Amazon assigning FC on the opposite side of Canada 🤦
Hello, I could really use your help. I am an experienced seller in the US market, but this is my first time selling in Canada. (My products are not NARF-eligible, so I have to get my inventory into Canada FCs.)
I now have inventory in a freight forwarder’s warehouse in Port Coquitlam, BC (greater Vancouver). I need to ship my inventory into an Amazon fulfillment center. (I had shipped inventory from China to the Vancouver warehouse as a staging location, with a plan to ship smaller palletized quantities into FCs in the Vancouver area.)
HERE’S THE PROBLEM: When I use the Send to Amazon workflow in Seller Central to send a few pallets of my inventory into an Amazon FC, it automatically assigns the shipment to the YYZ4 FC in Brampton, Ontario as the destination!!
Brampton, ON is literally on the other side of the continent from the warehouse where my inventory is located. It would be totally cost-prohibitive to ship my inventory by truck (LTL) that entire distance!!
It seems insane that Amazon would assign an Ontario FC destination, given the British Columbia origin address, and given that there are plenty of FCs in BC. Every week over the past 2 months, I have tried re-creating the shipment in Seller Central – but every time, it assigns an FC in Ontario as the destination… so I void the shipment and try again the next week… to no avail.
Have any of you encountered this problem before? Does anyone have any suggestions for how to solve it? Thanks for any help you can provide.
Amazon assigning FC on the opposite side of Canada 🤦
Hello, I could really use your help. I am an experienced seller in the US market, but this is my first time selling in Canada. (My products are not NARF-eligible, so I have to get my inventory into Canada FCs.)
I now have inventory in a freight forwarder’s warehouse in Port Coquitlam, BC (greater Vancouver). I need to ship my inventory into an Amazon fulfillment center. (I had shipped inventory from China to the Vancouver warehouse as a staging location, with a plan to ship smaller palletized quantities into FCs in the Vancouver area.)
HERE’S THE PROBLEM: When I use the Send to Amazon workflow in Seller Central to send a few pallets of my inventory into an Amazon FC, it automatically assigns the shipment to the YYZ4 FC in Brampton, Ontario as the destination!!
Brampton, ON is literally on the other side of the continent from the warehouse where my inventory is located. It would be totally cost-prohibitive to ship my inventory by truck (LTL) that entire distance!!
It seems insane that Amazon would assign an Ontario FC destination, given the British Columbia origin address, and given that there are plenty of FCs in BC. Every week over the past 2 months, I have tried re-creating the shipment in Seller Central – but every time, it assigns an FC in Ontario as the destination… so I void the shipment and try again the next week… to no avail.
Have any of you encountered this problem before? Does anyone have any suggestions for how to solve it? Thanks for any help you can provide.
Seller_AKFEePkCPtw6T
This is common here in Canada. There is no inventory placement option when sending in FBA as you have discovered.
I am going to hazard a guess that your products are PL with no sales history in Canada yet. In that case, all of your shipments will be directed to the GTA because that is where the bulk of our population lives. There is no escaping it in my experience, especially when sending pallets. In all my years here, I have never sent a pallet to the BC warehouses and I am based in Vancouver.
Those of us with experience shipping pallets have been reexamining that choice. I have found that my costs for shipping pallets with gas prices being what they are is the same as shipping via UPS partnered, especially when I factor in the fact that there is no partnered shipping for LTL shipments and that the carriers handling those shipments cannot get a daytime appointment for the delivery. As a result, drivers are having to wait for night time deliveries. My broker told me about one delivery that he handled that was kept waiting for more than 36 hours. That waiting time is charged at rates as high as $100/hour. Amazon does not pay those charges. Neither do they pay for the storage costs if your carrier cannot get the appointment in a timely fashion and your pallets have to be stored for a week or more.
Once the LTL delivery occurs, I have seen deliveries sit in the yard for a month or more. Meanwhile, that inventory is not selling and your IPI is being impacted. As a “new” Canadian seller, you will not have restrictions on your inventory levels, but in 9 months you will. Many new sellers are getting their limits now and they are not happy.
This is not the good ole US of A and you cannot treat things here the same way you do there.
I encourage you to rethink sending in several pallets of product right now. Manage your inventory so that your IPI stays healthy and you are not back here in 9 months struggling with excess inventory.
Welcome to Canada, eh?
10 replies
Seller_yOQSz1WCydSKg
Amazon is assigning the fulfullment center closest to where your products are in the most demand, or the warehouse that has the fastest receiving ability.
This is the way it has always worked. There is no problem for you to solve.
Seller_AKFEePkCPtw6T
This is common here in Canada. There is no inventory placement option when sending in FBA as you have discovered.
I am going to hazard a guess that your products are PL with no sales history in Canada yet. In that case, all of your shipments will be directed to the GTA because that is where the bulk of our population lives. There is no escaping it in my experience, especially when sending pallets. In all my years here, I have never sent a pallet to the BC warehouses and I am based in Vancouver.
Those of us with experience shipping pallets have been reexamining that choice. I have found that my costs for shipping pallets with gas prices being what they are is the same as shipping via UPS partnered, especially when I factor in the fact that there is no partnered shipping for LTL shipments and that the carriers handling those shipments cannot get a daytime appointment for the delivery. As a result, drivers are having to wait for night time deliveries. My broker told me about one delivery that he handled that was kept waiting for more than 36 hours. That waiting time is charged at rates as high as $100/hour. Amazon does not pay those charges. Neither do they pay for the storage costs if your carrier cannot get the appointment in a timely fashion and your pallets have to be stored for a week or more.
Once the LTL delivery occurs, I have seen deliveries sit in the yard for a month or more. Meanwhile, that inventory is not selling and your IPI is being impacted. As a “new” Canadian seller, you will not have restrictions on your inventory levels, but in 9 months you will. Many new sellers are getting their limits now and they are not happy.
This is not the good ole US of A and you cannot treat things here the same way you do there.
I encourage you to rethink sending in several pallets of product right now. Manage your inventory so that your IPI stays healthy and you are not back here in 9 months struggling with excess inventory.
Welcome to Canada, eh?
Seller_H9UG7MC0IImBN
This is a problem we struggle with here in Canada on a daily basis - all of our products end up getting shipped from vancouver to the YYZX warehouses and then are still offered on prime next day in alberta/BC which usually means they are present in the Western FCs… Not to mention I could walk to the YYC FC from here and cant remember the last time inventory got allocated there.
Its a massive inefficiency from amazon for us all to individually send our inventory box by box or ltl by ltl across the country when the amazon FC could consolidate transfers and save the sellers millions. But they dont care - it gives them a pricing advantage when offering their own products. Typical Amazon
