Amazon's new payment rules are temporarily suspended, allowing sellers to recover frozen funds

Recently, thousands of sellers on Amazon's UK and European sites have been informed that their payments will be delayed for up to a week, with some sellers saying that their stores may close as a result.

According to the latest reports from foreign media, Amazon has unfrozen part of the sellers' funds.

After some sellers had their funds frozen, they wrote to members of the British Parliament seeking help. After learning about this, British Small Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake expressed the hope that Amazon would make an explanation.

Kevin   In a letter to Amazon UK manager John Boumphrey , Hollinrake said that in light of these complaints, he hoped that the platform would explain how Amazon intends to help sellers mitigate the impact of this change; because it is a challenging time for many small businesses that already have cash flow problems. British media also reported that Amazon's delayed payment has caused some sellers to be on the verge of bankruptcy.  

Amazon issued another notice stating that it has modified the implementation time of this policy and postponed the temporary withholding of funds to the end of January next year.

Amazon wrote in an email to some sellers in the early hours of Saturday (August 12) UK time: We understand that the policy change on August 3 has caused a one-time cash flow disruption for you. To help you prepare for the policy change, the platform has extended your policy transition period to January 31, 2024.

Amazon said many sellers now have access to funds and the company is listening to sellers' concerns and reaching out to those who are experiencing one-time cash flow disruptions.

Amazon said in its initial policy update in May that it would temporarily withhold sellers' funds to meet customer refund requests. The update said sellers will have seven days from the date of shipment to withdraw funds. According to the company, the policy was implemented to unify all sellers around the world under the same system.

But sellers whose funds have been frozen say the funds frozen by Amazon are disproportionate to the refunds that could result from customer returns or non-delivery.

While some sellers were told the policy would come into effect in January, others were told it would take effect in September.

In addition, according to a British seller, although the problem of frozen funds has been temporarily resolved, it has affected his entire supply chain, and it may take two weeks for the business to fully resume; Amazon is just "delaying our pain", and the delayed implementation of the policy "is good news at the beginning", but "it just pushes the problem to the month when corporate and personal taxes are due. January is a difficult month."

It is not yet clear whether affected sellers will be compensated for their losses due to the withdrawal freeze.

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