Important Chargeback Updates from Amazon for VC Clients

Important Chargeback Updates from Amazon for VC Clients

by | Jul 23, 2020 | Amazon Updates

7.23.20 – Hello from Ideoclick, 
For those brands selling on Vendor Central, we wanted to share the following chargeback updates from Amazon:

1.  Effective immediately, Amazon is increasing the financial charge associated with Carton Content Accuracy chargebacks from $0.50/unit to $1.50/unit. This chargeback is surfaced when the products or the product quantities in a carton Amazon received does not match the information in the Advance Shipment Notification (ASN). Please note that the date listed in the communication from Amazon (below) has been confirmed as a typo.
 
2. Pickup accuracy chargeback for Collect Shipping is being relaunched. At this time, there is no information on the associated financial charge associated or the go-live date, so we recommend that you begin monitoring for this chargeback type in the Operational Performance dashboard in Vendor Central and stay tuned for more information be released later this year.  

The following related information below was provided by Amazon:  

Fee Increase Carton Content Accuracy Amazon has audited the costs of resolving mismatches between product quantities received in a carton and the information provided in the Advance Shipment Notification (ASN). The current Carton Content Accuracy chargeback rate does not cover our operating costs; therefore, it is necessary to increase the rate by 50c to $1.50 per defect. This fee change is effective from August 26, 2019 (sic).

For more details about this chargeback, review the Help topic under Vendor Operational Performance (Chargebacks) > Chargebacks – Problems With the Receive Process > About Carton Content Accuracy.  

Pickup Accuracy chargeback change for Collect shipping: Amazon has relaunched the Pickup Accuracy chargeback for Collect shipments involving truckload (TL) volumes. You will not incur charges yet for this chargeback, but you should closely monitor it, as we will be enabling this chargeback later in the year.  

Missed pickups have negative impacts on Amazon’s supply chain. When Amazon schedules a pickup for Collect vendors, it plans the optimal carrier, allocates transportation capacity, and reserves fulfillment center (FC) labor and dock. Any failure to meet the scheduled pickup time makes Vendor Lead Time (VLT) volatile, disrupts carrier planning, elevates transportation costs, creates capacity issues, and eventually jeopardizes our mutual goal to maintain optimal inventory levels to serve customer demand.  

This chargeback will be applied to Collect TL shipments where we have GPS tracking of the pickup to confirm the carrier’s arrival at your site.

How will this chargeback work?
If you are a Collect vendor, you will receive the confirmed pickup date and time of your TL shipments from Amazon.
You will have until 5:00 p.m. PST on the day prior to the scheduled pickup time to reschedule the pickup, if you cannot accommodate the time given. If you reschedule after 5:00 p.m. PST on the day prior to the scheduled pickup, you will incur this chargeback. If you do not reschedule, the carrier arrives on time, and your freight is not ready or you are unable to load the carrier in the expected timeframe, you will incur this chargeback. Follow the instructions in the Routing Request emails from Amazon to request a reschedule.

How you can prevent this?
1. Always confirm the planned pickup time given after routing for pickup to ensure that you can accommodate the pickup date and time. If you are not able to accommodate the given pickup time, reschedule the pickup before 5:00 p.m. PST on the day before the scheduled pickup date.
2. Ensure that your facility operating hours are up to date so that shipments are not scheduled outside of your facility’s operating hours.
3. Ensure that your freight is ready when the driver arrives at the scheduled time. (Note: Drivers must be loaded within 60 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.)  

Your Partners,   The Ideoclick Team
For additional information on staying up to date on chargeback updates from Amazon and how Ideoclick helps clients optimize operational compliance, please contact us.
Avoid Amazon Out of Stocks

Avoid Amazon Out of Stocks

by | Jun 18, 2020 | Amazon Insights

Information on Setting up an Efficient Carrier Pick Up Program

With many of Amazon’s categories now completely suppressing out of stock (OOS) items, being in stock is more important than ever. If your items are not in stock on Amazon, they are simply not on the digital shelf and you’ll lose ground to competition. However, getting products picked up from your warehouses and delivered to Amazon in a timely manner is harder than it sounds – especially in a Collect model where Amazon controls the freight carriers. Here are some tips and tricks to avoid Amazon out of stocks and ensure your products get picked up on-time and efficiently so you can focus on selling, from one of our resident operations experts, Brian Butts.

Proper Escalation

Please see the linked carrier escalation paths document for detail on how to troubleshoot a pickup or delivery issue with Amazon’s transportation team. We have provided solutions for both Vendors and Sellers to troubleshoot carrier related issues and seek a timely resolution that appeases all parties.

Risk Mitigation

Per Amazon, Collect/WePay Vendors must consolidate all Purchase Orders (POs) that share the same ship/delivery window, origin, and destination into a single routing request while adhering to the parameters provided by Amazon. By consolidating POs, you are effectively increasing the volume of your shipments and hopefully forcing a Less-than-truckload (LTL) or Truckload (TL) tender from Amazon. At the same time, you are also limiting the number of shipments that could potentially result in a pickup or delivery issue. Vendors who consistently submit consolidated and accurate routing requests will be in a strong position to maintain or even lower overall freight costs, which will help with Amazon funding asks during annual vendor negotiations (AVN).

For all Vendors and/or Sellers that have justifiable volume, we recommend following these steps from the North American Vendor Transportation Manual to work with a carrier for arranging a Drop Trailer to alleviate dock congestion.

  • You must initiate communication with the carrier to see if drop capacity can be offered.
    • The carrier will do an analysis of all business lines shipping out of your location to determine if enough consistent volume exists to support drop trailer capacity.
    • You may be required to sign the carriers Shipper Load and Count (SLC) agreement.
    • You may be required to follow the carrier’s PRO sticker guidelines in order to establish drop trailers.
    • Once drop trailer is initiated, you must load Amazon orders first.
    • You are responsible for notifying the carrier that the drop trailer is ready for pick up. The local terminal must be contacted by 10AM local time to schedule a driver for same day pick up. If the carrier is contacted later in the day, driver capacity is limited, and the load may roll to next day.
    • When scheduling a pickup for a drop trailer, the mandatory requirements are to provide trailer number, ARNs/FBA IDs, and pallet count or cube. If there are only a few pallets loaded, the carrier may wait until the vendor/seller has additional freight to load prior to pick up.
    • Upon pick up, have BOLs ready to hand to driver

Ideoclick seeks to provide clients with operational assistance as part of its complete Amazon managed services. Helping you avoid Amazon out of stocks is part of that formula. Contact us to learn more.