Carrier Central

Carrier Central is Amazon’s appointment portal at carriercentral.amazon.com, where a vendor or its carrier books, tracks, and reschedules delivery appointments for inbound freight arriving at an Amazon fulfillment center.

What it is

You or your carrier submit an appointment request that spells out the shipment: the PO and ASN it belongs to, the destination building, the pallet count, and the load details. The request normally goes in once the ASN exists, since the ASN is what the appointment gets booked against. Amazon then either confirms the window you asked for or schedules the next slot it has open, and the confirmation comes back with a booking reference number that travels with the load.

Some third-party vendor documentation calls the same system CARP, short for Carrier Appointment Request Portal. Sellers on FBA use the portal as well, booking against a shipment ID where a vendor books against a PO.

Where it lives in Vendor Central

Carrier Central doesn’t live inside Vendor Central. It’s a separate Amazon domain at carriercentral.amazon.com with its own sign-in, so a vendor looking through Vendor Central for an appointment screen won’t find one. Inside the portal there’s navigation for requesting an appointment and for searching ones already booked, alongside a performance view, and the landing page opens on the instruction to “request an appointment with your earliest available time.”

Why it matters to a vendor

A truck that shows up without a confirmed appointment can be turned away at the gate or held for hours before anyone unloads it. Either way the delivery misses its date, and a missed date registers against your performance metrics and can turn into a chargeback.

Changing a booking has its own deadline: an appointment you cancel or move has to be rebooked at least 24 hours before the originally planned delivery. A carrier problem that surfaces on the morning of a delivery is already past that window, so the delivery date slips even though the freight was ready to go.

Related terms

• ASN (Advance Shipment Notice): the shipment notice that has to exist before the appointment request goes in.
• Purchase Order (PO): the order from Amazon that the shipment and its appointment are booked against.
• Chargebacks: the Vendor Central section where the charge for a missed appointment shows up.
• Glossary index: the rest of the Vendor Central terms and InsightLeap metrics.