FBA is a logistics service provided by Amazon based on its own powerful intelligent logistics ecological network system to help cross-border e-commerce sellers with warehousing, picking, packaging, delivery, payment collection, customer service and return processing, etc., in order to provide customers with a better logistics experience.
For Amazon sellers, FBA has the following advantages and disadvantages:
(1) Advantages
It can improve the Amazon listing ranking of the store, which is conducive to sellers grabbing shopping carts and growing into featured sellers, thereby spreading the store’s influence, enhancing customer recognition and trust, and promoting the growth of store sales.
With Amazon’s rich logistics service experience and intelligent logistics ecological network covering markets in various regions around the world, it can provide customers with better cross-border logistics and delivery services.
Most FBA warehouses are close to airports, with a high delivery efficiency, allowing consumers to receive 24/7 professional Amazon customer service.
The Amazon platform provides logistics services for customers on behalf of sellers, avoiding sellers from receiving bad reviews due to logistics reasons.
For products with a unit price of more than US$300, the Amazon platform will waive the seller’s FBA logistics fees.
(2) Disadvantages
Generally speaking, the cost of Amazon FBA logistics service is higher than that of direct domestic delivery (especially for FBA delivery from non-Amazon platforms). Of course, the specific cost also needs to be determined according to the weight of the product.
Poor flexibility. Although all overseas warehouses have this deficiency, many third-party overseas warehouses have dedicated Chinese customer service to handle related issues, while FBA can only communicate with customers in English, and the timeliness and convenience of communication are not as good as those of third-party overseas warehouse customer service.
Amazon FBA warehouses will not provide customs clearance services for sellers’ first-leg shipments.
Label scanning problems caused by insufficient preliminary work will affect the smooth entry of goods into the warehouse, and may even prevent them from entering the FBA warehouse. The return address only supports the domestic address of the FBA warehouse (if the seller opens a store on Amazon’s US site, then the FBA return address only supports the US region).
Customers can return goods without much communication with FBA, which will cause many troubles for sellers.