Amazon has structured its fees so sellers don't park slow-moving inventory in its FBA warehouses, but sellers will soon find themselves between a rock and a hard place: Amazon is instituting a new "low inventory fee" in 2024, meaning that in addition to paying fees if they have too much inventory at Amazon, they'll also pay fees if they have too little inventory stored at Amazon.

In its announcement today, December 5th, Amazon explained the new fee as follows:

"We will introduce a low-inventory-level fee for standard-sized products. The fee applies if you carry consistently low levels of inventory relative to unit sales, as this inhibits our ... Read More

eBay sellers lost the ability to print shipping labels for several hours on Monday. It was one of the worst days for an eBay shipping glitch to occur - the day after what eBay had predicted to be one of the biggest shopping days of the holiday season. (eBay's Adam Ireland included a graphic showing December 3rd was historically the busiest day in his announcement board post from November 17th.)

It's also a time when shoppers are particularly sensitive to on-time delivery and may grow antsy if they don't see tracking numbers showing their orders have shipped.

Sellers reported the ... Read More

Sellers have been waiting for eBay to restore key functionality that went missing when it transitioned from Global Shipping Program (GSP) to eBay International Shipping (EIS) for international orders. Today, eBay sent an email to many sellers offering them early access to "combined shipping" on international sales.

eBay had addressed the hole in its new international shipping program in July when a seller had asked, "When will eBay International Shipping allow for combining different items into a single shipment? I'm losing sales on "add-on" stuff from my international customers since February."

eBay responded, "Combined Shipping is not an option at this time, ... Read More

It sounds counterintuitive - penalizing eBay sellers for bad buyer experiences. But it refers to bad "buyer experiences," not "bad buyer" experiences.

In July, we reported on eBay's crackdown of international sellers after some reported that eBay had begun restricting their selling privileges in the US and Canada for what eBay called BBE - a "Bad Buyer Experience" metric.

An excerpt of the letter eBay sent some international sellers included the following:

eBay will be making a change to how it displays Item Specifics when sellers are listing an item. While it sounds like an improvement, sellers tend to be leery when they hear about such changes, especially when they involve Item Specifics (eBay's term for product attributes) due to the potential for glitches. 

Potentially even more worrisome is the timing of the rollout: sellers are adamant that they don't like eBay or other companies to roll out changes during the busy fourth quarter when glitches can disrupt sales and operations.

Chuck Van Pelt, previously Product Operations Manager for eBay Stores and now lead for ... Read More