As most of us know, placing your Seller Account on Vacation Mode does not stop the monthly subscription fee as outlined under Amazon’s → Monthly subscription fee FAQ
Will I be charged the subscription fee if I put my account on Vacation mode?
Yes, you will be charged the fee for the period during which your account is in Vacation mode.
You will no longer be charged the monthly Professional selling plan subscription fee for the subsequent months, provided you don’t have active listings in other stores where you retain a Professional selling plan.
Professional Selling Plan: USD $39.99 per month* when you have active listings
Individual Selling Plan: No subscription fee
*If you have active listings in additional countries or regions using merged accounts, a different fee may apply. The subscription fee charge does not apply when you do not have active listings in any country.
If a seller does not downgrade (keeps the Professional Plan) but either deletes or marks all their ASINs as ‘Inactive’ should they/will they still be charged a monthly fee?
(wouldn’t this essentially be the same as going on Vaca)
What does Amazon actually define as “Professional tools or benefits”?
Deleting all ASINs seems to have a bigger impact on whether fees are charged;
(i.e. when Amazon splits the fee between Marketplaces). Do you think deleting listings makes a difference in being charged a monthly subscription fee versus Inactive listings?
The one time we put our account on vacation for two weeks (fyi … our Professional fee charge date was in the middle of those two weeks) we did not get charged the Professional fee that month. We figured it was a glitch at that time frame.
Although we didn’t have to pay the $39.99, we suffered more as that is when our listings were brand hijacked and it took 4 months to resolve that issue.
We would have rather paid the $39.99 and not have had our listings brand hijacked.
I think this is just down to how quickly sales-ranking slips and how it is king to amazon in terms of getting your items high on search results and in “recommended” options. No sales for 30 days might as well be a brand new listing IME.
I well remember reading about your travails with that unfortunate situation, in various OSFE threads (of Q4 2021 & Q1 2022, IIRC); if there’s a silver lining to be found in that, I would suggest that it’s the knowledge which you gained in correcting it - which knowledge you have subsequently, and quite graciously, paid forward to the betterment of our Seller Community.
I would submit that Rush, Keys, Oneida, and the many other experts on Hijacking/Co-opting gained a most-valuable ally in you, Marbles - as have we all.
Thank you, Lake!! That is really good to know and would explain the monthly charges.
I’ve never put my account on vacation and just assumed the listings move to ‘Inactive.’
The standard response for all sellers who want to stop the monthly fee is to downgrade their account or go on vacation which may not be necessary or always be the best option (depending on their reasons).
If they want to take a short hiatus or are new and there is a delay in production, moving inventory to Inactive (zeroing out inventory) may be a better alternative so they don’t have to go through the hassle of upgrading again to a Professional Plan and going through re-verification.
No one knows for sure what happens to your approvals for gated brands and categories if you downgrade while on vacation and then upgrade when ready to take your listings off vacation.
I paid fees while my listings were on vacation because I did not want to lose my approvals.
