Sellers Are Being Forced Off Amazon Due To Their New Weekend Policy
Last week, every seller on Amazon received an email detailing the online retailer’s new policies about weekend deliveries: all sellers, no matter how big or small, will be forced to offer weekend delivery options for customers.
For weekend deliveries, Amazon is asking that sellers ship through USPS Priority Mail, USPS Priority Mail Express, and FedEx Home Delivery. These options would guarantee that these items make their way to customers within the weekend window.
This change was put in place to benefit customers, many of whom are either working from home or not working at all. For these people, the distinction between weekday and weekend becomes more and more blurry as time goes on.
However, Amazon doesn’t do a good job of communicating to customers that sellers are paying for these express shipping options out of pocket. While the Amazon customer does pay an additional fee for these weekend shipping options, the seller is forced more or less to foot the entire bill.
As an example, FedEx home delivery costs a minimum of $17. In outlandish (and extremely rare) cases, the maximum shipping cost can be as high as $119 -- though it is unlikely that any Amazon seller would be expected to pay shipping prices like these.
The reality is that sellers will be paying an additional $17-$25 to ship orders for weekend delivery. Smaller sellers who cannot take the hit will be forced to raise their prices to compensate for this increase in costs.
In the cutthroat world of Amazon’s seller marketplace, even the slightest increase in product prices can mean the end for sellers. If prices are raised too high, the seller is thrown out of competition and basically has their chances of getting a sale reduced to zero.
Larger sellers, with the resources of bigger companies behind them, are able to take the hit from shipping costs without raising their prices.
This disparity will force independent sellers off of Amazon’s marketplace. In this case, smaller operations can no longer compete.
Sellers have taken to Amazon’s forums, complaining that this will be the end of their business.
On the one hand, Amazon’s intent is to offer customers the option of weekend in a time when they might really benefit from it. Amazon is in charge of their own marketplace, and they make the rules.
On the other hand, Amazon is clearly alienating certain sellers and forcing them off of their marketplace without any relief. People’s livelihoods’ will be negatively affected by this change in policy. Amazon is in charge of their own marketplace, but combative policies might do more harm than good. When sellers migrate to a different sales platform, in many cases, it will have been Amazon itself that is responsible.
For bigger, more secure companies like Snap Supply, with the infrastructure and resources to accommodate the change, the weekend delivery option doesn’t really affect operations one way or another. We’re happy to be able to offer our Amazon customers the option of weekend delivery.