Nearly 60% of the items sold on Amazon come from third-party sellers, but it will cost more for sellers to store their items in Amazon Fulfillment Centers beginning in January.
All sellers pay referral fees (a percentage of the total price, shipping cost, and any gift-wrapping charges) – and those won’t change when new fees hit on January 17, 2023.
But sellers who use Amazon’s FBA fulfillment service will see some significant increases in the new year.
- FBA outbound fee rates will increase by $0.22, on average.
- Peak monthly storage fees will rise by 20 cents per cubic foot for its non-sortable network. Off-peak storage will rise by between 3 – 4 cents per cubic fit.
- A new a storage utilization surcharge will apply to sellers who store a high cube of inventory relative to the cube of their recent weekly sales, effective April 1, 2023.
- Amazon will increase the surcharges applied to inventory stored between 271-365 days, effective April 15, 2023.
- Amazon will introduce aged inventory surcharges on inventory stored between 180-270 days, excluding products in the following categories: Apparel, Shoes, Bags, Jewelry, and Watches, effective April 15, 2023.
It’s not just storing items that will cost more – Amazon will nearly double the cost of removing items from Amazon fulfillment centers. For example, to remove a 2-pound standard-sized item from Amazon’s fulfillment center currently costs $1.14. In January, it will cost $2.20 to remove or dispose of the item.
Apparel sellers got bad news – Amazon will apply dim-weight pricing in calculating shipping weight for large standard-size products beginning February 16, 2023. However, Amazon will reduce the returns processing fee rates for customer-returned products in the Apparel and Shoes categories by an average of $0.20 per return.
One bright spot: Amazon is expanding its Small and Light program (for new products that measure 18 x 14 x 8 inches or less and weigh 3 lb or less). Currently, the program is limited to items priced up to $10. On January 17, it will be open to items priced at up to $12. This will enable sellers to realize the program’s lower fees for more of their selection, Amazon said.
Amazon is also lowering fees for the US FBA New Selection program.
Amazon explained the reason for the changes to FBA fees: “This year, we saw some sellers use more of our storage than we expected or believe was needed to serve customers well, and that constrained how much product from other sellers could be sent into FBA.”
One change that will affect sellers of collectibles, whether or not they use FBA or fulfill their products themselves: Amazon is removing the following fee categories: Collectible Coins, Entertainment Collectibles, Sports Collectibles, and Collectible Cards.
“Impacted ASINs will be re-categorized to their most suitable product category, which may result in different (some lower, some higher) fees for those re-categorized products.”
On the Amazon seller discussion boards, a seller asked what category would replace Collectible Coins. A moderator responded: “Effective January 17, 2023 Collectible coins will be mapped to Toys and Games. Your product’s fee category may not be the same as the category that appears on the Amazon retail site.”
