So, I was making my shipping plan today to send some boxes into Amazon. Going through the usual process. “Partner carrier” selected by default (which for me is Japan Post’s “Yu-Pack” parcel service). Went through the sections filling out as usual, get to the “estimate costs” part…see the shipping estimate… click accept…about to finish the shipping plan when I thought, “you what?”…
I went back and looked at the price. It didn’t look right. 1,560 yen per 120cm size box. It’s usually 851 yen. When things increase by over 80%, I notice!
I checked the transactions tab in Seller Central and it confirmed that shipments had almost doubled in price from last week.
I called support to find out what has happened, and apparently since May 7th, The Post Office has removed their Amazon discounted rates and set everyone at the standard rate! So as this post title explains “Partnered Carrier” isn’t very bloody partnery…(made up word). It is in fact the, “We will make loads of money until you guys notice” default carrier option.
Apparently Amazon did mail us all about this change. I missed that one. What with the 10 trillion emails I get daily from the 7 Amazon market places I am on. And that’s not an exaggeration. I got 10 trillion yesterday. I counted.
Fortunately, I’m grandfathered in to really low rates through “Sagawa”, one of the largest carriers in Japan. But for many people, this rate hike will really eat into margins.
My advice to everyone is to sell really tiny products, that have huge margins, and sell by the bucket load😁
