Amazon Drops FBA Inventory Storage Overage Fees Retroactively Back To July 1

In a rare move, Amazon is backing down on inventory storage overage fees for FBA sellers in the United States, Europe, United Kingdom, and Canada stores.

VP Selling Partner Services Dharmesh Mehta announced the change on LinkedIn, saying the fee removal would be effective retroactively back to July 1.

Every year, the holiday shopping season is a critical sales period for many of our selling partners. It also requires sellers to carefully navigate making sure they have secured enough inventory to meet spikes in customer demand while also not over-stocking and having too much inventory leftover. This is a challenge that many sellers have to navigate, including those that choose to use our Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service.

Amazon provides a number of tools and recommendations to help sellers achieve and maintain healthy inventory levels, including through the holiday peak. At the same time, we are also looking for ways to simplify this experience for sellers so they have fewer things to have to analyze and worry about.

So I'm excited that the team just announced that retroactively as of July 1st, Amazon is eliminating overage fees for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) inventory storage in the U.S.

The fee removal is in part due to Amazon’s more effective capacity management features, and we are glad to be able to eliminate these fees and allow sellers to not worry about them as we head into peak. We hope this will help more sellers ensure they have enough inventory ready for peak demand this holiday shopping season.

Sellers can find more information, along with other recommendations and best practices for a successful holiday season, in Amazon’s peak readiness playbook in Seller Central: https://lnkd.in/gYjbH5p5

An Amazon spokesperson told Fortune the company will still set inventory capacity limits for sellers, but they will no longer be charged extra if sales are slow and their in-stock inventory exceeds their threshold. However, sellers will be unable to add to their inventory if their in-stock inventory plus in-transit restocks surpass their limit.

The responses on Mehta's post were mostly positive, though some sellers took the opportunity to advocate for reduction or elimination of other fees or changes in policies to be more seller-friendly.

James McConnell, Jr.:

But you restricted capacity limits by upwards of 60% forcing us to send in stock earlier — yet still incur Q4 storage fees.

Mohamad Sam:

While this is a step in the right direction no doubt , the increased Q4 Storage fees are the silent profit killer that have changed the game in Q4. I understand the reasoning and they serve an important purpose, but I would suggest a less steep storage fee increase, as opposed to the current one.

Ryan Yaple:

Dharmesh, can we please remove the inventory placement fee and the seasonally increased FBA fulfillment fees next? Thank you!