Amazon is temporarily allowing sellers who use its FBA fulfillment service to remove slow-selling inventory at no charge thanks to fee changes it had announced in March.
On March 1st, Amazon announced it would assess Long Term Storage fees (LTS) monthly instead of biannually, and it introduced an Inventory Storage Overage fee. The changes are part of Amazon’s attempt to optimize space in its Fulfillment Centers.
While some sellers were happy to see Amazon was waiving removal fees, others pointed out they had already placed orders to remove inventory and felt the timing of the announcement rewarded sellers for procrastinating.
Here is the letter Amazon sent sellers:
Hello from Fulfillment by Amazon,
On March 1, 2018, we announced changes to our monthly and long-term storage fees. This included a new storage limit policy, which states starting July 1, 2018, sellers with an Inventory Performance Index (IPI) below 350 may be subject to quarterly storage limits. Removing excess and aged inventory may help you reduce storage costs and improve your IPI.
Therefore, starting today, April 18, 2018, for a limited time, FBA will waive your removal fees for any removal order that you submit for inventory that you have in our US fulfillment centers.
To take action, in Seller Central, go to Manage Excess Inventory (Pro sellers) or FBA Inventory Age (Individual sellers). Then choose Create removal order from the menu next to any FBA item in your inventory.
If you remove inventory during this promotion, you will not be able to send us more units of the ASINs you remove until either:
– August 1, 2018, when these restrictions will be lifted
OR
– When your inventory level for the removed ASINs falls below our projection of your sales for the next eight weeks based on your average sales rate for the removed ASINs during the preceding 90 days
Note that removals during peak and promotional periods can take longer to process than the standard 10 to 14 days. Learn more about free removals.
If you have inventory for an ASIN that is slow-moving or has not been selling, take advantage of this opportunity to remove it for free and avoid paying additional storage fees for it. This promotion will run for a limited time, and after it ends, standard removal-order fees will apply.
Learn more at Remove inventory from fulfillment centers.
Thank you for selling on Amazon.
Sincerely,
The Fulfillment by Amazon team
You can learn more about the new LTS fees announced last month in this March 1st Newsflash article.
what? Amazon has slow selling product – I thought everything on the planet just fly’s off the shelves there. If I was “allowed” to sell there I certainly would never use the fulfillment program.