Effective for shipments created on or after January 1, 2026, Amazon no longer prepares or labels your products inside its FBA warehouses. You handle prep yourself, or you use a third-party prep center. Six months in, the change stuck, the real enforcement turned out to be the inbound defect fee, and a second deadline (the March 31 commingling end) made FNSKU labeling near-universal for resellers. This page is the six-months-later report.
Per Supply Chain Dive's reporting on Amazon's seller announcement:
“The company said the change, which will take effect at the start of 2026, is due to improvements in sellers' packaging capabilities.”
Amazon's statement, in its own words:
“The vast majority of Amazon sellers now handle their own packaging, including prep and item labeling, either on their own, through their own manufacturing partners or through third-party service providers.”
Industry response has been direct. Charles Williams, senior manager of marketplace operations at the omnichannel agency Blue Wheel, called it “one of the most significant operational shifts Amazon has made in recent years.” Reddit's /r/FulfillmentByAmazon thread “So… Amazon just dropped FBA prep” ranks top-10 on the relevant SERPs.
The fulfillment centers themselves are unchanged. Only the inbound prep step moved out of Amazon. For the network you still ship inbound to, see our Amazon fulfillment center directory.
Amazon tells sellers by email that US FBA prep and item-labeling services will end. First trade-press coverage lands August 1 (Supply Chain Dive). Amazon does not pin a public announcement day, so neither do we.
The end date. No prep or labeling for shipments created on or after this date, across FBA, Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, Amazon Global Logistics, Amazon Send, and Supply Chain Portal. Shipments created before the date still got prepped even if they arrived later: the trigger is creation date, not arrival.
A separate squeeze begins: a bulky packaging fee (reported around $1.51 to $4.04 per unit, about $2.07 average) for Small and Large Bulky items not enrolled in Ships in Product Packaging.
Commingling ends. Brand Registry brand owners may switch to manufacturer barcodes; resellers must apply an FNSKU to every unit. Combined with the prep shutdown, labeling work became near-universal for arbitrage and wholesale sellers.
No walk-back, no extension, no reversal. A policy tracker updated July 11, 2026 records none, and every current industry source treats the change as permanent.
The story since January is not that a convenience disappeared. It is that the price of arriving non-compliant went from trivial to punitive. In 2025, the inbound defect fee ran roughly $0.02 to $0.07 per unit, and Amazon would quietly fix prep problems for a fee. In 2026 the reported defect-fee range is $0.32 to $5.72 per unit depending on the problem and size tier, with bulky items highest. Published figures conflict on the exact schedule (some sources describe a flat consolidated fee, others the full range), so treat these as industry-reported numbers and check Amazon's official 2026 fee schedule for your category. The magnitude is not in dispute: a labeling defect across a 500-unit shipment now costs on the order of $300 where it used to cost a few dollars.
And there is no fix-it-at-the-door option at any price. Non-compliant inventory is refused, returned at the seller's expense, or disposed of. Two things Amazon has told sellers directly in its own Seller Central forum: units damaged because they were improperly prepped “aren't eligible for reimbursements,” and if you use a third-party prep provider, “all contracts and transactions are managed between you and the service provider”: your prep partner's mistakes are your liability at receiving. That is exactly why the checklist below now asks whether a prep center will put defect-fee responsibility in writing.
No. Through July 2026 there has been no reversal, no extension, and no announced plan to restore in-house prep. Plan as if it is permanent, because every signal says it is.
Industry coverage agrees third-party prep absorbed significant volume in the first quarter, but nobody publishes a market-share number, so here is what we can measure first-hand. Our census tracks 715 prep-labeled operations (July 2026 count). Roughly half are general 3PLs wearing the prep label, about a fifth are dead, and 107 have cleared our 4-point verification and are published in the directory, up from 66 in early June. Across the hand-verified public rate cards in our 2026 Pricing Index, the median US entry price is $1.30 per unit, consistent with the $0.75 to $1.50 range industry sources quote for standard prep.
The churn number is the one sellers should sit with: about a fifth of the prep-center universe we track is dead. Operators enter and exit this market constantly, which is why every listing in our directory carries a last-verified date and why dead businesses get flagged instead of silently lingering. The full census, with the exact partition and a downloadable dataset, is at The State of FBA Prep 2026.
Most affected proportionally. In-house prep was a real cost cushion. Either accept ~$1-$2/unit on a third-party prep service or build a kitchen-table prep workflow at home. Many small sellers also qualify for Amazon's Ships in Product Packaging program for already-retail-ready items.
Sweet spot for third-party prep. Volume is enough to negotiate per-unit pricing under the listed rate. Multi-channel sellers should look at hybrid prep + 3PL providers; FBA-only sellers should look at pure FBA prep specialists for the per-unit pricing edge.
Likely already using third-party prep or your own warehouse. Amazon's in-house service rarely served your volume cleanly. Some large sellers will accelerate moving to full 3PL relationships now that the in-house option is closed.
Amazon's own seller guidance describes packaging, labeling, and inspection requirements per category. Workable if you have low SKU count, simple products, and physical space. Bottleneck risk on scale: once you're past 500-1,000 units/month, your time is worth more than the per-unit prep savings.
A small focused prep shop charges $1-$2 per unit for standard prep and handles inspection, labeling, polybag, kitting, and inbound FC routing. Most US prep centers turn shipments around in 24-72 hours. We maintain a verified directory: every published center cleared our 4-point operator standard before listing.
Eligible items shipped to Amazon FBA in their retail packaging can be exempted from many prep requirements. Eligibility depends on package durability, SKU labeling, and category. Best for items already manufactured retail-ready (consumer electronics, books, certain CPG). Since January 15, 2026 SIPP does double duty: certified items also avoid the new bulky packaging fee that hits non-certified Small and Large Bulky products.
The six questions a verified prep center should answer plainly:
Tetris3PL is a direct-to-consumer fulfillment warehouse at 6255 N Hollywood Blvd, Suite 120, in Las Vegas, Nevada, operated by Tetris Fulfillment, LLC, a Nevada company formed in June 2024. Most of its work is D2C order fulfillment, with B2B shipments, cross-docking, storage and returns alongside an Amazon FBA prep line that has been on its site since September 2024. Prep covers FNSKU labeling, poly bagging with suffocation warnings, bubble wrap, bundling with sold-as-set labels, case packs and quality inspection. It publishes a full rate sheet: FNSKU labeling $0.70 per item, poly bagging with bag and warning $0.75, bubble wrap $1.00, bundles of up to three units $1.50 plus $0.50 per extra item, and re-boxing $2 plus materials. Pallet receiving is $10, pallet storage $35 a month and pallet forwarding $30. Cautions: there is a $1,000 minimum monthly spend, a $400 monthly account management fee and $100 a month per connected sales channel, and pallet storage carries a $15 monthly surcharge per pallet when an account ships fewer than 200 D2C orders a month (B2B accounts are quoted), so small prep batches will cost far more than the per-unit rates suggest. The company is about two years old and runs one warehouse; an Atlanta site is announced for 2027. Its customer case studies are unnamed, so we did not use them.
Ships A Lot is the current name of Dollar Fulfillment, an Idaho ecommerce fulfillment company that merged with Memphis-based Ships-a-Lot in 2023. The operating entity, Macek Consulting LLC, was registered in Idaho in December 2008. It lists three warehouses: 4391 W Hargrave Ave in Post Falls, Idaho, its registered address; 5755 FedEx Lane in Olive Branch, Mississippi, outside Memphis, its largest site; and 4340 N Lamb Blvd in Las Vegas. The square footages on its site run higher than property records and its own LinkedIn post, so treat them as the operator's figures. Most of its work is direct-to-consumer, marketplace, retail and subscription fulfillment. Its Amazon FBA prep section covers polybagging, bubble wrap, FNSKU labels and shipment plans, with inspection before inventory ships to Amazon, and the company states a 24 to 48 hour turnaround from receiving to shipment. The predecessor site described the same prep work in May 2024. Pricing is quote-based; no prep rates are published. Cautions: FBA prep is one of eight service lines at a DTC-first 3PL and the prep section runs four short paragraphs, so ask for a written prep rate card and confirm which warehouse will handle your inbound. Volume figures such as 5 million orders a year are the operator's own. The two homepage testimonials name generic-sounding companies, so we did not use them. The predecessor's Trustpilot profile (dollarfulfillment.com) shows 1.3 stars on 63 reviews, and the visible ones are mostly from shoppers of client brands rather than sellers; the BBB rates the business A+.
HermesLines is an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse in Cleveland, Ohio, operated by Logilines LLC, an Ohio company registered in December 2023. It works from Suite B at 5300 Tradex Parkway, a multi-tenant industrial building, and handles direct-to-consumer orders, pallet storage, and B2B and Amazon FBA prep. Its services page lists inbound inspection for damage and quantity discrepancies, labeling, carton building and pallet wrapping, with dispatch to Amazon fulfillment centers and retail distribution centers across the eastern US. Prep is billed as labor rather than per unit: $60 per hour, which its prep-cost article says is prorated to the minute, plus $10 per new pallet and $5 per stretch wrap, with no monthly order minimum. Its cost articles also list a platform fee from $14 a month in months inventory moves, which the pricing page does not show. Pallet receiving is $10 and storage starts at $15.99 per pallet per month. Its pricing page adds FNSKU labeling and polybagging, and its rate card adds carton and pallet shipping labels and packing lists. Cautions: this is a DTC-first 3PL and FBA prep shares one short section with B2B retail work. The operator asks sellers to supply current Amazon prep guidelines with every shipment, so agree in writing who owns compliance. Hourly billing makes per-unit cost hard to predict; ask for a time estimate on a sample batch. The site went live in August 2024. Until at least April 2026 its Amazon service was priced per pallet ($79.95 for one pallet); the hourly unit-level prep card dates from about May 2026.
Fulfillment Express is a Los Angeles-area 3PL at 1502 Gage Rd in Montebello, California, near the Port of Los Angeles. It was incorporated in California in 1997 and now runs the fex3pl.com site, which replaced the fulfillmentexpress.com domain it has held since 2001. Its Amazon page covers bulk FBA shipments for both Seller Central and Vendor Central: ASIN or FNSKU unit labels from $0.20 per unit, FBA carton labels built to Amazon's carton weight and size rules, pallet labels and pallet building, plus Seller Fulfilled Prime and FBM order shipping. The core business is DTC and retail order fulfillment, including EDI and routing-guide work for big-box retailers, kit building, lot and serial number tracking and returns, with no monthly minimums. Pricing beyond the unit-label rate is quote-based. Cautions: the prep line is focused on labeling; the Amazon page does not list polybagging, bundling or inspection as FBA services, so confirm those if your products need them. The site says the company was founded in 1993, while the California corporation dates to 1997. No email address is published on the website, so contact is by phone or the web form.
Cims 3PL is a small ecommerce fulfillment warehouse in Richmond, Texas, in the Houston suburbs, run by CIMS 3PL LLC, a Texas company registered in May 2022. It publishes an FBA prep rate card: $1.25 per unit covers receiving and inspection, FNSKU labeling, polybagging and bubble wrap, with new FBA-compliant cartons at $4 each, carton labels at $2 each, and outbound loading to Amazon at $2 to $3 per box or $30 to $35 per pallet. Pallet storage is $30 a month and DTC order fulfillment runs $1.75 to $2.50 an order depending on monthly volume, with returns, kitting, bundling and subscription boxes also offered. The site lists one location. Cautions: the homepage quotes FBA prep at $1.50 per unit while the pricing page says $1.25, so confirm the rate in writing before shipping. The About page claims eight years of logistics services, but archived copies show this domain ran an online salt lamp store in 2018 and 2019, and the 3PL site first appears in January 2022. The website gives only 'Richmond, Texas' with no street address. Its client testimonials are signed with initials only, so we did not use them.
Borderworx Logistics is a cross-border 3PL and customs broker with warehouses on both sides of the Canada-US border: a facility it describes as over 110,000 sq ft at 6405 Inducon Drive West in Sanborn, New York, near Niagara Falls, which this listing covers, and one of over 52,000 sq ft at 2360 Cornwall Rd, Unit A, in Oakville, Ontario. Its Ontario corporation dates to 2006 and its New York LLC to 2008; the company says it started in 2003, the year its domain was registered. The FBA prep page describes receiving whole shipments, unpacking, labeling and repacking to Amazon's prep and label rules, bundling and quality checks, then sending stock to Amazon fulfillment centers in Canada or the US; the location pages add poly-bagging and case-pack prep. The rest of the business is customs brokerage, trade compliance, container freight station work, cross-border trucking on its own fleet, warehousing, and FBM and multichannel order fulfillment, which suits Canadian sellers moving stock into Amazon US. Pricing is quote-based; no prep rates are published. Cautions: the prep pages describe a three-step process with no turnaround times or rates, so ask for both in writing. The site's own figures conflict, more than 2,000,000 customs clearances on the homepage and more than 250,000 on the About page, so treat its counters as the operator's claims.