Top 5 Amazon News for May 2023

Each month, we monitor Amazon news and updates to seize opportunities as well as to avoid potential problems before they become an issue for us and our clients.

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Here we share the top updates and news for May 2023:

1. View your brand protections on the new Brand Registry Impact dashboard (USA & Canada)

Amazon announcement:

“Our new Impact dashboard in the Brand Registry portal offers insights into how Amazon protects your intellectual property and listings for your brand-registered ASINs.

The dashboard provides a snapshot of our proactive protections for your registered brands, including:

  • Number of brands registered and protected
  • Number of infringing ASINs removed
  • Number of invalid new ASINs or invalid modifications of existing ASINs prevented

You can also view trends and filter the protections data by store, brand, or category.

Sign in to Brand Registry to view the Impact dashboard.(…)”

 

ProMerit Tip: This new dashboard is a great tool to help brand owners visualize certain metrics, such as the number of listings, and how many modifications have been removed or prevented thanks to this program.
The Brand Registry’s objective is to help you protect and differentiate your brand, giving you access to free tools to protect your intellectual property (IP), manage listings, and grow your business.
And if you have multiple brands in your catalog, this new dashboard also allows you to compare their metrics.

2. New tracking feature for Subscribe & Save now available (USA)

Amazon announcement:

“We’ve launched a new Subscribe & Save feature which allows you to:

  • Track SKU enrollment status or subscriptions
  • Update seller-funded discounts
  • Check status for SKUs at risk of missing deliveries due to low stock

Subscribe & Save is a program that allows customers to sign up for recurring deliveries of products that they use regularly, typically at a discounted price.

You can access Subscribe & Save today through the Amazon Seller Central desktop application for all SKUs.

To view the tool, go to Manage Inventory, click the SKU number for a listing, then click Subscribe & Save on the left side of the SKU page.”

 

ProMerit Tip: This new feature is easy to set up. Amazon uses the following criteria to determine product eligibility:
• Fulfilment history and in-stock rate
• Sales performance
• Product category
• Average selling price
This feature implies that subscribers get a base discount on their deliveries, funded by sellers. Customers who receive five or more subscriptions in a delivery reach tiered status, unlocking additional savings on all products in their delivery. If needed, you can find more information on the AMZ platform.

3. New delivery window requirement for FBA shipments (USA)

Amazon announcement:

“We understand that quicker receiving and shipment processing at our fulfillment centers is important to you. From April 24 to May 2, 2023, we’ll be rolling out a new Send to Amazon requirement to help us get your products in stock faster.

When you create a shipment, we’ll ask you to provide a “delivery window,” which is an estimated date range of when you expect your shipment to arrive at our fulfillment center.

Beginning April 24, 2023, if you use a non-partnered carrier for small parcel or less-than-truckload shipments, you must provide a delivery window on Send to Amazon. If you use an Amazon-partnered carrier or Amazon Global Logistics, no action is required, because the carrier will provide us with shipment arrival information.

Since transportation lead times vary, we’ll ask you to specify a seven-day delivery window for domestic shipments, or a 14-day delivery window for cross-border shipments that have longer lead times, for example, August 1-14. If your shipping plans change, you can update the information until the start of your delivery window on Send to Amazon in the Tracking details step.

We’ll track shipment performance in the Shipping Queue and notify you if a shipment arrives earlier or later than the delivery window, so you can work with your carrier to provide more accurate estimates for future shipments. (…)”

 

ProMerit TipThis new requirement Amazon is announcing will affect some sellers, as it only applies to non-partnered carriers. This measure is being taken with the objective of getting products in stock faster at fulfillment centers and making the shipment process timelier.

Bear in mind that domestic and cross-border shipments will allow for different delivery windows.

4. Updated guidance on returns and refunds (USA)

Amazon announcement:

“We have updated our guidance on returns and refunds with answers to some of your most commonly asked questions.

Our updates are based on your feedback and are intended to ensure a hassle-free returns process.

To learn more, go to Returns FAQ.”

 

ProMerit Tip: At Seller Central Help you will find two sections: “Returns FAQ” and “Returns Performance Dashboard FAQ”, where you can check information before submitting a case or dealing with any kind of return. The FAQs you’ll find there address several topics of interest that we may frequently face, such as labelling, disputes, different options for refunding customers, etc.

5. Update to Canada referral and FBA fees starting June 30, 2023 (Canada)

Amazon announcement:

“We would like to thank you for your continued partnership. We started 2023 with high fuel prices and inflationary pressure, and we have seen recessionary concerns arise in many places around the world. Despite these challenges, you have persevered and demonstrated tremendous agility, and together, we have served customers well.

We continue to invest heavily in people, technology, transportation and infrastructure to innovate on behalf of our selling partners. We do this while also working to be more efficient and manage our costs to serve you and customers, so that we can provide an amazing service that is also a great value. Today, we would like to share the updates that we are making to our Canada referral and Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) fees that will take effect on June 30, 2023, except where otherwise noted.

  1. Referral fees will remain unchanged with the exception of the Personal Computer category, increasing from 6% to 8%, in line with the rates for selling on Amazon.com. Referral fees provide sellers with traffic from hundreds of millions of customers, an attractive shopping experience for customers, payment processing, fraud prevention and much more. We will remove the following fee categories: Toys and Games – Collectible Cards and Sports Collectibles. 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. For more information, please visit: Fee category definitions.
  2. Last year, we introduced a fuel and inflation surcharge for our FBA fees for what we believed might only be temporary cost increases. Although we have seen some decreases, elevated costs have generally persisted, so we will adjust our standard FBA fee rates to account for these costs and we will remove the separate fuel and inflation surcharge at this time. These changes are reflected in the below summary.
  3. Last year, we saw some sellers use more of our storage than we reasonably anticipated was needed to serve customers well, and that constrained how much product from other sellers could be sent into FBA. As a result, we will make updates and create additional granularity in our FBA fees that continue to better align fees with our underlying costs. This will drive improved Inventory Health, more efficient use of our storage and create more capacity for sellers who are using space efficiently. For more information, please visit: 2023 CA Fulfilment by Amazon fee changes and 2023 storage fee changes. This includes five areas:

a. We will increase the monthly off-peak storage fee (January to September) for standard-size products by $3.00 per cubic metre and oversized products by $2.00 per cubic metre beginning on July 1, 2023. We will increase peak storage fees (October to December) for standard-size products by $9.00 per cubic metre and oversized products by $4.00 per cubic metre.

b. We will introduce a storage utilization surcharge for sellers who have a high volume of inventory stored in our fulfilment centres relative to the cube of their recent weekly sales. We estimate that this will impact approximately 6.6% of sellers who use the highest volume of storage relative to their sales volume. This change will take effect on September 1, 2023.

c. We will increase the surcharges applied to inventory stored over 365 days. This change will take effect for the July 15, 2023 aged inventory assessment date. We encourage you to check your aged inventory surcharge and take action on these products. These changes will help drive more efficient use of our storage and create more capacity for sellers who are using space efficiently.

d. We will increase removal and disposal fees driven by increased costs of these services. To learn how to configure your settings for automated removals, go to Remove inventory automatically.

e. We will increase FBA outbound fee rates by $0.27, on average, which is below fee increases announced by most logistics providers. As part of this, we will introduce more granular weight tiers for FBA outbound fees (at the 100-gram level) to better align fees with shipping costs.

4. We will introduce a monthly inventory storage overage fee beginning on August 1, 2023. Overage fees will apply if on-hand inventory in Amazon’s fulfilment centres, not including open shipments, exceeds your FBA capacity limits (new capacity management system launching on May 1, 2023). Overage fees are calculated based on the highest estimated or confirmed limit that we provided for the given period. Overage fees help prevent excessive inventory levels and shouldn’t affect sellers who maintain healthy inventory levels. To learn more, go to FBA inventory overage fees and FBA dashboard.

These changes are designed to allow us to collectively better serve customers while ensuring that we continue to provide you with a great value relative to alternatives. On average, these fee changes are below those announced so far by most logistics providers. In addition, Amazon’s fulfilment fees will remain an average of 30% less expensive than standard shipping methods offered by other major third-party logistics providers in Canada (…).”

 

ProMerit TipKeep in mind, these changes only go into effect for Canadian FBA sellers on June 30, 2023. Also, not all product categories are affected, so we will need to check whether it will have an impact on a case-by-case basis.

Some temporary fees will become standard as they have persisted over previous months, such as fuel for example. Other fees affected are:

  • Fulfilment fees (envelope, standard, small, medium, large and special).
  • Storage fees and aged inventory surcharge
  • Referral fees (e.g. the referral fee percentage for personal computers will increase from 6% to 8%)
  • Removal and disposal order fees (depending on shipping weight)

You can access Amazon’s platform to check each category and product to find out how it will affect your individual brand.

We hope this article is helpful for your businesses. Please note that the above announcements have been sourced from Amazon’s official channels as well as from some well-known business blogs.

If you have any questions related to our services, please contact us. Remember to sign up for our newsletter to receive more exciting news every month!