IOSS & B2B Sales
We have seen a couple of threads on this already but they haven’t really got to the bottom of this or suggested a workable solution.
Amazon Business (B2B) sales are not covered by IOSS, this means that tax is not being collected and remitted by Amazon under the Marketplace IOSS rules. We are unable to us our own IOSS number (if we had one!) as there must be a tax declaration to the customer at the point of sale.
It seems to us that the only thing we can do is to send them DDP, but this creates a pricing difference between those and B2C sales which is difficult to manage on lower value items, especially given that the cheaper DDP providers have stopped their Europe-wide service from 1 July as they now need a presence in each EU country to perform DDP. It seems only Royal Mail now cover most of Europe at anything resembling a reasonable cost.
Any thoughts? Is this thinking correct?
21 replies
Seller_qqCKaiyZvp4Rc
You can use your own IOSS number for b2b sales? I didn’t know that…
Seller_H2J6DPLXo3EtS
I posted about this yesterday, but had no replies. We’re thinking exactly the same and feel this is a massive catch 22.
Do we send DDP with expensive courier and take a loss just to keep our account health good?
Do we send using regular post and hope most customers won’t react? Risk negative feedback and having to reimburse fees paid by customer to the courier.
Do we cancel all b2b orders? Massively risking account health…
We actually heard that business orders could be turned off, which we did, but they are still coming in I guess the business on Amazon switch between on and off is about something else and doesn’t actually stop b2b orders…
Seller_axwS3wBiFFCFh
We’ve the same issue.
We asked Seller Support to see if we can opt out of supplying EU B2B but we can only opt out of Amazon Business (inc UK). We did this but are still get business orders from standard amazon EU sites.
There doesn’t appear any other way to opt out of selling to EU business?
Our other issue is that for sending the larger orders to EU businesses, we need the customers EORI number. Amazon doesn’t provide it and getting it from the customer is so difficult.
At the moment, we’re cancelling all small orders and asking the customers for their EORI number for the larger orders.
We were deactivated on Amazon.fr last week due to high cancellation rate, and the same on amazon.es this week.
Haven’t a clue what to do to get around it.
Seller Support are useless and even our Amazon 360 contact has no ideas.
Surely this must affect every UK seller, selling low priced goods to the EU?
Or are we just missing something?
Seller_sFEUMUfeW5484
The costs of getting and managing your own IOSS number etc is about £200 a month plus the admin that goes with the extra VAT calculations/registration.
Seller_qqCKaiyZvp4Rc
We already have our own IOSS for our own website so in theory I suppose we could use it for b2b as long as we are paying the tax it’s the same as ddp really
Seller_Vf10jieAEG9f1
We also wondered about using our own IOSS number even though it’s not strictly correct at least the tax is paid. Strange (or maybe not) that Amazon have not communicated on this matter.
Surely the customer would like the goods cheaper and the ability to reclaim import VAT but it appears at the moment they pay the gross value and then we send via DDP with non-reclaimable VAT.
Seller_qqCKaiyZvp4Rc
we have also applied for royal mails DDP service the prices aren’t too bad but if values are above 150EUR we might cancel
I have just sent 2 with DPD’s duty paid service on parcel2go but i’m not 100% confident it will work
Seller_iLJMOkYKDIy7x
We are struggling with the same issue; have been sending the orders DDP, but with a big hit to profits. We were considering opting out of Amazon Business, but it seems this won’t help from the responses above?
Has anyone found a solution or had a useful response from Amazon?
Seller_iLJMOkYKDIy7x
It’s true that Amazon charge the VAT price to the customer. That’s probably why they think it’s OK. But unfortunately that does not cover it. Because when you send B2B DDP (as we have to according to Amazon T&Cs) we end up paying the clearance fee which can be anything from £8 to £16. This is itself can cause us to make a loss. But worse, the products are priced based on an IOSS shipping service with P2P (now called Fedex Cross Border). But when sending non IOSS, we have to send with a more expensive DHL or Fedex, or DPD service. This can cause a seriously large loss. We have quite a few B2B orders each month and for virtually all of these we are now making a loss or a big loss.
We tried uploading a higher B2B price but that didn’t work - Amazon just ignore it and reset it to the standard price unless the B2B price is lower than the standard price.
Basically, we are totally knackered. Do Amazon really expect us to keep sending B2B orders and making a loss every time? I know that their general policy is to focus on the end customers and treat their 3rd party sellers like second class citizens but expecting us to make a loss on every B2B sale is going too far. This will cause 3rd party sellers to stop selling completely or else put up prices significantly which will cause Amazon themselves to lose sales.
This would be easily fixed if we could just turn off B2B sales on EU channels. It doesn’t mean those customers couldn’t order, they would just have to place a B2C order paying the VAT up front and get the sent as an IOSS shipment.
Seller_E5g7NVvIisYd4
I have been asking Amazon Seller Support exactly the same question - how do I deal with the different cost of postage for Personal and B2B Business orders when Royal Mail DDP costs more than postage to personal customers. I have lost count of the number of times I have re-asked the same question and been given the same answer - price must be the same to B2B Business and BCB Personal. Have explained the costs and we simply go around in ever decreasing circles. Frustrating to say the least. Cancel the Business order and Amazon penalises you. Post the order Buyer is not happy with the charges and Amazon penalises you. Amazon simply do not understand however simplistically you explain the problem
