Amazon is a marketplace whereas per report about 2 million independent sellers list their products to do business, and more than half the goods sold on Amazon.com come from these sellers.
If you are a seller on Amazon, then it might come as a shock to you. Amazon made a burning announcement on Wednesday that it is all set to levy a 5% “fuel and inflation surcharge” to the fees of third-party sellers who take benefit from the use of this e-commerce fulfillment service i.e. FBA service in which the sellers rely on Amazon to store the products in its warehouse and ship them to customers when the order is placed.
Amazon mentioned on its website that the imposed 5% fees to be taken into consideration starting from April 28, are “subject to change” and the same will be applied to both apparel and non-apparel items.
The current rise in fees go around with one notified in November 2021 and went into effect in January 2022. Amazon didn’t immediately give a word to the appeal for throwing some light on the recent move. But on Wednesday company sent a notice to sellers and in that Amazon mentioned that the cost graph has been gradually going up from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the constant increase in the price of factors affecting cost such as hourly wage rate, the hiring of workers and construction of more warehouses.
To justify the increase in cost, it said it had made efforts to cut off the costs whenever possible, and only increased fees to address permanent costs and to be competitive with other providers as both FedEx and UPS have fuel surcharges.
The company stated in the notice, “In 2022, they did expect a return to normalcy as COVID-19 restrictions around the world eased, but fuel prices and inflation rate have presented further challenges to be faced.”
Federal data released on Tuesday exhibited inflation shoot up 8.5% in March, its fastest pace in more than 4 decades. Gasoline prices have also gone through the ceiling by 48% in the past year.
Though the Amazon company is blaming inflation and rising fuel costs for the surcharge, there has been a bold criticized comment made by Stacy Mitchell, who is co-director for the anti-monopoly group Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on Wednesday’s announcement, affirming Amazon was taking advantage of the moment.
Mitchell commented that “Amazon keeps increasing its fees on the sellers that have to depend on its platform,” she also said that imposing this fee is a way to make money for themselves from the independent sellers.
Amazon increased fees for labeling and package prep and for removal and disposal following that in the month of February it also raised its FBA storage fees, to read more in-depth about this move made by Amazon you can go to the blog link given here https://www.techamenity.com/amazon-fba-fees-increasing-everything-you-should-know-about-2022/
