Introduction
In my FBA circles and arrows post, I mentioned at the bottom that I choose co-mingled inventory on FBA just because I’m lazy. However, since then, people have reminded me that I should stop. Here’s what I originally wrote about co-mingled inventory so you know what it is:
Comingled Inventory
For this tutorial, I didn’t have a screenshot asking me about ‘Comingled Inventory.’ This question will pop up eventually when you sell certain items. What this means is if you choose comingled inventory, that means you won’t need to label individual items. So let’s say I ship a widget to FBA and price it at $100 and Taylor Swift ships a widget to FBA and prices it at $110 and we both chose comingled inventory. That means when it gets to the warehouse, they are stored together.
Now if Calvin Harris purchases the widget from me for $100, Amazon may ship him Taylor Swift’s widget. Now let’s say Taylor shipped a defective widget and slipped through FBA’s checks at the warehouse, and when Calvin receives the item, he returns the item due to it being defective. He’ll ship it back to Amazon, who will then ship the defective item back to me (at a very dirt cheap cost,) and now I have to deal with the return.
Case #1 –
Then recently I saw this guy’s post – http://www.fbamaster.com/suspended-one-mans-story-of-losing-his-amazon-account-part-2/ Now he got banned for being careless (like not returning expired stuff back to himself), but he also mentions co-mingled inventory as another reason why he was banned.
Case #2 –
One of my chat people then one-upped me and sent me this – http://www.startupnation.com/start-your-business/plan-your-business/amazon-fba-program/. This one takes the cake. Can you imagine being the 10th largest seller in a category one day and the next day, your world crumbles around you?!? I mean, that’s not just a sucker punch to the stomach…that’s a sucker punch and a kick to the groin AND FACE while you’re down.
Conclusion
The point of this is – how many times have people said, “Oh I love co-mingled inventory.” Exactly. It’s always “Don’t do it.” So when wiser and more experienced people tell you to do something, you do it. I realize this will make me buy more shipipng labels and will slow down my packing process, but at least I know that the buyer receiving the item is receiving MY ITEM and not some scammer’s item. Look at it this way – would a scammer disable co-mingled inventory? YUP. Go change your setting. Then stock up on these labels.