Amazon FBA is famous for it’s prime membership and prime delivery options. Prime is for both buyers and sellers. Prime for buyer is in terms of faster delivery and for seller it means products are in FBA. Buyers have to get Amazon prime membership to avail benefits associated with Prime.
Sometimes buyers complain and ask why a particular product is not available for fast delivery even when the s/he has prime membership. In such cases the product item is not prime enabled. It means that the particular item product is not in Amazon FBA. Seller fulfills the product using Easy or Self ship. Seller has not put that item in Amazon warehouse and is not fulfilled by Amazon. Though FBA is good for faster delivery of product items to buyers as they are already stored mid-way in the delivery chain. They are present at a location (generally Amazon warehouse) which is more convenient, less time taking for delivery person to pick and deliver.
In case of normal Easy Ship, first seller identifies, packs and list product for pick up. After which a delivery agent pick ups the parcel at a time slot (generally next day). This means generally 1 to 2 days of time. After this parcel goes to Amazon warehouse (another 0 to 1 day). Whereas if product is already in Amazon warehouse then this time period of 1-3 days is saved.
What are some disadvantages for Sellers
For sellers FBA sometimes is costly when item is low cost. There are additional costs like shipping to Warehouse, Storage Fee, Higher Fixed Closing Fee. Fulfilment of items when inventory is nil or going to be nil soon is a task itself. Identifying such items and fulfilling in advance is a separate process involved.
Product sale/standard price has to be redefined sometimes as shipping price has to be now included in selling price (if earlier it was defined separately).
What are some disadvantages for Buyers
Sometimes for non-prime users items are costly for buyers. As for sellers shipping has to be defined with in selling price so it is obvious that sellers would recover it by increasing the selling price. If a buyer is purchasing items where total price is less than 499/- (or some minimum level) then s/he has to pay extra delivery charges and it is not free. This delivery charges goes in Amazon kitty. Let’s go in more details with an example.
Item is non-prime
- Let the item being Sold is of Rs. 200
- Seller has defined an additional Shipping Cost of say Rs. 50
- Net Payment by Buyer (prime or non-prime) would be 200+50
- Rs. 250/-
In case product is Prime enabled i.e. it is FBA product item.
- Item selling price would increase as Seller has to add shipping charges in Selling price only. Price would be 200+50
- i.e. Rs, 250
- for prime buyers, cost would be Rs. 250
- for non-prime buyers cost would be 250 + Shipping Cost (as order price is less than Rs. 499 (or some minimum amount to be eligible for Free shipping)
- for non-prime buyer this would come out to be 250+40 (40 is shipping cost) i.e. Rs. 290
- so, non-prime buyer is actually paying the shipping twice
This would be a disadvantage for buyer as s/he has to pay extra and for seller also as buyer would find product expensive. In such cases, sellers could create multiple similar listings with one item as FBA and other as Easy/Self Ship. With this non-prime buyers can buy the cheaper one.