For goods ship from China to Amazon Fba, many Amazon sellers are directly or indirectly using the top 4 major international express companies shipping them to Amazon FBA. The top 4 major international express companies are UPS, DHL, FedEx and TNT. Though the formats of their shipping receipts are different, the main contents are basically the same. The shipping receipts refer to waybill, invoice, packing list, inspection and quarantine documents, fire proof, explosion proof, magnetism proof, and so on. And we are only going to discuss the contents on shipping waybills and receipts.
Many Amazon sellers and even many freight forwarders are confused at how to filled in the Amazon FBA waybills, as Amazon Fba Warehouse dose not provide any logistics clearance assistances and even dose not have receiving contact information. In deed, Amazon FBA warehouse is just a window, you can imagine it is a robot which has no communication and coordination skills. However, we have to filled in the receiving information such as recipient, contact number, and more if there are customs clearance problems, the customs need to contact Amazon and require Amazon to settle the tariffs. We as the Amazon sellers being worldwide, it is limited for us to communicate with the local couriers and customs staffs, then it is usually costs irreparable losses.
We need to understand and digest each issue one by one, though it is impossible to avoid all the risks, at least can prevent us from getting in some common problems. TaobaoGuides, as a professional freight forwarder with 8+ year shipping experience, providing safe and stable shipping line to Amazon FBA, is going to explain the major issues in the perspective of a third party, all the point of views are balanced.
About SHIPPER/EXPORTER/FROM
This is easy to understand, it need to fill in the shipment sender’s name and the location where the shipment ship from. But in the practical shipping procedure, the shipper need to make adjustments in order to different situations, some are normal adjustments, but some might do harm to the Amazon sellers.
Example 1, While we undertake the shipment shipping to EU Amazon FBA, the first journey is from our warehouse to EU Amazon FBA warehouse. At this time, the shipper can be the really Amazon seller, or TaobaoGuides, but this is not a issue. In order to handle the customs clearance problems, we are more willing to leave our contact information. And the second journey is from Amazon FBA warehouse located in German to other European countries, thus, the shipper is Amazon. It’s quite understandable, right.
Example 2, If Amazon sellers ship their goods by UPS, DHL, TNT, and FedEx directly, then there are more deals we need to pay attention. First, shipping by these four Express directly, we need to register an account, and there are two kinds of accounts, one is Trade Account, the other one is Agent account.
Trade Account: The account for manufacturers, export traders, cross-border e-commence companies. In principle, these accounts only are available for the traders’ goods. The major international express companies are fond of giving these account to clients, and the shipping price are low with better services. If an freight forwarder use a trade account to ship Amazon FBA goods, under normal circumstances, they won’t give the waybill to their clients, as the waybill includes account information, which has certain risks to the account.
Agent account: the account given to the logistics peers, this account can help various shippers to ship different kinds of goods, and the account belongs to one logistics provider but not the shipper. However, the major express companies giant to monopoly the logistics market, and in order to catch as many as customers in their hands, agent accounts are under strict control. Furthermore, the price given to agents accounts is not so competitive.
Then naturally, when you ship goods through a freight agent with which a trade account, that means the shipper filled in the waybill cannot be the real shipper, but the owner of the trade account, so at this situation, the goods dose not belong to you but belong to others on the legal level. That is to say, the ownership of the shipment and the right of disposition do not belong to the real shipper.
About SHIP TO/CONSIGNEE
For Amazon FBA goods, there is no doubt that the recipient is Amazon FBA warehouse, and the receiving address is Amazon FBA warehouse address as well. Nevertheless, major international express companies stipulate that shippers need to fill recipient and the contact number on the waybill, but Amazon FBA warehouse doesn’t provide any relevant information. Thus we suggest shipper fill in the information of customs clearance subject( will explain later). Customs clearance subject generally is located in destination country, which is more convenient to answer the destination customs’ call. If Amazon FBA sellers or the freight forwarder do not have the customs clearance subject information, that would be troublesome, only they can fill in is a Chinese contact number, which make no differences.
About SOLD TO/NOTIFY PARTY/INVOICE ADDRESS
This information indicate the ownership of the shipment which the customs concerns the most: Who is the owner of the goods, and if the owner has the right of importation and exportation, and if the owner settle the tax. Then a series problems come. From the view of legal level, Amazon FBA is just a warehouse for goods storage, it has no ownership of the goods, the real ownership is the supplier in China, and this supplier is supposed to have the right of importation and exportation. However, not all the Chinese suppliers have this right. At this moment, it shows the value of the freight forwarder who has customs clearance service in imported and exported countries. The freight forwarder is responsible for providing a local company which has importation and exportation rights, it need to be the owner of the goods so as to make the goods have quality for export to destination market.
Speaking of this point, the information of importer is easier to fill, if the real shipper has the importation and exportation right already, just fill in that relevant information, otherwise, it should fill in the information of the local legal company which has relevant rights provided by the freight forwarder. And the contact information of the Chinese local company should be filled in the blank of receiving address as well, just in case.
About Fill in the declared value and invoice amount
Many shipper concern this issue the most, however there is no particular calculating formula, we can only reply on experiences. According to our experience, we suggest shipper declare the goods according to 20-50% sales value of the goods, or according to 40-60% cost value. But it depends on what kind of goods you declare, it doesn’t apply to all the goods. If the destination customs considers your goods declared value is too low, they will rework on the shipment, and we don’t have many rights to negotiate.
After knowing all this common problems of Amazon FBA shipping, does not mean you can deal with them well, take our TaobaoGuides shipping service as examples, all the shipment have to be clear and have all the needed documents so that we could ship goods smoothly to Amazon FBA warehouse.
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