Have you ever felt like you’re paying just to exist?
For many sellers, Amazon charges not for the value it provides, but simply for being on the platform.
- Think before you ship in Seller Central 🚫
- Sellers scramble as Amazon FC collapses 🏭
- Amazon cuts costs to fight rivals 🛍️
- Selling on Amazon just got pricier 💵
BLACK MARKET
Amazon just dropped a Q4 curveball: the LIT1 fulfillment center in Little Rock has been shut down indefinitely after engineers flagged structural design issues.
Sellers are now watching their stranded units sit in a building no one’s allowed to enter.
🍪 Quick bits
- Stock is frozen. Anything sitting in LIT1 isn’t moving until Amazon gives the all-clear.
- Inbound gets rerouted. Anything already on the road diverts to another FC automatically.
- Listings stay live. As long as you’ve got units elsewhere, orders still ship. 📑
- Capacity cushions. Amazon boosted your account and ASIN limits to keep Q4 momentum alive.
- Fee forgiveness. Expect refunds for storage and aged-inventory fees tied to LIT1 within a month.
- Performance protection. Your IPI, limits, and account health are shielded from any LIT1 delays. 🛡️
- Visibility tools. Inventory Ledger shows what’s stuck, Restock Inventory helps rebalance, and the FBA Dashboard reflects updated limits.
💬 SellerBites’ take
No one’s happy, but at least Amazon isn’t pretending nothing happened. Fee refunds and IPI protection soften the blow, but this is a solid reminder: if one FC holds your whole season, that’s not a strategy, it’s a gamble.
TOGETHER WITH THREECOLTS
Why are you still creating shipments in Seller Central?
💬 Think about your workflow.
On Seller Central, you check which items to send to FBA, the unit amounts, start your shipping plan, tell Amazon which boxes have what, and how many units before you even know where everything is going.
It’s a slow, multi-page nightmare to create the actual shipping plan.
It's time-consuming. But worse, it's disconnected.
It's the start of the "triple-entry" problem with your COGS, min/max price, and supplier purchase info.
Plus, your shipping plan, your accounting, and your repricer are all in different places, and you're the "human glue" holding them together.
📋 InventoryLab (included in Seller 365) now has a new, streamlined Inbound Shipping process.
You can create, manage, and complete your shipments directly within the app—right where all your data lives.
It's the first step to a truly unified business. ⚡
BITES OF THE WEEK
- Collective Tariff Grievances: Nine Japan-linked U.S. affiliates sue Washington to reclaim Trump-era tariffs as the Supreme Court reviews their legality.
- ChatGPT Checkout Debut: Target rolls out in-chat shopping, edging ahead of Walmart as AI-driven retail competition accelerates.
- Record Cyber Spend: Shoppers hit $44B online, boosted by AI-driven traffic and rising BNPL use despite inflation.
- Trust Takes Over: Authenticity-led online shopping surges toward $150B by 2030 as SEA buyers favor verified Mall ecosystems.
TRENDING TOPIC
Amazon eases FBA costs to fight Temu and Shein
For once, Amazon isn’t squeezing its sellers, it’s loosening the belt.
Amazon is rolling out some of its biggest fee cuts ever, a move many see as a response to Shein and Temu bulldozing Europe with ultra-cheap products. The cuts take effect on December 15.
🍪 Quick bits
- Fashion gets the love: Clothing and accessories drop from 7% to 5% for items under €15, and 15% to 14% for €15–€20.
- Home goods join in: Starting February first, home products under €20 fall from 15% to 8%, with pet clothing, groceries, and vitamins also seeing cuts.
- Fulfillment gets cheaper: FBA fees across Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom drop by roughly €0.32 per parcel starting December 15.
- Margin revival: Sellers now have room for sharper pricing, budget SKUs, or keeping more profit.
💬 SellerBites’ take
Amazon doesn’t cut fees for fun, this one screams “Temu/Shein panic.” Sellers aren’t complaining: EU marketplaces finally see real margin relief.
Call it survival, opportunity, or a pre-holiday miracle, it’s game on.
SELLER CONFESSIONS
Every sale costs more on Amazon
Amazon fees are starting to read like a Netflix director’s cut, longer, more confusing, and full of surprise charges.
One seller vented about how the platform can drain your wallet in dozens of tiny ways before you even make a sale, sparking a community-wide meltdown of stories, hacks, and shared frustration.
🍪 Quick bits
- Fee avalanche: Referral, storage, long-term storage, and removal fees. One seller joked they’re just waiting for a “breathing in the warehouse” fee.
- Low inventory bites: Amazon penalizes based on storage use, not sell-through, hitting seasonal or slow-moving items. 😵💫
- Workaround: experts suggest closing or removing listings that shouldn’t trigger fees.
- The gripe: many say Amazon charges simply because it can, pay to list, store, fulfill, advertise, and now not stock enough.
- The counterpoint: fees sting, but the marketplace’s reach is unmatched. Survive the math, and the audience is there.
💬 SellerBites’ take
Sellers aren’t wrong to question whether they’re paying for value or just paying for existence, but the uncomfortable truth remains: buyers keep showing up, so the platform can keep charging.
Navigate the maze correctly, and Amazon pays. Fail, and the fees make it painfully clear faster than Seller Support ever will.
