Walmart beats forecasts | Amazon raises FBA fees (again)

Onward we march

Walmart Beats Expectations

Whereas Amazon’s Q3 earnings report was problematic, at least insofar as its retail business is concerned, ecommerce seems to have been smooth sailing for Walmart this past quarter.

Its Q3 numbers surpass Wall Street forecasts, and the brick-and-mortar giant is confident going into Q4. We picked up other interesting tidbits as well.

Check out the full report here.

FBA Fees to Increase in 2022

One of the more heartbeat-skipping announcements this week is Amazon’s plan to update (increase) FBA fees across the board. These include fulfillment and storage fees, referral fees, removal and disposal fees, and adjustments to the Small and Light program. You’ll find the specifics of the fee increases here.

As to why the rise in fees, Amazon points to the same supply chain disruptions sellers have faced throughout the year, including the stupidly high sea freight costs, shortages in the labor market, and general ecommerce inflation. The company also intends the higher fees to offset the higher operating costs it’s expecting to incur moving forward.In the announcement, Amazon claims that it has managed to keep these fees low to support third-party sellers, although a lot of forum users were quick to point out that “support” actually means “getting in the way” in the company’s dictionary—think fair pricing violations, pesticide bots, and inability to address customer scams.

The announcement also includes some juicy stats about Amazon’s third-party seller ecosystem: More than 3.8 billion products sold; a 15% increase in the number of American sellers who surpassed $1M in sales; and more than 200,000 new third-party sellers.

Suspiciously, Amazon does not say where the 200k+ new sellers come from, which makes one wonder if a good number of those are black-hat sellers and counterfeiters from China.

Amazon Fined $500K

Despite its efforts to become the “best place to work for,” Amazon got slammed with a whopping $500,000 fine Monday for hiding the number of COVID-19 cases from its California employees, as reported by the LA Times.

The fine will be paid to the State of California pursuant to its state consumer protection laws. According to CA’s Attorney General, Amazon had concealed COVID-19 case numbers from its workers, in direct violation of the “right to know” tailored to improving workplace safety. Under CA law, among others, employers are required to keep a record of all injuries and illnesses within the workplace, and such information should be made available on demand for workers.

500K sounds insignificant for a company like Amazon, whose market value hovered around 1.7 trillion as of 2021, but it does bring Amazon’s lack of care for workplace safety in the limelight yet again—not to mention that the fine comes at a crucial time when its workforce and third-party sellers are gearing up for the holidays.

Amazon CSBA Rewards: A Hard Pass?

Announced roughly the same time as the FBA fees update is that Amazon’s customer service network, Customer Service by Amazon (CSBA), is now available at discounted prices for eligible sellers. This service lets you use Amazon’s “world-class” customer service network for customer inquiries on your self-fulfilled orders.

According to the update, the offer is available to sellers who meet the following requirements:

• Ensure customers know where their packages are by offering valid tracking information and maintain a Valid Tracking Rate (VTR) of 95% or higher
• Streamline the customer returns process through Amazon Prepaid Return Label (APRL) program and maintain APRL rate of 95% or higher

That’s how you can avail of the service, but should you? Well, given the reputation of Amazon services, “world-class” sounds pretty brazen, although we won’t put it past Amazon to make such a claim.

Most sellers consider this a hard pass—as one user sarcastically notes: Why would I pay for Amazon customer service to give my stuff away when they already do it for free?

Don’t Let Shoppers Get All the Good Deals

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner, but we can’t let shoppers have all the fun.

As an exclusive treat for sellers who follow EcomCrew but are yet to make the leap to Premium, we’re offering EcomCrew Premium at 50% off for a limited time only this November 26-29.

That’s half-off for access to all Premium perks, including:

• Unlimited email support from two 7-figure sellers
• 7 full-length ecommerce courses in glorious HD
• Exclusive Secret Sauce webinars from industry experts
• Value-packed Q&A webinars and masterminds
• Templates, vendor lists, vetted services
• And much more

Slots will be limited and will be on a first come, first served basis, but you can sign up to our active waitlist as early as now so you don’t miss a beat.

Join the waitlist now.