The inbound placement service fee is what Amazon charges to distribute your inbound inventory across multiple fulfillment centers. The less you split the shipment yourself, the more Amazon has to move it, and the higher the fee. Split it the way Amazon prefers, and the fee shrinks or disappears.
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution stores inventory upstream in bulk and feeds FBA automatically. It can lower placement-fee exposure and does not count against your FBA capacity limit, which makes it worth considering for slower or bulkier stock.
On every shipment we weigh the placement fee against freight and prep labor, structure the cartons and splits to land on the cheapest total, and decide when AWD makes sense. Fees and split rules are set by Amazon and can change.