There seems to be a frequent misunderstanding regarding how Amazon FBA operates. Amazon does not keep inventory in shipping cartons. Amazon also does not keep all of the inventory it receives in the original FBA/redistribution center third-party sellers shipped to (except for very rare circumstances – like seriously, we’ve only seen this happen twice).
Amazon distributes the inventory it receives throughout the United States into numerous FBA centers. The inventory is then stored in commingled storage bins for quickness of picking and shipping to the end user.
Here’s a video of a typical FBA center in action.
When a third-party seller creates a removal order, Amazon ships inventory directly from each of the facilities it’s currently located. In some cases, this can mean dozens of shipments of various quantities, cartons sizes or envelopes.
Sending Amazon FBA inventory to our facility
When we receive your Amazon removal order shipments, we’ll consolidate your inventory into as few shipping cartons as possible to save on storage space and cost if the inventory is to remain with us.
If inventory is being removed from Amazon FBA for export, we’ll repack the units into heavy-duty shipping cartons.