There is some disturbing news from one Tamebay reader who says that they’ve been overcharged by Amazon for their Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) fees.
So far they have found around 100 wrong transactions from both the UK and DE Amazon marketplaces and are continuing the check. They’re yet to start checks on the other Amazon sites that they trade on.
We’ve seen a support email from an Amazon Technical Account Manager saying “the reason of this it’s because of the problem on the database, that all of the information was not updated on the system. So our Engineers are working on this so that all of the information will be accurate and be fixed“.
The email adds that Amazon are raising the case as a priority and confirms that there have also been other sellers complaining about the wrong charged for the FBA fees.
As sellers we generally rely on marketplaces we trade on to bill us correctly. From my days as an eBay seller I barely gave invoices a glance and if I did is was just to cut and dice the invoice to see where I was spending my money. Am I paying too much for listing enhancements or is the invoice mainly final value fees, in which case I was happy as I only paid final value fees if I’d made a sale.
Rarely did I check fees to see if I’d been charged the correct amount and I suspect most sellers are the same. Do you know if you’ve been overcharged for Amazon FBA fees? Do you ever check if you are charged the correct amount?
10 Responses
I rarely check ebay and amazon fee invoices. I’m constantly being told off for not checking anything by my brothers who work in ‘real side’ of our business (brick n mortar). Not checking fees under the assumption that the automated systems in place are faultless and big companies like ebay/amazon/paypal are never out to shortchange you, is a really bad habit. It breeds a kind of ‘slackness’ in you, which then takes spreads into other areas so that you’re not checking other bills like streamline, rates, paypal etc.
Eventually you start to treat all bills and all companies the same….and that leaves you very exposed to being overcharged.
After being caught out a few times with suppliers overcharging me for products (against agreed pricing), I’m now trying hard to be more vigilant and am less trustful of how people/companies bill me.
I rarely check yet I have found a number of errors, I’ve heard there are a number of services that offer to check for these type of problems.
We’ve been overcharged by Amazon and subsequently received an email saying we had been reimbursed. The way the FBA fees are structured as well as the reports makes it very difficult to actually scrutinise them.
Jason, can you send links to the providers who offer these services?
Thanks for the info I will go and check.
I would also urge other sellers to check other fees. There is a rebate scheme currently on where a number of categories have the selling fee reduced from 15% to 8%. This is applied in the form of a rebate on each invoice. I have had the rebate applied to some orders, but currently have over 2,000 orders in dispute
Can there be more light shed on which part of the fees he was overcharged on and where/how he managed to checked and identified the fees being inaccurate.
Is it just in a specific category ? i.e. toys & games or media?
Sky+ sucks. I set this to record a few days ago. Just went to watch it and it’s not recorded ffs.
Hi,
This issue is not limited to Amazon FBA. We have recently discovered Amazon.com have been charging us 18% referral fee rather than the correct 15% for a category going back to April 2015.
Like you say who checks? You feel pretty stupid when it is discovered and then left praying the ‘concern team’ are going to agree to pay you back!
As the figure is over $3,000 the matter has been referred to Amazon management due to the amount involved.
I urge everyone to check their billing. I also have to say the amount of information we have been asked to provide Amazon (down to individual ASIN’s affected) is a disgrace when we did not cause the problem.
Furthermore there seems to be dual standards in customer service response times to resolve the issue where we have to reply to customers within 24hrs 7 days a week and we are lucky to get a progress update weekly!
Nice little way for Amazon to off-set their tax bill….