Since January 1, 2026, Amazon has no longer offered in-house prep and labeling services for FBA shipments in the US. If your fulfillment setup still hasn’t fully adjusted, or if the workaround you put in place is causing rejected shipments and headaches, you’re not alone. Here’s where things stand now and what’s actually working for sellers half a year into the change.
What changed
For years, sellers could lean on Amazon to handle some of the prep and labeling on inventory arriving at fulfillment centers. Amazon announced in mid-2025 that it was ending that, and as of January 1, 2026 it’s gone in the US across every channel, including inventory sent through Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, Amazon Global Logistics, and the Supply Chain Portal. Amazon now expects your inventory to show up already prepped to their exact specifications.
If a unit arrives non-compliant, the consequences are real: Amazon can refuse it, charge you noncompliance fees, or return the shipment at your expense. For a seller counting on that inventory to stay in stock, a rejected shipment means lost Buy Box performance, stockouts, and account health damage. And there’s no safety net anymore. Amazon used to fix non-compliant shipments for a fee. Now it simply rejects them.
One more change that caught sellers off guard
Alongside ending prep, Amazon changed its commingled inventory process on March 31, 2026, which shifted many sellers toward using manufacturer barcodes instead of FNSKU labels. If you sell your own brand, converting to manufacturer barcodes is worth looking into, since it can simplify your labeling. Resellers still need FNSKU labels. This is exactly the kind of detail that trips up sellers who set up a prep workaround in January and haven’t revisited it since.
What “FBA prep” actually involves
Prep is more than slapping on a label. Depending on your product category, compliant FBA prep can include:
FNSKU labeling, the unique barcode Amazon uses to track your specific units. Poly bagging with the required suffocation warnings. Bubble wrapping or protective packaging for fragile items. Bundling and kitting for multi-packs and sets. Carton marking and box labeling. Pallet prep and shrink-wrapping for LTL shipments.
Each category has its own rules, and Amazon’s requirements shift. Something as small as a missing suffocation label or a loose item in a polybag can trigger damage, returns, and noncompliance charges.
Your three options now
With Amazon out of the prep business, sellers have three paths:
Do it yourself. Workable if you’re small and have the time and space, but prep is tedious, error-prone, and doesn’t scale. As volume grows, it becomes a bottleneck. Over half of Amazon sellers already say the operational side, including prep, is one of their biggest challenges.
Hire a dedicated prep center. These specialize in FBA prep but often don’t handle your broader fulfillment, so you end up managing multiple vendors.
Use a 3PL that does prep and fulfillment together. This is where most scaling brands land, because one partner handles receiving, prep, storage, and your DTC and FBM orders from a single pool of inventory.
Why a California 3PL makes sense for FBA prep
The strongest place to prep for Amazon is close to where your inventory lands. If you import through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a Southern California prep partner receives your container, preps it to Amazon’s specs, and ships it inbound to FBA without hauling it across the country first. That cuts freight cost and gets your inventory sellable faster.
The other advantage is accuracy. A rejected FBA shipment is expensive, so the prep needs to be right the first time. Ask any prep partner about their process: do they verify component counts on kits, do they run quality checks, and do they track their Amazon inbound defect rate. Experienced partners track this internally.
How 6G handles FBA prep
We’re a Southern California 3PL, and we do complete Amazon FBA prep to current Seller Central specs: FNSKU labeling, poly bagging, bundling, carton marking, and pallet prep for LTL. Our facilities sit near the ports, so we receive your imported inventory, prep it, and send it inbound to Amazon without the cross-country detour. Our trailing 12-month order accuracy is 99.84%, because rejection-free shipping starts with getting the prep right. And since we handle fulfillment too, the same inventory can serve your FBA, FBM, and DTC orders from one pool.
Need an FBA prep partner before your next shipment?
Send us your product details and volume, and we’ll build a prep and fulfillment plan with transparent pricing, no buried fees. Email info@6glogistic.com or request a quote at 6glogistic.com.