Fire at Amazon’s Rugeley Fulfilment Centre

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Amazon Rugeley spTwo men have been arrested for arson after a fire at Amazon’s Rugeley Fulfilment Centre on Sunday night. Staff were evacuated and fire crews attended the fire at 02:15am. Noone was hurt. A 19 year old and a 21 year old have been arrested.

Amazon have said that they do not anticipate the fire to impact operations and that other FCs will be abe to pick up the slack. That said, according to a Tamebay reader, staff at the FC were told not to come to work this morning. Amazon say they are working to have the facility back on track as soon as possible.

There are several important things that are unclear at this time. How big was the blaze? The 700,000 sq ft facility clearly hasn’t burnt to the ground but are we talking about more than a bin fire?

Has stock been damaged? Many Tamebay readers will send stock to the Rugeley facility for storage as part of FBA so you’ll be anxious to know if you’re affected.

If you do hear anything, do drop us a line or add a comment.

20 Responses

  1. We had stock arrive on Friday at Rugeley. Started selling well over the weekend then everything went into reserve. We had no idea what was going on until I googled it! No one is being told anything, our FBA stock has been removed from sale. The communication from Amazon on this has been non existent and an absolute disgrace. We don’t know whether our stock is ok, wet, smoke damaged etc. Not even a generic email from Amazon. People seem to be in a worse position than us according to the Amazon forum, I really feel for them. It would appear that Seller Support are not being very forthcoming with info to sellers either. Really poor show from Amazon that sellers had to find it out on the news!

  2. Absolute shambles, more than 1000 SKUs reserved and at such a crucial time in the retail calender.

    Its not Amazons fault that there was a fire however not once comms about the matter is really painful.

  3. Presumably its a secure facility so most likely to have been started by staff disgruntled at how they are treated.

  4. Much of my clothing stock is also showing as “reserved” too!

    Hopefully we will get an email soon with a large Amazon Re-imbursement payment for any damaged stock.

  5. i went to book a FBA tonight and it said to send to rugeley , i edited and doubled the stock and got a new FBA to ridgmont , i cant be a severe fire if they are still accepting FBA stock to that warehouse but i dont want my stock sent there at the moment

  6. We have substantial amounts of stock at Rugeley (mostly clothing) and over 1100 items are now being held in reserve.
    There are no official announcements from Amazon and we have been advised to open a case with seller support if the items aren’t back in stock in 7 days.
    As we use multi channel fulfillment this is also having a knock on effect with sales on other channels.
    It is the lack of communication from Amazon which is most frustrating.

  7. Just received from Amazon…

    “Following an operational incident in our Fulfilment Center BHX1, some of your items may have been damaged. While we work to confirm the condition of all the items affected, some of them will be in reserved condition. Once they have been reviewed they will either become available to customers again or will be reimbursed as per the standard FBA Lost and Damaged Inventory Reimbursement Policy.

    We recognize you may be concerned about customers being able to purchase your items, especially at this time. We are actively working to ensure that your inventory is available for sale to customers as quickly as possible.”

    We have an inbound UPS shipment which is showing as destination scanned at Tamworth Monday 22:22. It’s still flagged as in transit however so I guess BHX1 is not receiving stock or is only doing so slowly. Must be a pain for UPS as well.

  8. If the roofs on fire man, just let it burn your talking about money homie i ain’t concerned.

  9. UNBELIEVABLE, OVER 5000 ASINS OF MINE ARE MESSED UP. NO COMMUNICATION FROM ANYONE WHATSOEVER. WORST TIME EVER JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS. MY BUSINESS IS AN ABSOLUTE SHAMBLES AND IS AT A STAND STILL FOR THE MOST BUSIEST PERIOD OF THE YEAR.

  10. We had 17k units in reserve. This dropped to 7k units today overnight.

    Not a single communication from Amazon regarding this until 16th November and even when querying a shipment to BHX1 staff did not inform me the issue affected more than just that shipment.

    It took Amazon only a few hours to wheel out a press response stating it was a small fire. Yet took days to even bother to inform their customers their stock may be damaged.

    Amazon support staff know nothing and have no information. Amazon are apparently checking stock one by one to confirm it is sellable yet the speed at which this is occurring I am pretty sure they are just visually inspecting the products and not checking for odours. Their own staff can not confirm what level of checks and standards are being carried out but stock is blissfully being re-added to our inventory.

    Whilst Amazon will probably make sure reputation is protected on Amazon but for sellers using MFN to fulfil for eBay and other marketplaces this could be very damaging to feedback and sales metrics.

    Information is key and Amazon have provided absolutely none.

  11. Email from Amazon today:

    Dear Seller,

    We recognize you will be concerned that customers are still unable to purchase some of your stock, especially at this time.

    Following our communication on the 16th November, we have reviewed the majority of inventory affected by the operational incident. However some of your units are still in reserve status as a result of the incident. We expect to have evaluated all the remaining inventory by midday on Monday 21st November.

    Between now and then this inventory will either become available to customers again or will be automatically reimbursed as per the standard FBA Lost and Damaged Inventory Reimbursement Policy. After midday on Monday 21 November if any of your inventory still shows as “reserved” it will not be due to the incident. If you need more information on reserved status please review the help page here.

    We will continue to update you next week through email or seller central notification.

    BHX1 continues to accept inventory and is shipping customer orders as normal.

    Thank you for using Fulfilment by Amazon.

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