As we wrote the week before last, there was a fire at Amazon’s Fulfilment Centre (FC) at Rugeley in the early hours of Monday 14th November. It’s seems that the blaze spread over two floors and an unspecified amount of stock was either destroyed or damaged.
A few days after the event, Amazon said they were working on the issues and sorting stock out and promised to have it all resolved by 21st November. Amazon would also process refunds for stock. Affected sellers with stock at Rugeley noted that their FBA stock had moved to being Reserved in Seller Central.
Two weeks down the line from the fire it seems that Amazon hasn’t resolved all the problems, kept sellers informed and made good on all the refunds. That’s very disappointing to hear because this problem has now straddled the Black Friday events.
One seller has been in touch, by way of illustration. Thankfully, as this seller notes, they don’t have a great deal of stock marked as Reserved at Rugeley (and they assume that means it was involved in the fire) and it hasn’t had a tangible impact on their trading over this peak period. But stock is still showing as Reserved and refunds haven’t been made. A call into Amazon support says that hopefully it will be sorted in the next two days.
It would be interesting to hear what has happened to your stock and refunds, if you had any involved in the Amazon Rugeley fire.
5 Responses
I was told today. when I questioned where the refunds were – and why it was still in my unfulfillable that it will take 30 days to refund.
Those that have automated removal in operation need to be carefeul. or you could end up with the damaged stock back, as mine is suggesting I create a removal for it (despite the stock all saying warehouse damaged),
No stock damaged but two shipment s delayed about 10 days before getting checked in. I’ll cut Amazon a little slack here in that this must have been a nightmare to handle at this time of year and I’d assume long hours were worked by many getting it sorted out. Communications with sellers could have been better though. Those of us with stock parked up with UPS could have been given some blanket message about the circumstances and the prognosis. Anyway it worked out ok and we did make the cut for Black Friday. I feel for those that missed it though.
We have units damaged but still not paid out for and no communication whatsoever. Very poor from a company who so loves metrics.
My advice though would follow on what Rachael talked about. Turn off automated removals if you use it. And don’t turn it back on again, ever. Because it’s not fit for purpose in a situation like this. So it’s not fit for purpose, ever.
Thanks for the confirmation