Amazon lifts ban! Sellers can freely choose logistics

Last month was Amazon's year-end Christmas peak season, but Amazon itself made a big mistake and suddenly announced on December 9 that it would suspend warehousing and focus on processing Black Friday orders.

Although the blame was finally put on the translation of the Chinese version, most sellers did experience slow warehousing and serious order delivery delays this month, with many Black Friday orders still pending until mid-December.

The reason is that before the critical December peak season, Amazon blacklisted its long-term logistics partner FedEx and banned third-party sellers from using FedEx to deliver Prime orders.

Just yesterday, Amazon announced that it had lifted the FedEx ban announced in December, and third-party sellers can once again use the FedEx delivery service.

In the FBA delivery process, in addition to its own logistics system, Amazon also needs to outsource part of the work to third-party logistics companies such as FedEx and UPS.

Although Amazon's own logistics has grown rapidly, accounting for more than 50% of the total, up from less than 20% the year before last. However, many orders are still delivered by third parties, and companies such as FedEx have made a lot of profit from this. It is impossible to say that Amazon is not coveting this part of the market.

By kicking FedEx out in the most critical month of December, Amazon obviously wants to further increase the proportion of its own logistics until it realizes its grand vision of having all FBA orders delivered by its own logistics.

But everyone has seen the performance in December. The self-operated logistics company simply could not bear the huge order volume during Amazon's peak season. The consequence of kicking out FedEx and forcing it to take on the task on its own was a large number of order delivery delays, and it even had to postpone all warehousing work until January.

Now is one of the slowest times of the year, but Amazon has lifted the ban on FedEx and let FedEx take charge of Prime orders again. Kicking FedEx during the busiest time and letting FedEx back during the quietest time is a reverse operation that makes people puzzled.

Amazon's official statement was also very subtle. When it kicked FedEx out, it said, "Based on FedEx's poor delivery performance, we decided to stop using FedEx." Less than a month later, when it lifted the ban, it said, "FedEx's ground transportation service has always met Amazon's needs for on-time delivery, so we resumed using FedEx's express delivery service."

Could it be that the federal service was improved in just one month to meet Amazon's needs again?

Of course not. Whether it is banning FedEx or restoring it, what was said in the speech is just an excuse. The truth is that Amazon kicked FedEx out and took over the logistics share, which resulted in indigestion and a large number of delays, which caused a lot of complaints from sellers and buyers. Amazon had no choice but to call FedEx back.

This incident fully demonstrates that Amazon can really do whatever it takes to make money and grab market share.

Now that third-party sellers can use FedEx’s ground logistics services to deliver Prime orders, I think many sellers who have been forced to change their cooperative carriers must be cursing now.

Here I would like to remind everyone that sooner or later Amazon will let its own logistics take full responsibility for FBA order delivery. Sellers using the SFP plan should make plans as soon as possible.

Should they continue to deliver goods themselves and bear the disadvantages of not being able to provide Prime delivery and low traffic, or should they surrender and honestly choose FBA service? When Amazon kicks out all third-party logistics providers and monopolizes the platform delivery service, it will force all sellers to make this choice.