Let’s look more closely at the main disadvantages of the FBA program.

Unfortunately, Amazon FBA isn’t always a perfect solution.

Let’s begin with a couple of small problems that you may need to work around if you use the FBA system:

# 1. Inventory management

The thing is Amazon fulfillment centers are not storage units.

This means that you can not send them your goods and expect them to sit on it until it sells.

Your goods need valuable inventory space to be stored and if they do not go away for six months, Amazon would increase your storage charges.

This makes using Amazon FBA a bit of cat and mice game.

On the one hand, you have to keep enough inventory in the Amazon center to make sure you can cover your orders.

On the other hand, you can’t let to store more goods than you expect to sell during the next half-year.

Logically, suppliers who have hundreds or thousands of items in stock might have problems figuring out exactly how much inventory they need for each product.

# 2. Preparing items

We’ve already spoken about the labeling and packaging difficulties when shipping to Amazon FBA.

No matter what you are selling, your products have to be packaged according to Amazon standards before you send them to fulfillment center.

Yes, in some cases Amazon can take care of the packaging and labeling process for you.

However, they also will charge you a fee for these services.

That is why certain businesses prefer to deal with their customers directly.

Sometimes packaging and shipping your goods to an Amazon fulfillment center is going to be about as much work as sending them to your customers by yourself.

# 3. Mixed products

it is not easy to complete Amazon’s 2-day delivery promise.

To do so, the company has fulfillment centers all around the world.

All orders are fulfilled by the nearest center that has such goods available, even if these products didn’t originally come from your inventory.

Remember that when you send some kind of product to an Amazon fulfillment center, you don’t actually create unique labels for them.

The only thing you need is to use the barcodes for certain items.

After receiving, your goods will be added to the fulfillment center’s local inventory for such products.

In practice, you can ask not to mix your goods with others.

However, by default, your products might be included in such a mixing process.

Eventually, when your customer receives the product that they ordered from you, what they really receive is the product which might have come directly from you or it might have come from another supplier.

The good thing about all this is the possibility of rapid delivery for your clients.

On the other hand, we can see clear issues with quality assurance.

As a seller, you’re responsible for the quality of the goods which your clients get.

So when Amazon swaps out your product for another seller’s defective item, in your customer’s mind, you still sent them such a messy product.

Yes, Amazon FBA will provide covers and returns in such a case.

But it still can be a huge issue: some sellers have received negative reviews, been forced to close shop or even faced legal action when their customers were sent counterfeit or damaged goods.

# 4. Sales tax compliance

Amazon’s decentralized fulfillment procedure leads to another issue besides the quality assurance.

We are talking about potential difficulties with sales tax compliance.

When Amazon receives your goods, there’s no guarantee that they’ll keep them at the fulfillment center you sent it to.

As a result, you can’t decide where exactly you should register for sales tax compliance.

Amazon doesn’t tell you where your products currently are.

That exposes sellers to several potential tax liability issues.

To date, it hasn’t become a huge problem, but it is something to keep in mind as a potential issue that could arise while using the FBA program.