Online retailer Amazon has informed all third-party sellers that it will no longer be accepting stock of non-essential items in its US and UK warehouses until April 5th. This is all down to the huge demand and mass panic buying generated by the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.
If you're unfamiliar with how Amazon works, it typically carries out deliveries for a wide variety of third-party sellers in exchange for a fee. This is in addition to everything Amazon itself stocks and ships, naturally. According to a report by Yahoo Finance, Amazon has named six categories that qualify as essential, and will be the only items eligible for continued stocking at its many warehouses.
As it stands, the only third-party items currently allowed into its warehouses will be health and household items, pet supplies, baby products, beauty and personal care, groceries, and industrial and scientific. Books have also made the cut apparently, which is brilliant news.
The upshot of this is that any stock that exists outside of those categories can't be restocked until Amazon ends the restriction. I should point out that Amazon first-party products are also subject to these new restrictions. You can still order whatever you want from the website, obviously, but with limited stock and a few weeks before things are replenished, you could be looking at a bit of a wait.
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"We understand this is a change for our selling partners and appreciate their understanding as we temporarily prioritize these products for customers," Amazon said in a statement. Third-party sellers could still deliver to customers directly if they needed/wanted to, but it's unclear how many of these sellers would have the capacity to do so.
One area that has already been impacted by these restrictions? Video game pre-orders. A number of Twitter and ResetEra users who pre-ordered Final Fantasy VII Remake are reporting that their orders now have a "new estimated delivery date" which was "not yet available." If you pre-ordered a game that's due out in the next month or so, I'd maybe go and check on the status of it to see what's happening.
Based on what I'm seeing over on Twitter and ResetEra, it does look like this issue is affecting limited and special editions more than standard editions of Final Fantasy VII Remake. This, I would imagine, owes to the limited supply of these copies that would have already been in stock.
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There doesn't seem to be any mention of anyone else running into trouble with pre-orders on titles like Resident Evil 3, DOOM Eternal, or Animal Crossing: New Horizons either... but I'd be surprised if this new policy didn't affect delivery on these March/April games in some capacity.
Featured Image Credit: Amazon/Square EnixTopics: Final Fantasy 7
