Amazon adjusts commission rates! Will FBA costs rise again?

Amazon Canada released a major update last weekend, adjusting the commission rates for some categories and increasing the delivery fees for FBA logistics.

Every year Amazon makes some adjustments to commissions and fees, but they are generally announced at the end of the year and implemented at the beginning of the following year, leaving sellers ample time to prepare. This time, the Canadian station announced it at the end of July and it will be implemented on September 1st, which is indeed a bit hasty. Let's first show you what has changed.

First of all, there are changes in commissions. In total, the rates for outdoor furniture, personal care products, electronic office equipment and Ring accessories have been adjusted.

Here, I would like to explain that the last ring accessories is probably a translation error. It originally refers to the accessories of Amazon's own smart home brand "Ring". These four categories can be said to have changed because of the change of categories and the implementation of the new category rates.

Another important change is the increase in FBA fees. This time, Amazon has increased the fees for local delivery in a step-by-step manner. Officials claim that the overall increase is about 3%. So how much has it actually increased? Here is a table of fee changes in the background for everyone to see.

In short, the cost of standard parts weighing less than 500g has not changed much, and the delivery fee of products weighing less than 250g is even cheaper than before. The cost of standard parts weighing more than 500g has increased mainly in the first weight, from 6.08 Canadian dollars to 6.4 Canadian dollars, an increase of about 5%. The delivery fee of large products has increased more sharply, with the first weight increasing by about 20%.

The overall size of the Canadian site is not large, and most sellers do it while they are doing business on the US site. What is most affected are large items with relatively few sellers, and the increase in standard items is not obvious.

The timing of the price increase in Canada this time is quite sudden. The local epidemic is far less serious than that in the United States. Logistic costs should be relatively stable. However, the United States is now overwhelmed with warehouses everywhere, and the situation has not improved even after hiring tens of thousands of warehouse workers. Will the US site also increase FBA logistics costs due to the large expenditures in these logistics links?

As of last week, the backlog and explosion in Amazon's warehouses had not eased. Some shipments arrived at the port but no one came to pick them up, and even the logistics information had stopped updating. Amazon's official customer service said that there was too much backlog and the only option was to queue up for listing.

Due to the continuous overload of ports and warehouses, warehouses with serious backlogs such as LGB8 and FTW1 have repeatedly postponed the pick-up time. Some freight forwarders said that the pick-up time of LGB8 has been postponed from July 24 to September 2; there are even some news that the warehousing time of FTW1 and ONT8 has been scheduled to October and November. This delay is really terrible.

Not only is it difficult to enter the warehouse at the first leg, but the delivery of Amazon's in-stock products has also become a big problem. After the second outbreak of the epidemic, many places in the United States re-implemented stay-at-home orders, so the demand for online shopping has soared again. Although Amazon has urgently expanded its warehouse scale and manpower, it is still a drop in the bucket compared to the huge demand and sellers' retaliatory replenishment.

And the current logistics situation has not yet reached its worst. According to industry insiders, a large wave of sea containers will arrive at the port in late June and early July, which is likely to make the local distribution system even worse.

Some sellers choose Amazon's official logistics service AGL in the face of widespread delays, hoping to get their products into the warehouse and on the shelves as soon as possible. We ourselves sent a ticket last month. Although the process was more cumbersome, the timeliness was excellent.

Moreover, official logistics are less affected by the recent warehouse explosion. Sellers who are worried about out-of-stock can contact official staff and try AGL official logistics.