Are sellers' shipments frequently canceled? Amazon adjusts storage limits

On Monday morning, some sellers came to ask me what to do if their shipments were cancelled. When I was collecting information in the forum and group, I found that many sellers were discussing this issue. Apparently, there has been a large-scale cancellation of backend delivery plans recently! Many of them were already on the way!

Shipment cancellations are not a common occurrence, and there must be a reason behind this widespread occurrence. When I was looking for relevant news, I found another situation - Amazon is secretly changing the inventory limit!

According to feedback from sellers, the inventory limits have been directly lowered in the past two days, and some sellers’ available inventory has even been halved.

On the one hand, Amazon is constantly canceling the shipping plans created by sellers, and on the other hand, it is reducing the inventory capacity available to sellers. The purpose of Amazon's practice is obvious, and a new round of inventory restrictions is on the way !

Amazon issued an announcement in the middle of last month, notifying sellers that it will continue to test warehouse storage and delivery capabilities, and will reserve more storage space for sellers' products as much as possible based on their actual sales. It also announced that it will re-evaluate the distribution chain capacity and buyer consumption demand under the latest US epidemic, and then issue new guidance policies on IPI storage restrictions in mid-December.

At that time, we speculated that the action would be to adjust the storage limit or adjust the IPI score red line. It seems that Amazon is preparing to do something big with storage capacity this time. Whether it is lowering the available limit or canceling the delivery plan, it indicates that Amazon's warehouse policy may continue to tighten!

The period before Christmas and the months of January and February are traditionally the off-season for e-commerce. Unless something unexpected happens, Amazon will not tighten its warehouse policy at this time. The main reason is that the epidemic in the United States in the past two days is too serious.

According to the latest data from the New York Times, the total number of confirmed cases of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has exceeded 14.8 million, and more than 100 new positive cases have been added in the past five days, with an average of 200,000 people diagnosed every day. At the same time, an average of 2,010 people died from the COVID-19 every day in the United States last week, and the cumulative number of deaths has exceeded 280,000 (by the way, the number of casualties in the United States during World War II was about 290,000, and Trump is not bragging when he says he is a wartime president).

What’s even more frightening is that during the just-passed Thanksgiving holiday, more than 50 million people in the United States went out to visit relatives or travel , and the peak of the epidemic caused by this large flow has just begun . American infectious disease experts said that the worst consequences will probably appear about four to six weeks after Thanksgiving, which is around the end of this month to mid-January.

Under this serious situation, California has urgently implemented a stay-at-home order last night , including parts of southern and central California, where people are not allowed to leave their homes without necessary reasons.

Under such influence, the time delays of US air and sea delivery are very serious, with frequent dock congestion, unmanned pallet removal and palletizing, and warehouse overflow of logistics companies. Now, whether it is replenishment of warehouses or delivery to customers, as long as the goods are on the way, they are delayed . Therefore, Amazon recently urgently changed the warehouse restrictions in order to cope with the upcoming peak of the epidemic.

This will be a difficult time, but we sellers have survived the ban on restocking in March, so there will be basically no problems this time. There will be no major promotional holidays coming up that will require large amounts of restocking. You just need to calculate the timeliness and expected sales and keep inventory in stock.