Amazon sent an e-mail to sellers today, November 16th, discussing fee changes taking effect January 18th, 2022. If you have a Seller Central account, you can see the full text of the update here. I will also share the full e-mail message below.
Amazon tries to soften the blow of a fee increase message by stating third-party sellers sold over 3.8 billion products in 2021, how Amazon has invested $15 billion into their fulfillment network, and how 350 new fulfillment, sortation, and delivery centers opened in 2021. They go on to say costs are rising, and they have to adjust fees in response.
Based on my review of all the fee increases, the biggest change I see is to the removal fees. Many of these fees are more than doubling, which is a lot if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to remove inventory.
I circled the removal fee increases in red in the table below so you can easily see the increases.
The other interesting thing worth noting is they say prep service fees will increase in the first quarter of 2022, but they don’t give any guidance on which fees will go up or exactly when they take effect.
Tables Highlighting Amazon Referral and FBA Fee Increases in 2022
- Every fulfillment fee is increasing, on average by 5.2%:
- Removal fees are increasing a lot:
- Storage fees are increasing:
It’s worth pointing out one more time that these fee increases go into effect on January 18th, 2022.
See below for the full announcement from Amazon.
Note: you need to have a Seller Central account to follow the links in the body of the text below.
*Begin Amazon Announcement*
Hello,
As we all get ready for another big holiday season, we would like to thank you for once again putting your trust in Amazon to power your business this year. Despite the ongoing challenges everyone has faced with COVID, supply chain bottlenecks, and a very challenging labor market, sellers have continued to thrive. US-based sellers sold more than 3.8 billion products, or 7,400 products per minute, in Amazon stores alone—and we welcomed more than 200,000 new third-party sellers to our US store, up 45% over the previous year. All while the number of American sellers who surpassed $1 million in sales grew by nearly 15%.
We are proud to have supported you during this time with significant investments in our fulfillment and delivery network, and through powerful new tools and services to help you grow your business. Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve more than doubled our US fulfillment capacity, spent over $15 billion across our fulfillment network to help keep employees safe, hired more than 628,000 people, and increased our US average starting wage to $18.00 an hour. That includes opening more than 350 new fulfillment centers, sortation centers, regional air hubs, and delivery stations in the US. With the 2021 holiday shopping season in full swing, we are hiring 150,000 more people across our US fulfillment network to ensure we are able to quickly receive your inventory and deliver your products to customers.
In addition, our teams are working to build services to grow your business, such as our Brand Referral Bonus, which helps you make your marketing dollars go further, as well as Search Analytics Dashboard and Product Opportunity Explorer, which offer insights on search performance and suggests new products to sell in Amazon’s store. We will also be increasing the benefits offered in the FBA New Selection program, and will help you kick start early sales with the New Seller Starter Pack, a new program that will launch in Q1 2022.
Throughout the pandemic we have worked to support you—postponing and keeping fee changes low, reducing or eliminating select fees like those for customer returns, and absorbing billions of dollars in increased costs on your behalf—all while making significant and necessary investments in people, technology, transportation, and infrastructure. As you’ve seen widely reported in the press and have likely experienced yourselves, costs are rising and we now need to make adjustments to next year’s fee structure in response. In 2022, we will adjust FBA fulfillment fees to partially offset the higher permanent operating costs we face going forward. This and prior fee changes since the pandemic continue to be lower than other logistics service providers. Accounting for these changes, our fees remain 30% less expensive on average than if sellers were to fulfill orders on their own, providing FBA sellers with premium expedited fulfillment and delivery speed for lower than standard service prices.
Please review the fee change highlights below and the more detailed fee pages in Seller Central. These changes will take effect January 18, 2022, except where otherwise noted.
US Fulfillment by Amazon fees – See full details of the 2022 US Fulfillment by Amazon fee changes
- To reflect increasing costs of operations, we will increase fulfillment fee rates by 5.2%, on average.
- We will use the greater of unit weight or dimensional weight to determine the shipping weight for all large standard-size products, excluding apparel.
- We will increase removal and disposal fees to reflect the changing costs of these services. Liquidation fees will remain unchanged and will be lower than the fees for disposal or removal services. You can enable automated liquidations or removals for aging and unfulfillable inventory before the implementation of the revised fees by going to your FBA settings.
- We will increase the monthly off-peak storage fee (January-September) for standard-size and oversize products. This change will be reflected in March 2022 charges for storage that occurs in February 2022. Peak storage fees (October-December) will remain the same.
- We will introduce a tiered rate structure for long-term storage fees, which will be applied as a surcharge on top of monthly storage fees and include a storage fee for inventory stored between 271-365 days. This change will take effect on May 15, 2022. We encourage you to check your aged inventory and take steps—such as setting up deals, liquidations, or Sponsored Products—to sell through these products before the 271-day threshold and avoid paying these fees.
- We will increase FBA Prep Service fees to align with our operation costs on labeling, bagging, and taping. We will announce additional details by Q1 2022.
- We will increase the maximum weight eligibility for products in the FBA Small and Light program from 12 oz to 3 lb.
- We will launch FBA Grade and Resell, with associated fees for this service, which will allow sellers the opportunity to recover value from their returned items by grading and listing them as used offers. We will announce additional details by Q1 2022.
US referral fees – See full details of the 2022 US referral fee changes
- We will reduce the referral fee for lawn mowers and snow throwers from 15% to 8% for products with a total sales price greater than $500.
- All other referral fees will remain unchanged.
US FBA New Selection program – Get more information on FBA New Selection
- We will add free liquidations benefits for a specified duration of time and number of units on eligible products. This change will take effect by December 2021.
- We will offer a 5% rebate on sales for eligible new-to-FBA parent-ASINs, for a specified duration of time and number of units. This rebate will be for sellers who complete Brand Registry. We will announce details on additional changes to FBA New Selection in Q1 2022.
New Seller Starter Pack
- We will launch an exciting new program focused on helping new sellers grow in their first year on Amazon. New Seller Starter Pack will provide a number of benefits for eligible sellers, including monthly bonuses for new sellers who complete Brand Registry. These bonuses will be available to eligible sellers for a specified duration of time. We will announce more details on New Seller Starter Pack in Q1 2022.
For a summary of all fee changes, go to amazon.com/selling-fee-changes. We welcome your feedback at fba-fee-announce-feedback@amazon.com and will review each comment.
With our gratitude and warm wishes for a healthy and prosperous holiday season, we value your continued partnership and the investments you have made to serve customers through 2021, and beyond.
Thank you.
The Amazon Services team
*End Amazon Announcement*
Additionally, you can find a 2022 fee changes summary page here on Seller Central, and on this page are the links shown below, which go into detail about specific fee changes:
2022 FBA fulfillment fee changes
2022 FBA monthly storage fee and aged inventory surcharge
2022 Amazon referral fee changes
2022 FBA removal and disposal order fee changes 2022 FBA Small and Light fee changes
Want to know how much it costs to use Amazon FBA? Click here.
Are you curious how much you could make selling on Amazon? See my guide to Amazon’s revenue calculator here.