Amazon want to charge fees retroactively

[latting]

Received email as below recently:

''titled: Selling on Amazon Referral Fee correction for Amazon.co.uk''

''Between sep/2016 and jan/2017, items sold within the Electronics Accessories Categories were charged incorrectly at the rate of 7%, rather than the correct rate of 12%

Seller Referral Fees that were incorrectly charged during this period will be posted retroactively to your Seller account. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused.''

The thing is, it's for the entire 4 months, covering Xmas period, the total less charged fees are therefore huge. In my case, at least 20k. I understand Amazon wants to charge the fees back as 12% is contractual. However I doubt whether this is realistic...Many people including myself, were selling the products because of the lower commission. If you are making just 7,8% profit, this charge back will eliminate all your proceeds in 4 month time.

It makes me wonder maybe it's time to sacrifice this account, even though it's hard to set up a new one nowadays...

Any thoughts?

[elmo]

Gotta abide by their rules or move on to another account

I'm pretty amazed they can do that to their sellers.

[latting]

I previously asked them about the change of fees and they replied they made the mistake so they would take the responsibility and won't re-charge, which as I expected.

However a few days later that email came. I think they originally thought that error just happened to me and decided to bite the bullet. But they later realised it actually happened to all sellers, of which the loss to them are massive.

They then changed their idea as to who takes the responsibility...

[chaichaoyi]

Not tasteful, but entirely covered in the ToS that you agreed to.

[Play]

@Latting

I strongly recommend you contact them back, preferably reply to the email they sent, and try to enforce it upon them to take responsibility, because a) its their mistake and b) they said they will - at least for you.

If you aren't successful, follow it up with the executive team at Amazon. For more information on how that works, feel free to contact me. I think you have sufficient ground to get this vetoed, but £20k is something I would presume only execs would waive off.