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Amazon Seller of non-essentials here. Fulfillment out of Amazon’s warehouses has been slow the last week or so (on the order of 2-3 days delayed vs. normal). Se

Amazon Seller of non-essentials here. Fulfillment out of Amazon’s warehouses has been slow the last week or so (on the order of 2-3 days delayed vs. normal). Sellers started noticing last night / this morning that Prime items which are fulfilled by Amazon are showing delivery date of April 21st. We don’t know if that is a real date yet, or if Amazon is just setting expectations super low. Based on the fact that a wide variety of items are all showing that as the Prime delivery date and that shipping has not been that delayed up til now, I think there’s reason to think that things will actually be delivered faster than that. Plus, I know at least one seller of non-essential products who is not seeing that delivery date for their products. So who knows. The April 21st delivery date is crushing our sales, though.

obrajesse 7y ago
Multiple items I’ve ordered this weekend with April 21 or later delivery dates got their dates moved up by 3+ weeks after order.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- artificial 7y ago
  I can confirm this as well.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  That’s good to know, thanks for the anecdata.
- GarrisonPrime 7y ago
  I wonder if they're giving an artificially long date in an attempt to discourage certain orders so as to relieve the current crush.
  - grumple 7y ago
    I can only imagine how such behavior would go at a normal tech company: "Hey boss, we're getting a ton of orders in. Think we should discourage people from ordering junk so we can prioritize the important stuff?" "Hell no, keep the orders coming in as fast as possible." So props to Amazon for doing something in the best interest of their customers and their reputation.
    - capableweb 7y ago
      > So props to Amazon for doing something in the best interest of their customers and their reputation Let's not jump into any conclusions here. For all we know, Amazon is doing just what you wrote in quotes above, but the logistics networks are so overwhelmed that they can't fulfill orders fast enough. I'm not saying Amazon is good or bad here, just that we can't decide that unless we _actually_ know their reasoning.
      - pythonaut_16 7y ago
        My guess is that they're giving themselves a ~4 week buffer so they're free to prioritize orders both by necessity and efficiency.
    - mPReDiToR 7y ago
      That hellaciously unlawful and immoral company (at least in England) UBER does this with their "surge" pricing. Want more cabs than we have? 2x, 4x, 7x the normal price for the ride is a win-win. Driver gets more money. Company gets more cut. More drivers come out to earn the extortionate fees. Fewer customers take a cab at that time, lowering the demand. It's great until you figure the drivers are gaming the system by not going to work until there is a surge price in effect. People will always take the opportunity to profit at others' expense. A moral company would attempt to curtail this. Are Amazon moral?
      - computerphage 7y ago
        "drivers are gaming the system by not going to work until there is a surge price in effect" So, immediately after you explain the way that surge pricing works in terms of supply and demand, you claim that one of the parties is being immoral by not supplying the product under a certain price? How is that "profiting at other people's expense"? You literally just explained how it's a win-win. Do you feel like the drivers are morally obligated to supply their time at a certain low price?
- _asummers 7y ago
  Similarly, I had an April 7-16 order from Friday and it got moved up to March 27 last night.
ecommerceguy 7y ago
They announced to not send in non-essential items on the 20th. Do NOT ship those in right now.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  Yes, but the comment you're responding to isn't talking about shipping orders in, they're talking about orders (to end customers) of inventory they already have in the Amazon warehouse.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  My sibling comment is correct: I am referring to outbound shipments. Also, don’t worry, there is literally no way to send in non-essential products. You have to create an inbound shipment on Amazon’s seller portal before you send it in. You can’t do that for non-essential goods right now.
double0jimb0 7y ago
Also a seller, this went into effect as early as 4:30am mst on Sunday. I know, because I was awake and saw it. Amazon nerfed new FBA inbound shipments from sellers thru April 5. This new ~April 20th expected ship date is just about exactly the time it would take inbound shipments starting on April 5th, to distribute thru FCs and become active for sale. Amazon is attempting to level the playing field for the sellers that got iced out during the inbound lockout.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Maybe. My partner and I (actually mostly my partner) did some more analysis. We scrape the search results of the keywords that matter to us 24x per day so we can keep track of how we're performing. Most of our products are in the top 5 for their primary keyword. What we've noticed in the last few days is that, when our products are shown, they are still top ranked, but our products are only being shown around 10% of the time (vs. basically 100% of the time normally). Upon digging in further, my partner realized that most of the product being shown for our keywords are A) not normally top ranked, and, B) all fulfilled by merchant (as opposed to fulfilled by Amazon). This would suggest that they really are capacity constrained and doing whatever they can to avoid shipping non-essentials. Also, good luck out there. Our sales have been devastated. Hope you're doing better than us.
emidln 7y ago
Several non-essential items (shampoo, conditioner, cat litter, etc) I ordered last week were rescheduled from 2-4 day delivery times to April 20th. I canceled and reordered them without Fulfilled by Amazon. The tracking says they'll be delivered today by USPS and UPS.

obrajesse 7y ago

Multiple items I’ve ordered this weekend with April 21 or later delivery dates got their dates moved up by 3+ weeks after order.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
artificial 7y ago
I can confirm this as well.
toasterlovin 7y ago
That’s good to know, thanks for the anecdata.
GarrisonPrime 7y ago
I wonder if they're giving an artificially long date in an attempt to discourage certain orders so as to relieve the current crush.
- grumple 7y ago
  I can only imagine how such behavior would go at a normal tech company: "Hey boss, we're getting a ton of orders in. Think we should discourage people from ordering junk so we can prioritize the important stuff?" "Hell no, keep the orders coming in as fast as possible." So props to Amazon for doing something in the best interest of their customers and their reputation.
  - capableweb 7y ago
    > So props to Amazon for doing something in the best interest of their customers and their reputation Let's not jump into any conclusions here. For all we know, Amazon is doing just what you wrote in quotes above, but the logistics networks are so overwhelmed that they can't fulfill orders fast enough. I'm not saying Amazon is good or bad here, just that we can't decide that unless we _actually_ know their reasoning.
    - pythonaut_16 7y ago
      My guess is that they're giving themselves a ~4 week buffer so they're free to prioritize orders both by necessity and efficiency.
  - mPReDiToR 7y ago
    That hellaciously unlawful and immoral company (at least in England) UBER does this with their "surge" pricing. Want more cabs than we have? 2x, 4x, 7x the normal price for the ride is a win-win. Driver gets more money. Company gets more cut. More drivers come out to earn the extortionate fees. Fewer customers take a cab at that time, lowering the demand. It's great until you figure the drivers are gaming the system by not going to work until there is a surge price in effect. People will always take the opportunity to profit at others' expense. A moral company would attempt to curtail this. Are Amazon moral?
    - computerphage 7y ago
      "drivers are gaming the system by not going to work until there is a surge price in effect" So, immediately after you explain the way that surge pricing works in terms of supply and demand, you claim that one of the parties is being immoral by not supplying the product under a certain price? How is that "profiting at other people's expense"? You literally just explained how it's a win-win. Do you feel like the drivers are morally obligated to supply their time at a certain low price?
_asummers 7y ago
Similarly, I had an April 7-16 order from Friday and it got moved up to March 27 last night.

ecommerceguy 7y ago

They announced to not send in non-essential items on the 20th. Do NOT ship those in right now.

bdcravens 7y ago
Yes, but the comment you're responding to isn't talking about shipping orders in, they're talking about orders (to end customers) of inventory they already have in the Amazon warehouse.
toasterlovin 7y ago
My sibling comment is correct: I am referring to outbound shipments. Also, don’t worry, there is literally no way to send in non-essential products. You have to create an inbound shipment on Amazon’s seller portal before you send it in. You can’t do that for non-essential goods right now.

double0jimb0 7y ago

Also a seller, this went into effect as early as 4:30am mst on Sunday. I know, because I was awake and saw it. Amazon nerfed new FBA inbound shipments from sellers thru April 5. This new ~April 20th expected ship date is just about exactly the time it would take inbound shipments starting on April 5th, to distribute thru FCs and become active for sale. Amazon is attempting to level the playing field for the sellers that got iced out during the inbound lockout.

toasterlovin 7y ago
Maybe. My partner and I (actually mostly my partner) did some more analysis. We scrape the search results of the keywords that matter to us 24x per day so we can keep track of how we're performing. Most of our products are in the top 5 for their primary keyword. What we've noticed in the last few days is that, when our products are shown, they are still top ranked, but our products are only being shown around 10% of the time (vs. basically 100% of the time normally). Upon digging in further, my partner realized that most of the product being shown for our keywords are A) not normally top ranked, and, B) all fulfilled by merchant (as opposed to fulfilled by Amazon). This would suggest that they really are capacity constrained and doing whatever they can to avoid shipping non-essentials. Also, good luck out there. Our sales have been devastated. Hope you're doing better than us.

emidln 7y ago

Several non-essential items (shampoo, conditioner, cat litter, etc) I ordered last week were rescheduled from 2-4 day delivery times to April 20th. I canceled and reordered them without Fulfilled by Amazon. The tracking says they'll be delivered today by USPS and UPS.