Amazon Changes Shipping to Prioritize Baby, Health & Household, Personal Care, Grocery & Pet Care

Amazon has temporarily suspended its “Fulfillment by Amazon” (FBA) program while it concentrates on providing key items to shoppers during the global COVID-19 pandemic. This program provides warehousing and shipment services for products from third-party sellers, was well as some other vendor related shipment services. Through April 5th, these services are suspended to allow Amazon to prioritize shipment of “household staples, medical supplies and other high-demand products” Amazon said in this document.

Amazon says that they are “seeing increased online shopping”, and that “we are 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.”

Most of the products they are accepting at this time are in the below categories:

• Baby Products
• Health & Household
• Beauty & Personal Care (including personal care appliances)
• Grocery
• Industrial & Scientific
• Pet Supplies

What does this mean for me as a shopper?

• This is a good thing! It should mean that more items in the categories people want and need will be available, as Amazon focuses its efforts. Continue to shop as normal — items that are available will still show as available, just as normal. The main changes are for the market third-party sellers.
• Any existing shipments created prior to 3/17 are still going to be processed as usual.
• New INBOUND and OUTBOUND orders that are NOT sold and shipped by Amazon, won’t be processed until such time as Amazon alerts sellers that things are back to normal. The tentative date for the program to resume in full is April 5. This could likely be extended.
• This doesn’t block sellers from selling their products on the platform and fulfilling the shipments themselves.

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