Has Amazon started prioritising price over delivery speed much more aggressively?
In the last few days, it feels like Amazon has started prioritising price far more aggressively than delivery speed when awarding the Featured Offer.
As an FBA seller, one of the main advantages used to be faster shipping. In many cases, that seemed to justify being a few pounds higher than slower offers. Recently, though, I’m seeing the opposite. Even when my offer is FBA and another seller’s delivery is slower, I’m still losing the Buy Box over differences as small as 40–50 pence.
If this is really how the system is working now, it seems to remove one of the main advantages of using FBA in the first place. FBA is already becoming harder and harder to justify because of reimbursement problems, poor packaging, high return rates, and rising fees. If faster delivery no longer gives sellers a meaningful advantage, then what exactly is the point of paying for FBA?
Has anyone else noticed the same change recently?
Has Amazon started prioritising price over delivery speed much more aggressively?
In the last few days, it feels like Amazon has started prioritising price far more aggressively than delivery speed when awarding the Featured Offer.
As an FBA seller, one of the main advantages used to be faster shipping. In many cases, that seemed to justify being a few pounds higher than slower offers. Recently, though, I’m seeing the opposite. Even when my offer is FBA and another seller’s delivery is slower, I’m still losing the Buy Box over differences as small as 40–50 pence.
If this is really how the system is working now, it seems to remove one of the main advantages of using FBA in the first place. FBA is already becoming harder and harder to justify because of reimbursement problems, poor packaging, high return rates, and rising fees. If faster delivery no longer gives sellers a meaningful advantage, then what exactly is the point of paying for FBA?
Has anyone else noticed the same change recently?
7 replies
Seller_19xPhE8YgkmxW
Hello MoyaRecords,
Have you seen some of the recent threads e.g. Repeated Featured Offer / Buy Box suppression cases no longer look like ordinary competition alone?
Perhaps Amazon has either noticed a drop-off in sales, or pressure is building internally to increase them...
Either way it looks like there is an impetus for sellers to reduce their prices, presumably because of increased competition...
And until you squeeze hard, you don't know how low someone will go...
All Best
Brian
Seller_d8YGbIjNqwFxn
To be honest I was looking at a lull in sales on some FBM SKU's earlier and my conclusion was that Amazon were featuring the faster FBA offer rather than the cheapest FBM offer. Even when there was a fairly big price difference.
You also get different results depending on the type of seller account you have.. If you look on a non prime account you will see the cheapest offer as the featured offer and on a prime account see the fastest (FBA) offer as the featured offer.
Amazon are committed now to ensuring that FBM and FBA sellers get a fair share of the featured offer. This was as a result of an investigation from the CMA a couple of years ago.
Angie_Amazon
Hello @Seller_M0KDZMmrenoyq,
The Featured Offer (Buy Box) algorithm considers multiple factors including price, delivery speed, seller metrics, and fulfilment method — and Amazon regularly adjusts the weighting of these factors. While FBA still provides advantages such as Prime eligibility and customer trust, price competitiveness has always been a significant factor and its weight can shift over time.
That said, your feedback is valid. If you feel the balance has shifted in a way that undermines the FBA value proposition, we'd encourage you to share this feedback directly with Seller Support through Seller Central (Help > Contact Us) so it reaches the relevant teams.
— Angie
Seller_IQo80d99W2DzP
I thought it was the other way around!
FBA seems to usually win the Buy box. It tends to go:
1 = Amazon supply item, so they give themselves 100% rating.
2 = Seller using FBA. Even if they have bad feedback ((most feedbacks get struck through, often if FBM, the feedback would not get struck through)).
3 = FBM (SFP), even if the delivery time is the same as above
4 = FBM, even if the delivery time is the same as above
The only way we can win on FBM is by sending SFP, and then lowering the price, often both - which is annoying
Seller_soBD2wwhsVOww
I have an asin with my self FBA & 1 other FBM he is 3 days slower than me & 50p cheaper,I never have the BB but get the bulk of the sales.
