FBA-mageddon: The full story of Amazon restricting items from FBA warehouses
FBA-mageddon: The full story
I almost never do posts on “Amazon policy changes” or “new FBA fees” or related topics. Overall strategy and tactics is where the money is, not “news” or defensive positioning.
That said, Amazon did something big last week that affects FBA sellers in a pretty big way.
Is this “FBA-mageddon”, or all hype?
Let’s get into it.
Amazon starts restricting many items from being sold FBA
Last week Amazon sent the lives of many Fulfillment by Amazon sellers spiraling into chaos when they started rejecting a significant percentage of ASINs from being sold FBA.
Sellers who were creating listings were finding as much as 40% (the biggest number I’ve heard – I’m sure there’s higher) of their inventory rejected by Amazon. The message looks something like this:
“You are already at the maximum inventory allowed for this product, due to capacity or other restrictions. This product must be removed from this shipment.”
Why Amazon is restricting items from warehouses
Amazon apparently has a large problem with slow-moving inventory filling up its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) warehouses. They’re simply running out of room.
As the theory goes, Amazon is trying to restrict low-demand items from entering FBA warehouses. Amazon wants high turnover, rather than FBA warehouses turning into cheap storage facilities for items that rarely sell.
The facts as we know them:
Refraining from sending low-demand items to Amazon is not the answer. There’s way more to this.
Amazon is rejecting books (and more) for which sellers have never shipped to FBA. (Meaning ASIN quantity limits of “zero” are a very real thing.)
Amazon is rejecting books (and more) with a strong “best seller rank” (aka sales rank). This undermines the theory that the FBA restrictions are based solely on keeping slow-moving inventory out of its warehouses.
Amazon is restricting low-demand books with no existing FBA offers. Indicating Amazon wants items that fall under a certain demand-threshold out of FBA warehouses altogether. A bad sign for those of us who do serious business in long tail FBA inventory (most of my shipments have an average rank of worse than 1 million).
There are anecdotal reports of Amazon restricting well -ranked books with NO current FBA offers. We can’t put a ton of stock into this (like I said, they’re anecdotal so file under “gossip”), but this even further undermines the above theory.
My personal experience with new warehouse restrictions
So far, non-existent.
I just sent off a shipment of about 90 books, and none were rejected. And its worth noting the average rank for this shipment was 1.1 million (not exactly high-demand).
When you combine this with my inventory health report (covered below) showing zero restricted ASINs, it could lend to the theory some sellers are being favored over others (I don’t want to get any rumors going, it’s totally anecdotal and merely something to keep an eye on).
My sell-through rate (presumably something Amazon would look at) isn’t amazing, but I’m certainly not storing tons and tons of dead weight in their warehouses either.
A big thing remains to be seen: What will happen to any “restricted” inventory when it hits the FBA warehouse? My fear is that “no news is not good news,” and these items will immediately go “unfulfillable.”
Unanswered questions about new FBA restrictions
- Are these restrictions permanent? Or are we in the “working out the kinks” phase?
- Are they tied solely to ASINs, or is Amazon algorithmically limiting them based on multiple factors, such as which warehouse you’re shipping to, your overall inventory sell-through rate, or even on the demand for certain book subjects?
- Is Amazon going to start sharing FBA restrictions with third-party apps (i.e. our scanning apps), so we can know FBA eligibility before making a purchase?
- Is Amazon going to reveal their secret-ASIN-restriction-formula, so we can assess how these restrictions will impact our FBA business overall, instead of on an item-by-item basis (as would be the case if they implemented #3).
Amazon’s second-biggest blunder
What concerns me second-to-most about this (I’ll get to the #1 thing in a moment) is the lack of communication from Amazon. They either don’t know or don’t care how seismically disruptive it is for sellers having a massive percentage of FBA inventory they’ve invested in unable to be sold.
To put it colloquially: Not cool. Not cool at all.
Amazon’s biggest blunder
The worst thing about this isn’t the FBA restrictions at all (we could theoretically cope with this), its that we aren’t made aware of the restrictions before we purchase inventory.
So far, Amazon is apparently unwilling to share this information with third party apps (like scanning apps), so that we can determine an item’s FBA-eligibility before making a buying decision. (If Amazon is sharing this data with scanning apps, it has not been incorporated into any of them yet).
This is a pretty massive oversight.
On one hand, some have gotten conspiratorial and said: It’s in Amazon’s interest to not tell people an ASIN is blacklisted, which would deter them from purchasing (and thus selling the item on Amazon). As such, Amazon is essentially tricking people into purchasing inventory they can’t sell, thereby forcing them to sell it merchant fulfilled.
I don’t agree to this theory because, like any good company, Amazon is always four steps ahead. While they will find many of us will cope by selling the items anyway, they have to know a much larger percentage will do one of two things:
- Take their business to other channels, like eBay / Half.
- Get out of the FBA business altogether.
Both of which hurt Amazon.
One thing I know: There is zero-percent chance I’m going back to merchant fulfilled.
Why these restrictions are shortsighted on Amazon’s part
Hard to believe Amazon could be this shortsighted, but I believe Amazon thinks this move will solve one simple problem: limiting the number of low-demand items in their warehouses.
If that’s how simplistic their forecasting is, it’s surprisingly myopic for a company so forward-thinking.
Instead what this his done has thrown many seller’s FBA business into complete chaos, buying inventory totally blind, and sending everyone into a tornado of uncertainty that is totally unsustainable.
And this isn’t the kind of “inconvenience” that a seller just adjusts to over time and won’t even notice in a few months (many businesses make big changes, knowing their customers will be temporarily uncomfortable, but won’t even think about it 3 weeks later) .
This change has a massive impact on the most important thing of all: Our bottom lines. If 40% of our inventory is getting rejected, that’s a 40% blow to our margins. Most sellers cannot – and should not – absorb this.
Big mistake, making it unprofitable for a big chunk of people (i.e. third party sellers, who, speaking of 40%, make up 40% of Amazon’s profits) to do business with you.
What do new restrictions mean for FBA sellers who sell books on Amazon?
Many (probably most) of you sell more than books. But let’s discuss specifically how this will affect Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) booksellers – both the good and the bad.
It’s too early to say if this affects FBA booksellers more than, say, people who sell toys.
My theory is that it does, based solely on the math: A higher percentage of books have low demand (i.e. don’t sell very often) vs. toys (which have a higher percentage of ASINs that sell semi-regularly).
If the theory holds that Amazon is restricting ASINs base primarily on how long they’ll sit in an FBA warehouse (while there’s evidence to the contrary), it will affect a much larger swath of the book market than other categories.
The reason is simple: Books are simply a much larger category, and finite subject matter makes any one book inherently not a “mass market” item. The demand for books is simply spread across a much larger catalog.
More on the good news/bad news for FBA booksellers
This affects FBA booksellers in a negative way in that most sellers I know go wide rather than deep – selling single copies of thousands of books vs. multiple copies of single SKUs. So these restrictions simply affect a larger number of SKUs, making it almost impossible to build our inventory around avoiding restricted ASINs.
The flip side is that when a book is restricted, it represents a smaller percentage of our inventory, and a probably insignificant investment (though in aggregate, it will add up to something significant).
(Just be glad you’re not selling private label products [or be un-glad if you are]: Many are finding their products are rejected by FBA only after they’ve invested in a pallet shipped from China. Makes our problems look tame).
What some FBA sellers are doing to cope
Several sellers online have talked about the new field in your Inventory Health Report headed “ASIN limit.”
The idea here (thanks Ryan Grant) is to download your Inventory Health Report, paste the text file into Excel or a Google doc spreadsheet, and review the column headed “ASIN limit.” You can sort the data in that column from high-to-low to give you a glimpse of how many items in your FBA inventory are affected.
How does this help? It lets you see what items in your current FBA inventory are restricted, to give you an overall sense of how this will affect your business.
I just did this. How did I fare?
The column in my report was blank.
From what I’ve read elsewhere, this is a common occurrence. From what I’ve also read, it does not mean you won’t find some FBA items restricted. It just means Amazon hasn’t gotten around to telling you yet.
What you should do to combat these restrictions
I always err on the side of not burdening Amazon’s Seller Support with general complaints. So I’m not recommending you do that here.
But this is serious, and I’m recommending contacting them not with “complaints,” but legitimate questions:
- Asking why you have not received any communication from them on these changes.
- Requesting full disclosure on their ASIN restriction formula so you can adjust your inventory purchases accordingly.
- If this is permanent, asking when these ASIN restrictions will be communicated to third party apps.
There are enough Amazon sellers reading this that if we all contacted Seller Support, it will have an impact – not in reversing any restrictions (for which I’m not hopeful), but greater transparency.
Why I’m not panicking yet
Why I might panic on your behalf, I’m not personally panicking yet for two reasons:
- Amazon’s hasn’t restricted any of my FBA inventory yet.
- My FBA inventory is showing no restricted ASINs. More than likely Amazon hasn’t gotten around to me yet, but my fingers are crossed I’ve been selling via FBA long enough that I’m in their good graces (naive, but I’m clinging to this).
“More on this situation as it develops.”
-Peter Valley
I was also thinking that sell-through rates could have something to do with it. Mine is at 6-10%, on average, and I also haven’t had any books restricted yet (knock on wood!).
i’m running 27% restriction rate on the books i send to amazon..the lowest sales rank was today..3,162 sales rank..most are under 1 million..i keep hearing this crap is over on the 23rd..nobody’s told me for sure..i could deal with it if we had the apt tell us BEFORE we buy..i’m sure not going to a library sale dragging a ream of printouts..
talk about luck..i sent tons of ASD merchandise days before this started happening..
I pulled the report that you recommended and found only one ASIN limited to zero quantity. It was a product that had been put on the Restricted Product list that I had sold in the past and no longer sell. I usually remove the listings of these so that I don’t try to relist them – and of course, the system will no let you relist it anyway because of the restriction. I found no other ASIN’s restricted at this time on any of my inventory.
I agree that if this actually does pan out to be something that Amazon is planning to do with more ASIN’s that they notify sellers in advance and provide notification to seller apps so we don’t end up purchasing a quantity of unsellable inventory. I guess we’ll see!
I opened a case with Seller Support when my first batch of 5 ASINs was rejected, and this is what they told me:
“Please know that, there is a temporary hold on the inbound fulfillment for these ASINs. This hold will be released on 23 of March. This hold is unanimous to all the sellers on our website.
*** Therefore, please be assured that, you will be able to send in the inventory on 23 of March. ***
The offers that you see are for the sellers who had inventory prior to the hold.
This hold is concerning a few customer complaints that were received for these ASINs. There are a few more products in the same list.
We have an ongoing research for these products that are being offered currently. The research will complete on 22 of March and the hold will be released by 23 of March.
Again, my apologies for the inconvenience.”
We’ll see what happens when I try to re-submit them in a few days.
We can only hope. Thank you for sharing this!
Interesting. Can you share what date you submitted this? I’m wondering if this represents the latest statement, or an older one they’ve since abandoned.
Well, I opened the case on March 17 and got that statement on March 18. But I just tried resubmitting the books, and got the same error. So much for their assurances that the hold would be removed on March 23!
Amazon is now allowing me to send in the 9 titles that they had on hold (5 originally, and the 4 from another purchase).
Thanks Paul. I appreciate your sharing.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the update. We started getting hit with book ASIN restrictions earlier this week. There is no rhyme or reason to why they are getting rejected. I made a list to see if there was a common thread amongst the rejected ASINs.
Were over 1 million sales rank (they were not) – some were amazing ranks.
Were there too many FBA sellers – nope – not that either – all the books / listing I target have either no FBA or maybe 1, so that isn’t it.
Were there hundreds of copies of this book being offered. Nope – most of the books were only showing 20ish new and 20ish used by merchant (with no FBA) – not high numbers, so not taking up warehouse space.
All very confusing and hope things clear up. I did list a very small shipment today and nothing has been rejected “yet.” I tried to throw in a couple of the already rejected ASINs and, yup, still rejected.
Look forward to hearing more.
Yes, I had many books rejected that had only 1, 2, or at most 3 FBA competition.
Nothing but mass paranoia like the google algorithm updates over the years.
Stay focused and steady!
I like the comparison, but I have to mention the Google algorithm changes destroyed a lot of businesses as well.
Yes, true
But it also got rid of the bad, and helped the good.
I personally like what amazon are doing, from their prespective and ours as we need to adapt to sending in good stuff not crap stuff (me included as very easy when all you need to do is scan and send in a box of stuff, so easy to be complacent).
Hopefully this will get rid of crappy amazon sellers, reduce amazon warehouse loads, and give amazon customers a better experience. This is exactly the reason amazon are doing this I think.
I had several toys that fell into this category, they were all used and items that Amazon sells. The books I had restricted (which were few) were ranked under 100k and also sold by Amazon. The common theme seemed to be that you shouldn’t compete with Amazon.
I’m definitely not panicking, and I’m not going to start selling merchant fulfilled anytime soon.
I heard a rumor that come March 23 Amazon will be done with cleaning out their warehouses and this will all be moot. I hope so. 16 of my 50 were rejected last week and they all had decent rank.
Any product I am scouting that I am going to sell multiple of, I always go through a “add a product” test to see if I am restricted for some reason. Even books.
I guess now I will just go all the way and create a test shipment.
Obviously this method doesn’t work for scouting masses of single books. UNLESS…. Our scouting apps had a “test ship” button that would work the item through the listing and shipment process and tell us if it makes it into a shipment.
Great tip. Let’s hope the scanning apps are listening.
Just ran my Inventory Health Report and like you, Peter, I had 0 items restricted. I sent a shipment yesterday of 175 items and everything went through just fine. Hope it stays that way.
Amazon could solve the full warehouse problem very easily by raising storage fees as high as necessary until sellers with slow moving, low priced inventory, find it unprofitable and remove it. They currently are still subsidizing storage fees to keep them artificially low. I would prefer Amazon raise their storage fee than to impose these arbitrary and unpredictable ASIN restrictions.
I agree. That’s what I’ve been saying. Booksellers aren’t really affected by long term storage as most of our books are one copy each. Raise long term storage fees on sellers with a lot of the same sku.
I was working on a shipment to FBA last week with I think 78 used books, but it gave me the error message (“You are already at the maximum inventory allowed for this product, due to capacity or other restrictions. This product must be removed from this shipment.”) on 19 of the books. I think they were all between 1 million and 3 million for rank, but other books from the same shipment had a similar rank that were not rejected (one even had a rank of 5 million and was accepted). I sent a message to Amazon and this is the response:
“From the below email, I understand that the issue is regarding the ASINS which are unable to send the shipment due to limit.
I understand from your email that you are concerned about the error restricting you from creating a new shipment for ASINs and would like us to remove this restriction as you are low on inventory and there are not many units from other sellers on Amazon. Kindly allow me to assist you with this query.
I am sorry for the inconvenience caused due to this restriction. As you’ve stated there are not many sellers offering this item and there’s not enough inventory units, in order to see if we can make an exception and remove this block I had contacted our internal team which manages these issues. After a long discussion and a thorough research the ASIN, they have concluded that this restriction cannot be removed or provide additional information at this time. Hence, you will not be able to send inventory for this item to our FC anymore.
I truly apologize for the inconvenience caused and regret that I cannot be of further help at this point, but I hope you understand my limitations in this matter as these decisions are taken by our business team. We are unable to determine the reason behind these restrictions or change them. The only way to sell them would be merchant fulfillment.
Personally, I wish there was more I could do, but there are situations such as this wherein we may not be able to provide you with the best possible experience and I hope you’ll understand our limitations. Kindly let me know if I can be of any further assistance. There is nothing more important to us than our seller’s concerns and therefore we are willing to extend any help that you may need at any time.
Thank you for your co-operation in this regard.
I hope this answers your query and please feel free to contact us for any further queries.
It has been a pleasure serving you today. We strive to provide the best customer service we can and your feedback is key to letting us know how we’re doing. Can I ask you to take the brief survey below and share your feedback with us?”
That’s a really long way to say nothing at all.
It ‘a like they’re getting paid by the word. Remember trying to stretch out a report in school to meet the minimum word requirements?
Ha. They all double as sweatshop writers for Gawker.
“Hence, you will not be able to send inventory for this item to our FC anymore.” That one line in that letter tells me a lot and I hope it tells some others the same. I was one of the lucky ones, I have no restrictions and I pray that I don’t get any.
Could we explore if how long you have been FBA has an effect? I have been merchant fulfilled for years, but only started to transition to FBA in Dec. 2015. I have a good sell through rate, so I am not loading them down with slow moving inventory, but I am getting good books rejected.
Worth looking at. I’ve been FBA since 2011.
Me too (FBA since 2011) and I still got ASIN restrictions on about 30 of 100 items in the last shipment I tried.
That’s brutal. So we can eliminate the length of time we’ve been FBA sellers as the overriding factor. My girlfriend is a relatively recent seller, and she’s not seeing any ASIN restrictions either. The mystery continues…
I have had maybe 5% of my books rejected. I try to look at the positive – I pay so little for books that if I can’t list a small % of them I will still be profitable….
Also, these massive booksellers that are undercutting all FBA Sellers (JENSON BOOKS, BETTER WORLD BOOKS, etc.) aren’t going to be able to dump all of their inventory to FBA anymore! Maybe we can get the books we do have going to FBA back up in price and more than make up for the sales we are going to lose with this new policy!
Jensen Books and RentU drive me bananas with their FBA pricing.
OMG! Yes!!! There are several on my hate list – those two, Hawthorne Academic (or something like that) and one or two others I can’t remember right now. But, I have noticed lately that one of them (can’t remember which one, NOT Jenson) has started to raise their prices at least a little ($5 or so). If there are more than 2 low-ball FBA prices, I don’t buy the book. But, they are super annoying.
Now that’s lookin at the bright side of life. Didn’t think of that.
I agree, if this stays under 10% I may just find a way to deal with it. Especially if it will mean the end of Jenson and RentU.
So glad you wrote this. One other ‘expert’ got all ornery and her blog post on this topic freaked everyone out (it didn’t help that she sounded like a substitute teacher who just had her apple stolen). You always provide sage, calm advice. Thanks bro.
And I sound like the paper-airplane-throwing punk fresh off his last suspension in the back of her class.
LOL 🙂
Maybe or maybe not, Peter, but even if so, we all know those kids were usually pretty darn smart and just needed a little extra excitement in their day! 😉
Peter,
Only those people who are using 3rd party (web based) listing services are not seeing the restrictions. If you are not seeing them, I’ll bet this is why! I used a 3p listing service to successfully send in a batch that SS was rejecting. Who knows what will happen with these when they arrive at Amazon’s warehouse.
I have heard their inventory that ends up being restricted in their shipments is showing up as stranded inventory once it gets to the fulfillment center, instead of when I list. Which is good bc I can retry to list the book later and have the book in my office instead of at Amazon.
I had wondered about this. I’ll be keeping an eye on my last shipment.
This isn’t true – I use a 3rd party listing service and have books rejected.
Anyone getting books rejected via third party software want to report what they’re seeing when something gets rejected?
I’m glad you mentioned this topic Peter. I use ScanPower for my listing and have not had any listings rejected through the software.
However, I have had about 25% of my existing listings set to “merchant fulfilled” (I am and have always been 100% FBA); I only found out about this when Amazon sent me an email on March 1 saying I have 30 days to “fix stranded inventory”, saying they will dispose of it if not addressed by March 30. It’s got me nervous and though perhaps they’re not related, it sure seems like my issue has something to do with these restrictions. I am attempting to get everything relisted, but Amazon Seller Support has been less than helpful unfortunately.
I had many books rejected using third party listing software. They were rejected in the “create a shipment” part of the process. Some of these I had taken photos of and written descriptions. Each time I updated the shipment, more were rejected. Most had sales ranks over 1.2 million. Some had good margins and almost no FBA sellers, such as a slim volume of obscure poetry. I set that aside for later.
I have had about 9 books rejected of the last 200 I have sent in. In one case I tried to relist a book rejected on the first order. It was rejected again on the second order. I am just throwing them in a box to review again after the Aug 15 Storage Fee period.
I started selling on Amazon Jan of 2014, and shifted to FBA May 2014 (thanks to you Peter).
I do very well with long tail books, DVD and CDs. I have often wondered when Amazon was going to start increased storage fees on the long tail items.
I have often worried that Amazon might do something to mess up the system. I strive to find other ways of selling… EBAY doesn’t work for me, I am looking into Shopify or other store, and let amazon do the shipping for me. My goal is to have at least 5 sources of income and FBA being only 20% of that cash flow.
I stay calm, because I do believe that Jeff Bezos ( Founder and President of Amazon.com) is one of the smartest business planners in history. He will not knowingly let things get screwed up. Amazon is a huge organization and he can’t keep tabs on everything.
That being said, I hope Amazon is reading this. Jeff, please communicate with us sellers. Ask for feedback, ask for advice, let us know what your problems are, we have lots of good ideas. Hey, invite some of us in for a good old fashioned Focus Group… you buy lunch…THX.
I have managed several businesses, and departments…If Jeff asked me to recommend one book on how to manage right and get the maximum out of all his employees, business partners and sellers. I recommend it to anyone interested in business and managing right.
http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0446670553/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458616201&sr=1-1&keywords=ricardo+semler
I keep wondering when I’m going to get an invite to a “focus group.” I’d settle for an old fashioned attempt to influence this blog with an envelope of cash. (I’d reject it, don’t worry).
Thanks again for all your help. You are the only reason I am making it in this business. I Know I am a broken record… but Feedback Mastery saved me… I now have few negative feedbacks, and I have been able to get all of them removed since last summer…. and the guy before that refused to email with me…. when the next two drop off, I will be at 100% THX
PS Great Videos…and yes I was screaming at you to scan some really good books… one of them was a $90.00 book… got two really good ideas on pricing during those videos…THX
PPS I also was able to figure out exactly where you live from the video… Fairbanks, Alaska… right 😉
Thanks again for all your help.
I ran into this on my last shipment (two weeks ago). I am a small-time FBAer and had listed 26 titles. When I created the shipment, they rejected two of the 26. I figured they were limiting quantities due to space availability, but wasn’t sure how much more it would affect anyone. I think they’ve made a huge error rejecting items AFTER purchase when they made no announcement previously of policy changes. They should accept your item and then tell you that the item will be restricted after that shipment. OR, if you have purchased multiples, allow ‘x’ to be shipped with the restriction on the remainder. It is cold-hearted to reject seller wholesale purchases without having given them advance warning. This is going to bite them in the ass – unless their goal is to actually reduce the numbers of people selling through them, especially now that they have also connected with chain stores to sell their items through their program. I don’t know. But, they really should have been upfront like they were with fee changes. They gave plenty of notice on that.
It seems that, like with many things, Amazon is rolling this out to sellers slowly. I didn’t start hearing about it until late last week, and some people are reporting it began for them weeks ago.
I first started seeing it several weeks ago, with VHS tapes. Maybe that was Phase I.
What I have heard is that Amazon’s warehouses are filling to the rafters with Chinese goods. There are ads in China urging sellers there to ship to Amazon via FBA. Also, to many people, Amazon appears to be favoring the Chinese. I am especially not happy about it because I have bought a number of Chinese counterfeits recently on Amazon, and they seem unwilling to discipline the sellers.
What bothers me about the book business on Amazon is that selling books is different from selling many other kinds of merchandise. Are we going to reach the point where only fast moving books are accepted? The wonderful thing about Amazon has always been that, unlike a brick and mortar bookstore, you could find everything, even the most obscure.
I agree, Amazon seems indifferent. I feel there is something behind this we don’t yet understand.
Interesting theory. This is definitely more complex than we realize.
I’ve listed 90 books the last few days and of those only five have been rejected. All rejected were confirmed slow movers (via CamelCamelCamel) with sales ranks above 1.2 million with mixed competition via FBA, but would wield a good profit with lower competition.
I’ve been FBA since June 2011 and ran the inventory health report, finding that just like Peter I have 0 items restricted.
Lets hope this all works out. Been a very stressful week. I have a large inventory opportunity on Friday and I’m hoping I don’t blow a lot of money buying things I cannot sell.
Fingers crossed.
New FBAer though I’ve sold on Amazon for 10+ years. I’ve had 11 of the ~430 books I’ve listed rejected. I’ve made about 32 sales so far so that’s a 7.5% sell through. I’m listing using the bookloader tab.txt template. I’ve retried the restricted books on successive shipments and they still don’t work. The rejected books were all over the map demand-wise. One or two were in the low 4-digits. This kind of thing is why I’m not willing to commit to FBA entirely and will continue to spread my sales over merchant fulfilled, eBay, Abe and my own site.
The “overflowing FBA warehouses” theory is looking more and more like a huge oversimplification. Based on this example and many others, its not adding up.
Could it be connected with AmZon needing warehouse space for their own bookstores they are going to open
It’s not just books, I had some fast moving grocery replens items rejected. They were ranked from 5,000 to 10,000 with only one or two other FBA sellers (which means these items were selling around 10 – 15 per day). When I checked the quantity in stock of the other sellers, there was only 50 – 90 in stock for each ASIN at Amazon. What is funny is that these items were showing up on my Low Inventory Report, with Amazon suggesting that I send more into FBA. I have heard other people having this same problem with other categories, shoes, clothing, etc, and many with nice low ranks. But, it does seem like books are being hit the hardest.
Restricted items showing up in the Low Inventory Report is the most glaring evidence yet of how hastily this change was implemented. Funny if it wasn’t so not-funny.
That is one of the most bizarre ones I’ve read about.
I can understand them not wanting 10,000 copies of “Strengths Finder 2.0.”
Noticed this about two weeks ago and posted on a Facebook group. Not so happy to see others blogging about it now. Looks like we have to wait and see at this point. Had three items restricted on my last shipment to Amazon. A puzzle, a craft item and a cd. I already had an email into support it took them forever to answer. Put in a complaint back and will do so again once I hear back from them. Will add on some of the info you posted.
Very good. Let us know if they respond with anything interesting or revealing.
Hey Peter, here’s an experiment: I can’t sell the following book FBA, but can you?
Is there ASIN rejection rate for this item equal across sellers?
I found a book called “MayDay: The Art of Shepard Fairey,” ASIN 1584234288. Sales rank today of 587,288. Current offers of 23 used, 47 new. Only 3 FBA offers – Amazon selling New, and 2 others selling used. I have a better customer satisfaction rating than both of them and listed at a slightly better price: $24.95.
Paid a dime for it. Very good condition. It was rejected from a recent FBA shipment. I can still try to sell it merchant-fulfilled for $19.95. Not a big deal, just a hassle to have to store and ship. ****Or if you get it in your shipment, make me an offer and I’ll send it to you. *****
Lessons learned so far: Complete your shipment plan FAST.
95% of my shipments of books have gone through so far to FBA, though it changes if I let it sit over night. So, am completing my shipment plans much more speedily than before.
Interesting experiment. If it works maybe sellers could trade boxes of similar price pointed books? I will likely just sell my rejected stock at a local high traffice used bookstore (assuming this doesn’t go away or become more transparent like the restricted warnings given for dvds).
I sent in my first (small) shipment Fba on Feb 29. I did have one book rejected at that time. I also had a book rejected a couple days ago. Now I understand why. I was a bit confused, it being my first time. I say they have started this more than a week ago. Also I’m a newbie.
Is your header photo for this article the Citizen Kane Xanadu warehouse matte painting by the way? If so niiiiice.
I think it’s the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Here’s a possibility that no one has mentioned yet – it may be the individual Fulfillment Centers that are setting the limits.
This would explain why you do not see the restricted order until you complete the shipping plan that tells you which warehouse to send it to. If that particular warehouse is overfull, the logarithm kicks in and starts removing items.
This could also explain why some sellers are seeing a lot of item items restricted and others are seeing few to none.
I currently get almost all my orders sent to either Kenosha, Dallas, or Chattanooga. Sellers who tend to get their shipments sent to other warehouses may not be dealing with the same storage issues as much. It would make sense if those warehouses are overloaded to split the shipment and send some items to other warehouses, but accommodating sellers is probably not a primary goal in this initiative.
It’s also possible that one of the issues that the logarithm/bots look at is if Amazon itself is selling the item. I haven’t noticed that on any of my items, but I am relying on data from my seller app that doesn’t break it down.
One of the sellers on the Amazon seller’s forums reported receiving a message from Seller’s Support that said “”I am so sorry. This caused you trouble. This is a decision of the warehouse. Our seller support can’t change it. Limit start date is Mar 16, 2016.Limit end date is Mar 23, 2016.So please be patient.””
So, this could be a temporary issue to relieve some of the warehouses and let them free up some space, although other methods could be used later (like increasing storage fees). If the root cause of this is a bunch of warehouse managers screaming up the chain of command for space, it’s likely that the logarithm used was thrown together quickly and some of the decisions it makes are not always coherent or logical.
This is incorrect. It tells you when you add a quantity. Which is why I now add product, set quantity, cross fingers, and refresh the page.
Just to throw my 2 cents into the mix…I’ve been an FBA seller since 2012, never sold as merchant fulfilled. I put my Amazon business on a back burner in 2014…stopped everything. I just resurrected the business in Jan of this year after letting it just sit idle for well over a year. I sold an occasional item from time to time during that period.
So it would almost make sense to me that I would have had items restricted, since I’ve left inventory sit in their warehouses for nearly 2 years.*IF* “overstocked warehouses” was the real reason behind these restrictions. But it hasn’t been the case for me, at least not so far.
I haven’t had any items restricted from shipping (knock on wood!), and in the last two weeks, I sent in one shipment of 98 books, which all went to a single fulfillment center (woohoo!) and another shipment of about 60 books and a dozen or so games which got split into being sent to 2 FCs. But again, nothing was restricted. Those shipments have been received, products are selling and I have no stranded inventory.
It’s been my experience that Amazon has always been good to let us know about upcoming changes to policies. So I want to believe what one commenter said about this being a temporary change…and maybe TPTB at Amazon thought they could do what they needed to do in within a short window of time without it affecting *too* many people, so it wouldn’t be necessary to alert, and possibly panic, the masses.
Peter, I hope you’ll be able to find out in the next few days if it indeed *did* end on the 23rd (tomorrow), and that you’ll keep us posted, as you always do. I’m very happy to be on your list and I find your emails and posts are ALWAYS helpful and informative. Thanks so much.
For what it’s worth, here are the stats on the books I had removed from the last shipment (out of a shipment of 98) . First figure is the sales rate, followed by the number of FBA sellers. followed by the number of FBM/Used and FBM/New. All were going to either Kenosha or Chattanooga. All were books.
First, those with a sales rank >1M:
3.31M / 3 / 28 / 6
2.46M / 8 / 80 /36
3.45M / 2 / 24 / 5
4.68M / 2 / 15 / 10
2.14M / 2 / 14 / 13
1.99M / 1 / 16 / 4
2.78M / 3 / 24 / 20
3.87M / 3 / 16 / 6
1.87M / 2 / 25 / 19
3.12M / 2 / 16/ 20
5.16M / 5 / 54 / 18
2.57M / 1 / 18 / 5
7.43M / 1 / 17 / 9
4.75M / 2 / 22 / 20
2.13M / 2 / 15 / 7
2.73M / 1 / 23/ 10
9.89M / 3 / 21 / 9
2.42M / 1 / 32 / 9
In all the above, there is at least one FBA seller, and quite a few FBM sellers. I list the FBM sellers as it is possible that the Amazon logarithm is willing to squelch an item if there are enough FBM sellers that a buyer can still get a copy. (All of the above had the lowest FBA price at $20 or greater).
Of the books with a sales rate <1M,
451K/ 8/ 80 / 36
211K / 6 / 34 / 22
855K / 2 / 23 / 9
146K / 5 / 32 / 31
Of these, there seems to be more FBA sellers, along with a high number of FBM sellers.
Of the orders that did get approved, most were <1.5M, some were up to the 5M range. I didn't record the # of FBA / FBM sellers on those.
Wow, thanks for taking the time to type all this.
One thought: The “good sales rank” ASIN rejections are books that have an artificially high / temporarily high rank, and aren’t strong sellers overall.
Peter,
I guess I’m a bigger seller. I have sent in 380 books over the last couple days with no errors and so far none of them went to stranded. I don’t know if it makes a difference but I have been sending in textbook type books as I just bought out a tech school library. I’ve been selling FBA since 2013.
Did you list through a third-party system, like InventoryLab?
Yes. I use Inventory Lab. All the shipments were checked in and none went to stranded.
An odd thing I noticed before the St. Patrick’s Day Massacre: When Amazon’s logarithm made the decision on how to split my shipment, I used to think they were doing it based on some calculation of what region would be most likely to have a sale of a particular category of book. But since I started to use a listing program that assigned a sequential MSKU (i.e., (date)001, (date)003, etc.), I realized that the logarithm’s decision on which books to send to Dallas were usually just a run of a sequence – i.e., they would send all the books with an MSKU of (date)105 through (date)125. There was no real logic applied as to which books would be likely to sell in a particular region, as I had earlier thought, it was just “Send 1/4 of this seller’s books to Dallas.”
The same brute force logarithmic decision could be going on here – e.g., “out of this seller’s orders, remove 25% of the books that would have gone to Dallas,” or maybe “remove 75% of the books with a sales rank >1.5M UNLESS <1.5M and at least 2 FBA sellers, then remove 5%."
Very interesting. If the theory is accurate, its the kind of formula you only create in haste, in an emergency, until you create a real formula. Thanks for sharing.
Not sure it will help, but I thought I would show yall what Amazon just sent me after I called them.
“As discussed, Amazon is not denying sellers from shipping there items to the FBA ware house. The error message that sellers are getting at this time is due to a technical issue that we are having currently.
We do have the technical team looking to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
I must apologize for the incorrect information that you are hearing but must assure you that we are not denying shipments from sellers.”
Encouraging. Yet so far, I haven’t heard the same response twice.
This tells us that they are trying to cover themselves from a massive class action lawsuit.
This is paralyzing a lot of businesses. They way they did is is practically malicious – it’s also inconsistent. Is there some kind of discrimination happening here that we haven’t figured out? We don’t even know until we get the shipping plan together, so we’ve already bought the inventory.
This is our full time occupation and right now we are in panic mode. No communication from Amazon at all is a big reality check to faithful FBA sellers: Amazon is not interested in your wellbeing.
That’s insane though, because if we all leave for other sites (or our own brick and mortar), that will be harmful to Amazon. We’re also faithful Amazon customers, and believe me until this is over we are going to order NOTHING from Amazon.
It’s also very troubling because Amazon was always ‘Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.’ We make a business out of listing rare books, often have the only copy online, and our customers appreciate this and are very happy with us – we’re a 5-star seller, all excellent feedback, and we’ve built up the Amazon catalog with great photos, descriptions, and so on. Now all of that is going away, which means Amazon’s book holdings are going to sink. It doesn’t make sense at all. Unless Amazon is moving away from selling books.
I have not had any items rejected when sending to FBA so far, nor have any been items gone to stranded status upon arrival. I use Seller Engine to list. However, every shipment I have started since March 7 has gone to TPA1, about 400 SKUs total. It was previously rare for my shipments to go there.
To me, this lends credence to the temporary warehouse clean-up/reorg idea, but I guess we will all find out more eventually.
I do hope this is a temporary thing, but I must always remind myself Amazon does what is best for Amazon so perhaps they will in the future choke off some items at will, then allow them again, then not… Fingers crossed. Its a very unwelcome development if so which is why i have always kept a balance of FBA and seller filled stock. I am really grateful to everyone posting thus far to keep me up to date on this and will be checking back in soon.
According to the Seller forums, it’s still happening today.
Anyone doing a shipment today and can report back?
Did one. Still happening
I’ve sent in about 1,000 items since the news of the ASIN restrictions, and none of my items were restricted. All books. About half under 500k in rank and half over. Probably 30 or so were in the 2-3 mil range on sales rank. My sell through rate is 6-10% and I’m selling about 800 items a month. Keeping my fingers crossed it doesn’t affect me.
Thanks for sharing this. We’re getting lots of insights here that all sellers are not being treated equally in the eyes of Amazon right now – even if its just in their proximity to certain warehouses vs others.
I’m fairly similarly situated, with over 1k in inventory and a similar sell-through rate. I haven’t had any dinged yet either.
Retried my rejected book today (the 23rd) still no go. I hope you will do another post if this ends tomorrow because I am sick of handling these books.
I got my number a bit wrong in the previous post. I had 8 books rejected of the 450 or so I listed, my sellthrough rate is now about 8-9 percent and the best ranked rejected title was around 40K.
Here’s my list of rejects Following the same format as Mike’s above:
ISBN / Sales Rank / #FBA Sellers / #FBM USED+New+Collectible
9780374290252 / 41,800 / 1 / 105
0806127694 / 2,699,992 / 1 / 36
0887066054 / 691,008 / 6 / 49
0805068929 / 2,170,008 / 2 / 44
1430303743 / 6,587,316 / 5 / 28
0140043063 / 1,781,238 / 5 / 99
0946551030 / 3,740,853 / 1 / 19
1879384574 / 3,445,047 / 3 / 23
Three news items, none of them any good.
1) As everyone seems to be hoping this was supposed to end today (3/23) based on some comments from Sellers Support representatives, I did a test listing of all the items that had been restricted. All were still restricted.
Sellers on other forums are still having items restricted, and are hoping that the 3/23 end date means it will end AFTER 3/23. At this point, I feel like a citizen in Chairman Mao’s China trying to guess which way the political winds are blowing based on ambiguous slogans in the new propaganda posters that have just been put up.
2) A poster on the Amazon sellers forum posted the following, which does not bode well for a 3/23/ end date: “Just spoke with Seller Support and they still can provide NO guidance on what AISN’s are and will be restricted and when they might have a tool in pace to help us segregate our inventory. They did say that the dates that Seller Support gave in the past (like 3/23) are review dates (not release dates); AISN’s are reviewed on these dates to see they can now meet the criteria (what ever that may be) to be sent into the warehouse (if they fail they are blocked again until the next review date).”
3) I called asellertool tech support and asked if anyone there is talking with Amazon about how to access the restricted ASIN data. He said Amazon has not shared anything with them, and that unless Amazon shares that data, there is nothing they can do about it. He said they have referred the matter up their chain of command to see if someone can talk to Amazon, but he said based solely on what he has read in the comments forums on the different sellers’ fora, it doesn’t sound like Amazon is being very forthcoming.
Okay, I just called Amazon Seller Support and got bounced up the chain and had a good long conversation with one of the seller support reps who appears to know a good deal about the issue, and is fielding a lot of calls on it.
First thing to remember is, they are humans doing a job and don’t make the policies or always get it clearly communicated to them from higher staff. It sounds like they are taking a lot of verbal abuse from irate sellers, so if you are calling on this issue, you will get a lot more information and help if you are courteous and polite to them. The rep I talked to was very helpful and wanted to explain what is going on.
The bottom line is that they are being told this is a temporary measure, that MAY end after today but could be continued longer (how much longer, is not yet decided upon, or is not being communicated to Seller Support). She said they are being told it will not be for “a long time”. The program was originally slated to run from 3/16 – 3/23, but could be extended. It could even be lifted later today. (Or it could be days, weeks – Seller Support has not heard yet.)
She said the ASIN restrictions are not being lifted for large sellers, or based on which warehouse the shipments are going to, or based on your sell-through rate.
Long Term storage fees are getting to be pretty hefty for many sellers, and they don’t want to be charging huge fees to their sellers, many of whom may be unaware that they are paying them (not everyone pays close attention to their accounts, as you can see from the number of FBA book sellers who are charging 2.50 for FBA books and losing money on every deal_.)
She said the biggest driver of this initiative (and one which I have not heard mentioned anywhere yet) is the increase in the number of “Re-Inbound” shipments – that is, sellers who remove inventory just before Long Term Storage fees are charged, then re-ship them back to Amazon to avoid paying the fees. She said the current initiative actually began to be phased in back in August 2015, when they notified sellers there would be a 30 day hold before any disposed item can be returned to the warehouse. Sellers began trying to get around this by shipping after 45 or 60 days, which puts a huge strain on inbound shipments, as well as the available storage space.
(I’ve never even thought about doing this as a bookseller – once I remove it, it’s gone – but there are valid reasons for doing it (like removing multiple items of, say, Christmas or Halloween items) so you are not being charged storage fees for items that are not likely to sell throughout the year.)
The current restrictions are being done to test different ways of dealing with both items that don’t move quickly, or are overstocked (like the umpteenth copy of “50 Shades of Gray” or “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”, or ever (The 1967 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in acceptable condition), as well as the Re-Inbound problem – items that are removed, but then aren’t really removed. This will probably lead to other ways to deal with the problem, so I think a leaner, faster-moving inventory is a good idea from now on, even if the current restrictions are removed.
I suggested just raising long term fees as a good free-market solution to the problem, but she said Amazon is (surprisingly) opposed to levying still more fees on their sellers if it can be avoided. They profit by having more sellers, not fewer.
I suggested that the reason a lot of the reason sellers are so irate, and that so many theories are popping up (mine own among them) is that this seemed to happen without any advance notice, and that Amazon has not put out any official explanation, which breeds paranoia and conspiracy theories. She agreed and said she will try to get one sent out to all sellers (if for no other reason that that Seller Support is tired of endless calls from angry sellers, perhaps.)
I also asked if they would, if this continues in some form, be sharing the restriction data with the sourcing app companies, and she said she would send that recommendation up.
I will keep doing test runs with the denied items to see if the current restriction ends.
As of today, looking into some other fulfillment options. I can’t sit on rejected books indefinitely. I can’t run my business on Amazon’s whims.
Please let us know what you find.
I put together a shipment of thirty books earlier today (3/23). Of those, four were restricted. On the plus side, the remaining books all went to one warehouse instead of the usual three. Good deal there.
I don’t know if this is new on Amazon or not, but I thought I’d post it here.
Someone on the Amazon Forum asked a question about the limits. This is the response they got:
————————————————–
Thanks for your post. Several other FBA community members have received similar messaging.
If our Fulfillment Center(s) are already at maximum capacity for a particular ASIN, additional inbound shipments will not be accepted.
This limit is intended to help you avoid sending products that already have high overall inventory levels, but low customer demand.
ASIN quantity limits may change over time based on the inventory turns and other performance metrics.
If an ASIN becomes restricted, Amazon may choose to set your ASIN quantity limit to zero.
This allows you to sell through current FBA inventory but will prevent replenishment on the ASIN.
Amazon reserves the right to restrict sales of a product at any time.
You can review our help page on ASIN Quantity Limits for more information.
————————————-
I went to the ASIN Quantity Limits page on Amazon (found here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200777420)
It says this:
For a select group of ASINs, FBA may limit the maximum unit quantity that you can ship to our fulfillment centers. These limits are intended to help you avoid sending products that already have high overall inventory levels but low customer demand. Units that have been in our fulfillment centers for six to 12 months or 12 months or longer (with an exemption of one Unit for each applicable product ASIN) will be assessed a semi-annual Long-Term Storage Fee.
When creating a shipment that contains an ASIN with a quantity limit, you cannot exceed the stated maximum unit quantity. ASIN quantity limits may change over time based on the inventory turns and other performance metrics.
————————-
I don’t know if this is old information that all of you already know about, but I just thought I’d share.
Beth
Something else I just found. I used Amazon’s Seller App and scanned a few books I have at home. On several of them, a big red, “Restricted,” notice came up, and it said I could not sell these books. On other books, there was a green check mark and said I could sell them as new or used.
This isn’t the app I use when sourcing. I tried that app and it didn’t show the restriction, which I figured it wouldn’t.
I don’t know whether or not the books you have had restricted will show up that way on the Amazon’s Seller App or not, but it might be worth taking a look. I haven’t had any restricted yet, so I can’t check.
Beth
Beth,
I kept all the books that were denied in the last shipment in a box and scanned them with the Amazon Seller App, but didn’t get a restriction on any of them.
But on the brighter side…
I just did a test run on the same box of books and relisted them. I tried that at 09:00 this morning and they were all denied again.
This time, about half of the previously denied lot, which included some very long-tailled items, were approved. I’ll try again tomorrow morning to see if any more were allowed. So maybe the restrictions are starting to be lifted.
Keep your fingers crossed, everyone.
And, when I tried listing them all, all were now disallowed.
Dang.
I got hit today! I must say that I am very thankful that I previously was warned by Peter. I thinks its very cool of him to keep us up to date. He is a great guy thinking of a much bigger picture. Communication is key.
I was hit for one ASIN only and I don’t think it was a coincidence it was a Publication’s Manual.
This is entirely speculative on my part. With the massive proliferation of seller apps, scouting, buyback deals, enormous friends of library sales charity dump bins etc. resulting in huge amounts of books coming into FC’s I think Amazon may have made a long term decision just to push books back more towards MFN because **most** will still sell whether FBA or not. If they ever did Amazon have no need to impress carriers with shipping volume targets and are investing heavily in their own logistics network. I feel desperately sorry for people that may have made life changing decisions based on the FBA model but if there ever was low hanging fruit to be harvested this is coming to an end. I am based in the UK and am lucky I can get parcels to customers within 24hrs on a standard tariff. I do notice that whatever Amazon does in the USA the UK is about 1 year behind so I am prepping FBA shipments madly to get my inventory up. I am halting shipments of pallets to USA FC’s now. I use SellerEngine and am contacting to see if they can shed any light on the situation. As I said, speculative on my part but this may be permanent. If anyone is thinking of selling large amounts of inventory it would be good to have a user community outside of Ebay etc. to make bids, put up offers etc. This might be some sort of disaster cushioning at least for some folk. On a final note, and I dont want this to sound unsympathetic, this is the capitalist market system and Amazon will do what is best for them, which will change over time possibly with zero or little notice. As SME’s we have exercised the choice of FBA or MFN but this may soon no longer be an option. Long term sellers may have to think seriously of investing in warehousing of their own, a massive commitment.
Maybe in longer term less copies circulating, possible deceleration of race ot the bottom on prices ?
I was able to list and ship a whole bunch of books today with none of the ASINs rejected, some with sales ranks in the 2M range.
That emboldened me to try the box of declined ASINs from the last week. Late tonight, I was able to list them all and do a shipping plan with no problems.
Amazon may have terminated the initiative. Can anyone else try to list some ASINs that were declined this week to see if they are accepted now to confirm?
That is really good news.
I just approved a shipment of 22 previously restricted ASIN’s. Looks like the restrictions have been removed. Hope this helps anyone waiting to source or ship items.
Last night I made another shipment. 11 were declined.
About an hour later, I read a post somewhere with people saying that they were now suddenly getting all of their previously restricted ASIN’s approved.
I tried again, and mine were all now approved as well. Strange business.
My batch of declines were all taken. Finally
Just want to share this update from 3/31. We received an email from Amazon saying that we would have “free removal” of any or all of our FBA inventory and that this promotion will last until April 30, 2016.
This is scary and alarming. It means that maybe Amazon wants to eliminate FBA book sellers. We make a good living at this and we sell a lot of books. Suddenly, 40% or more of our books are denied in shipments, and now they’re asking us to remove everything “if we like.”
What’s going on? If selling books via FBA is ending, then Amazon has no future for booksellers. It would be much much more profitable to sell our books elsewhere. The great advantage of Amazon was FBA.
If they’re planning on stopping booksellers, giving us a month to remove our stock wtihout any official announcement that they’re going to end used book sales or extremely curtail it to the detriment of our livelihood (and our customers) is extremely misleading and puts them in a very dangerous legal situation.
I do hope your fears are unfounded. I can not imagine Amazon stopping books through FBA completely but the free removal offer suggests there is pressure upon space. I am sorry to say that any legal issues I a sure Amazon will have covered. Fingers crossed for you , Duncan
I honestly don’t see the big deal here – Amazon does make a good point and they do hold the right to deny inbound orders. Think about it, perhaps amazon believes by rejecting inbounds, books already there will have a better chance of going out. It will cause sellers to remove their items alltogether allow amazon to accept more; In the long wrong, storing stuff for sellers that isnt selling isnt good for anyone. Its not good to seller who is paying what like $0.03 per book, and its taking space amazon could be storing actual sell able goods. Everyone loses really, the 0.03 cents being paid to store that item could use for something better. This is all speculation with no real base at all. But it is very obviously if an item isnt selling, everyone is losing. What makes rethink this is why are they doing it for low rank, low offer items? Could it be amazon is restricting certain buyers only who they are pressuring of removing their stored items? I have been getting emails from amazon about clearing my inventory. So maybe its a way for amazon to pressure sellers to turn over their old not selling inventory for new ones with a potential to sell.
Now, to what I said about not being a big deal. From what I read, amazon isnt indefinitely restricting inbounds orders. Its taking sellers anywhere from 1 week to 2 weeks to have their orders accepted. If this becomes the norm., then the best thing to do is to just adjust. Okay this week I shipped 1000 books, 100 of them were rejected. Ill get 1000 items ready, if 100 are restricted, I could try again the 100 that were restricted last week to see if any of them are accepted. We just have to adapt to this if it remains.
I am based in the UK. Last couple of shipments I made I got a message next to 3 books (out of 60) stating
Inventory alert
We’ve identified this product to be slow-moving, overstocked or both, and it likely will incur Long-Term Storage Fees. We recommend that you remove it from the shipment.
Then there was a check box with the message
I would like to proceed with my shipment, and I understand that Long-Term Storage Fees may apply.
i checked the box and sent them in as 2 of the 3 I am fairly sure will sell for a healthy profit even if they incur some long term storage fees (they both had ranks of just over 1 million),
No one else reporting they have had a similar experience on the UK Amazon seller support forum yet.
Hello. I’m dealing with the same “Maximum Inventory Reached” warning on many items and this is dating back from October 26th to present, November 2nd, 2016. I’m hopeful that if this was resolved in March that it will be resolved again. This is an important time to send inventory Amazon and I am very disappointed to have to deal with this now. Does anybody have any current insight on what is happening and when the restriction may be removed? Thanks.