FBA moved my ASINs to Frustration free packaging - now I'm frustrated!

Hi all,

I recently noticed that some of my customers had started to complain that their orders were being received without outer carton boxes and I also had noticed an increase in orders going missing. Now bearing in mind that my ASINs are high value items (over £150 each) and have pictures of the items on the outside gift boxes I was pretty annoyed to hear this. I asked Amazon why after one year of selling were these ASIN’s now being sent without an outer carton box and they replied that it was decided by FBA that they can be sent without any extra packaging. I explained to them that this is unacceptable because:

• the items are high value and have pictures of what’s inside so they are more likely to be stolen
• in current social distancing rules most packages are being left outisde customer homes and so even more likely to be stolen.
• when customers return items (unwanted etc) the gift box is covered in shipping stickers. As our company tries to keep the amount of packaging to a minimum we don’t have spare gift boxes to replaced the ruined gift boxes so having damaged boxes means we can’t sell return as new (usually we end up having to perform removal orders and sell them as 2nd hand).

I’ve asked to escalate as I really don’t feel this policy is fair. We are getting bad seller feedback suddenly because of this decision on our ASINs along with a host of other issues related to the ASINs being sent with no outer carton box that are making it difficult for us. Are Amazon intentionally trying to destroy our reputation?

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what can be done about this or can other sellers comment if they had something similar happen to them? Note that we have never agreed to Frustration free packaging and have never asked for any ASINs to be shipped in their own container.