Amazon Adds a New Fee For Sellers Who Ship Their Own Packages - Slashdot
source link: https://slashdot.org/story/23/08/18/2039237/amazon-adds-a-new-fee-for-sellers-who-ship-their-own-packages
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Amazon Adds a New Fee For Sellers Who Ship Their Own Packages
Amazon Adds a New Fee For Sellers Who Ship Their Own Packages (cnbc.com) 36
Posted by BeauHD
on Friday August 18, 2023 @05:20PM from the cost-of-doing-business dept.›
Posting anonymously for reasons...
Amazon continues to raise the cost of doing business for its sellers. Just know that over 50% of every penny you spend on Amazon goes to Amazon. If you can buy the product direct from the seller. It will most likely be significantly cheaper, and more of the proceeds actually get to the seller.
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considering how god aweful most sellers are to communicate with. i consider that a tax on good service!
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you being lacist! We do best job shipping you plastic but ship only go so fast. Please be giving us 5 star review and forrow us on lacebook.
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While I agree with that, in theory, one big reason for Amazon existing, except for "one-stop-shop", is the relative consistency of its services.
That 50% tax you mention includes several things that make shopping much easier (using Amazon's fulfillment service).
1. You can easily return a product.
2. You are pretty much insured against shady sellers, wrong product received, bad product received, etc.
3. You have fast delivery.
4. You need not worry whether the seller is actually genuine or a scam.Of course, there are exceptions to each of the above, even when using Amazon, but the risk is much, much lower.
In my country, there is no Amazon, but we have one large e-store which behaves similarly. I have a subscription to them, and I prefer buying products "shipped by" that e-store, even if the price of a product is higher than own seller's website. My time and peace of mind are more valuable than those extra few bucks I have to spend.
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This system incentivizes the cheap-chineseum resellers.
If your entire business consists of ordering cheap bulk goods from a manufacturer in China, having it delivered directly to Amazon's FBA warehouse, letting Amazon handle everything... this works well. Little effort is required beyond sourcing items, and placing orders. You make a profit.
If your business deals in real goods that require handling (staff, space, etc) then the "Amazon Tax" leaves nothing for you.
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What you say is very likely, and yes, I found it harder and harder to find proper (quality) items on Amazon. I'd rather use AliExpress, they have impeccable record track as far as customer satisfaction goes, my only complaint is some items take for EVER to arrive (3+ months in some cases).
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Been finding that too, a staggering amount of stuff on Amazon now is exactly the same cheap crap as Aliexpress but with higher prices. So you run across it on Amazon, find the exact same item at a lower cost on Ali, and buy it from there. Ali also has proper checks and balances while with Amazon it's unlikely you'll get any resolution from the fly-by-night fake-reviews seller who sold you the piece of junk. Ali also somehow magically seems to be mostly free of fake reviews, unlike Amazon. So the only st
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Amazon has changed their return policies, it's not as simple as it used to be. I received a busted computer case and even after printing all the paperwork and label, repackaging it, taking it to the local UPS store, getting a receipt and it being delivered with tracking, they still tried to charge me for it three times.
As for sellers, if you complain then they'll investigate. If enough complaints are received then they'll do something. I honestly think eBay does a better job weeding out scammers.
If fast
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Amazon will even go above that. I had a package stolen a while back and went through the usual hoops of verifying it was delivered and then filing a police report, which was basically a waste of time for everyone involved. Amazon said they'd ship a replacement. Really they weren't on the hook for anything, but they'll go above and beyond like that. Compare them to some brick and mortar stores that I've had to pull teeth just to return a defective purchase (with receipt!) and it's not hard to understand why
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Used to love Amazon. Now I can't stand the majority of its business practices.
Corey Doctorow likes to use the term “enshitification” for companies who decide that every single dollar’s worth of profit that runs through the business must flow to them.
As the article mentions, Amazon wants fees for shipping. They want fees for not shipping. They want fees for advertising and product placement. Start selling a product that’s too popular, and Amazon will seek out your sources and compete
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Former Amazon seller here... I can confirm that when we were doing it 60-65% of the sale amount was eaten up by Amazon fees. It varied from month to month because some fees are fixed amount per month, some are fixed per item, and some are % of sales.
Eventually it was just too much work for too little return.
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The enshittification continues apace. Friend of mine is an Amazon seller (US company) who already can't ship to some locations via Amazon shipping because the cost destroys any profit he makes (it's the seller that pays for your cheap shipping, not the tooth fairy), and now they're artificially driving up the cost of alternatives to make their own ripoff shipping the less awful option of the two. More legit sellers get driven out of business, more Chinesium junk appears to take their place.
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I shifted $2M a year online. $1.25M+ on Amazon.
We had to hire extra staff just to keep up with the rate of Amazon orders. When they introduced Prime we signed up for FBA and did bulk shipments to Amazon warehouses in order to cut down on the fulfillment labor on our end (and to access customers who only ordered Prime/FBA).
Margins were tight to begin with due to competition in the market. With the additional FBA fees we actually lost money that year. on $2M+ in sales.
I gave up selling online. Fuck it.
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And yet when I wanted to purchase a Rain Bird system recently, it was much cheaper on Amazon than direct. And when I noticed and tried to cancel the direct order, they refused, which Amazon doesn't do as much. (No online cancel button; out of phone hours; sent an email within minutes of the order but still "already sent for shipping" by the time they replied...)
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Yep. In fact I've had sellers on Amazon in the past me to their web site for the cheaper deals. Same with sellers on eBay.
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... in the past lead me to their web site...
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I purchase a lot of the same materials to incorporate into my products. So I just find parts I like, then just buy direct from suppliers. Cheaper, direct relationship. Way to go for a small business like mine.
Iâ(TM)ve thought about selling through Amazon but seems like they just keep finding new ways to screw over sellers.
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" If you can buy the product direct from the seller. It will most likely be significantly cheaper, and more of the proceeds actually get to the seller."
But its a lot more work for the customer, to find the seller (if they are small) and to see if they have good service and have good products.
Amazon shipping seems to be pretty good around here (west central MN) now, and theres the 5% re-wards on my Amazon Prime credit card.
If the seller is located in Delaware or Montana I might consider buying direct from t
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