Many sellers have recently received news about Amazon’s latest policy adjustment: Prime exclusive discounts are no longer free! For this Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday promotion, Amazon has officially announced that a $50 fee will be charged for each promotion! For sellers like us, this is a significant cost increase! 💸

Many sellers joked: "Amazon really won't let go of the opportunity. Even the member-only discounts are charged. It's really hard work!" 🤣

Not only that, Amazon has also updated its policy on warehousing configuration fees. If you want to divide the warehouses reasonably without being charged, the conditions are becoming more and more stringent!

The new regulations stipulate that only products of the same quantity and same SKU can be divided into five warehouses, so as to waive the warehousing configuration fee; otherwise, these boxes that do not meet the standards will be concentrated in one warehouse, and you will have to pay extra.

Amazon warehousing configuration fee details

Specifically, if you have five boxes to ship, the first three contain 100 pieces of product A, and the last two contain 100 pieces of product B - sorry, this does not comply with the new regulations!

Only when all boxes contain the same quantity of the same product will they be eligible for exemption from the warehouse configuration fee.

What’s more troublesome is that if you plan to ship multiple SKU products at the same time, you must make sure that at least one of the SKUs can be allocated to five warehouses, otherwise you will still have to pay additional fees.

And don’t forget, if your goods take more than 30 days to arrive at the FBA warehouse, the placement fee will still be charged!

This policy adjustment has sparked heated discussions among sellers, with many complaining that Amazon is “fleecing the sellers” again: “Amazon is really thinking about cutting the leeks all the time”, “To work for Amazon, you can’t even be bad at math” 🤯, “The fees are increasing, and sellers are almost forced to become philanthropists.”

For small and medium-sized sellers, this adjustment is indeed not easy to deal with. The shipment of products with multiple SKUs may not even be able to fit into five boxes, and large items cannot afford such increased costs. It seems that in the future, when shipping, we must not only calculate the accounts clearly, but also be more careful in calculations to avoid unnecessary cost increases.

Amazon's warehouse configuration fee billing method has been updated. Previously, if you sent more boxes each time, you could allocate them to several different warehouses, thereby reducing or exempting the warehouse configuration fee. However, the new warehouse configuration fee charging method will take effect on March 1, 2024, requiring:

1. Each product must have at least 5 identical boxes or pallets;

2. The quantity and combination of products in each box or pallet must be the same.

To put it in plain language, each shipment must be at least 5 boxes, and the quantity and combination of products in each box must be the same. If you want to ship multiple products without Amazon collecting the warehouse configuration fee, the method is as follows:

Box 1: 20 pieces of product A, 30 pieces of product B, 20 pieces of product C;

Box 2 : 20 pieces of product A, 30 pieces of product B, 20 pieces of product C

Box 3 : 20 pieces of product A, 30 pieces of product B, 20 pieces of product C

Box 4 : 20 pieces of product A, 30 pieces of product B, 20 pieces of product C

Box 5 : 20 pcs of product A, 30 pcs of product B, 20 pcs of product C.

A total of 100 units of product A, 150 units of product B, and 100 units of product C are shipped. The slightly difficult part is that we need to calculate how many units of each product A, B, and C can be packed into each box.

Here’s a little tip: If the three products are in stable order, you can set up a special box of a certain specification to only carry these three products.

What if there are excess products? If you put them in a separate box and send them away, the storage and configuration fee for this box is unavoidable, or when other products are shipped, use the same method to match them.

It is foreseeable that this new regulation will indeed cause headaches for many sellers. First of all, this new regulation requires that each replenishment must reach at least 5 boxes of products with the same SKU in order to be exempted from the warehousing configuration fee.

This is a real challenge for small and medium-sized sellers, because not every replenishment can reach the quantity of 5 boxes, especially when cash turnover is tight.

However, it is recommended that you consider using small boxes. After all, the lifting standards of many logistics companies have been reduced from 21kg to 12kg.

This change gives you the opportunity to meet the requirement of 5 boxes by sending more small boxes, but you need to confirm this with the logistics company to avoid unnecessary trouble due to non-compliance with the lifting standards.

Secondly, the new regulations increase the difficulty of operations; especially for sellers with multiple products, how to allocate the number of products in each box becomes more complicated.

On the one hand, you need to accurately calculate the ratio of each box to avoid being charged extra fees for not meeting the requirements;

On the other hand, accurately grasping the order quantity has become a science, and any carelessness may lead to inventory imbalance.

In general, the new regulations have put forward higher requirements on sellers' operating strategies.

You need to be careful with costs and pay attention to operations. If you want to stand out in this new challenge, sellers need to use their brains and manage each batch of goods in a refined manner!

How to calculate the warehousing configuration fee?

・BOX1: A 20 pieces, B 20 pieces

・BOX2: A 20 pieces, B 20 pieces

・BOX3: A 20 pieces, B 20 pieces

・BOX4: A 20 pieces, B 20 pieces

・BOX5: A 20 pieces, B 20 pieces