Switching FBA prep centers, when yours has gone quiet.
Prep centers churn mid-shipment. Emails start bouncing, the phone rings out, a pallet that should have gone inbound three weeks ago is still sitting in someone else's building, and the account portal still cheerfully shows a balance due. This page is the order to do things in: what to send in the first 48 hours, which clause in the agreement you signed is about to matter, the three ways inventory actually moves, and how to check the next operator before you ship it a pallet.
The first 48 hours.
Everything here is about creating a paper record while you still have one. None of it commits you to leaving, and all of it is worth having if you stay.
- 01
Get the inventory count in writing
Email, not a phone call, and ask for a reply to the email. You want units on hand per SKU, units received but not yet processed, anything already boxed or palletized for outbound, and photos of the pallets as they sit. A count you cannot produce later is a count you do not have. If they answer on WhatsApp or Slack, export the thread the same day.
- 02
Stop inbound to that address
Change the ship-to on every open purchase order, tell your suppliers and your freight broker today, and pause anything scheduled to leave a warehouse this week. Units already in transit to a center that has gone quiet are the hardest case on this page, because nobody will be there to refuse the delivery.
- 03
Ask for a removal or forwarding quote, per box and per pallet
In writing, itemized: outbound handling per box and per pallet, who palletizes and shrink wraps, who loads, whether a dock or a liftgate is involved, the labor rate if they bill one, and the date storage stops accruing. A center that will quote this is a center you can still work with. Silence on a quote request is itself information.
- 04
Screenshot the abandonment and dispute clauses
Capture the agreement you signed and the terms page as it reads today, with the date visible, because a posted terms page can be edited and a PDF in your email cannot. Save the invoice history and every thread in one folder while you still have an account login that works.
What your current center's terms probably say.
Prep agreements are short and the parts that bite are shorter. Five clauses decide almost every exit. Find each one in your own paperwork before you send another email, and treat what follows as a map of where to look rather than advice about your contract, because we are not lawyers and yours is not ours.
Abandonment window
How long inventory can sit after the account goes unpaid or inactive before the center can dispose of it, sell it, or treat it as theirs. It is usually counted in days from a notice, and the notice usually goes to the email on the account, which is the email you stop reading when a relationship sours.
Dispute window
How long you have to contest an invoice after it is issued. Past that date the invoice is typically treated as accepted, which matters most when the disputed line is the outbound handling charge on the way out the door.
Late fees
Flat, percentage, or both, and usually compounding. A late-fee clause turns a stalled relationship into a growing balance, and a growing balance is what a lien or abandonment clause attaches to.
Storage accrual
Storage almost always keeps accruing while your pallets wait for a truck, including through the weeks you spend negotiating an exit. It is the cost that quietly decides whether forwarding or removal was cheaper, and it is rarely in the quote.
Payment methods
Which rails they accept, and what each one costs you. Card and PayPal surcharges are common and are added on top of the rate card. The rail also decides what recourse you have: a card payment has a chargeback process behind it, a wire or a Zelle transfer does not.
Among the 3 centers whose posted terms we have audited so far, abandonment windows run from 7 to 90 days across the 2 that publish one, and one publishes a window to dispute an invoice, of 20 days. That is a spread wide enough that the number in your own agreement is not guessable from anyone else's, which is the point of looking it up today rather than on the day you need it.
Two of the three publish a late-fee policy, and two list the payment methods they accept. One of those attaches a surcharge to at least one method, which is a real per-invoice cost sitting outside the rate card. Neither is a detail until the relationship ends, and then both are.
Moving the inventory: three paths.
Most sellers end up running two of these at once, because the units are in two places. The costs below are categories to quote, not figures: freight and handling are priced per shipment and nobody can give you a number without your pallet count and your lanes.
Forward it from the old center to the new one
For units sitting at the old center, prepped or not.
- Outbound handling at the old center, usually quoted per box or per pallet
- Pallets, shrink wrap, and any repack labor if the boxes are not ready to ship
- The freight itself: LTL for pallets, small parcel for a few boxes, plus liftgate or dock fees where either end lacks a dock
- Receiving at the new center, which is a rate-card line of its own
- Re-prep on anything that arrives opened, mislabeled, or unlabeled
- Storage at the old center until the truck actually leaves
Removal order from Amazon to the new center
For units already at a fulfillment center, not at your prep center.
- Amazon's per-unit removal fee, charged by shipping weight
- Inbound receiving at the new center
- Re-prep and relabeling, which is where case-packed inventory gets expensive
- A second inbound shipment back into FBA once it is prepped again
Leave it and route new purchase orders to the new center
When the stranded stock is small, sellable, and not worth a truck.
- Storage at the old center while the last units sell through
- No freight, no removal fees, no re-prep
- The risk you are accepting: the last pallet stays under someone else's roof, and the abandonment clause keeps running
What Amazon says about removal orders
Read off Seller Central on . A removal ships only to you, your warehouse, your supplier, or your distributor, never to another fulfillment center and never to a PO, APO, FPO, or DPO box, and the address cannot be changed once the order is created. Pallets are delivered to a shipping dock or similar facility, freight requires a signature, and carriers bill you directly for anything beyond basic delivery, inside delivery included. Storage fees stop accruing on the units while the removal processes. Two details catch prep-center moves specifically: case-packed inventory is returned as individual items, which is a re-prep bill waiting to happen, and an order can be cancelled by Amazon if a unit turns out to be part of a pending customer order.
Removal fees are charged per unit at the unit's shipping weight. On the date above, the rate card put standard-size units of half a pound or less at $1.04 per unit, with Amazon's own page carrying a parenthetical reading $0.84 from January 15, 2026 onwards, which we quote as published rather than resolve; large bulky, extra-large, and special handling units start at $3.12 per unit; and the heaviest standard band adds about a dollar per pound over two pounds. Everything past those entry rows belongs on the rate card itself, not on a page that was written once. Check it before you budget a move.
For the other half of the arithmetic, what the new center will charge to receive, re-prep, and relabel what arrives, the fee benchmarks break down per-unit rates by tier and the fixed fees that decide whether a cheap per-unit rate is actually cheap. Receiving and relabeling are usually separate lines; ask for both before you book a truck.
How to vet the next one so this does not repeat.
Every center we publish clears four checks from primary sources before it appears, and keeps clearing them to stay unflagged. Here they are in plain words.
Operating more than 12 months
The state business registry confirms the legal entity exists, founders are confirmed independently, and the business has a public track record going back at least a year before we verified it. A one-month-old shop fishing for inbound leads does not get listed.
A live site that is actually about FBA prep
The domain resolves, the homepage returns HTTP 200, there is a working contact route, and the site plainly describes Amazon FBA prep work rather than burying it behind a form. A dead site is the earliest public signal that an operator has stopped operating.
FDA registration only when it can be verified
Required only of centers that claim it, which is the case for supplements. We cross-check the registration number against the FDA establishment database. A claim we cannot confirm is never printed as a fact; it stays an operator statement or the listing does not publish.
A human reads it, then software watches it
An editor reviews the listing before publication and cross-checks the name against seller forums and complaint records. After that, automated liveness checks watch for a dropped site between reviews, and a seller report reopens the review at any time.
What the date on a profile means
Every profile shows the date we last confirmed the listing. The badge beside it is not a reading of that date alone: an editor's status overrides it, so a center we have flagged reads as flagged even if we checked it yesterday. Past 90 days the badge becomes a warning, past 180 days it reads as flagged, and a business confirmed dead moves to the archive instead of vanishing, because a dead listing that disappears is how a directory hides its own misses.
Right now the directory holds 246 published centers, of which 237 resolve as verified and 9 carry a warning (8 flagged, 1 past the 90-day mark). Those are live counts, computed when this page rendered. We leave flagged centers listed behind the badge rather than deleting them, which is why the warning count is not zero. A directory reporting zero problems is a directory that has stopped looking.
What is the minimum, and what happens in a month I am under it?
A monthly minimum you cannot reach is a bill you pay for nothing. Ask for the number and for what a short month is actually invoiced at.
What is the setup fee, and what does it cover?
One-time onboarding fees are common and are the line most rate-card comparisons leave out. Ask whether it is refundable and what you get for it.
What is your abandonment window, in days?
Ask before you sign, not after the relationship is in trouble. An operator who cannot answer this from memory has not read their own terms either.
If you sell the business, who owns my account and my inventory?
Prep centers change hands quietly. Ask what happens to stored inventory, open invoices, and your rate card if the entity is acquired or the doors close. Get the answer in the same email thread as the quote.
The whole standard, including what gets a listing flagged and how removals are handled, is on our methodology page. The longer decision framework, for when you are comparing two or three finalists rather than escaping one, is how to choose an FBA prep center. And the complete typed list, filterable, every row carrying its own verification date, is the prep center directory.
Switching is one of the intake's four starting points.
The first question on the match intake asks what brought you here, and "Switching prep centers" is one of the answers. Pick it and one more field appears: "Who preps for you today?" We will leave them off your shortlist. That is the entire reason the question exists, and it is the one piece of context a directory cannot infer from your volume and your category.
The rest is scope: units per month, what you sell, where it ships from, and which certifications you need. No account, no password, and your name and email are asked for on the last step, not the first.
We will shortlist verified replacements in your region.
Tell us your volume, your region, and who preps for you today. We hand-match you to 2 or 3 centers that cleared the four checks above, with their current rate cards, and we leave your current provider off the list. Free for sellers, no account required.
Switching questions, answered plainly.
How long does switching prep centers take?
Can my old prep center hold my inventory?
What if the prep center has stopped answering entirely?
Will Amazon help me get my inventory back from a prep center?
How do I know the next prep center is still operating?
Related references.
How we verify every listing
The four checks in full, what gets a listing flagged, and what happens to a center confirmed dead.
Read the methodology →
How to choose an FBA prep center
For comparing two or three finalists rather than escaping one.
Open the buyer's guide →
Every verified prep center
The complete typed directory, filterable, every row carrying its own verification date.
Browse the directory →
What FBA prep centers charge
Receiving, re-prep and relabeling rates for whatever arrives from the old center.
Open the fee benchmarks →
Amazon ended its own FBA prep
The January 1, 2026 shutdown that pushed every reseller onto a third party in the first place.
Read the background →