Some best Amazon sellers recently obtained an unexpected shock after having increased their prices to compensate for the additional costs of President Trump’s pricing war: the online retail giant penalized their ads.
But this week, several of these same best sellers have said Fortune This Amazon seems to have been reversed and now allows them to increase prices, without penalty, up to 25%.
“Something has happened,” said the CEO of a home furnishings that sells $ 50 million to $ 100 million in goods per year on Amazon. “”[W]He has recovered almost all of our purchasing boxes. “”
These penalties had involved Amazon by removing the pimples “Add to the basket” or “buy now” on the pages of merchant products, which most Amazon buyers use to make purchases. Among Amazon sellers, this is known as “losing the purchase box” or “deleting the purchase box”, and it can torpedo a product – and, in turn, a seller if such an article is one of their main income engines.
Historically, Amazon’s reasons to delete the purchase box have varied customer protection against prices prices, to test the sellers or brands to reduce their price on Amazon to match prices on the website of this merchant or the shopping site of a concurrent retailer. This last strategy is a central discord in the antitrust file of the Federal Trade Commission against Amazon.
But according to the sellers who spoke toFortuneLast week, the penalties in question were imposed even when the increased price of a seller on Amazon was the same as on his own website and all competing sites, and when the seller had the product brand. Amazon did not give sellers any reason to be penalized, but many assumed that it was because they had increased the prices of a relatively large amount.
Those who complained that the sentence was unfair because, without considerably increasing the prices, they stood to take a significant financial blow. And with the penalty, their companies were injured in the same way.
In the case of the CEO of furnishings at home, his business had suddenly lost the purchase box on a wide assortment of products after having increased prices by around 20% on average after the new 145% tariffs of the Trump administration on many Chinese imports. This came despite the company which owns the product brand and the only one to sell them on Amazon.
But on Monday, the purchase box returned for most of these items, even with the same price increases of around 20%, said that the CEO, who, like others, interviewed on the site, asked for anonymity for fear of Amazon’s reprisals. The CEO said that Amazon had given this company any reason to raise its penalty.
Two other best Amazon sellers who had their purchase boxes removed last week Fortune Monday and Tuesday that Amazon no longer removed their lists despite price increases up to 25%. Them, and the other CEO of the brand, suggested that Amazon may have lit in response to FortuneThe original reports of the question last week. But it is not clear if this is the case.
Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin did not give up on the apparent about Face, but rather referred this journalist to an Amazon five -year blog article This explains how the company determines which items receive the placement of purchase of boxes. It is not known if the purchase boxes have returned for all the owners of brands on Amazon who recently increased prices considerably or just some.
The sanctions were lifted for a week and a half after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, had discussed the impact of higher rates in China on Amazon sellers.In an interview on CNBCHe said he thought that Amazon sellers would try to “transmit this cost” to customers and that he would understand if they did.
The situation is delicate for Amazon. Allowing sellers to increase prices, as they wish, could allow certain prices to react, while risking buyers who direct their anger on Amazon for increases in drastic prices.
But for sellers who make their products in China or import key materials from there, price increases are often used as the most immediate and legal import costs to increase quickly.
Some Chinese suppliers have offered to help us Amazon sellers Fortune reported. Others are presented on a “transhipping” price escape – mainly sending their goods from China to countries at low tariff, where they would be reconditioned and incorrectly labeled as from a country other than China. Other merchants still envisage a decision known as “substantial transformation”, by which they still come from materials or key parts of China, but then bring a sufficiently substantial change to goods in another country at low tariff so that the latter nation becomes the country of origin for the goods.
It is a fluid situation for brands and merchants and now it seems, at least for some, price increases on Amazon are back on the table.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
