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Yesterday, the much-publicized Amazon variant review violation incident reversed: a large number of accounts that were blocked due to illegal variants began to be automatically restored. Many sellers were very surprised by this. However, one problem has not yet been solved, another has arisen. In addition to the variant review violation incident, Amazon sellers’ shopping carts have also encountered many accidents recently.
It is learned that recently, a large number of Amazon sellers have lost their shopping carts when selling FBA links and are unable to sell normally. Among them, in addition to some sellers who were punished by Amazon for previous performance issues, another part of the sellers had their entire store’s shopping carts inexplicably lost even though there was nothing abnormal - their performance, accounts, and orders were normal. It is understood that the shopping cart is the key to the exposure rate and conversion rate of store links. Generally speaking, the main reasons for the disappearance of shopping carts are unreasonable price adjustments, arbitrary changes in listing information, many negative reviews and poor listing performance. Judging from the feedback from the seller, the reason for the disappearance of the shopping cart this time is most likely that the seller's link was judged by Amazon as "unreasonable price adjustment." According to feedback from the industry, many sellers opened cases with customer service after their shopping carts disappeared, only to receive the response that “the quote does not match . ” At the same time, some sellers received emails from Amazon notifying them that their "quotations do not qualify as recommended quotes." In fact, according to sellers, Amazon UK has experienced a large number of shopping carts being lost since the end of April this year: "On April 27, a large number of UK accounts lost their shopping carts." “All links of one category in the entire store on the UK site (more than 20 SKUs) have lost the shopping cart.” "I lost my shopping cart and opened a lot of cases that were useless." As of press time, some sellers with normal performance have restored the shopping cart by adjusting prices in response to this incident. Therefore, most sellers believe that the reason for the inexplicable disappearance of the shopping cart may also be that Amazon wants sellers to lower prices. Amazon has not yet responded to this situation, so the above inference can only be used as a reference. But there is no doubt that as Amazon's multiple new fees take effect, the profit margins of sellers in the US and European sites will be further squeezed.
It is learned that in early March this year, Amazon US announced that it would charge a return processing fee for products with high return rates in each category (except clothing and shoes) starting from June 1, which caused an uproar in the industry. It is foreseeable that after this fee comes into effect, the costs of many Amazon US sellers will rise again. Therefore, sellers on other sites were glad that this new fee only applies to the US site. However, accidents are always unpredictable. Recently, some sellers have observed that some changes have also occurred in the backend of some European Amazon sites: from October 1, 2024 (European time), Amazon will impose a return processing fee on all categories of high-return products except clothing and shoes. The first charge will be made between January 7 and 15, 2025. The key points of the change in the return processing fee for the European site are as follows: All returned merchandise in the apparel and footwear categories; Products with return rates above specific thresholds for each category, except apparel and footwear; Applicable to sites such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain . Not applicable to the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and Belgium.
Amazon sellers who ship fewer than 25 items in a month do not have to pay this fee. For sellers who sign up for the Amazon Fulfillment Program, Amazon will waive return processing fees for up to 20 units for each qualifying parent ASIN.
The return rate thresholds for each category will be announced on October 1, 2024 (European time); For apparel and footwear products, each customer returned item will still be subject to a return processing fee; For products that exceed the return rate threshold, except for apparel and footwear, size tiers will be used to determine the applicable rate.
(Specific rates for other size levels can be viewed on Amazon backend) As can be seen above, the scope of application and exemption of return processing fees on some of Amazon's European sites is the same as that on the US site, but the return rate thresholds and charging standards are different. The specific values are yet to be announced by Amazon on October 1. For sellers in Amazon's European sites such as the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, the implementation of this fee undoubtedly means another increase in operating costs , which unsurprisingly attracted many sellers' complaints: “Is the Amazon team all thinking about how to charge more?” “Whether the adjustment is made to the US site or the European site, the only ones who will be hurt in the end are the sellers…” However, it is worth mentioning that in addition to the return processing fee, in April this year, Amazon also announced that it would expand the commission discount for low-priced clothing in the US site to other sites. At the same time, Amazon's US site, after several adjustments, finally decided to officially implement the low inventory fee in May, and the European and Japanese sites followed suit. It can be seen that Amazon usually launches new policies in the US site and then further expands the scope of application of the new policies. This also sends a signal to sellers on Amazon sites other than the US site: the new policies launched by the US site are also a weather vane for sellers on other sites. As the saying goes: If you are cautious, you will succeed; if you act rashly, you will fail. Today, the cross-border e-commerce industry is in a period of change. Sellers in it still need to act prudently, pay more attention to changes in platform policies, and adjust their layout in a timely manner. What do you think about this? Welcome to discuss in the comment area~
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