Breaking news! Lost Amazon shipments are being auctioned off?

When using FBA or logistics to transport goods to customers, it is inevitable that items will be lost. Generally, FBA will compensate the seller for the loss of items, and there are also relevant clauses for claims for lost items in logistics.

But where did these lost items go?

Recently, foreign media revealed that these lost goods were actually being auctioned off by government agencies!

The name of this auction website, "GovDeals", is closely related to the government. In fact, this website is a cooperative website of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which specializes in online auctions of USPS shipments that cannot be delivered normally.

Regardless of whether it is FBA or a logistics freight forwarder , when the goods are delivered to the local link, they will generally be taken over by USPS or UPS, which will be responsible for the final delivery to the customer.

Therefore, it is very likely that the parcels that USPS publicly auctions include the parcels that the seller has lost.

For shipments with incorrect delivery addresses or where the recipient cannot be contacted, USPS has a special department - the Mail Recovery Center ( MRC ). They will try to contact the sender and find the correct recipient at the same time to find a destination for the shipment.

When the staff of this department is unable to find the consignee/sender for the shipment, the shipment becomes a shipment that cannot be delivered normally, and its final destination is - to be auctioned.

Because the USPS can make a corresponding profit from the auction, the most frightening thing about this operation is what kind of shipment can be judged as undeliverable? This standard is entirely up to the staff to decide.

In other words, if the USPS is a little more unscrupulous , it can even lower the corresponding standards through various means for the sake of profit, causing more products to become "undeliverable" and be auctioned off.

Are the profits really that big to justify the USPS's efforts? Guess how boxes of groceries like the one below sell on GovDeals?

The starting price for each box of goods is $500 ! Each bid increase must not be less than 5% of the current selling price, and it is easy to bid a box for thousands of dollars.

Why would anyone pay so much for such a large pile of groceries?

Because among these mailed items there are both cheap and worthless junk, as well as expensive new products.

Buying a box is like gambling on stones, nervous and exciting. If the box you buy contains high-value products such as mobile phones or jewelry, you can earn back the selling price several times.

Amazon’s own products FBA is not immune

By selling these lost shipments, USPS can earn an additional tens of millions of dollars in profit each year.

With such a huge profit, it is not too much to suspect that USPS did it on purpose. Facts and data also prove that these shipments that enter MRC basically cannot escape the fate of being auctioned.

Of the 88 million "undeliverable" shipments handled by MRC in 14 years, only 2.5 million were found to their correct destination, with a chance of recovery of less than 3%.

This incident is still fermenting, but with the strong support of government agencies such as USPS, GovDeals' auction warehouse is well guarded.

Not only was there a barbed wire fence outside the warehouse, there were also warning signs everywhere prohibiting approaching. Even foreign journalists who tried to approach and take pictures were stopped by the police and their driver's licenses were confiscated.

▲Police guarding the gate

▲Foreign media reporters being questioned

*All photos are from foreign media

USPS has been doing this for a long time, and protests and public opinion have had little effect. Moreover, USPS has irreplaceable price advantages and coverage advantages, making it indispensable for everyone from Amazon to small and medium-sized sellers to provide delivery services.

Amazon can still build its own logistics platform and try to get rid of its dependence on USPS in another way, but we sellers basically have no way to argue with such a giant.

Therefore, you can include the occasional lost items in the cost and use sufficient profit margin to cover this unexpected cost to avoid the situation where the cash flow is interrupted due to lost items.

Therefore, the high profit margin can really cope with all emergencies, whether it is taxation, superposition of discounts or lost items, high profits can ensure that you do not lose money or even just make a little less.

Sellers who want to learn about Amazon's high-profit strategies, scan the QR code and add me to receive a high-profit operation skills package

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Source: Cross-border Business School

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