Where do YOU think we are headed in 2025?
Dear Fellow Amazon Sellers,
2024 has been an incredibly challenging year for many of us in the Amazon seller community. I wanted to reach out to gauge how everyone is doing and see if we can collectively bring attention to some of the hurdles we’re all facing.
Our Story:
We’ve been selling on Amazon for four years, and while we’ve grown significantly—selling over 250,000 units this year through a mix of manufacturing, reselling, and exclusive brand representation—it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sustain this growth. 2024 has been the toughest year yet.
This year alone, Amazon introduced several new fees and policies that have drastically impacted our business:
- Low inventory fees
- Inbound shipping fees
- Increased fees for low-priced items
- Removal of the under-$9.99 fee discount
The financial impact has been substantial. Despite doubling our sales compared to 2023, our profits have remained stagnant due to these higher costs.
Additionally, policies around bundling and AI-monitored health violations have caused several of our best-selling items to be removed from the platform, leaving us with limited ways to address these issues.
We personally know of multiple multimillion-dollar businesses—some with years of success—that have either shut down entirely or drastically downsized their workforce this year because they couldn’t navigate the current landscape.
Every day on this forum, I see sellers sharing stories of struggle and uncertainty. It makes me wonder: Is this just an isolated experience within our circle, or is it reflective of broader challenges across the platform?
We Want to Hear from You
How has your business been impacted by the changes in 2024? Are you finding ways to adapt, or are you also facing struggles with sustainability? Let’s share our experiences and see if we can create enough momentum to encourage Amazon to reconsider some of these policies.
Looking forward to hearing your stories. Let’s navigate this together.
Where do YOU think we are headed in 2025?
Dear Fellow Amazon Sellers,
2024 has been an incredibly challenging year for many of us in the Amazon seller community. I wanted to reach out to gauge how everyone is doing and see if we can collectively bring attention to some of the hurdles we’re all facing.
Our Story:
We’ve been selling on Amazon for four years, and while we’ve grown significantly—selling over 250,000 units this year through a mix of manufacturing, reselling, and exclusive brand representation—it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sustain this growth. 2024 has been the toughest year yet.
This year alone, Amazon introduced several new fees and policies that have drastically impacted our business:
- Low inventory fees
- Inbound shipping fees
- Increased fees for low-priced items
- Removal of the under-$9.99 fee discount
The financial impact has been substantial. Despite doubling our sales compared to 2023, our profits have remained stagnant due to these higher costs.
Additionally, policies around bundling and AI-monitored health violations have caused several of our best-selling items to be removed from the platform, leaving us with limited ways to address these issues.
We personally know of multiple multimillion-dollar businesses—some with years of success—that have either shut down entirely or drastically downsized their workforce this year because they couldn’t navigate the current landscape.
Every day on this forum, I see sellers sharing stories of struggle and uncertainty. It makes me wonder: Is this just an isolated experience within our circle, or is it reflective of broader challenges across the platform?
We Want to Hear from You
How has your business been impacted by the changes in 2024? Are you finding ways to adapt, or are you also facing struggles with sustainability? Let’s share our experiences and see if we can create enough momentum to encourage Amazon to reconsider some of these policies.
Looking forward to hearing your stories. Let’s navigate this together.
60 replies
Seller_a1CZqtxdXTdW5
I've been selling on Amazon since 2016. It definitely had humble beginnings - working on shipments out of a shared second story apartment (with no elevator!). Products stacked around the floor and furniture. Pallets of coffee getting delivered to the parking lot, UPS delivering hundreds of cases of board games when I wasn't home and lining the stairwell and hallway with stacks of boxes. Hiring a few friends that lost their jobs during covid to help with the surge in orders. This all led to me gaining financial freedom, being able to purchase a nice home and a new car and being able to travel around the world. Thankful for that. But oh my have things changed in the last couple years. My best wholesale accounts have taken things in house and cut out the middleman third party sellers. Other brands have struggled to control MAP violators, leading to difficulties selling my inventory. Customers have abused the return policy constantly by claiming an item is "defective" even if they never opened it. Many seem to enjoy "renting" my products and returning them when they're done (and of course expecting me to pick up the bill for return shipping). Since Amazon lost their relationship with Fedex, my shipping costs have gone up drastically. I used to pay $7/box with free pickups from Fedex. Now I'm paying about $25/box + pickup fees with UPS. I used to ship to one in-state fulfillment center, but now I'm forced to ship to 6 different cross-country FC's unless I want to pay additional placement fees. It really seems like Amazon is forcing me to ship cross-country in order to drive up my shipping costs to encourage me to switch to using the placement service. FBA fees have steadily increased, as have my COGS, while sales prices have largely remained the same. Don't even get me started on the low level inventory fee. I'm now down to about a 2% net margin, which just isn't sustainable long term. I will probably do about $1.3M in sales this year, and will only be able to pay myself about a $45k salary. I'm planning on winding things down next year, selling through my inventory, and learning to fly...and will hopefully get a job with the airlines in a couple years. I'm exhausted from Amazon creating nonsensical problems and then making them impossible to resolve. I find it frustrating that I've been doing 7 figures in sales with this company and I can't speak with someone who understands english and has the power to quickly resolve a silly issue. I can't express how frustrating it is trying to reason with Wazoolib at seller support that no, this box of cereal is NOT a pesticide device and no, I do not want to take a 4 hour pesticide device training course to sell breakfast cereal. I'm tired of the FC's losing items on every single shipment and then making me jump through hoops to get reimbursed. I'm tired of random account health dings, which I struggle to resolve even with LOA's and invoices (and sometimes my brand rep reaching out on their end too). I'm tired of the cut-and-paste template responses. I'm tired of not being able to have an unscripted adult conversation with someone at Amazon to resolve a simple issue. I'm tired of spending half my time bogged down in administrative nonsense when I should be trying to grow my business. I sometimes wonder if I'm part of some crazy social experiment to see how much stress a company can put on a vendor until they quit. Well, it seems like that day is about to come. It's just not worth it anymore.
Seller_XJk5RkDQR39p0
Negative equity across the board. Some years ago I jokingly said to my wife that in a few years, we would have to pay food insurance, and education insurance, and, it's not insurance per se it's subscriptions with other names meant to squeeze every penny between your profits and your investments.
Do you guys remember when one bought software? Now you have to rent it, one has to pay for some "cloud" to back it up because one can't trust one's hard drives! And of course, we all pay for more than one cloud, because the free one is not a big enough cloud, who would trust just one anyway? Music, movies, and books have to be rented from a cloud. Everything is in the cloud and that is where our profits are heading, a cloud. Because if it's clouds instead of working people the ones doing all the work, who is going to have money to buy our wares? no one, that's who.
Seller_K7LqHXdiKwZFk
Good day
I will share my findings, everything would be fine for my store, but I am facing one problem for which I cannot find an answer, I myself control the sending of the shipment to Amazon FBA, but this year the losses are huge, and I only received compensation for a small amount of the goods, let's say I send about 2000 goods Amazon claims to have received 500, I can't find an answer what to do, so this year I lost AMAZON FBA thousands of goods.Very big product losses, especially in this year, which makes all profits negative.
Seller_NDQApF6fwgF6l
Great topic. One thing I would like to see in 2025 is Amazon actually start listening to sellers issues (like this post). I have been selling since '21 on Amazon. Only in 2024 have I ever had such issues with unacceptable amounts of lost shipments and the receiving/ processing to Prime Ready. It takes forever and they lose 1/2 your stuff. Prime is what really appeals to my business because I travel so much. Also only in 2024 have Pending Orders became an issue. They say its because Amazon is waiting for payment methods, but in reality I think Amazon just wants to hold on to our money longer for some reason. This was never an issue until 2024. Overall, I see all these tiktok and instagram reels about warehouse workers unionizing at Amazon. I feel us sellers need some sort of representation too. Amazon is to much like the wild west and they can get away with whatever they want. Sellers need organization and representation looking out for our best interest.
Seller_c7AY5UmbBC07I
"One additional point we'd like to add is how Amazon padded the FBM shipping estimates by up to a week in December. This may have been Amazon's cruelest move in all of 2024. Our last hope for growth was December and Amazon deliberately tanked it in an effort to punish those that won't pay the ridiculous FBA fees.".
I am alerting my customers to this. Dumb amazon mistake because people have discovered they can go to websites and get better deals and service because sellers are not punished by shipping faster. As of now I have to ship slower so it doesnt trigger AHT. I have a couple products due to October slump pre election I was able to ship faster. This triggered AHT. Some of these products have an 11 turnover time I wake up to with a GIANT ALERT.
Ever since Jeff Bezos left Amazon has turned into a tech, testing nightmare.
Also not sure if it has happened to you but I have been put into several harmful tests which I nailed Amazon for putting me into without asking. Do they put their products into testing? No!
So I am less than likely in the future NOT to use service by them because there is always some underhanded something to make more money of us.
Oh yeah seller support with pro selling fee - what a joke as you know.
Cut and paste, not read the question and favorite line unrelated is show me your ASIN. Rubbish
Seller_KSGiCfnnfnz0d
Thank you for starting this thread. This was very well written and I do hope other sellers continue to chime in.
We have been on Amazon since 2015. We started off in Vendor Express and credit Amazon for helping us build and establish our brand. Amazon is now our least profitable platform.
Every single thing you mention is correct. We have lost our faith in Amazon. 2024 was the lowest sales volume we have had on Amazon since 2018 with much smaller margins.
Some of our lows this year, on top of everything mentioned above include but aren’t limited too:
This delivery padding of 4 to 6 days- it destroyed our holiday sales. Amazon refuses to tell sellers why they did this.
The amount of fraud on Amazon has exploded! A seller operating two seller accounts with two identical brands has lowered the value of our entire category over the last 2 years. Amazon kicked this same seller off in 2021 for operating 11 seller accounts. Even with a trove of evidence submitted in numerous reports, Amazon allows this. Without government interference, Amazon refuses to enforce their own policies.
Thank you again for starting this thread. I do hope sellers coming together can make a difference!
Happy holidays!
Seller_Cj39FIFBjVLNf
probably continuing to languish and maybe close down.
U.S. manufacturing Labor and warehouse space became ridiculous after COVID. No one wants to buy U.S. companies. Amazon policies get worse and worse. Margins stink now.
Looking into 3rd party fulfillment options. trying to get away from FBA.
Seller_cCwRiCrjZMd4T
Going on 10 years with us working up to yoy growth being over 1 million in sales for 5 years in a row with a 2 person operation. Until the last two years we've been in decrease. This year we are barely over 500K in sales. Due to increase in fraud, Amazon fees including low inventory fees, return fees, storage charges, Q4 extra fullfillment fees, placement fees, etc. we are winding down. With the ever increasing risk of suspension and ever decreasing ability to list and repair listings the scales have tipped and no longer does this business make monetary sense. I've pulled thousands of units back this year from listings that can't be repaired. Have product purchased for a well selling list only to have the listing go to the dogs or be orphaned before my product is out of the box.
I wish it wasn't this way. We intended to continue doing business on Amazon for another 10 years.
But we can't. They've made it a non-sustainable model.
Seller_Sram36TnVt73c
the placement fees have killed my desire to use FBA except for maybe one or two products out of 100s we used to sell through FBA.
Advertising costs have become outrageous.
Customer fraud continues to increase.
There are days I sell more on Etsy, and the endless returns I get here are almost non-existent there.
Danny_Amazon
Hello @Seller_BwhuAKHyZROZM- and thank you for creating this thread and fostering some good discussion around selling on the platform.
We sincerely appreciate feedback on the selling experience, and our teams are constantly looking for new tools to arm our selling partners with, though I can appreciate the frustration voiced in this thread.
Please know this feedback will be connected with our teams internally as plans for the new year are solidified, and we hope you continue to look to the forums to share feedback or ask specific questions of the community.
Best,
Danny
Seller_BwhuAKHyZROZM
Thank you @Seller_KSGiCfnnfnz0d for your support and your input. Being on the platform almost 10 years is an incredible feat!
We have seen both the points you mentioned on your post over the last month, and we have seen many of the FBM sellers frustraton with the padded shipping times with no response from seller support that explains it.
Thanks again for your input, and happy holidays to you and yours!
