Every year, without a fail, Amazon comes out with FBA fees changes. This year is no exception.
If you currently sell, or plan to sell on Seller Central, AND use Amazon fulfillment, this changes will impact your bottom line.
Per Amazon (full announcement here), “Most referral fees will not change, and we are making only modest increases (about 2-3% on average) to fulfillment fees”.
We couldn’t pull our Excel spreadsheets fast enough to dig into those ‘only modest increases’.
Referral fee increase for the following categories: Personal Computer, Full-Size Appliances, and sub-category of Veterinary Diets under Pet Category (other pet products remain unchanged)
Fulfillment fees (FBA transactional fees) overall are increasing. The biggest structural change is the removal of packaging weight from FBA fee consideration.
Thanks to this packaging weight removal, winners are products that weigh under 16 oz without packaging, but 1-2 lbs with packaging. These products actually are getting FBA fee reduction.
For other scenarios, fulfillment fees are going up.
We simulated changes across some products in our management portfolio:
Return processing fee:
- eliminated for Watches, Jewelry, Luggage, Handbags, and Sunglasses categories (which range $2.50-$5.50 for non oversize items)
- Reduced return fees for Apparel and Shoes
Other changes:
Increases to FBA removal and disposal fees (applicable to unfulfillable inventory only)
Small and Light Program weight and dimensions limit increase, which will make more products eligible for Small and Light
Our thoughts:
Most of this year FBA fees changes are straight up increases, but some are re-structure. Which means, if your business is on Amazon, you need to evaluate your Amazon P&L.
Amazon reduced and even eliminated on couple fees, in some categories (like returns fees for soft lines), but increased transactional FBA fees.
In other words, increases impact 100% of sellers, and reductions only a subset of transactions, in a subset of categories.
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