Amazon said Wednesday that for the first time in company history it will charge sellers a 5% fuel and inflation surcharge.
The e-commerce giant said the new fee will begin April 28 and is being imposed because inflation has worsened significantly in recent months.
“In 2022, we expected a return to normalcy as Covid-19 restrictions around the world eased, but fuel and inflation have presented further challenges,” Amazon wrote in memo that was provided to CNN by the company. “It is unclear if these inflationary costs will go up or down, or for how long they will persist, so rather than a permanent fee change.”
Amazon spokesman Patrick Graham told CNN that the fee surcharge applies only to fee rates paid by sellers that choose to use Amazon’s fulfillment services, which include storing, packing and shipping products. Others sellers that do not use Fulfillment by Amazon will not be impacted.
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More diplomatic than charging it to buyers.
The sellers can of course just add it to the price?
Amazon.ca also added C$20 to the price of Prime (from C$79 to C$99), I’m paid up until next Feb.
We (Halifax Metro) now have our own Amazon warehouse complete with a fleet of Amazon’s own trucks. The contractor that used to deliver always had a pretty good estimate as to when he would be at our door, now all we get is “Out for Delivery, Arriving before 10pm today”.
Well that makes a lot of mom and pops on Amazon unprofitable.
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/amazon-primes-free-shippi… Shipping and logistics is extremely expensive, far more than the membership fees charged by Prime; Amazon spent $37.9 billion on shipping costs in 2019, and much more in 2020. No matter how amazing your logistics operation,you can’t just offer free shipping to customers without having someone pay for it. Amazon found its solution in the relationship between Prime and Marketplace. It forced third party sellers to de facto pay for its shipping costs,by charging them commissions that reach as high as 45%, according to Racine, merely to access Amazon customers.
(A brief word on numbers. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance found a slightly different number for Amazon’s seller charges, 30% for FBA plus 5-10% for seller fees, while agreeing with Racine on significant price hikes from 2014-2020, what is known as ‘recoupment’ in predatory pricing cases. Another firm calculated the amount paid to Amazon at 27% for an average seller in 2019, and found that number had jumped 42% over five years. One reason we don’t know the actual number Amazon charges third party sellers is because Amazon is hiding this data from investors and fighting the SEC to do so.)
Once enough third parties leave Amazon, the free shipping likely ends.
Amazon.ca also added C$20 to the price of Prime (from C$79 to C$99)
Here Prime went from $99 to $119 and now going to $139 in July. We are considering not renewing. We’ve been watching less and less Prime TV, which had been the excuse for paying the fee.