Amazon India is set to revise its seller fee from April 7 and there are speculations that customers will have to shell out more for products in certain categories.
Amazon makes money by charging commissions and fees from sellers that includes referral fees, closing fees and weight handling fees besides other ancillary fee heads. The fees are levied when an item is sold on the platform.
Amazon said it will apply 18 per cent GST to all the fee types listed. "These revisions take into consideration various macroeconomic factors such as inflation, interest rates, operational costs etc, and align with industry-prevalent fee patterns," the company said.
Categories that will see a hike in seller fees include luxury beauty (from 5 to 10 per cent), home improvement (from 9 to 13.5 per cent), sleepwear (from 11-15 to 13.5-19 per cent), musical instruments (from 7.5 to 10.5 per cent) and flipflops (from 10-12.5 to 13-15 per cent), according to Moneycontrol. Some categories are set to see a dip in selle fee, including inverter and batteries (from 5-5.5 to 4.5 per cent) and baby apparels (from 11-21 to 11-20 per cent), the report added.
Amazon India said the closing fee for average selling price of over Rs 1,000 has been hiked by Rs 3 while weight handling fee has been raised by Rs 2 in line with rising shipping costs.
"We recognise seller fees and incentives as strong long-term levers that will help sustain a robust thriving marketplace, focused on digitising small and medium businesses in the country and enabling them to grow into strong national brands," said an Amazon India representative. "These changes reflect our commitment to make Amazon.in one of the most preferred marketplaces for selling in India and creating right choices for sellers to grow efficiently."
From October 1, 2023, Amazon had started charging members of Amazon's Seller Fulfilled Prime programme a 2 per cent fee on every product sold. The programme allows third-party merchant to sell products with the Prime badge.
