There was a giant banner at the top of their site that explained there was global health crisis and shipments of non-essentials could be delayed. They'd been asked (told in some cases) by governments and others to prioritize eseential product shipments, so they did. They also told suppliers to stop sending non-essentials for FBA. If they had capacity (and items on hand) they've been delivering non-essentials (I've gotten some of my stuff sooner too). There was a big article that blew up here about how France was going to fine them for shipping non-essentials/putting workers at risk and gave them 24 hours to change their entire warehouse workflow/technical systems (Amazon responded by saying they'd need to shutdown for a bit to avoid the fines as they reworked everything to comply).
And on this note, I was talking with my neighbor yesterday and he's having a related issue that only became an issue when Amazon enacted this covid-response policy. It used to be that it didn't particularly matter if your products were accurately mapped into Amazon's categories as long as they were searchable. Now, however, Amazon is refusing to ship (or receive FBA stock) for non-essential categories. My neighbor is a shoe salesman for a brand that has a full medical & industrial line ... but they weren't tagged into medical equipment categories at Amazon so he can't ship replenishment inventory. Amazon isn't allowing these mapping adjustments to be made at all right now for fear of abuse.
Also, when FBA stock depletes, sellers have the individual option of whether to direct ship or not. Some are, and some are using expedited shipping, but others are either not shipping at all or are using the cheapest freight possible.
Yep. And in the circles I'm in, some are already setting up stores outside Amazon... that's not going to bode well for Amazon when all these sellers suddenly realize they don't need Amazon anymore.
