When you comply with Fulfillment by Amazon’s Packaging and prep requirements and Shipping and routing requirements and ensure that your carriers and suppliers also follow them, it enables efficient and accurate receipt and storage of your inventory at the fulfillment center.
When there are problems receiving inventory at the fulfillment center, we perform unplanned services to successfully process products into your sellable inventory. This may cause costly delays and affect your ability to sell products quickly.
See Inbound performance summary for further details on problems with shipments received in Amazon fulfillment centers and the action to take to avoid these issues in the future.
Additional coaching or product prep requires resources. For repeated instances of the same problem group, Amazon escalates your coaching level (Standard, Elevated, Critical).
Follow the steps below to see your current coaching level and escalation criteria.
The following table provides an example of coaching level escalation and de-escalation for problem group Unplanned Prep – Bagging. The maximum problem rate permitted for this problem group is 0.36%.
Problem date | Your problem rate | Coaching level | Problem quantity | Notes |
April 14 | 0.01% | Standard | 2 | First instance for this problem group |
There is a 21-day grace period where we do not escalate you further for this group. | ||||
April 20 | 0.40% | Standard | 6 | No escalation |
You are still within the 21-day grace period (beginning April 14) | ||||
May 10 | 0.50% | Elevated | 5 | Coaching level escalated |
Problem rate exceeds the maximum permitted problem rate (0.50% > 0.36%) | ||||
Outside the 21-day grace period (beginning April 14) | ||||
June 20 | 0.50% | Critical | 10 | Coaching Level escalated |
Problem rate exceeds the maximum permitted problem rate (0.50% > 0.36%) | ||||
Outside the 21-day grace period (beginning May 10) | ||||
Oct 25 | 0.20% | Elevated | 5 | Coaching level de-escalated |
Problem rate below the maximum permitted problem rate (0.20% < 0.36%) for the last four months (June 20 to Oct 20) |
If your problem rate remains below the maximum permitted problem rate for a four-month period from the first date of escalation (June 20 in the example above), we lower your coaching level by one.
When products that have not been prepped or labelled adequately are sent to Amazon, we provide complete unplanned prep services, such as labelling or poly bagging, within our fulfilment centres. This affects our processes and can cause costly delays in making products available to customers, which in turn affects your ability to sell your products quickly.
Problem Type | Unplanned Prep Service | Charge |
Barcode Label Missing | Label Unit | $1.62 |
Label Required | Label Unit | $1.62 |
Poly bagging Required | Enclose Unit in Poly bag | $1.90 |
Bubble Wrap Required | Bubble Wrap Unit | $1.90 |
Opaque Poly bagging Required | Enclose Unit in Opaque Bag | $1.90 |
Taping Required | Tape Unit | $1.90 |
You can view a list of products that have been charged the Unplanned Prep Service fee in the Summary tab of the shipment creation workflow and in the Inbound Performance report.
To learn more about problem types, refer to the help page Inbound Performance Feedback.
To ensure accuracy in the assessment of these fees, Amazon will be reviewing photos taken in our fulfilment centres of your shipments. You will be able to view these photos that demonstrate noncompliance with our prep requirements in Seller Central.
We want to help you improve your inbound processes and better plan your prep and packaging activities, by providing greater visibility to your inbound shipments, increased use of our Inventory Requirements help content, and planned service options such as the FBA Label Service.