How many FBA shipments have you sent this year and how many have been lost by Amazon
I want to start sending items to Amazon to do FBA, but all i see on these forums and online are posts about how frequently Amazon is losing shipments. Sounds like sellers are out thousands with no recourse because of how poorly run Amazon fulfillment centers are.
Is it really as bad as it seems - or am I just hearing from the 1% vocal few who are having their shipments lost?
How many FBA shipments have you sent this year and how many have been lost by Amazon
I want to start sending items to Amazon to do FBA, but all i see on these forums and online are posts about how frequently Amazon is losing shipments. Sounds like sellers are out thousands with no recourse because of how poorly run Amazon fulfillment centers are.
Is it really as bad as it seems - or am I just hearing from the 1% vocal few who are having their shipments lost?
39 replies
Seller_8sP6ffckcRn6v
I am shipping merchandise to Amazon since 2016.
We rarely had any problems. Must of the time, our shipments were received and processed by Amazon by the next morning.
The situation changed over the last 6 months or so.
We ship to Amazon several times a week. They are several shipments that were lost after intake.
Amazon makes you run around the block several times before reimbursing.
If practical, you may consider sending in smaller shipments to manage the risk if one is lost.
Seller_S2gp9TALYcRj6
In last 3 months 4 shipments lost. 30 units of inventory in every shipment. After "investigation" all stated that 0 inventory received, and all cases closed without reimbursement.
Seller_z3XfkorVSmnEY
We've been FBA since FBA started. Amazon looses a small percentage of our items. It's annoying and we don't always get reimbursed. But we've also included this as a part of the cost of doing business. Some items we won't FBA and just FBM because of a variety of FBA issues and/or fees.
Seller_We3HtHAyNT23w
It has gotten much worse in the last year. I personally count each shipment and have at least 1 other employee verify that the counts are correct. Even so, I currently have 4 shipments that have been received as being short 3-4 items each. I also have two shipments that had 10 units and both have been counted as having 1 units. Almost 20 units short on just those 2 shipments. And what others have said that even if they investigate the missing items, they never find them and it's almost impossible to get reimbursed for the "missing" items.
Seller_9U8MMSzm8FLgU
I went from 90% FBA to 10% FBA because they started losing AND miscounting units.
Example: I sent 31 collectibles, all VERY unique and different... and expensive, in one shipment. They flagged my shipment saying they got 27 instead of 31 and that 15 of them were the same item. Wildly inaccurate and ultimately lost me about $1800 worth of merch and charged me a fee for shipment issues. I disputed and did as much as I could, but it was just too exhausting with no positive results in sight.
I enjoy the platform in a lot of ways, I sell plenty FBM at this point. I'll never send more stock for FBA. It's to unreliable and costly in my opinion.
Bryce_Amazon
Good morning @Seller_W3ws4uSaHS30d,
Thanks for posting! I'm glad to see some sellers jump in here with their own anecdotes regarding their FBA experience. I'll make a plug here for a thread my peer @TaylorR_Amazon wrote a few months back: What to do if you have a lost or delayed FBA Shipment. This thread covers the basic recovery steps sellers can take if an issue with a shipment pops up.
I also encourage you to post here on the forums if you run into issues. The seller community and our Community Management team can review, offer input, and / or potentially escalate the case. Not every situation is the same, but I have had success in the past helping sellers with shipment issues.
Whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck. Happy holidays!
- Bryce
Seller_tN04uvGl1GlpI
I sent 10 shipments in 2023 containing 1250 items altogether. Only 3 items were lost and I was reimbursed for that. I have been doing FBA for last 2 years and my overall experience with shipments is not bad at all.
Seller_hZlWagzEXNMRm
anytime you put your items in others hands, you lose all responsibility of them and can’t hold accountability to those who are not responsible. Therefor I highly suggest not ever doing FBA, how do you think amazon got so big so quick. When you hand them unlimited cash flow, you will always be able to grow faster than most. Their number one magic rule: we will never admit mistakes or apologize because we are never wrong.
With that being said, a marketplace that doesn’t own up to their mistakes even when losing in arbitration is not a company that cares about you. Their term “partner” should almost be a questionable legality, because they only use that term to fit their agenda, not yours!
Seller_hyHCTrb1jcwPE
I have more shipments with lost inventory than ones without, its ridiculous and if it doesnt stop soon we will have to quit doing fba completely. How can sellers operate businesses or have any faith in amazon's fulfillment anymore when they wont even acknowledge their own problems and search for a solution, hoping this gets resolved soon because its unacceptable.
Seller_uzTwyTA8LB2Qi
I have sent product via fba about 30 times. I have had discrepancies a few times, but most of them resolved on their own. However once I had a shipment that never got resolved. From my experience, shipments with 1 SKU get processed the quickest. The one shipment that never got resolved had 3 SKU's. It looks like having more that 1 or 2 sku's will likely confuse the amazon warehouse workers. By the way, I always double and triple check the count before sending fba.
