Inventory Alert – Amazon’s Answer
A recent discussion on the newest changes to warehouse overcrowding in FBA Sourcing Simplifiers facebook post led me to this blog post. You may remember a month or so ago Amazon started restricting inventory that they felt would be long term hold. After many complaints Amazon decided to scrap that idea. They then decided to give everyone free removals till the end of April. This is in hope to free up some space at the warehouses. Now Amazon’s answer to our complaints so far is a warning. If you try to send in inventory that Amazon suspects will be a long term hold and get a Long-Term Storage Fee it will give the Inventory Alert shown below.
To bypass this all you have to do is click the box saying you would like to proceed and you are aware that you may get a long-term storage fee. This is Amazon’s answer so far. I do not think they are done with changes.
Amazon just adding a checkbox so you are aware that the item is a long term hold is not going to hold enough people back for them to be satisfied. I came up with a few realistic scenarios that Amazon may enforce in the future that you should be aware of.
Future Amazon Warehouse Overcrowding Fixes
Of course, I have no inside knowledge at Amazon but these are all things that I have seen done in the past.
- Higher Fee’s for Long-Term Storage
- Inventory Removed right before Long-Term Storage Fee’s will not be allowed to be sent back in for 6-months. Right now they have 2 month rule but I feel they are going to make the penalty longer
- Increase the removal fee. Right now the fee to remove inventory is .50 an item. Amazon could increase this to at least $1 in the near future so people will not send in as much thinking they can get it back cheap.
- Start charging long-term storage fee’s quarterly.
Feel free to speculate on your own and share your possible warehouse overcrowding solutions in our Facebook Group or on Twitter.
