Please note: This newsletter was originally sent to our clients on January 4, 2022
Hello,
Happy New Year to all! Now that the holidays are over and a new year has begun, we thought it would be a great time to send out an update.
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Notes from our Account Managers:
Carton Clients We recently had a client reach out to us asking if we had any other clients who were shipping containers to McKenzie Services from China, as they were interested in possibly sharing a container to help save on the costs of shipping, especially when they don’t have a full container. On their behalf, we are reaching out – is this something you are interested in? If so, please let your Account Manager know. We can help work out the details and put those clients who are interested in touch with each other.
Items Clients Have you thought about enabling 2D barcodes on your Seller Central account? You can do it with a click of a button and the feature is free. Enabling this feature allows us to generate your shipping labels faster and more efficiently. Why? Without 2d barcodes, we must manually enter the contents of each box into Amazon. But *with* 2d barcodes, Amazon only needs the weights and dimensions from us. **If you enable this feature, you must tell us right away so we can tell EPIC** Otherwise, EPIC will not print the barcodes for Amazon to scan.
*Please note* that Carton clients should not enable this feature.
LTL If you aren’t already aware, Amazon has started their own Freight company for LTL shipments. Whereas most carriers pick up the pallets from our facility within 1-2 business days of being ready, Amazon is setting dates for a week out or more, and we have already found that the pick-ups are continuously postponed within just a few weeks. Therefore, if you have a shipment that *must* leave our facility in a timely manner, consider choosing small parcel, or ask your account manager how you can tell which carrier your LTL shipment is going to be assigned to. This issue is only happening with Amazon Freight. All other carriers are operating as normal.
We are unsure if this trend will continue post-Holiday season, and we will update you when we have a firm answer on that.
Notes from our Accounting Team:
Billing Please ensure that your credit card on file is valid, current, and has available funds. With this being a busy time of year, we realize that the number of jobs and, therefore charges, have gone up significantly. It helps our team keep processing payments efficiently when there are no declined payments. We thank you for your understanding and cooperation!
Notes from our Operations Team:
Carton Barcodes in EPIC We ask that you please make sure your carton barcodes are in all capitals, and that there are no special characters besides dashes. For example, no #, *, &, % etc. Thank you for understanding, as recreating the carton barcodes takes time which will cause a delay in receiving your shipments into EPIC.
Carton Barcodes (Supplier) Please pass along the following information to your suppliers:
We receive many cartons that are already barcoded (which we love!) However, many of the barcodes are covered by shipping labels, or otherwise unusable. This means we have to print our own barcodes in order to receive the cartons into your inventory. This impacts the receiving process in that it causes a delay, which we know is not ideal.
Inbound Packages If you have shipments from Amazon.com being sent to us, please make sure that when you are checking out, the estimated delivery dates are not set for Saturday or Sunday. Amazon delivery drivers have been leaving packages outside of our warehouse over the weekend and the packages have been soaking wet by the time we get to them on Monday.
As a best practice, please make sure that wherever you are ordering from to change the delivery date to be a Monday-Friday whenever possible, and if there is a place to leave delivery notes, please note no deliveries on the weekend.
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Thank you so much for your continued business, and for reading these updates. We are wishing all of our clients the best New Year and many more to come.
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