Category: News

The FBA storage capacity system on Amazon has recently been updated, and this update may have an impact on you.

In the past few years, Amazon has changed its FBA storage limits multiple times, leading to confusion and annoyance among sellers, who saw their inventory being restricted or decreased in some cases. The weekly restock limits and quarterly storage volume limits implemented by Amazon created further perplexity. However, as of March 1st, 2023, Amazon has eliminated the weekly restock and quarterly storage limits and has introduced a new system called FBA capacity limits, which encompasses a monthly capacity limit. Keep reading to discover more about Amazon’s newly simplified FBA capacity management system.

What are FBA capacity limits?

FBA capacity limits are a monthly constraint that dictates the quantity of inventory that sellers can ship and store at Amazon. This new system offers greater inventory capacity and control than the previous FBA inventory storage and restocking limits. These limits are established during the third week of each month, allowing sellers to plan for up to three months ahead with approximate capacity limits specific to each storage type in their account (e.g., standard size, oversize).

Your FBA capacity limits are heavily impacted by your IPI score in the Inventory Performance section of Seller Central. The higher your IPI score, the higher your capacity limits will be.

Who is subject to FBA capacity limits?

Amazon will not impose capacity restrictions on new professional sellers as the company hasn’t had the opportunity to evaluate its inventory performance yet. However, professional accounts that have been in operation for a minimum of 39 weeks will be subject to capacity limits.

How does this new streamlined FBA capacity management system work?

• Sellers indicate a reservation fee for every cubic foot of supplementary storage capacity.
• Amazon will objectively approve the request by beginning with the reservation fee with the highest value per cubic foot until all assigned capacity is provided.
• Once Amazon grants extra capacity, sellers can offset their reservation fees by obtaining performance credits from the sales they generate using the additional capacity.

What if you need more storage space?

If you find that you require more space for your products or are introducing a new product and need additional room, you can ask for more capacity by paying a “reservation fee.” The reservation fee involves bidding against other sellers, and those with higher reservation fees will be given priority over those who bid lower. Once extra capacity is granted, a seller’s reservation fee can be offset by earning performance credits from the sales generated through the added capacity.

The aim of the performance credits is to compensate for up to 100% of the reservation fee, which means that sellers won’t have to pay reservation fees if their new inventory sells out. This emphasizes the importance of the sell-through rate once again.

How FBA capacity limits affect Amazon sellers

As a seasoned seller on Amazon, you must be aware that remaining vigilant is crucial while selling on this platform. This is because Amazon keeps updating and modifying its policies and functions, compelling sellers to adjust quickly.

However, in the case of this specific change, we believe it is a positive development, particularly when compared to past inventory storage changes. This is because it offers sellers a more transparent understanding of how much inventory they can send to Amazon per storage type. Moreover, Amazon has stated that this change will allow most sellers to enjoy increased capacity limits, which is a positive aspect.

Amazon will reward sellers with more storage capacity if they can sell their existing inventory quickly. However, if inventory remains unsold for an extended period, do not expect additional space. If you require more room for a new product launch or other items, you can bid for more storage capacity. However, we recommend doing so only if you are confident that the new inventory will sell, as Amazon will compensate you with performance credits that can offset the reservation fees.

The primary factors that have the most significant impact on your IPI score are:

• Excess inventory: It is advisable to prevent the accumulation of stagnant inventory that remains unsold and incurs monthly storage charges.
• Sell-through rate: It is desirable to keep this rate as high as possible. The sell-through rate is calculated by dividing the number of units sold and shipped in the last 90 days by the average number of units available in Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
• In-stock rate: Amazon encourages sellers to maintain a stock of fast-selling items as much as possible.
• Stranded inventory: Stranded inventory refers to the stock that is present in Amazon’s fulfillment centers but has no active offer for the product. It is recommended to maintain this percentage at 0.

Focus on your IPI score

A crucial lesson to take away is to concentrate on enhancing your IPI score, which is a significant factor. Amazon requires your score to be at least 400, and if it falls below that, you may anticipate a reduction in your capacity limits.

Amazon will display the top contributing factors and the elements that have a negative (and positive) influence on your score. Therefore, use this information to enhance your inventory performance.

This just in from Amazon:

We want to ensure that we can receive, store, and fulfill products in a timely manner for all sellers using FBA. One of the ways we do this is through restock limits that enable all sellers to be able to send sufficient inventory to meet future customer demand.

As we prepare for the busy holiday season, those demand patterns naturally change. To ensure a successful holiday season, including accounting for seasonality and scheduled deals, we are updating our restock limits to allow all sellers to have at least four months of inventory in FBA. While all sellers using FBA will see their limits updated, this updated limit will currently restrict about 5% of sellers using FBA from being able to restock additional products due to their already having high levels of inventory.

Our records show that your current inventory levels (including open shipments) are within our projected four months of inventory limit, and so these limits should not have an impact on your current ability to restock products. As always, you can review your current restock limits and maximum shipment quantity on the Inventory Performance dashboard (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/inventory-performance/dashboard).

Your restock limits are determined by a range of factors, including seasonal and peak selling periods for your products, forecasts for your ASINs, the new selection you carry, deals you have scheduled and fulfillment center capacity. For more information on restock limits, go to Restock limits by storage type: Frequently asked questions (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/GUWWC8QVAF8TFVFR).

You can create more room for products within your limits by selling through your inventory, creating removal orders for products that are unlikely to sell, or canceling non-urgent shipments to fulfillment centers. For more recommendations, go to FBA Inventory (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/inventoryplanning/manageinventoryhealth).

We thank you for choosing to sell on Amazon and for all you do to provide an excellent experience for customers by maintaining healthy levels of inventory.

You’ve probably noticed that we’ve done a lot of changes in Zonmaster recently! We’ve updated the:

• Dashboard
• Order Manager
• Email Template Manager
• Account Settings Area
• Landing Pages

So now we are going to update our backend infrastructure! Unfortunately, to do this requires some downtime.

Downtime Scheduled for Monday June 14, 2021

During the downtime the site will be unavailable. We thank you for your patience and understanding!

The Purge

Zonmaster has been around for a long time! We are one of the oldest (and best, we like to think) 3rd Party Tools for Amazon Sellers. But, because of our age (we are 7 years old!) we have a lot of baggage in the storage area.

Please Note: If you are a current member of Zonmaster – either paid or still in your free trial – you have NOTHING to read about here. Your account will be unchanged, regardless of how much data we have of yours.

Accounts dormant for 6 months or more will be archived

This means that your data (customers, orders, products, etc) will be completely removed from our system.

In July 2020, Amazon announced ASIN-level quantity limits for products stored in their fulfilment network. Amazon made this change to ensure that they could receive and store products for all sellers who use FBA. During the pandemic limits were even more restricted but now Amazon are replacing ASIN-level FBA quantity limits with FBA restock limits.

Restock limits are set per stock type based on your past and projected sales, so you can spread these limits across your ASINs. This gives you more flexibility because you’re not limited to quantity for a single product, but it still makes sense to only send inventory to FBA that will be sold in the near future – both because it limits your FBA replenishment limits for ASINs that sell faster and because you may incur long-term inventory fees.

Amazon Storage Types

Amazon Storage limits are applicable for four storage main types:

• Standard-size
• Oversize
• Clothing
• Footwear

Adjustments to the limits for the storage of dangerous goods (flammable goods and aerosols) are treated separately from other types of storage.

FBA Storage Limits

Storage limits are calculated using several factors including:

• Your sales volume (including your sales’ seasonality periods)
• Your historical IPI scores
• Available fulfilment centre capacity

Sellers with consistently higher IPI scores will receive higher storage limits, adjusted for sales volume and available capacity. When setting limits for an upcoming quarter, Amazon considers both your recent sales volume and seasonal volume from the last year.

You can see which storage types your products are categorized as and how much cubic feet they occupy using the FBA Inventory Age page and the Inventory Age report. Utilisation includes your current inventory at Amazon and all incoming shipments, including your shipments in Working, In Transit and Receiving status.

What’s the difference between FBA restock limits and storage limits?

It is important to note that both FBA storage limits and FBA replenishment limits may apply to your account. Storage limits are based on volume, measured in cubic feet, and determine the capacity of the fill center you can use. Replenishment limits are based on units and determine how much inventory you can send to replenishment centers. Replenishment limits apply regardless of your IPI score.

For some products, your limiting factor may be storage limits, especially if you have one of more ASINs which are relatively bulky. For smaller products where storage limits aren’t an issue restock limits may be more important.

Don’t forget that you can see your current stock levels inside of Zonmaster on your product’s details page. Also, when we release our new monitoring and alerts feature in May, 2021, you’ll be able to get warnings about low stock levels.

Start your Zonmaster Free Trial today!

Amazon is facing a constant battle to deal with fake reviews on the marketplace. In an amazing piece of investigative journalism, the UK’s consumer champion, Which? – a not-for-profit organization based that is 100% independent and focuses on revealing online (and offline) scams – has released it’s finding.

The Size of the Problem

Which? easily found 10 sites that offer Amazon reviews for money. These companies have over 1 million(!!!) people offering reviews. Reviews can cost as low as $7 (£5). Sellers can sign up for the services and choose from a range of packages and services.

Which? signed up with several of these sites and posed as sellers. They also discovered Rebate sites (get a product for free if you write a review) offer similar services.

For Buyers: Spotting Fake Reviews

Check the Location – Amazon now posts on reviews where the buyer who left the review was from.

Beware Unknown Brands with lots of positive reviews

Check the Language – watch for weird spellings and punctuation.

Check the content – sometimes listings are hijacked so see if the reviews actually mention anything about the product

Watch for lots of images – fake review sites (ironically) often request that reviewers post an image. But real reviewers rarely do this. Watch out for listings with an unusually high number of images in the reviews.

What You As A Seller Should Know

Obviously, buying reviews or doing anything to stimulate positive reviews in exchange for something is against Amazon’s Terms of Service. If discovered your account will be closed.

Things not to do:

The 7 most common transgressions

1. Using your account or that of a competitor or customer to post, edit, or retract a review. 
2. Offering compensation of any kind to facilitate reviews.
3. Requesting a positive review, rather than any kind of review, either directly or through packaging and box inserts.
4. Engaging with fake reviewers, even if the need for a review is never mentioned but rather implied (closed social media groups, review websites and clubs, etc.).
5. Contacting a negative reviewer to offer compensation, even if there’s no mention of retracting the review in return.
6. Asking buyers to contact you before posting a negative review, but encouraging positive reviews to be posted.
7. Creating product variations to accumulate reviews from existing products.

Repercussions

Amazon is fighting a battle over fake reviews and here are some of the things that can happen to you as a seller if you are caught doing it.

1. Suspension – your account will be frozen and if you have inventory in FBA that will be destroyed
2. Legal Action – Amazon has taken legal action against sellers based in the EU and the US caught review tampering
3. FTC legal action – in serious cases the US Federal Trade Commission also takes separate legal action against the seller.
4. Buyer Legal Action – several cases of Consumer action have been brought before the courts

Getting Legitimate Reviews

There are legitimate ways to get reviews of course. The best way is to use the Request Review Feature.

Using Zonmaster you can automate Amazon’s own ‘Request Review’ feature. This will automatically ask your buyers to leave a review at the right time.

Start your free trial today!

This just in from Amazon! This is a closure notice for the main fulfillment center in Canada. Presumably this is about Covid 19.

Amazon Notice

On Friday, March 12, Amazon Canada received an order from the local government in Peel Region requiring us to temporarily close our YYZ4 fulfilment centre located at 8050 Heritage Road in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, effective March 13 at 12:01 a.m. ET. It is anticipated that YYZ4 will reopen on Sunday, March 28.

We are working urgently to minimize any potential disruption to our selling partners and customers.

Please note, our other fulfilment centres throughout Canada continue to operate as usual. Our customers will continue to be able to find and order the products they need most on Amazon.ca, through Amazon’s flexible operations and seller-fulfilled network.

For more information and the latest updates, check the Temporary closure of YYZ4 fulfilment centre (Brampton, Canada) help page, here: https://sellercentral.amazon.ca/gp/help/GRJBZ626U87TZ3V7. Selling Partner Support does not have additional information at this time.   

Please be assured that as we adapt to challenging circumstances, our focus and absolute priority continues to be the health and safety of our employees, selling partners, and customers.

Amazon teams in Canada will continue to be relentlessly engaged on your behalf to find the operational solutions best suited to your specific needs and provide you with the support you need through this critical time. We appreciate your understanding and patience as we navigate this unprecedented situation.

Update (March 29, 2021)

This Fulfilment center has reopened. This from Amazon:

We’re pleased to confirm that our YYZ4 fulfilment centre, located at 8050 Heritage Road in Brampton, Ontario, reopened on March 28.

Your FBA offers remain available on Amazon, and no action is required from you. If you converted any offers to seller fulfilled, we recommend that you convert them back to FBA as soon as possible.

For more information, including partnered carrier updates, go to our YYZ4 Help page:
https://sellercentral.amazon.ca/gp/help/external/GRJBZ626U87TZ3V7

Just a quick announcement. In various marketplaces Amazon is rolling out new updates to ensure that emails sent comply with their new guidelines. You can read about those guidelines here.

We are trying our best to update our compliance checker, but we may not find more complex issues.

Email Styling Rules

Do not include any of the following display material:

• Emojis. 
• GIFs.
• Message margins over 20% maximum width.
• Image or graphic sizes larger than 80% maximum width.
• Overrides of Amazon’s default line height, font family, or font color.
• Fonts in more than three sizes.
• Message bodies that are centered or otherwise override default text alignment settings.
• More than two line-breaks (spacing between paragraphs) in a row.
• Unsecure images (http instead of https).

Email Content Rules

Do not include or do any of the following in your emails:

• Order confirmations and product images.
• Shipping confirmations.
• Thank You messages.
• Contact us if you have a problem messages.
• Promotional messages including coupons.
• Promotions for additional products.
• Referrals to any 3rd party products.
• Repeat requests for product reviews.
• External links (unless necessary for order completion).
• Attachments (except for instructions, invoices, or warranty information).
• Logos displaying your web address.
• Email addresses and telephone numbers.
• Sensitive content (violence, bare skin, gore, adult, and offensive language).
• Language that incentivizes buyers to leave a review (a free gift, discount, compensation).
• Links to opt-out of messaging.
• Tracking pixels and images.
• Provide instructions or guidelines when requesting reviews.
• As per the previous change in guidelines, you can’t use the word [Important] in the subject of the message unless it’s a critical one to complete the order (personalization required etc…)

As of March 1st, 2021 Amazon is now scanning emails for content and styling violations and not delivering those messages.

Yes, there may be instances where an email gets through, but you have been warned! Historically, the next step Amazon will take – typically a few months after stopping delivery – is to issue you with warnings and then suspensions.

The Good News

Here is what we do know for sure:

• You can still send emails
• 3rd Party tools are ok to use with Amazon.

Auto Review Requests

The absolute best way to ask for reviews is to use Amazon’s own Review Request tool. Inside of Zonmaster we have a simple switch that lets us send out these review requests automatically. No need to keep on top of orders. The really good thing about Auto Review Requests is that Amazon will send them out in the preferred language of the customer! You don’t need to do anything.

Auto Review Requests are available on ALL Zonmaster plans, even the one starting at $6.99 a month.

This update just in from Amazon Australia. They will be requiring Tracking IDs for most MFN shipments.

A very similar rule came into effect in Europe on February 8, 2021.

Please note that what Amazon does in one marketplace may or may not make its way to other marketplaces, but best to be aware of it!

[Action Required] Providing Tracking ID for seller fulfilled orders to be mandatory

Upcoming changes to seller fulfilled order requirements.

Effective April 15, 2021, all seller fulfilled orders will require a valid tracking ID and carrier name when confirming shipment on Seller Central. You will not be able to ship confirm your order without providing tracking information. This change will help improve the delivery experience of seller fulfilled orders for our customers, so that they can see detailed shipment tracking information wherever possible. Tracking also reduces customer contacts, order-related defects, and lost-shipment costs, while improving seller feedback ratings.

This requirement will apply across all three ship confirmation methods:

• Single and Bulk order processing on ‘Manage Orders’ page;
• bulk confirmation using ‘Shipping Confirmation file upload’; and
• API feeds.

However, you are not required to provide tracking details in the following circumstances:

• Orders that cost less than $30 (including shipping) and are shipped using Australia Post Regular Letter Service; and
• Orders that cost less than $50 (including shipping) and are shipped from outside of Australia using non-integrated carriers.

For more information visit Mandatory input of carrier and tracking ID FAQ.

Just a quick head’s up!

We see that Amazon has quietly slipped Poland (amazon.pl) into orders and reports. We will be opening up that marketplace as a target for emails and review requests and also sales rank tracking etc this week.

Slowly Amazon is covering the world!