
Fulfillment by Amazon suspends non-essential inbound shipments - myth_drannon
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-amazon-suspends-all-non-essential-shipments-to-warehouses-2020-3
======
jmccorm
TL;DNR: Through April 5th, they're preventing marketplace vendors from
shipping new inventory to Amazon's fulfillment centers that aren't household
staples, medical supplies, or otherwise high-demand products. Marketplace
vendors that do their own warehousing and customer shipments are unaffected.
This may affect the available selection, inventory, and shipment options seen
at Amazon, but no restrictions were placed on customer purchases.

The following notice was sent to my Amazon Marketplace account:

Hello from Fulfillment by Amazon,

We are closely monitoring the developments of COVID-19 and its impact on our
customers, selling partners, and employees.

We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result some products such as
household staples and medical supplies are out of stock. With this in mind, we
are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other
high-demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so that we can more
quickly receive, restock, and deliver these products to customers.

For products other than these, we have temporarily disabled shipment creation.
We are taking a similar approach with retail vendors.

This will be in effect today through April 5, 2020, and we will let you know
once we resume regular operations. Shipments created before today will be
received at fulfillment centers.

You can learn more about this on this Help page. Please note that Selling
Partner Support does not have further guidance.

We understand this is a change to your business, and we did not take this
decision lightly. We are working around the clock to increase capacity and
yesterday announced that we are opening 100,000 new full- and part-time
positions in our fulfillment centers across the US.

We appreciate your understanding as we prioritize the above products for our
customers.

Thank you for your patience, and for participating in FBA.

The Fulfillment by Amazon team

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azakai
The title may be slightly confusing. They aren't suspending shipments to
customers, they are suspending shipments _to Amazon_ from vendors (Fulfillment
by Amazon vendors, who ship to Amazon and then Amazon handles everything from
there).

The suspension covers non-essential supplies as mentioned in the title.

~~~
vwcx
Surprised, but not surprised, that Business Insider would run an ambiguous,
panicky headline in a time like this. Imagine if web journalism wasn't funded
by clicks and precision of headline/reporting was the metric that mattered.

~~~
smacktoward
Imagine if people were willing to pay for journalism that prioritized accuracy
over sensationalism.

~~~
rbritton
Which one disappeared first? An audience willing to pay for quality journalism
or quality journalism? I suspect quality journalism declined first, and it
declined to the point where it made customers skeptical of journalism in
general. That then shrunk the audience, and it circled back around again in a
continuing cycle.

~~~
reaperducer
High-quality and low-quality journalism have always existed, regardless of
business model.

The difference is, when told to put their money where their mouths are, people
on the internet like to pretend that high-quality journalism doesn't still
exist so they can keep their wallets closed.

~~~
anongraddebt
So far, the only journalism I've found worth paying for is Monocle. Had
subscriptions to The Economist and The Information for awhile before canceling
them.

What would be nice is a pay per article approach. I find Monocle quality
enough for an annual subscription, and sometimes The Economist is worth
getting for a weekly here and there.

Also, another thing keeping me from having many subscriptions to different
rags is how much information is free online (even things like the HN comments
section have a wealth of information).

~~~
reaperducer
To summarize your post:

"I should pay to support quality journalism, but since there's stuff free
online, I won't, and it will die."

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wool_gather
The Reuters version of this news is on page 2 right now with a clearer HN
title: "Amazon stops receiving non-essential products from sellers amid
COVID19 outbreak"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605116)

------
zaroth
Kind of hard to know what exactly is an “essential” item.

Last week the condensate pump for my furnace stopped working. A condensing
furnace produces about a gallon of water an hour while it’s running.

I rigged up a storage bin to catch the water and would dump it out manually a
few times a day. The size of the bin is limited because the furnace drain is
only a few inches off the ground.

Keeping my house heated basically depends on that condensate pump. I ordered
one on March 12 and it was delivered March 14.

There’s probably a very long tail of strange things which are actually
relatively crucial components that people depend on being able to order
(rather than having spare parts on hand).

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Mediterraneo10
The dangers of overcentralization of shopping. The country in which I
presently live went into lockdown a couple of weeks ago, but I have still been
able to order all kinds of stuff and have it delivered to my home: some
furniture, some books, vinyl records, a new vacuum cleaner. That is because
none of the disparate online shops here to which one turns are overburdened.
Amazon’s decision to be the one-stop-shop for everyone and sell food as well,
now makes it unable to provide the rest of its inventory.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Well, on the other hand, it seems like _because_ Amazon is so centralized,
they had a lot of capacity which they can now re-purpose. Previously they were
shipping both non-essential stuff (books, vinyl records, etc) and essential
(food, medicines), and now all those resources can go into essential things.

If the vinyl record shops had a completely separate fulfillment system, there
would be no easy way to repurpose it to ship essential items, so we would be
in a worse position.

~~~
Ajedi32
In an unencumbered free market system where shipping systems were not
dominated by any one particular shopping vendor (not Amazon, not vinyl record
companies, nobody), what would naturally happen would be a sharp increase in
shipping costs in accordance with demand (incentivizing shipping companies to
increase supply), followed quickly by a corresponding decrease in demand for
shipping items the market deems non-essential (e.g. I'm less inclined to order
vinyl records online if shipping costs go up, but if I can't get hand
sanitizer anywhere _but_ online I'll probably still order it).

~~~
monadic2
> In an unencumbered free market system

This is not a real thing. Stop bringing it up as if it’s a meaningful concept.

~~~
Ajedi32
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying an unencumbered free
market system is impossible, or just that it's not what our current system is
right now?

If the latter, I agree; that was sort of the whole point of my comment. Amazon
controls a large portion of the shipping market, therefore what we have here
is closer to a monopsony than an unencumbered free market.

If the former, I mostly disagree. Obviously a perfectly idealized free market
system is impossible in the real world: all idealized systems are. There's no
such thing as a frictionless surface or a perfect sphere either. That doesn't
mean however that we couldn't be a lot closer to that ideal than where we are
now, or that idealized systems aren't useful tools for modeling the behavior
of similar, non-idealized systems in the real world.

~~~
dmwallin
While an unencumbered free market can exist it's not a stable equilibrium.
Without strong external forces keeping it in that state a free market will
quickly centralize power and enact artificial market barriers.

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daxorid
Bear in mind that "essential" in these contexts is a very fluid definition,
and is likely to be highly dependent on the popularity and connectedness of
the sellers/partners.

For example, Elon Musk managed to convince Alameda County that manufacturing
luxury vehicles is an "essential" service subject to exemption from their
industrial shutdown order.

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ativzzz
On the topic of hiring 100k workers, how is amazon planning to safely manage
such a large increase in a physically-present workforce when all the current
suggestions are to prevent large gatherings and isolate?

~~~
paulmd
Packaging doesn't strike me as a particularly person-to-person type of thing
where you need to touch other people.

I'd imagine gloves, masks, and safety glasses are probably fine.

~~~
9wzYQbTYsAIc
Touching something someone else just touched after wiping their cough spray
off their lips is definitely a risk booster.

~~~
sitkack
24 hrs on cardboard, up to 72 hrs on plastic/stainless steel (smooth
surfaces).

~~~
wool_gather
Caveat: that's our best understanding at this time; that study hasn't been
reproduced as far as I've seen.

~~~
sitkack
I would take these as minimums, still wipe down outside material with
bleach/windex/soap water.

~~~
wool_gather
Exactly, yes. Although, does the amount of ammonia in window cleaner actually
do anything useful?

~~~
sitkack
It is the degreaser that makes the outside of the virus fall apart.

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capableweb
Anyone knows if this applies wordwide? Specifically Europe/Spain

~~~
jmccorm
Great question. The seller FAQ (marketplace account required) clarifies that
this applies to the US and EU marketplaces.

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bdcravens
dang, this title should be updated. It's inaccurate to the point of
fearmongering (probably not OP's fault, since the article has probably changed
the title to a more accurate one, but I'd say this falls under "...unless it
is misleading or linkbait" and should have been submitted differently)

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pmoriarty
Amazon's crisis is an opportunity for other online retailers.

I know I've started searching around on other online retailers like ebay,
wallmart, home depot, and boutique retailers for products that were no longer
in stock on Amazon.

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kristianp
The announcement from the original source:

[https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/help.html?...](https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/help.html?itemID=GF37V7QBB8WSVF43)

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paulmd
Pretty big news and says a lot about the state of the situation if even Amazon
can't keep up (yes, with stocking, not shipping, but still).

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etxm
Clickbait be clickbait.

Can’t we stop this bs panic inducing clickbait in times like this?

Edit: looks like they’ve updated the title

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Rottweiler
Paywalled. Can't read it.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
[http://archive.ph/CCOvG](http://archive.ph/CCOvG)

Edit: Amazon is suspending all incoming shipments of non-essentials to their
fulfillment centers. You can still order non-essentials that are currently "in
stock" and at their fulfillment centers.

~~~
joezydeco
This message will get mangled out in the public. Hopefully it won't trigger a
run on Amazon and make things worse for the fulfillment centers.

