Amazon are starting to unify Base Reserve policies for all selling partners with many given a date of the 6th of September for changes to kick in. Amazon will change their Base Reserve policy to a Delivery Date Based Reserve policy.
A Base Reserve policy is one of the factors that determines your account level reserve, which is the amount of money that Amazon reserves to ensure that you have enough funds to fulfil any refunds, claims or chargebacks from buyers. The Delivery Date Based Reserve policy is Amazon’s worldwide standard for selling partner accounts since 2016 and determines when your funds become available for disbursement.
While some sellers’ current Base Reserve policy uses the shipment confirmation date to determine how long funds are held in reserve, the Delivery Date Based Reserve policy uses the delivery date of an order. When you use an integrated shipping provider, Amazon will use the actual delivery date of the order. In the absence of valid tracking data, we will use the latest estimated delivery date. This policy change may cause a one-time cash-flow disruption until the new reserve is built up and funds become available for disbursement according to the estimated or confirmed delivery date.
Why the change to Delivery Date Based Reserve policy?
Changing to Delivery Date Based Reserve policy will allow you to run non-Prime deals in the European stores, which are currently limited to sellers on Delivery Date Based Reserve. Other eligibility criteria for non-Prime deals still apply.
The policy change will not affect your disbursement frequency, your ability to use the Disburse Now feature or the total amount of funds received. This policy change will only defer the availability of your funds according to the delivery date of the order plus seven days.
No action is required from you; the policy change will automatically be initiated on the 6th of September 2023. To prepare for this change, Amazon recommend you to evaluate if this change could impact your processes for handling payments from Amazon. They also recommend that you ensure that you have enough funds to cover the one-time cash-flow disruption and evaluate possible financial support options, if required.
5 Responses
This is another way of withholding our funds for longer, so they can make even more money.
If your account gets suspended in that time you will never get the funds.
Like so much of Amazon nowadays a massive *hit show!
Yep, it’s just an excuse to hold onto sellers funds for even longer. There is no need for this, they have everyone’s card on file for chargebacks the excuse of “allow you to run non-Prime deals in the European stores” is complete bull… , presumably the real reason is they earn interest on all the marketplace sellers money they are holding onto.
Selling on amazon used to feel like it was a two way street, as in Amazon used to at least partly value their marketplace sellers. Now it feels like they are the mega corp and you do as we say and we will do what we want and don’t complain, otherwise we will stop you selling here. Well I may well say bye bye Amazon thee way I am feeling,
I know it makes no difference to Amazon if I stop selling there but at least it makes me feel better.
Amazon are staggering the roll out – some sellers have a change over date to the new payment policy in August.
Perhaps someone can do the maths on how much money Amazon will be holding on average at anyone time before passing it to the sellers. It could be as much as 500 million GBP
There was a change a few years ago where the settlement time on merchants credit card transactions was shortened from 5 days to next working day. Was that the result of a change in the banking code or legislative change.
This also applies to FBA sellers where of course Amazon are solely responsible for the customer delivery experience.
Aren’t we all getting tired of feeling like we are working FOR Amazon/Ebay/Etsy/etc. Chris, how about finding some up and coming marketplaces where they value keeping their customers happy? Customers being the business sellers who pay for their services.
I am surprised any UK seller can make a living off Amazon as its 99% Chinese tat in the search results. Unless you’re looking for a SUPERHAPPYFRESH toilet brush or a XYINOBOG door handle.
I see this, and I read the comments and I’m so glad we had the courage to invest in our website and direct sales over 1 year ago and that meant that we could cease trading on Amazon from 1st January this year and here we are months later knowing it was the right move. The amount of time it has given us to spend on other things rather than their constantly changes rules and customers that expect you to bow down to them. It is only when the masses take that move that they will notice – with increasing fees, eBay could be next!