In December 2023 Amazon announced a new fee for FBA inbound shipments, called the Inbound placement service fee. The announcement said they would begin charging sellers in July ’24 for inbound placement. In March of this year, a setting was added to Seller Central allowing sellers to choose a region and 1 of 3 placement options:
Amazon Optimized was the cheapest ($0) option but shipments might be split 5 or more ways.
Currently, the Selling Partner FBA Inbound API has no way to change the inbound placement options or region so the shipment splits and eventual placement fees are driven solely from the FBA Inbound Settings in Seller Central.
In March of this year, to help sellers predict and analyze FBA Inbound Placement fees, ScanPower created an FBA Inbound Placement Calculator in Prep & Ship that estimates fees in bulk for all items in the current batch based on the selected options:
8 months later, after the failure of multiple black-hat techniques by various software selling partners to circumvent them, it is clear inbound placement service fees are here to stay.
On top of shrinking margins, the fees add another layer to FBA Inbound processing. Previously, you could adjust the inventory mix and quantity you send in each batch to generate favorable shipment splits and optimize for the best freight costs.
Now, sellers and 3PLs must choose between streamlined processing, with fewer shipments, and saving on the inbound fees but paying more for freight to multiple distant IDXs. Three different factors (region, splits preference, and inventory mix) complicate the calculus and may change at any moment during the day.
To avoid the fees, choose Amazon optimized placement. The trouble with $0 fees is the number of shipments doubles or triples leading to complicated processing and higher freight charges.
Recently, Amazon further restricted qualification for Amazon Optimized $0 placement fee by requiring shipments to include at least five identical cartons or pallets per item. Each carton or pallet must contain the same quantity per item and the same item mix. For resellers with limited access to higher quantities this means it is harder to avoid the inbound fee, especially for shipments with mixed SKUs.
If you process shipments using the FBA Inbound API with tools such as ScanPower, you will soon have the option to compare placement fees along side freight and transportation charges.
This will allow you to better estimate the total inbound cost of each shipment.
Starting December 2nd, ScanPower will support the new v1 FBA Inbound API with both workflows:
Pack first before placement and transportation options are accepted.
Pack after placement options are accepted.
One BIG Caveat is that Small Parcel Delivery (SPD) is ONLY supported in the Pack first flow. If you are shipping by partnered small parcel, you must save packing information before you accept placement options (shipment splits and fees). Also, if you want to ship SPD and LTL form the generated shipment splits, you can only do that in the Pack first (left side) flow.
It goes without saying, sellers don’t need more stress in Q4 or big changes to existing FBA processes at this time. Unfortunately, Amazon is more worried about lowering the “cost to serve” for marketplace customers than they are the health of sellers, especially North American sellers. We want to help you with the transition and give you fair warning about the coming changes.
I will be hosting a Q&A every Wednesday until the current API is sundowned . We will be previewing the new API and discussing how it will impact different sellers and 3PLs:
Join the Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89018524857?pwd=TmcrT2RhWGs3bTVJTHp2L0pmUHFUZz09
NOTE: the current workflow and API will be supported through 12/20/24.