Is the current policy on charging for low inventory levels reasonable?
Recently, Amazon issued the "low inventory level fee charging policy", the starting point of Amazon is to enable us sellers to ensure that we sell products in sufficient inventory in a timely manner. As a seller, we can accept Amazon's rules, but I feel the current low inventory level fee charging policy makes me feel disappointed.
My product was out of stock for a short time. Amazon timely detected that the historical delivery days of my product were less than 28 days, and marked my product with the reminder "Fees will be applied in current week". I thought that I could remove the label as long as I supplemented my goods to meet the 28-day stock quantity, but at this time I found that this policy was not as simple as I thought. After replenishing my inventory for more than 28 days of delivery, I still found that my product order was still charged by Amazon for low inventory level. After consulting the customer service team, I learned that the "Fees will be applied in current week" is not updated in real time. But there is a cycle, that is to say, once the inventory of my goods is lower than the 28-day delivery date, I have to be charged by Amazon for low inventory level within this cycle, even if my replenishment exceeds 28 days in this cycle, this fee will also be charged, which makes me very disappointed. Is it to charge more to the seller for the reason of low inventory, or is it really to help the seller monitor the supply cycle of the seller? Is this cycle collection policy really reasonable?
2 replies
Seller_z3XfkorVSmnEY
Amazon re-evaluates your inventory levels weekly. Replenishments received during the week will be reflected in the numbers for the following week.
Jameson_Amazon
Hi @Seller_IH2xqzhDP5TN2,
Thank you so much for reaching out with your thoughts here!
The information provided by the Seller Support team is correct, the low-inventory-level fee only applies to standard-sized products if the historical days of supply is less than 28 days.
For each seller, the historical days of supply metric is calculated at the parent-product level, so all child products related to the same parent product will have the same historical days of supply. The historical days of supply is a seller-specific metric, which means that we only consider the seller’s inventory units and shipped units in the metric calculation. The metric will be updated weekly, and the latest available historical days of supply will determine the fee rate for units shipped that week.
It's also worth noting that the low-inventory-level fee won’t apply to the following:
- New Professional sellers, for the first 365 days after the first inventory-received date.
- New-to-FBA parent products for the first 180 days after the first inventory-received date. You must be enrolled in FBA New Selection to get this benefit. For more information, including seller and product eligibility, go to FBA New Selection program.
- SKUs for which 70% or more of the inventory was auto-replenished through Amazon Warehousing and Distribution over the prior 90 days, because this program has managed that product’s replenishment into FBA on your behalf.
- Products that have sold less than 20 units in the past 7 days.
For more information on the low-inventory-level fee, I would encourage you to read through this resource.
If you have any additional questions, please let me know!
All the best,
Jameson
