Does that mean you have to look up each item's weight & dimensions on Amazon.com? YES!
Does this mean I could actually lose money selling a book? YES!
See the chart for cost comparisons. Keep in mind, while this happens a lot, the more common error is one that is off by several ounces, not several pounds ... an error that you would probably never notice.
Also keep in mind, it does not take an error like this to lose money on an FBA transaction. Sellers lose money all the time - by being forced to lower prices, by having an item sit in storage too long, on returned merchandise, by FBA restocking fees, etc:
2 comments:
You left out the time it takes to prepare a shipment in to FBA.
When we started, we thought this was no big deal. We thought, it would be quicker to send one box of 50 books, than 50 books to 50 customers. WRONG WE WERE!
...Because the FBA stickering requirements, the time it takes to "convert" inventory to FBA, the time it takes to re-sku items to meet FBA requirements, etc.
We find it takes 2 people about 3-4 hours to put together an FBA box of 50 items. By comparison, it takes us only 60-90 minutes to fulfill 50 orders ourselves.
Time is a precious commodity.
Right, time is one thing most people forget to factor. It takes an enormous amount of time required to comply to FBA - for us, maybe an hour a day, to mess around with their incompetence.
So, for me, that's 1 hour of lost productivity every day. Additionally, they forgot to mention the time to takes to make sure FBA checks in your inventory!
At first they were great. But now, they take days (or weeks) to check in a box. We have to keep checking back - what happened to this item? what happened to that item? Are you going to credit our account? Why is there another "miscellaneous adjustment" on our account? It's never ending...
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