How to List Your FBA Products as Merchant Fulfilled
Due to COVID-19, Amazon has restricted new shipments of certain product categories coming into their warehouses. Read more in this article by tech crunch.
Also in the last 48 hours, some sellers have noticed certain products already live on Amazon have lost the prime badge and now reflect “Free Delivery for Prime Members” as shown below.
If this is one of your products, you may also notice the shipping date has moved out as late as 21 April.
So what can you do? If you have access to your products outside of Amazon Fulfillment Warehouses, you can list your products again as merchant fulfilled and ship them to the customer yourself, or have a prep center or third party fulfillment center do this for you. Here’s a comprehensive list of prep centers by the Seller Essentials blog.
Instead of having to switch your current FBA listings over to merchant fulfilled, you can simply list this item in your inventory again as merchant fulfilled. Here’s a comprehensive guide to walk you through it!
The Step By Step Guide Starts Here
Navigate to Inventory > Manage Inventory
Copy the ASIN that you’d like to relist as Merchant Fulfilled
Return to the Inventory Menu and Right Click on Add a Product > Select Open in New Tab
Paste the ASIN here in this field
Find the Product, Select Condition New from the dropdown, and select Sell This Product
On the Offer Tab, set the SKU to be something different than the current FBA SKU. I like to start mine with MF_ XXX… for merchant fulfilled
Set the Item Quantity to at least 1 (you can change this from your inventory screen after listing the product)
Leave the condition set at New and then enter your price. You can set the price as the same as your new price, which will show next to “match lowest price” or you can set your Merchant Fulfilled price slightly lower to encourage people to choose the lower priced option. This will also help you get the buy box.
Under fulfillment option, select I will ship this item myself (merchant fulfilled)
Select Save and Finish
You will now be returned to the inventory screen and get a notice that your request is being processed.
Return to Inventory > Manage Inventory Screen and you should see your new merchant fulfilled listing at the top of the list in your inventory
Note the difference between your merchant fulfilled listing and your FBA listing is that you can set the quantity. If you are not yet ready to ship this item, you can change the quantity to 0.
The next thing to note is the Free Shipping hyperlink in blue on the Merchant Fulfilled listing. This may look different on your screen if you haven’t yet set up your shipping template. To set up shipping click this shipping hyperlink
This shipping template link will now allow you to set up a free shipping template or any other shipping options, as well as enrolling in Seller Fulfilled Prime.
Another note on this screen is the ability to assign specific shipping templates to various skus with this option. Don’t worry, this won’t affect your FBA listings, as shipping is automatically covered by Amazon.
Also visit the General Shipping Settings tab and ensure the default shipping address shows the address where you’ll be shipping the items from and where they’ll need to be returned to should the customer return something. If you use a prep center or third party fulfillment center, you’d update with their address here.
What happens when you sell an item? How do you merchant fulfill it?
First you’ll get an email from Amazon that the item was sold with the subject line: Sold, ship now
The email will read something like this
You can simply click the links at the bottom of the email to go to seller central, purchase discounted shipping, print the packing slip, prep and ship your item.
If you don’t get this email, you can check your merchant fulfilled orders in the seller central dashboard on the left hand side. Any merchant fulfilled orders will show up in the unshipped row. You can click unshipped and view the orders.
In order for the product to show in the “seller fulfilled” column you’ll need to go through the process of purchasing shipping and marking the item shipped in seller central
If you need more help prepping or fulfilling your items, simply type your question in the search bar in the upper right of seller central and you’ll get tons of great information to help you on your journey.
We hope this guide has been helpful to you. Join the conversation in our Facebook Group at https://facebook.com/groups/amazingathome for more helpful insights and to connect with others.
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