If your products arrive at Amazon in violation of their Terms and Conditions, they may be completely rejected leaving you with the problem of what to do with them. At best Amazon will fix the problem, and charge you, but this will delay getting them into inventory.

Amazon has strict standards of packaging, labeling requirements, case lot limits and rules about hazardous goods, so it is best to have an experienced warehouse inspect the goods before they get to Amazon.

Damages are not detected by freight forwarders unless they are very obvious. An experienced 3PL warehouse will inspect any damaged shipping cartons to make sure the goods inside are intact. If damaged goods arrive at Amazon, they will be put into inventory which will result in returns and bad reviews later.

Finally, storage costs….Amazon storage is very expensive. They have purposefully set up their fee structure to penalize any non-moving goods and their 4th quarter rates are four times higher than usual. Amazon also recently implemented a 50% storage surcharge on goods that have been in their warehouses for over 26 weeks. This is on top of the usual storage fee and applies to the entire inventory of that SKU, not just the stale inventory. Having most of your inventory at a 3PL warehouse puts you in control of your inventory and avoids Amazon’s high cost of storage.

Please instruct your product supplier to label EACH AND EVERY master carton with the following information:

YOUR COMPANY NAME – C/O ZEBRAPALS
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
SKU
FNSKU
QUANTITY OF UNITS IN CARTON

We use this information when verifying your shipment. It is matched with the information in our Warehouse Management System (WMS) and will be used to generate a unique identifying label for each carton.

If you are shipping loose boxes (SPD) you do not need an appointment.

For containers and LTL (palletized) deliveries, your freight forwarder must arrange an appointment using this email address: info@zebrapals.com.   We cannot accept shipments without an appointment.

This avoids congestion at the loading dock and ensures your shipment will be unloaded in a timely manner.  Most freight forwarders assess a fee for exceeding the time allotted to unload the shipment. We only do live unloads.

Tip: To avoid waiting for an appointment, submit your Work Order as soon as you have placed an order with your supplier even though it may be months before we see the shipment.  That way we can manage the schedule and accept your shipment as soon as it has cleared Customs. Storage is very expensive at the Port of LA and we do everything we can to help you avoid these charges.

Zebrapals handles most types of products except for hazardous materials such as chemicals, and flammable or potentially explosive goods. We don’t handle corrosive goods or anything requiring climate control. We can handle food items such as tea, honey, and sealed dry goods – no fresh or spoilable food.  We do have a weight limit of 150 lbs (70 kgs).  You can always reach out to us to inquire if we can handle a specific type of product.

We have a very extensive insurance polity covering the warehouse generally, but we recommend you carry insurance for the value of your specific goods.  Our warehouse is fully alarmed and the exterior is covered by video surveillance.  The property is fully fenced and locked during off hours.  The closest fire station is less than 4 miles (6.4 km) from the warehouse and the police are frequently travelling on Foothill Blvd, right in front of the building.

If you have not done this before the following video will step you through the process for single box shipments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyN6qrVvmdA

Amazon bills you for this shipping service and depending on where the shipments are being sent, you will be charged from 40c-80c per lb by Amazon which is very reasonable and the best domestic freight price around anywhere.

https://youtu.be/ZM-DFvnN0T0

Note: the exact format that Amazon systems will accept as a “ship from” address when you are shipping goods out to Amazon from us, is:

ZEBRAPALS, INC
12432 Foothill Blvd
Sylmar, CA 91340

We work with several international freight forwarders in Los Angeles who can get your goods shipped from anywhere in the world and cleared through their in-house customs agent. They will then arrange for local delivery to our warehouse for inspection and/or forwarding directly to Amazon.

Tony Durbano – Connected International    email:  tony@connected-intl.com

Cell: 949-887-9216

Mike Hancock – Rivera Air Freight Corp – email:  info@riverafreight.com

cell: 310-330-3400

Sana Malik – Terralink Logistics – email:  info@terralinklogistics.com

cell: 713-635-9396

We will email you a QuickBooks invoice when the shipment has been processed according to your work order and ready to go out the door. This QuickBooks invoice has a built-in option to pay by credit or debit card and will accept overseas cards. (Click on the green “pay now” button at the top of the electronic version of your invoice)  Bank details are available upon request for wire transfers if needed.

We offer discounts on storage, box forwarding, and other services for high-volume sellers. Please call us for details. We regularly advertise other occasional discounts to customers on our mailing list which you can join here.

Our rates are scaled according to the volume of goods stored in our warehouse.  To get a quote, Call Carina or simply fill out a Request for Quote form. Our rates are calculated daily and do not have surcharges for oversized goods or long-term storage.