Big change: Amazon payments are going to be “overdue”

In October, Amazon introduced a major change - delayed payment for orders .

This change was not officially announced, causing confusion and panic among sellers: on the one hand, sellers were worried about whether there was a problem with their accounts, and on the other hand, sellers could not calculate their profits normally. Industry insiders bluntly said: "This is a money-grabbing behavior by Amazon, reserving sellers' funds to earn more interest."

A large number of sellers have delayed payments

During the National Day holiday, many sellers noticed that their stores were delayed in payment. Seller Li Tong said that the payment of one account with the largest sales volume was delayed, and only one of several accounts was delayed, which was equivalent to the platform payment being "overdue" and temporarily not settling the seller, and there was no time limit on how long the delay would last, which was very scary!

According to the prompt, this is related to the delivery date policy, which is a new policy. However, Amazon did not make any announcements or email notifications, nor did it give any specific reasons . It simply delayed payment for all orders.

Like Li Tong, many people are troubled by delayed payments. Seller Jack said: "100% of my sales are now in deferred transactions, and each purchase is deferred according to the delivery date policy. We are 100% FBA delivery, and for standard orders (not delivered), they are usually eligible for payment 7 days after the order is paid. This is a major change. From this month to now, orders worth $12,000 on our account have been postponed, with delivery dates ranging from 7 to 60 days . "

According to feedback, some sellers have seen this change since October 2, and more people have encountered it since then. Currently, not all accounts have seen this change.

Industry insiders speculate that the platform will gradually implement this policy and all accounts will be affected. Many sellers expressed concerns and confusion about this change.

A six-year veteran seller said: “Most of my orders are delivered within 3-4 days and completed within 3 weeks. I should have 10-11 days for payment updates, but seller support said that whatever date is listed is now the actual payment date and will not be updated in the system.

I am angry that this was not communicated to us before this policy was implemented, I have never had a negative balance in my reserve and now it looks like it will. I sell on other platforms and I am automatically paid daily, my own credit card processor pays me daily, I don't have to wait for the longest possible delivery date plus 7 days for payment. I am not a shady seller. I have been selling here for 6 years and have great account metrics. ”

In the seller's view, this is another money grab by Amazon, the purpose is to hold the seller's funds for a longer time and earn more interest. Some people believe that if they hold the seller's money for more than two weeks, they can earn billions of dollars in interest.

Seller Abin, who has been selling on Amazon for 13 years, said: “ Never encountered this before! In October we noticed that after the order was prepared and shipped, every order went into a deferred transaction. At first I thought it was just a mistake, but as of today, it is still the case.

Our account metrics are perfect, no issues, OTDR is all good, no emails or notifications from Amazon under the account health page.

I spoke to the account health team and was told they could not see any reason, then contacted another team who told me some of the funds were being held due to an open claim or chargeback. I called the account health team and they again said no. I have not heard back from anyone at this point and it has been days. I am hoping Amazon will explain this until these funds are released.

Affects normal profit calculation

There are two things that make sellers uneasy: one is that they were not notified, and the other is the impact of this change.

Li Tong told Ennet: “Amazon used to reserve funds for sellers. After the customer paid, it was equivalent to settling the account in our account and giving us the money, but we were not allowed to withdraw the money and had to wait about two weeks before we could withdraw it. Now the change is that there is only a bill for this money that is delayed in the system, and we don’t know whether it will continue to be reserved after the delay.

This means that the seller needs to find a new way to calculate the profit. Although the money was reserved before, the seller has already calculated it into the profit. Although I can only withdraw it half a month later, it means that the money is already in the account. The main problem now is that the profit cannot be calculated. "

" The most annoying thing about this is that the profit report of the ERP system is inaccurate. After the 2nd, the tables downloaded from the date range report all contain zero data. With such a delay, we can't calculate our gross profit, and the gross profit will also be delayed." said another seller in the same industry.

Regarding delayed payment, Li Tong believes that people are not worried about not being able to get the funds, but many sellers are worried that there is a problem with their accounts. Judging from the current situation encountered by many people, it is probably not a problem with the account .

In addition, in Li Tong's opinion, the reason why Amazon made this change should be to add an additional verification to prevent some bad sellers from taking advantage of the situation.

Amazon may have a loophole before. Once the buyer pays, the platform will put the money into the seller's account and reserve the funds for only about 14 days. In the past few years, there seemed to be some bad domestic self-shipping sellers who either did not ship the goods or issued fake order numbers, and then the money could be directly withdrawn after 14 days. After the withdrawal, the store was closed.

Now Amazon may be trying to plug this loophole to prevent some sellers from taking advantage of it, by delaying payment and adding an arrival verification for sellers. No settlement will be made if the goods are not received, and settlement will only be made upon arrival.

Amazon responds to delays

Regarding this change, some colleagues learned some information from seller support that the platform simply moved the sales that were previously displayed under "Account Level Reserves" to the "Deferred Transactions" section.

Support response: "Transactions are deferred when an order is awaiting delivery or payment from the buyer. You can use the Deferred Transactions page to identify these orders, the reason for the deferred, the date you received payment for these orders, and the corresponding amount.

The policy states that orders customers place on Amazon are generally subject to a hold policy based on delivery dates.

The proceeds of the sale are held until we know the buyer received the order as promised and ensure you have sufficient funds to fulfill any returns, claims or refunds.

Note: Previously, sales proceeds withheld through a delivery date-based reserve were displayed on your payments dashboard as a one-time amount under Account-level Reserve. Now, this is displayed as a deferred transaction so that you can understand exactly which orders are subject to these policies and how long they will be held.

The new change of delayed payment for orders has already occurred. Although there is no platform notification at present, this is a common problem encountered by many sellers, so there is no need to worry too much. However, timely adjustments should be made to cope with the impact of the new changes.

(Li Tong, Jack, etc. are pseudonyms in this article )

Amazon

Deferred Payment

Seller