Seller gets unexpected £12k bill because Amazon undercharged on fees

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In January we reported that Amazon had undercharged sellers in the Electronics Accessories Categories and intended to recoup the balance in the near future. It would appear that the bills have started rolling in.

Amazon’s Seller Referral Fees for Electronics Accessories should be 12%, but they were incorrectly charged at just 7% for four months and Amazon want all those 5% undercharged fees paid up.

We have seen an email demand from one seller who Amazon say now owe over £12,000 in undercharged fees which Amazon say they will be collecting from future disbursements starting on or before the 30/03/2017.

The only good news (and it’s not that good) is that Amazon have offered to collect the undercharged fees in 1-8 instalments. As Amazon disbursements take place every 14 days, this particular seller will lose over £1,500 of income twice a month for the next four months with the final payment being collected by the 30th of July 2017.

If you do nothing and don’t agree to an instalment plan, Amazon will start collecting the amount owed in 3 instalments.

Whichever way you cut this it’s pretty poor on Amazon’s part. It was Amazon that undercharged in the first place and now Amazon are dictating the repayment method, although to their credit they are offering a flexible payment plan. If it was consumers that were undercharged, you’d expect Amazon to write the sums off, but businesses are supposed to be more savvy and in theory should have realised the undercharged fees (not that we realistically expect that anyone would at the busiest time of the year!). I still think that if Amazon undercharged that’s their problem and collecting the fees six months later is poor form.

Have you discovered how much Amazon undercharged you? Has anyone got a bill even bigger then £12,000?

3 Responses

  1. Very Poor on Amazons part, but what do you expect these days. Your are forced on to this platform pretty much these days. We will admit we do not keep a 100% on their FEEs they have it all set up to do your head in anyway.
    Till they are brought under control they will continue to push smaller business traders about.
    We had to supply 3 invoices recently to sell MICROSOFT products to them, not had to do this anywhere else. Fine it is done and was authorised straight away, but WHY Am I having to send these tax dodgers a list of our suppliers????, so they can undercut me.

  2. Amazon are the least pro-active company in Europe.It took four years for them to react to losses of billions a year through “…dropped in street deliveries” and now they suddenly realise they’ve been losing billions to “nefarious entities”.
    What a clueless outfit.

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