New Amazon Shipment Options

If your business is carton-forwarding based, you may have noticed that Amazon now offers multiple shipping options at different price points.

If you choose Standard Shipping, the receipt of your units will be delayed. If you choose Recommended Shipping, your cartons will be prioritized for receiving. Often, the prices are wildly different. For example, to ship 18 standard sized cartons this November, the prices were:

$207 for Standard

$361 for Recommended

This was for small parcel. Sometimes the options are also available for LTL.

What Amazon’s system is doing is determining which facilities have the capacity to receive items faster. Keep in mind, some products may not be eligible for the faster receive times as they are routed to specific facilities. For example, oversized items and jewelry are not eligible. 

What do you think of this? Which option would you choose? Cut the line, or save some money?