[Check it yourself] Amazon deducted too much commission! Is it a bug or a new change?

There was a sudden news on the Internet these two days that Amazon was secretly deducting more sales commissions in the background. Some buyers were deducted from a few tenths to several US dollars for each order!

When I asked, I was shocked. Many sellers in our group also encountered this situation. They were charged commissions based on the original price before the discount . Normally, it should be calculated based on the actual amount paid by the buyer (including shipping, packaging, etc.), that is, the discounted price. The difference between the two is quite large. If a high-priced product is discounted by 20% or 30%, the difference in commissions may be several dollars. In addition, the commission is deducted for each order, and the amount affected will be a very scary number!

According to the information we have collected so far, some sellers have encountered this problem, while other sellers have not found any overdeductions after self-inspection and are still calculating normally according to the discounted price.

Many sellers believe that this is an occasional bug in the backend algorithm, and some people speculate whether it is a policy change.

Let’s talk about the policy changes first. According to general practice, commissions are calculated based on the actual amount paid. If it is calculated based on the original price, it will further reduce the seller’s efforts and willingness to do activities, which is not a good thing for the platform. The only thing that can drive Amazon to do this is to prevent sellers from listing products at extremely low prices and then selling them at discounted prices. For the platform, this is a thankless task, and the platform is unlikely to take the initiative to do this. Moreover, this change is of great importance, and it is impossible to change the rules directly without prior notice.

So this is most likely a bug. This is not the first time Amazon has overcharged.

In 2019, Amazon had a serious fee deduction bug. At that time, the advertising budgets of many sellers were seriously overflowed. The budget set for 10 US dollars ran for 70 or 80 US dollars and did not stop. The amount involved was huge.

At that time, Amazon had not made any positive statement on this matter, which caused strong dissatisfaction and protests among sellers. The incident quickly escalated and eventually reached the official top level . Amazon then took it seriously, issued an apology announcement and email, and promised to refund the excess budget .

Similarly, many sellers reacted strongly to the news of Amazon's commission calculation bug. One reason is that this was the bug that was first discovered by the sellers, and there was no news from Amazon. Another reason is that no one knows when this started. Unlike advertising budgets, sellers will not check them. The backend deductions, and the amount is not exaggerated, are difficult to detect . The situation of over-deductions of commissions must have continued for some time, and the affected orders cannot be checked one by one. The amount over-deducted is definitely not a small amount.

The official has not yet given the sellers an explanation. If the incident cannot be expanded like the advertising budget incident and attract official attention, Amazon may not return the overcharged money! Now we have to let more sellers know about this matter, and quickly check if they have been overcharged . Report it to Amazon officials, customer service, managers, and try everything you can. Only when Amazon executives know the seriousness of this matter will they return our hard-earned money!