I felt the need to share with you my personal experience in dealing with hundreds of removal orders from Amazon. This article is not meant to discourage you from doing removal orders, but rather to share my experience and to educate, so you go in with your eyes wide open when requesting product removal. Thus, making the process much easier than it initially was for me.
Removal orders can be necessary for many reasons some of which may be:
• Amazon’s storage fees add up quickly because you shipped/received too many products, compared to how many are being sold but you still have good margin on the product.
• Amazon changes the labeling requirement on your product.
• You register your brand and the name listed on the product doesn’t match your brand registry exactly. (yep, it happens)
• Your listing gets suppressed due to customers reporting damaged products, but what you really have is a packaging problem, not a product problem.
• You decide you’d like to bundle two or three products and you need to get them back in order to bundle.
As a 3PL/Prep Center, we have taken in hundreds of removal orders for clients and here's what other companies are not telling you about removal orders.
1. Removal orders do not ship back to you in the same carton you shipped the product to Amazon.
How exactly does this impact you? Most of the time, orders will have to be repackaged BEFORE sending back to Amazon. This is because the cartons are all different sizes, and you will not want to use small cartons to send products into Amazon. Be prepared for the double handling.
2. Products will get damaged.
Be aware that 10-20% of your product or product packaging will get damaged. Amazon will not treat your product like you, or I would as sellers. Let’s face it, they do not know why you are removing the product, nor do they likely care. If your product comes in customized packaging, I highly recommend you keep about 20% overage of packaging just in case you need it. It costs next to nothing to print a few extras when your product is created in those early stages. We are more than happy to store extras for you along with your product if your product is stored with us to easily handle this problem.
3. It will take longer than you think to receive all removal orders.
It’s possible your product is at dozens of fulfillment centers across the country. Getting your items removed and then shipped to the designated location could literally take weeks and sometimes even months.
The best way to have a positive experience selling on Amazon is to learn from other sellers’ trial and error. We hope we can provide a little bit of ease and expertise in that regard, while keeping you in the loop with Amazon’s current protocols. Thanks for the read and if you have any other questions, don’t be afraid to reach out!
This information has been provided by Amazonsellershelp.com, a logistics and warehouse company in the USA that helps Amazon FBA sellers. The company is actually owned and managed by a group who sells large volumes on FBA. If interested, check out their website.
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