sku A
Box 3 Sku A
Box 4 Sku A
_____________NOW ANY OTHER BOXES AND ANY OTHER COMBINATION OF SKU IN THE BOXES will qualify you for the free inbound placement plan. So
Box 5 Sku B, C, D
Box 6 Sku A, D
and so on. the quantity does not matter, so you could send in 4 boxes with 1 item in each box it would qualifty you for the no fee inbound.
Hope that helps.
****One note if your shipping plan like my example has 6 different shipments. You MUST send in all 6 shipments to the location on the label provided. if you say only send to 5 locations because you sent 2 boxes to your favorite FBA warehouse thinking you would be able to beat the sytstem. Think again it will blacklist you and you wont be able to send anywhere for free until you send that missing box to the fba location you skipped
