I’m sure it will, and I hope I exit this business before it gets close to it.
I’m not missing any point. Amazon’s doing what’s in their own best interests, which is what they should be doing. Why exactly do you think they should do anything for the sellers’ benefit? You realize the only reason they allow us to be here is to make them money, not the other way around right?
You are 100% right, I would not expect them to do anything but what is in their best interest. Amazon yet again had record profits this quarter, they as a whole dont need to continuously raise sellers fees to stay in existence.
But quite the opposite if they continue to raise fee us and many others will no longer be in existence, soley because of it.
The executives in charge certainly need to raise fees to stay in their jobs + get 100 million $ bonuses. You keep that job by making next quarter beat the last record quarter. They have teams of people who’s sole job it is to figure out how to move more money from sellers’ pockets into Amazon’s pockets.
Any business that involves being in a powerless position beholden to another entity is not a long term one. You’re already getting squeezed out. My margins are still healthy but I do see them going down year over year (as well as the amount of work that Amazon demands I do go up year over year), and I have no doubt that I will get squeezed out at some point. Almost all sellers here will be finished with Amazon at some point for one reason or another. Amazon WILL figure out how to squeeze the most out of their sellers until it’s only the biggest and most optimized companies that remain.
Certainly realize this wont last forever, in the meantime made more money in the last 7 years, than I made in the 15 earlier working years I had combined.
Just seems like a shame. I dont treat my business vendors like this, I always felt the pie is big enough that everyone who works hard is entitled to a piece. Amazon obviously feels differently.
I always looked at this as inevitable, because one of our largest non-Amazon logistics expenses is reverse logistics (returns). We waste money on processing refunds, the drivers time picking them up, the warehouse time of putting it back, crediting, etc.
The core issue is, that as a society we have created a monster where we prefer this cost to be hidden in our purchase price and shared with everyone.
Stupid Americans can’t comprehend that they are paying for other peoples returns on everything. They would gladly pay 3-4% more for everything out of the fear they may have to actually pay for their own return one day, costing far far less.
that is how the math works out now for one of my items. Granted, it is oversize, but the fees are outrageous…and this example is before the low inventory fees, the high inventory fees, the returns fee classic, the returns fees+, storage fees…
They are reducing returns by forcing sellers to stop selling things that have high return rates.
everything seems to have high return rates. Primarily at Amazon.
Large items have been tough for ecommerce in general. FBA rates obviously gone up, and even for non-FBA sellers, UPS and the like have hiked rates annually faster than inflation. I was looking at adding a product that would fall into the oversize category, and after accounting for shipping to my warehouse, shipping to FBA, paying fulfillment fees, and also factoring in the fact that larger items cost more labor to handle, it just didn’t make sense.
I read this all the time from various authors… Yet…
im closer to 10%. I see 5-20% mentioned online…of course it matters what you sell…clothing apparently has a high return rate, thus the amazon graduated breaks on fees and exemption from this newer fee.
If you’re selling clothing, 10% is actually low. Clothing return rates are super high and not just on Amazon.
Which is it then? LOL
I would assert many of the noob sellers you read on the NSFE think 1 return is excessive, so I try to keep that in mind when broad statements about returns are made on that forum.
Apologies if this has been asked and answered, but I didn’t see it.
According to this page, each month of sales is held against 3 months of returns. Therefore a sale in June is held against sales in June, July, and August.
If my item sells in June and is returned in July, that return will count against my June sales… and my July sales as well? That one return counts against 2 months of sales? Amazon is double-dipping or even triple dipping on each return to jack up the return rates and charge more fees? Did I miss something?
Whenever I try to research this, I can not find publicly available data that parse out returns by specific platform/sales channel.
I always appreciate ecommerce Sellers who sell through multiple online channels who say, “our return rate on X and Y is (range) but on Z is (range).” Those are meaningful data points.
i saw one metric that says my returns are around 2.7% overall…but then I look at my sales for a recent week and my sales were about $1400 but my refunds were $175…for that week anyway, the refunds were way higher than 2.7%.
maybe my math is wrong. I need a vacation.
yes, I think i will pull this from FBA once it’s depleted…they want $17 to ship it to a customer…i can do it for about $5.50 from home.
I’d prefer to be all FBM but I must acknowledge that sales are higher with FBA. The folks who paid for Prime want to use it, even though my FBM offers are all Free Shipping. And then there’s that toggle they can use to see only FBA offers. We all pay our $40 monthly fee and should have our offers shown to all buyers.
Your math is not wrong.
Still, leave us not forget that Amazon’s calculations of this and that metric are typically (but not always) based upon a larger range of data than that which applies to a mere 7 days.
A 2.7&% Return/Refund Rate over 30 days/365 days/Lifetime is nothing to sneeze at - provided that you can substantiate it with your own number-crunching, despite what a disinterested party like Amazon has to say.
Welcome to the club! 
