The slowest Black Friday? Amazon warehouses continue to be overwhelmed, and out-of-stock becomes the biggest problem!

In a blink of an eye, the first solar term of winter, "Lidong", has arrived as scheduled.

Compared with the warm winter brought by the heat wave this summer, the orders of cross-border sellers in recent times have faced the challenge of winter in advance, which is slightly colder. Logistics has become a difficult hurdle on the eve of Black Friday.

It is learned that according to foreign media reports, on November 7, due to the further escalation of labor disputes, workers at Amazon's Coventry warehouse (BHX4) in the UK went on strike again, with more than 1,000 workers participating in the strike.

It is understood that since January this year, workers at the Coventry warehouse have held several strikes, demanding that Amazon increase wages to adapt to the soaring inflation rate. Although Amazon has agreed to raise wages several times, the strike has not stopped because the increase has not met the workers' expectations.

In fact, when this strike action started, the British GMB union also stated that Coventry warehouse workers also planned to continue the strike from November 8 to November 9 and November 24 (during Black Friday), which may have a huge impact on Amazon's peak season logistics and distribution.

Recently, several freight forwarders have announced that multiple warehouses will continue to be overwhelmed: due to the arrival of the peak season, BHX4 and LBA4 will continue to be overwhelmed . Coupled with the impact of the strike, subsequent DPD delivery and Amazon listing speed will be delayed . Sellers are advised to arrange their shipping plans reasonably to avoid order losses.

It is worth noting that according to information from logistics professionals in the industry, in addition to the UK, many warehouses in other Amazon regions are still experiencing continuous overcapacity:

• United States: Direct delivery warehouses are out of stock, and GYR2/GYR3/VGT2 warehouses are all in 10 days;

• Germany: LEJ3 postpones appointments; MHG9 refuses to accept UPS/GLS packages;

• Canada: YXX2, YYZ3/7/9 were liquidated, and the rejection rate was high; YYC6 and YOW3 had liquidations and cancellations.

It can be seen that a large number of Amazon's popular warehouses are currently unable to operate normally. It is not ruled out that the slow stocking speed is caused by peak season promotions (a surge in inventory during Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday), but there are also many warehouses that have been affected by the strike and transportation has been delayed.

At the "MakeAmazonPay" summit jointly held by the International Trade Union Global Alliance and the International Progress Organization in the UK not long ago, trade unions and government officials also announced that they would strike in more than 30 countries around the world, including the UK, on ​​Black Friday this year . Their demand is still to "turn Black Friday into 'Amazon Payday'."

As of now, it is still uncertain whether the strike initiated by the alliance will actually be carried out. Perhaps there will be a turning point , but many sellers still can't help but complain about it: This is not to turn Black Friday into "Amazon's payday", but to turn Black Friday into "sellers' suffering day."

Based on this, cross-border sellers' anxiety about logistics and delivery delays has reached a peak. In addition to "products are delayed in being put on the shelves", "low efficiency of tail-end delivery" has become a hot topic in the cross-border circle in recent times.

It is learned that last month, Amazon released its third-quarter 2023 financial report, with a net profit of US$9.9 billion, a 241% surge from the same period last year, continuing the high growth trend in the second quarter and significantly enhancing profitability.

Tracing back to the source of its continued growth in performance, one is that Amazon's investment income in Rivian turned positive; the other is that the cost-cutting measures taken by Amazon in the past year have begun to bear fruit.

Among these, shrinking the scale of logistics is an important measure for Amazon to cut costs. Since 2022, Amazon has continued to lay off tens of thousands of warehouse employees, and resold and stopped renting the previously expanded warehouse logistics network.

Today, Amazon’s performance has indeed been boosted, but behind its shrinking logistics scale are many sellers who are “moving forward with a heavy burden” despite the logistics timeliness.

Not long ago, Amazon's inventory capacity suddenly decreased in November, disrupting the shipping rhythm of many sellers . Not only did they have to pay high excess storage fees, but some sellers even ran into a shortage of goods.

In addition, the efficiency of tail-end logistics in recent times has been a thorn in the side of sellers .

Recently, many sellers have reported that the FBA delivery time displayed on Amazon’s front desk is seriously delayed when there is a large amount of inventory available for sale. As a result, the sales of some sellers’ products have declined.

A seller opened a case and consulted customer service about this, and received a reply: This is an Amazon system problem and customer service does not have the authority to modify it.

In this regard, some sellers speculated that this situation might be due to the approaching peak season for Amazon, but the shortage of labor in the warehouse has led to a significant increase in the time from the entry of goods into the warehouse to the delivery of goods.

It has been observed that since the end of August, many sellers have noticed that the time to put their products on the shelves has slowed down, and the efficiency of customer service has also dropped significantly. There have even been cases where no one responded to their cases. At the same time, some sellers pointed out that delivery delays are also an important factor that has led to a decline in the online shopping experience, causing more and more consumers to lose patience with Amazon.

At this critical moment when Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday are approaching, the goods of many Amazon sellers have been affected by strike actions and peak season promotions, and the replenishment cycle has a tendency to be "lengthened". Now the low efficiency of tail-end delivery has made the sellers' already slow logistics efficiency even worse.

Amazon had previously stated that it would try to speed up delivery as much as possible, and reducing inventory capacity in November was also to focus on logistics and delivery during the peak season. However, judging from the above situation, the logistics efficiency situation still seems to be not optimistic, whether it is warehousing and shelving or end-of-life delivery.

It is currently unknown when Amazon warehouse delivery will resume normal operations. We would like to remind relevant sellers to always pay attention to the operation status of the goods and adjust the shipping plans in time according to the situation to avoid losses.