Leaving a prep provider feels risky because your inventory is hostage to the relationship. It doesn't have to be: route the next inbound shipment to us, prove the new flow on live freight while the old warehouse keeps working, then transfer the balance with a documented reconciliation. ProShip3PL has run this sequence for sellers arriving from prep centers across the US — the selling never stops.
Nobody leaves a prep center over one late shipment. What drives the search that landed you here is drift: the 48-hour turnaround that quietly became five business days, the receiving report that stopped including photos, the account manager who used to reply in an hour and now needs two follow-ups. Each incident is small enough to forgive — the trendline is the problem.
The trap that keeps sellers in failing relationships is inventory. Your stock sits in their building, their heads hold your prep rules, and a botched exit could strand a restock mid-season. So the erosion continues, priced into your margins as chargebacks, stranded units and your own hours spent chasing.
The overlap migration removes that hostage dynamic. Nothing is burned down: the old provider keeps shipping from stock they hold while your next supplier delivery routes to Medley. We rebuild your standing instructions in writing, prove the loop on real freight, and only then move the remaining pallets — reconciled carton by carton against their outbound manifest.
And to be fair to the industry: some switches shouldn't happen. If your issue is a single bad month at an otherwise solid provider, say so on the form — we'd rather tell you to have one hard conversation with them than onboard a seller whose real problem was fixable where they were.
| Signal at your current provider | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Turnaround drifting past a week | Capacity oversold — it worsens toward Q4, not away from it |
| Recurring count discrepancies | Receiving process gaps; your books are quietly diverging from reality |
| Support gone quiet under pressure | The relationship works only when nothing is wrong |
| Invoice line items you can't trace | Pricing opacity — compare against a written per-unit rate sheet |
| Prep errors surfacing at Amazon | No verification step between their bench and the carrier |
| One rough month, otherwise solid | Talk to them first — switching has a cost too |
Your per-SKU prep rules — bagging, bundle recipes, label placement, expiration formats — captured in a written sheet you approve before we touch a unit.
Your next inbound routes here while the old warehouse still operates — a full receive-prep-ship loop proven on live freight, not promises.
Old-warehouse stock arrives palletized, gets counted and condition-checked with photos, and is reconciled line by line against their outbound manifest.
Where their manifest and our count disagree, you hear it the day the transfer lands — with evidence, while the old provider is still answerable.
Throughout the overlap, whichever warehouse holds sellable stock feeds FBA — replenishment triggers keep firing on the 24–48 hour clock.
Ship-from addresses updated, supplier deliveries redirected, removal orders repointed — a checklist close, so nothing keeps arriving at a dead address.
SKU list, volumes, prep rules and old-warehouse stock levels captured; written prep sheet approved by you.
Your next supplier or factory delivery ships to Medley — new stock stops entering the old pipeline.
Pilot shipment reaches FBA cleanly; the old warehouse palletizes the balance and it lands on our dock reconciled.
Final statements in writing, addresses updated everywhere, one warehouse — and the drift you left behind stays behind.
Compress the sequence: redirect the incoming supplier order to us today, replenish FBA from it within 24–48 hours of receipt, and recover the stranded stock as a second act.
The transfer itself becomes the audit. We count every carton against their manifest on arrival day — you finally get one number both sides can be held to.
That knowledge is your asset, not theirs. We extract it into a written per-SKU sheet during onboarding — photographed bundle recipes included — so it can never walk out a door again.
Send us the specifics anyway. We'll tell you honestly whether it reads like fixable friction or structural failure — sometimes the right answer is a candid talk with your current provider.
Run the two providers in parallel for one cycle. Your current prep center keeps working the stock it already holds while your next inbound shipment routes to us. Once we've proven a full receive-prep-ship loop on live freight, remaining stock transfers over and the old account winds down. Your listings never see a gap because at every point one warehouse is able to feed FBA.
Patterns, not one-off mistakes: turnaround that has drifted from days to weeks, received counts that repeatedly disagree with your purchase orders, support that answers only after you chase, surprise line items on invoices, and prep errors that reach Amazon as stranded or mislabeled units. Any one of these occasionally is normal warehousing; the same one monthly is a process problem that rarely self-corrects.
Ask how fast they confirm receipts and what evidence comes with them, what their stated turnaround is and what happens when they miss it, who specifically answers your messages and how quickly, how they handle a discrepancy between your PO and their count, and whether they'll accept a transfer from another warehouse. Ask us the same questions — a provider that hesitates on any of them is telling you something.
Your current provider palletizes what they hold and ships it to our Medley dock — you arrange the freight or we can suggest carriers our clients use for warehouse-to-warehouse moves. We receive the transfer like any inbound: counted, condition-checked with photos, and reconciled against the outbound manifest the old warehouse produced. Differences between the two documents surface immediately, while you can still raise them.
Standing instructions are the per-SKU rules your old provider follows without being asked — which products get bagged, where the expiration label sits, how bundles are assembled, which cartons get case-packed. If they live only in one warehouse's heads, the switch loses them. During onboarding we rebuild them into a written per-SKU prep sheet you approve, so the first shipment we prep follows your rules, not our guesses.
No — Amazon doesn't care where your inbound freight originates. Your ship-from address changes to our Medley warehouse on new shipping plans, and plans already created from the old address simply complete from there during the parallel period. The one thing to check is that any open removal orders or supplier deliveries still pointed at the old address get redirected before that account closes.
Most switches complete inside one restock cycle. Onboarding and SOP rebuild happen in days, your next inbound shipment proves the new flow, and the transfer of remaining stock rides on whenever freight can be booked between the warehouses. Sellers with deep inventory at the old site sometimes stretch the overlap across two cycles to draw the old stock down through FBA rather than pay to move it — both patterns work.
Yes, once your first shipment has landed with us and the new flow is proven — not before, and not with drama. You'll need their cooperation for the outbound manifest and the transfer shipment, and most providers handle departures professionally. Check your agreement for notice terms, settle open invoices, and get the final inventory statement in writing before the last pallet leaves their dock.
Yes — emergency switches are a real share of the migrations we run. The sequence compresses: your next supplier delivery redirects to us immediately so new stock stops entering the failing pipeline, we prep and ship from that freight within 24–48 hours of receipt, and the transfer of old stock follows once the urgent replenishment is moving. Selling continuity comes first; tidiness second.
Three things: your SKU list with monthly unit volumes and the prep each product needs, an estimate of what the old warehouse currently holds (pallets or cartons), and what's going wrong — so we solve the actual problem, not just replicate the old setup. You'll get per-unit pricing, a migration sequence and a transfer receiving plan within one business day.
Tell us what's going wrong, what you sell, and roughly what the old warehouse holds. Within one business day you'll have per-unit pricing, a migration sequence, and a transfer receiving plan — and an honest read on whether switching is even the right call.
