Shipping fees for FBA
We are brand owners and use FBA. If we choose to charge our customers shipping fees, how does that work? Would that then put us as FBM? What are the advantages of staying FBA?
4 replies
Seller_d7Z0MKOJalf7S
You cannot charge shipping for FBA items.
Amazon sets shipping costs for FBA items.
Prime members get free shipping, and everybody gets free shipping when they purchase over a certain amount.
Seller_Qbd0RsfZFEZBY
IME most Amazon individual users have a “Prime” account and search for items with “free prime shipping”. FBM listings with a shipping charge have less “sessions” and therefore less overall sales.
Seller_PLls4YTN2kHqh
Having FBA means everybody that has prime gets free fast delivery of your product from amazon. FBA amazon takes care of customer support packaging, inventory storage, and shipping so all you have to do is send it to amazon and they do the rest. FBA also has full control of your inventory so loss or damage is part of it.
Seller_X9AxWaXfNnGAl
The key advantage are customers with Prime memberships and those who expect free shipping. That is more than half of the business on Amazon.
Another important advantage is that the fees you pay for FBA are almost always less than you will pay for shipping and handling costs for FBM. Do not forget that somebody needs to get paid to the fulfillment and someone needs to pay for the shipping packaging and someone also may need to pay to get the packages picked up or to drop off at a carrier depot. If you choose FBM and charges customers shipping, you will lose that share and your offers will be compared against other sellers using FBA and that will mean that your total cost for each order will be higher than theirs when selling at a competitive price. That means you will earn less per order than they do and miss out on more than half of the orders you would get (even with similar or possibly lower prices) when using FBA.
I suggest that you try some products with FBA and others with FBM and see how they perform. You can switch both to the other and see how they compare. You might be surprised.
