Amazon prioritizes household staples and medical supplies from merchants amid coronavirus outbreak
The commerce giant notes in an email that it is “seeing increased online shopping” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and will focus on prioritizing the reception, restocking and delivery of the essential products that are most in demand from this new uptick in activity from Amazon shoppers. For all other products, Amazon says it has disabled the creation of new inbound shipments for FBA members, as well as for retail vendors (their business-to-business selling platform).
Any existing shipments created prior to today are still going to be processed at Amazon’s fulfillment centers as usual, the company says, but otherwise new orders won’t be processed until such time as Amazon alerts sellers that things are back to normal. The tentative date for the program to resume in full is April 5, as mentioned, but it sounds like Amazon could extend these limitations depending on how the pandemic progresses.
Amazon is prioritizing goods in baby, health and household, beauty and personal care, grocery, industrial and scientific and pet supplies categories, the company says in a support document explaining the new limitations. Products outside of these categories that are already in Amazon’s fulfillment centers, or that are on their way to those facilities ahead of March 17, can still be sold through the platform.
