Amazon is Prioritizing Inbound Shipments of Essential Household Products & Medical Supplies
Heads up! Amazon is prioritizing shipments!
With social distancing in place and grocery stores running out of supplies, Amazon is seeing an increase in online shopping. As a result, some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock.
With this in mind, Amazon just announced to their sellers that they are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products coming into their fulfillment centers so that they can more quickly receive, restock, and deliver these products to their customers. This will last through April 5th.
Looking for more work? Amazon also announced plans to hire 100,000 additional warehouse and delivery workers to help handle the increase in online orders. The company also plans to raise the pay for its current workers by $2 an hour through the end of April. Read more about it here.
I work for amazon and honestly I’d be really surprised if they raised our wage…..
Idk but there’s a temporary rate increase
Wtf? This is terrible news
Like why am I paying for prime at this point.
I would worry about the virus and containment..and not your Prime account.
As someone who has been isolating for over 3 weeks prime is a better way then going out into stores
This should not affect your Prime deliveries, Andrea. Amazon has not made any comment about changing the process for shipment going OUT to customers, just that they are prioritizing shipments coming into the warehouse.
Ok thanks for clarification, I was worried cause it is really helpful rather than going out right now
Actually, I have seen a drastic change in my Prime Deliveries. Items that are normally available to arrive in a day or 2 tops, are almost a week out.
One of the things I like most about the H2S community is that comments tend to be very positive and/or helpful with reviewer thoughts. This comment is extremely disappointing… people out there don’t have essential items such as toilet paper or baby food, and you first thought is about what you can’t buy?
For the record, you still have access to other Amazon features, such as their streaming video. Maybe that’s not what you want right now, but it’s more than what other people have.
Seems they’ve hit diminishing returns with Prime now anyway—my Prime orders seem to all come later that they’ve promised. Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, told employees that the company will fail but their job is to put that off as long as possible.
His point was that ANY company can fail, but he wants to do his best to prevent that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardkestenbaum/2018/11/16/amazon-is-not-too-big-to-fail-bezos/#3cd57a1a1626
I’m curious how this will affect subscribe and save orders? I am pregnant and get a monthly subscription sent of all my vitamins. 🤷🏼♀️
It appears that if the order was made for before the end of today, then it will still be fulfilled.
I would think and hope that vitamins would be on that list considering it helps build the immune system..
Vitamins are essential household item
Motomom, Amazon has not posted anything about outbound customer shipments being affected. You should still get all of your items normally. I do think vitamins would be considered medical so I don’t think you’ll have any issues with it being in stock as they prioritize inbound shipments.
No they are NOT shipping out as normal times with prime. I ordered a couple of items today and it says delivery will be next week therefore they are very delayed!! They are marked prime shipping which should come on Friday , NOT next Tuesday!
Thanks, T-Jane. You are right; outbound shipments might be delayed, but they have not announced anything about not fulfilling orders for customers which is great news considering the demand.
Thanks for sharing this! Surprised that Amazon can ship any of the things that they mentioned considering those items have not been replenished on their site for quite some time. I have not seen hand sanitizers, masks or toilet paper in stock on their site for weeks now.
I was typing up the same comment! My shopping on Amazon has gone way down this past week or so because health and beauty supplies are OOS or 3rd party seller ripoffs.
Actually Amazon has hand sanitizers, rubbing alcohol, and alcohol wipes in & out of stocks. Sign up for notification. App notification is faster than email notification. When they get back in stock, you need to add to cart and check out right away. At times, it’s only in stock for seconds. I only start looking for these items around two weeks ago and managed to get these items shipped to my home. None of the local stores by me have these.
How do you sign up for notification? I don’t see where to do that.
On the item page itself, where the add to cart button located if the item is available. OT: Do the same with Target. Purell hand sanitizer & Purell wipes also in/out of stock. Once you get the app notification, add to cart and checkout with red card. Don’t bother using any gift cards as it adds an extra step, causing the item to go out of stock. Then, you’ll need to wait again until the next time the item go back to stock to purchase.
If you need hand sanitizer you could try your local compounding pharmacy. Several of our hometown pharmacists are making hand sanitizer and selling at cost as a service to the community.
Ugh maybe that’s why I couldn’t get through to the compounding pharmacy today! They always pick up right away and they didn’t answer and no answering machine picked up either! I bet they are swamped. I need my script!
This is about Amazon?
I can’t find this mentioned on their site, about suspending shipments that is. If you try to order something it will still say shipping this week too.
Hi, Holls. This was an email sent to their sellers in regard to receiving shipments. The main impact on customers should be that they are actually able to restock the stuff people are searching for the most (ie household essentials).
From what I understand it should not affect people’s orders that come from the warehouse. Those things are still in supply and will continue to be unless things change for the worse after the next 19 days.
That makes more sense.
Correct!
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding that they are talking about shipments to Amazon’s warehouses, not shipments from warehouse to consumers. So any orders from Amazon will still ship to consumers as long as there is stock in their warehouse. If it’s out of stock, then there will be no new shipments to the warehouse (unless it’s in one of the 6 categories) until after April 5th.
YES! This ^^^
Yes this⬆️⬆️⬆️
People are spreading false rumors and getting customers upset!! They are only limiting items going IN not OUT!
Yes, exactly, ET. These are shipments coming INTO their warehouses.
Well, if shipments aren’t going to the warehouse, then they are not going to the customers
Who decides what is essential?
Hey, Gavincraft! We had a reader that works at an Amazon warehouse share this comment on Facebook:
Every item is rated on a rating scale basically based on past sales and high demand. They can see the priority level whenever the truck is entered into the yard. If it’s too low and not a live driver, it’s skipped over so the more in demand items can be processed first.
Way I read it is Amazon is focusing on sending their warehouses medical and household essentials and putting everything else on the back burner. Assume warehouse will ship other stuff until they ran out.
They are talking to people who sell on Amazon only. Amazon can only hold so much product so they are saving space f or the essentials. They will still continue to ship out all product! This is going to create panic 🙁
Yes that’s what I read as well.
It would be very helpful to modify the title of this post to make clear that Amazon is not suspending shipments to consumers. Otherwise, yes, it will just cause more panic buying.
We just changed the title, ET to more accurately reflect the situation. “Amazon is Prioritizing Inbound Shipments of Essential Household Products & Medical Supplies”
Yeah, I agree, this kind of just fuels the fire, goodness.
CK – Thanks for commenting. We did edit the post a bit to make it a bit clearer that this affects inbound shipments only.
Does that mean I won’t be able to do my easter shopping on amazon?
Ashley, this does NOT impact outbound orders. This is only prioritizing shipments received from sellers. So if your Easter goodies are already in stock at their warehouse, you should get them as normal.
What they consider essential for the homebound family could be very subjective. However, I get there point and am anticipating more places doing this too. I noticed yesterday Dollar Tree is suspending shipping entirely.
I’m actually glad amazon has come up with this. I was just speaking of this about all the companies that are closing their physical stores but not their online stores. I am a supervisor at UPS and our warehouses are filled with worker that could have and contract the Coronavirus. And some of the prevention measures that the CDC says needs to be followed can’t be duly followed working in a warehouse that delivers. So I feel that we should only be exposed, if any, for the necessities that households, government agencies, medical places, and etc., may need. That way they can limit some of the workers that work, if possible or at least shorten the exposure time by possible shifting the shift times. Because this social distance is not going to work if the warehouse workers contact it and bring it home to their families and possible give it to other when their at the grocery stores or something. It just doesn’t make sense. Especially considering everyone doesn’t show symptoms. Jobs are only worried if you show symptoms and if you can’t be carrying it with no symptoms.
Yes I work at a amazon distribution center and yes this is very true. Sure people are paying for prime but is getting your apple iPods or your books on time more important than the people who are working in the warehouses and risking their lives to get the packages out. At any given time I work closely around 150+ people. Just think about that.
Thanks for editing the post. It was alarmist when I first read it, and incorrect. No need to publish either of my comments ❤️😊
We definitely don’t want to sound alarmist! We were hoping to come off as more of a “Hey, your medical supplies and toiler paper are being restocked!”
Grrr I almost ordered my son’s birthday gifts over the weekend (birthday early April)…now they won’t fulfill it 😭 tell that to a child in elementary that you couldn’t get their #1 item on list now 😫😫 Nor can you take them to their favorite museum etc… 💔
You should go back and re-read this article. It has nothing to do with outgoing shipments!
Hey, Nikki. Happy early birthday to your son! I have one that turned 3 today!
They are only prioritizing inbound shipments so that they can get their shelves restocked with the items most needed (Medical supplies, household essentials). If the items you want for your son are already in an Amazon Warehouse, you can still order and ship like normal.
This makes me rethink what I’m ordering. For example, I was going to purchase a couple puzzles for my kids to do while we’re quarantined, but those are clearly not urgent considering that some people need food, medical supplies, etc… so will my frivolous order bog down the system? Something for me to think about 😉 Thanks Hip2Save, for these informative posts also.
Order what you want. This has nothing to do with outbound shipments.
I knew something was up the other day. I have had prime for years with 1 or 2 day shipping. I ordered a medical device I needed urgently and they are saying it won’t be here for a WEEK on prime. I chose the one with the least shipping time too.
I had an order that said wasn’t arriving until Thursday, but I got it today. So you could get your item sooner.
You should remove the original tweet because it STILL says that Amazon is SUSPENDING shipments — alarming people and adding to the panic that is so dangerous.
Yikes, Josie! I was so focused on keeping up with Facebook comments that I forgot to delete that one. Thanks so much for reminding me – you are awesome! Done and done!
Prime delivery is delayed. I ordered prime products that will take 4 days to get delivered instead of 2 days.
Same here. I assume they are absolutely swamped.
I have sleep apnea and need distilled water for my CPAP machine. Difficult to impossible to get at the grocery stores. I ordered a water distilling machine on my Prime account and it won’d be delivered until April 22nd. It may not be a primary medical device but I sure need it.