Amazon Just Gave Sellers 24 More Days to Submit BFCM Deals

Amazon just gave sellers a second shot at Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals: the deal submission deadline moved from October 20 to November 13. Miss the first window? You're back in it.

Meanwhile, every major carrier is charging more to move packages this peak season. USPS, UPS, FedEx, and Amazon Shipping have all layered on holiday surcharges, and diesel just hit a record $5.85 a gallon — adding fuel, literally, to the fire.

On the darker side, a new wave of Amazon return fraud is hitting sellers of high-end electronics: scammers are swapping genuine CPUs for disguised fakes before sending them back, and Amazon may be reselling the counterfeits as new.

And three smaller platform shifts landed in the same week: Shopify can now filter bot traffic out of your analytics, Meta is defaulting your live ads into a new in-app format starting today, and TikTok Shop just made returns box-free at nearly 10,000 locations.

Here's what changed, and what it means for your business.

• 🧩 Amazon just gave sellers 24 more days to submit Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals
• 🚚 Holiday shipping just got pricier everywhere, and diesel is only part of it
• ⚖️ Amazon return scammers are swapping real CPUs for disguised fakes
• 📊 Quick hits: Shopify's bot filter, Meta's ad default, and TikTok's box-free returns

AMAZON NEWS

Starting December 18, 2026, Amazon will require a prepaid return shipping label on most US seller-fulfilled (FBM) orders — no more address-only labels where the buyer pays return postage, according to PPC Land.

📦️ What's changing

• Within 7 calendar days of a return request, sellers must either upload a prepaid label through the Manage Seller-Fulfilled Returns workflow, or issue a full refund without getting the item back. Labels sent through Buyer-Seller Messaging or other channels don't count, per NovaData.
• Miss that window and Amazon can automatically issue a "returnless refund" — deducted straight from the seller's account — while the customer keeps the product.
• Heavy and bulky items keep the old address-only labels for now, but Amazon has called the exception temporary without saying when it ends, per My Amazon Guy.
• Amazon hasn't confirmed whether forced returnless refunds qualify for SAFE-T reimbursement claims.

What this means for sellers

1. Build the label step into your return workflow now, not in December. A seven-day clock is tight if returns are handled manually — automate label generation through Seller Central before the rule takes effect.
2. Price the cost of a missed deadline. On a modest order, missing the window can mean losing the full item cost plus the label fee, with no product back — bake that risk into your return-handling SLAs.
3. Keep documentation on every forced refund until Amazon clarifies the SAFE-T question, so you have a paper trail if reimbursement eligibility is ever extended retroactively.

HOT TOPIC

The "Surveillance Pricing" Backlash Just Hit Amazon

Regulators and retailers are turning against algorithms that charge different shoppers different prices for the same item — and Amazon is squarely in the crosshairs.

🔍️ What's happening

• The FTC's antitrust case against Amazon centers partly on "Project Nessie," an internal tool the agency says ran for roughly five years and generated about $1.4 billion in extra profit by raising prices on products where competitors were likely to follow, according to TechCrunch. Amazon says the tool didn't work as intended and was scrapped years ago.
• Instacart ended a price-testing program after backlash over shoppers being charged different prices for identical baskets at the same store, per Barchart.
• New York's Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act, in effect since November 2025, now requires any price set by an algorithm using a shopper's personal data to carry the disclosure "THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA" — and Tennessee and New Mexico are weighing similar bills, per Skadden.

What this means for sellers

This isn't just a platform problem — it's a channel-pricing problem. If your DTC site, Walmart listing, or a flash sale shows a lower price than your Amazon listing, a scraping tool (or a regulator) can catch the gap, and on Amazon a visible discount elsewhere can cost you the Buy Box outright. Audit your cross-channel pricing now, before BFCM discounting makes any gap more visible than usual.

BLACK MARKET

The Return-Fraud Playbook That's Still Bleeding Sellers Dry

Empty boxes, "bricked" electronics, and straight-up item swaps: return fraud hasn't slowed down, and Amazon's new prepaid-label rule (see above) does nothing to change how refunds get verified.

🕵️ What's happening

• An estimated 9% of all US retail returns are fraudulent, against roughly $850 billion in total retail returns projected for 2025, according to the National Retail Federation.
• The most common tactics sellers report: the "empty box" (junk or weight-matched filler swapped in), the "switcheroo" (a used or lower-value item returned in the original packaging), and "bricking" (valuable components stripped out before the item goes back), per Chargebacks911.
• Because Amazon's A-to-Z Guarantee and Refund-at-First-Scan policies often refund buyers before a seller can inspect the return, FBM sellers in particular are left eating the loss — Amazon's own recovery process for confirmed fraud can take weeks and often doesn't cover the full item cost, per ShipScience.

What this means for sellers

Document every high-value return before you refund: photos or video of the inbound package, serial numbers logged against the original shipment, and a weigh-in before you open the box. File a SAFE-T claim the moment you spot a swap, and consider return authorization numbers on the SKUs that keep getting hit — a little friction is still cheaper than losing the unit twice.

ECOMMERCE NEWS

Quick Hits: Shopify's AI Overhaul, a Record Holiday Forecast, and Amazon's Hiring Spree

Three numbers worth knowing before peak season lands in full:

• 🛍️ Shopify shipped 150+ updates in its Spring '26 Edition, including a Universal Commerce Protocol built with Google so AI shopping agents can discover and check out from merchant stores, plus a new Shopify Catalog that feeds structured product data straight to ChatGPT and Copilot, per Small Business Trends.
• 📈 Adobe forecasts a record $275.1 billion in US online holiday sales this season, up 6.7% year-over-year, per Retail TouchPoints.
• 📦️ Amazon plans to hire more than 300,000 seasonal workers this year — up 20% from roughly 250,000 last year — even as other retailers pull back on holiday hiring, per GeekWire.

What this means for sellers

The macro signal is consistent: demand is expected to be up, AI-driven discovery is becoming a real sales channel, and Amazon is staffing up to handle volume. If your listings, inventory, and ad budgets are still planned for an average season, this is the week to revise upward.rns and cleaner, bot-filtered data — just don't mistake a sudden swing in either metric for a real change in your business.