Amazon Holding ASIN Hostage in Stranded!
Hi there,
Towards the end of November, I had a single unit of an ASIN be returned. Since then, it has been held hostage at the Returns Fulfillment Center with no end date in sight of when they will process the return. Due to this mistake on Amazon’s part, it caused the ASIN to go into Stranded Inventory. Thus causing this SINGLE unit to prevent me from being able to restock my inventory, causing me to lose thousands of dollars in sales and incur an insane backlog of inventory in my personal warehouse.
I have opened case after case, but all they all end up saying this:
"Please be informed that the unit is in FC: LAS2 which is a return center possibly that this unit was returned. Please know that this FC is unable to process customer orders that is why the unit is not available for sale.
Please wait for the unit to arrive to regular FC and by then your listing should be active and be available for sale. Please know that FC Transfers might take up to 30 days or more. Please allow us more time to complete the said process."
I have even attempted filing Removal Orders and Disposal Orders only for them to be cancelled by Amazon a few days later. A $20 item has cost me thousands of dollars in lost sales potential (not to mention a decline in the ranking of my product, the loss of sales history/velocity in my ASIN, and lowered inventory limits down to the minimum 200 instead of the 1000s as it should be based on proper velocity).
This is ongoing since November 23rd and now has just happened to another one of my items last week. I don’t want to wait 6+ weeks for the other ASIN either so I’m desperate. Would love to know if anyone has experienced this and has any ideas as to how to work around this or to at least ensure this doesn’t ever happen again.
Seller_9Uf78DYSZ2lcW
Can you create a NEW SKU on the ASIN to send your other inventory to? Can you list products to be merchant fulfilled while you wait to be able to send stuff in?
Seller_9Uf78DYSZ2lcW
Are you on the Professional Seller plan? If so, I would definitely be requesting a call back to help you get this sorted out.
Seller_9Uf78DYSZ2lcW
There probably is, but I’m not sure myself. I’m not an expert on these things, I’m still pretty new. Recommendation is probably to keep re-opening the case. Make it clear that they didn’t answer the question or solve the problem. Keep it as short and professional as possible. Try not to confuse them. I think the main thing you are trying to fix is the stranded inventory situation.
Was this just simply a return? Or was there some complaint about the product that has caused the issue with the ASIN?
Seller_vkH26PKnjHD6A
This has happened to us on numerous items.
One item has been stranded since September 25th, 2020 - that is 263 days at this point. The FC even sent photos of items that looked like ours.
I have opened 8 consecutive, lengthy cases. Thus far all my and the CSRs efforts have been wasted hours.
I need a solution to this growing problem of items being stranded in ‘Returns Fulfillment Centers/Returns FC/Alternative warehouses/Fulfillment Centers that cannot fulfill customer orders’.
Transshipments are being cancelled and unfulfilled and/or taking an inordinate amount of time to be acknowledged by warehouses just to be cancelled. An alternative reason for the error was that communications were being automatically redirected to the incorrect recipient from the CSR on the case but that did not resolve the issue. And Amazon has not issued any reimbursement because the inventory is not ‘lost’ according to their systems.
