Are your pallets being rejected by Amazon’s distribution centres? Have you lost money repackaging or replacing lost inventory?
Errors in packing, stacking and labelling all cause entire pallet-loads of goods to be rejected by the strict warehouses. This leads to delays for you, and your customers, which also costs you money.
You can save yourself the hassle, and avoid excess expenditure, however.
Amazon FBA sellers can save themselves a headache with a few easy packing tips to ensure every pallet they send is accepted by Amazon’s warehouses first time.
Top Three Ways to Save Time Packing Amazon FBA Pallets
The key to avoiding costly delays to the processing of your Amazon pallets is to minimise the opportunity for errors. Save time packing your pallets by making sure you follow these rules to avoid expensive delays and warehouse rejections.
1. Calibrate Your Weighing Station
Avoid rejections and repackaging delays by ensuring all individual items, cartons, and pallets are within the accepted weight ranges set by Amazon. Calibrate your weighing station regularly to avoid errors.
Cartons cannot exceed 30kg each and a pallet must be under 500kg in total. Any that do will be rejected–causing significant delays for you and your customer.
Any carton between 15kg and 30kg must also have a clear label depicting it as a ‘Heavy Carton’. The label needs to be visible from both the top and side view of the box.
You’ll also need to check that your total pallet height doesn’t come above 1.8m, including the height of the standard four-way access pallet your cartons will be stacked upon.
2. Be Smart with Box Stacking and Packaging
Instead of pilling your boxes on top of each other, stagger the stack. This provides additional strength to the pile and reduces the risk of collapse.
Collapsed boxes mean more than time-consuming delays. When your items get to the Amazon FBA warehouse any products deemed inappropriately packaged may be opened and re-packaged at your expense.
You also risk non-compliance fines if you’re deemed to have not packaged hazardous items safely.
Remember to use clear shrink wrapping for your completed pallet, too. Any pallets in black wrapping will be rejected at your expense.
Your boxes might get through the Amazon warehouse just fine, but you still need to ensure they are safe for transit to the customer. Items damaged during a collapse can result in unhappy customers and a ruined reputation.
People won’t buy from you if they don’t think they can trust that their delivery will arrive in one piece so take the time to learn how to stack and pack efficiently and safely.
3. Check Your Labels and Barcodes
There are strict rules about how to label and barcode each shipment that goes via Amazon warehouse fulfillment. If you don’t stick to these rules, you face losing your inventory or orders, delivery delays, and repercussions from Amazon itself.
Make sure the only barcodes visible are those for Amazon, and that they are placed on a flat surface for easy scanning. If your own product barcodes are visible this will cause delays as warehouse scanners will reject your boxes.
Choose a Trusted Carrier
There’s little point in making sure your pallets fit Amazon’s standards if your pallets don’t arrive on time for your booked shipping slot!
The final step to saving time and avoiding delays on your Amazon pallets is to hire a trusted logistics carrier to move your cartons from your warehouse to Amazon’s centre.
For a reliable and trusted service, contact us today to find out more about our services for Amazon FBA sellers.
Your comments are exactly correct the only thing that’s missing is the fact every Amazon DC work on different rules regarding loose boxes, one Amazon DC will accept over 200 loose cartons and another will only accept 30 but no one at Amazon will tell you why their guidelines are not consistent across all of the sites across the country.