Faced with rising inflation and soaring fuel prices, Amazon has decided to apply a new 5% surcharge to third-party sellers who use the American giant’s fulfillment and delivery services.
After raising the price of Amazon Prime membership by 17% in the United States, customers may well experience an overall rise in commodity prices on Amazon. Indeed, the American e-commerce giant has just announced this Wednesday, April 13, 2022 the implementation a “Fuel and inflation” surcharge of 5%. This new fee will apply primarily to third-party sellers who use the company’s fulfillment and delivery services.
Indeed, many third-party sellers in the USA and around the world use what is called the service FBA or Fullfillment by Amazon (FBA). This program makes it possible to leverage the supply chain, warehouses and shipping operations of the Seattle firm. According to the company, partner sellers who use this service in France have seen their sales increase by 36% on average between the 4th quarter of 2019 and the 4th quarter of 2020.
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Amazon surcharges third-party sellers to deal with inflation
According to Amazon, this surcharge will come into effect as soon as April 28, 2022. Why speak of an overall price increase? Quite simply because it’s a safe bet that third-party sellers in turn compensate for the cost of this commission by revising the prices of their goods upwards. And as much as with two million third-party sellers that operate the FBA program, this tariff increase could concern hundreds of thousands of products.
“In 2022, we expected a return to normal with the easing of Covid-19 restrictions around the world, but fuel and inflation presented new challenges. It’s still unclear whether these inflationary costs will rise or fall, or how long they’ll persist, so rather than a permanent fee change, we’re going to employ a Fuel and Inflation Surcharge for the first time – a widely used mechanism. by suppliers in the supply chain”, an Amazon spokesperson said in an email to CNBC.
Regarding the amount of this surcharge, Amazon will charge an average of 24 cents more per unit stored and shipped through its services and infrastructure. For the moment, this commission has only been announced in the United States, but nothing says that the French division applies a similar surcharge in France, which must also deal with rising fuel prices and inflation. . As a reminder, the Amazon Prime subscription has recently included Deliveroo Plus in France.
Source : The Verge
