Grocery category crisis, Amazon stops accepting new orders!

Now the number of infections in the United States has soared to 680,000. Experts previously predicted that the upper limit of the U.S. medical system may be around 800,000 confirmed cases. If the upper limit is exceeded, there will be a risk of a sharp increase in the mortality rate. After the collapse of the medical systems in Spain and Italy, the mortality rate once rose to 12% .

The epidemic in the United States will continue to worsen. As the most reliable channel for purchasing supplies, Amazon has been forced to make some changes to ensure product delivery due to the surge in demand, including the suspension of accepting orders for certain products which we had previously worried about.

Amazon announced yesterday that it would suspend accepting new orders for grocery products.

New orders for grocery items are suspended

When the European site suspended orders, the US site delayed the shipment of some non-essential orders until a long time later in order to ease the tight shipping capacity.

This time, Amazon also did not go to extremes and make grocery products unavailable for purchase on the US site. Instead , it set up a waiting list, and consumers who purchase grocery products will be added to the list and queue for delivery.

It’s not that Amazon’s shipping capacity has gone wrong, but rather that demand has increased too quickly since the outbreak. According to data disclosed by Amazon, the 100,000 new warehouse logistics positions it recruited a while ago have increased Amazon’s delivery processing capacity by 60%.

However, many consumers still complain about the decline in logistics efficiency, and now have to take measures such as suspending new grocery product orders.

In order to meet the surge in demand for grocery products as quickly as possible, Amazon even shortened the offline business hours of its own grocery and food supermarkets, mobilizing products and employees to fully meet the demand and delivery of online orders.

The grocery category involves a lot of food, beverages and some daily necessities. There are quite a few sellers affected by this wave. After Amazon had to use a waiting list, a drop in orders was almost inevitable.

But now the entire United States has entered a state of alert. When the lower risks of online shopping are obviously better than offline shopping, more consumers will tend to continue to place orders on Amazon even if they need to wait in line for delivery.

Grocery products are so popular that they must have taken up most of Amazon’s transportation resources. Will this affect the warehousing and delivery of our other products?

In fact, after Amazon's last large-scale recruitment to expand its delivery capacity, it has now announced a second wave of recruitment, this time offering 75,000 positions. And all applicants can get extra salary , with an average extra hourly wage of $2 higher.

The extra hourly wage will continue until the end of April. Based on the experience of the last large-scale recruitment, the 75,000 positions released this time can recruit at least 50,000 people within a week. Soon we will face the next wave of relaxation of replenishment of non-essential products.

Some sellers in our communication group have recently found that the delivery time of their products has been shortened from one month to the level before the epidemic, which is also a signal that Amazon's transportation capacity has been relieved . Regardless of how the epidemic in the United States will develop next, Amazon's delivery tension and shipping restrictions should be effectively resolved this month.