How Amazon India is Supporting their Sellers During the Pandemic

At Amazon, our seller family matters to us. Our sellers have been the backbone of the entire marketplace. Their continuous service and support help us provide a smooth and rich buying experience to the customers.

The nation had been under complete lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. This step was taken by the government to control its viral spread. During the period, only the essentials like food, groceries, medicines, and other healthcare were permitted to be delivered. This made it difficult for small & medium scale businesses who deal in product categories other than these to function.

But now the situation is gradually improving. The cities have been divided into green, orange, and red zones to identify the severity of the COVID-19 effect, with green zones being the least impacted and red being the worst. This step has helped our sellers who can now deliver all products in all the three zones - green, orange, and red zones. But they still cannot accept orders from the containment zones.

We realized the effect of this challenging time on our sellers and their businesses. While we completely stand with the government’s decision to tackle the virus outbreak, we are equally determined to help our sellers sustain during this period. Hence, we are doing our bit to help our seller community in these difficult times. Some of the key measures under this are on fee waivers & refunds. Let’s see what these major steps are.

At Amazon, we understand our sellers are facing a cash flow crunch. Hence, to support small-medium businesses (SMBs), we are waiving off 50% of the SoA fees, also called the referral fee, until 30th June 2020. The referral fee is a percentage of the total price paid by the buyer at the time of sales. This referral fee is applicable to all our sellers, although it varies for different product categories.

This fee is currently reduced to 50%, meaning that till 30th June 2020, our sellers will pay only 50% of the referral fee of their products. The fee concession applies to all our sellers whose average GMS (Gross Merchandise Sales) for January and February 2020 was INR 10,000 and below.

The FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) program enables our sellers to store their products and inventory at Amazon Fulfillment Centers. In exchange, our sellers have to pay a storage fee. With the restriction of selling limited products, we are taking care of our sellers’ inventory stored in our Fulfilment Centers.

We have waived off storage fees for all products at the Fulfillment Centers until 17th May 2020. This waiver will benefit our sellers who use FBA and store their inventory in Amazon Fulfillment Centers.

Additionally, we have waived off the Long Term Storage Fee at the Fulfillment Centers for March and April. This will benefit our sellers who have stored their inventory for a longer-term or need to store the low priority products at the Fulfilment Centers until further notice on the lockdown. The waiver will also be applicable for products that might get delayed or returned due to the restriction on the movement of goods and people during the lockdown.

We are focused on delivering high priority products like food, groceries, medicine, and healthcare items to help people during the lockdown. Due to this, certain orders of low priority products had to be canceled. Realizing that this decision can affect our sellers’ businesses, we are refunding all fulfillment and referral fees of the canceled products to reduce the impact.

We are extending support to our sellers and working towards enabling their businesses. Offering relaxation and refunds is a way to protect their businesses and maintain sustainability. The aim is to reduce the impact on their expenses by reducing and refunding these fees.

We are introducing these adjustments to help our sellers with cash flow. These measures are taken to help them navigate through these tough times. To learn more about different Amazon fees and their calculation, please visit here.

As an online marketplace, we take it as our duty to care for our seller family and stand with them to provide full support. Our sellers like you, are the ones who always help us in providing better services to our customers. We hope these steps and initiatives will help all our sellers in difficult times. For any other assistance, help is always a click away.