Amazon Seller Guides

Amazon published a revised Business Solutions Agreement on 29 May 2026, effective 24 August. It extends the transfer restriction from the agreement itself to the rights and obligations under it, and for the first time explicitly prohibits pledging them as collateral - which is exactly how revenue-based financing and merchant cash advances against Amazon disbursements are secured.

Amazon retired the invite-based provider delegation process on 10 August 2026. Providers must verify their approved role coverage by 3 September, and the access you granted expires if you do not reauthorize. Amazon now sets the ceiling on what an agency, VA or bookkeeper may hold - and it lands three weeks before peak.

AWD closes 2 September, FBA minimal splits 9 September, Amazon-optimised splits 16 September - then 14, 21 and 28 October for Black Friday. Peak fulfilment fees run 15 October to 14 January and the 3.5% surcharge applies on top of them. Six public dates, no reminders, and the peak-storage window that is not the same window.

On 31 August 2026 the FTC and 22 states sued Amazon, alleging it ran genuine ad auctions and then replaced the result with a higher price it set itself - taking over $20 billion from about 1.2 million US advertisers since 2019, more than 500,000 of them small businesses. What the complaint actually says, why no seller could have detected it, and what a remedy would realistically look like.

CBP has accepted about $132.5 billion of IEEPA refunds through CAPE and sent $106.6 billion to Treasury - but Phase 3 is delayed, and 22,170 approved refunds worth $1.7 billion are stuck because nobody gave CBP their bank details. Who qualifies, how to file a CAPE Declaration in ACE, and the deadline question a top Reddit comment asked and nobody answered.

From 1 August 2026, ad costs for Sponsored Products, Brands and Display come out of the seller account balance before disbursement for the group Amazon contacted directly. The card is kept only as a backup. Why lost credit card points is the wrong headline, and what the change does to working capital.

DD+7 in March, a 3.5% fulfilment surcharge in April, ad spend deducted from proceeds in August. Two of the three change when you get paid and one changes how much is yours. Worked through on a single unit, because confusing the two is how sellers end up repricing a product that did not need it.

The 75-character limit took effect on 27 July 2026 and Amazon began rewriting non-compliant titles the same day, rolling out through the rest of the year. Brand owners get 14 days to review each one. A separate display change on 10 August moved where Item highlights appear, which matters if you are trying to work out why sales moved.

It is 3.5% of the fulfilment fee, not of the sale price, and Amazon puts the average at $0.17 per unit for US FBA. It arrived in two waves rather than one, it hits cheap small items hardest as a share of revenue, and it is already stacked on top of the holiday peak rates that start on 15 October.

Higher bond minimums, a tangible domestic assets test, beneficial ownership disclosure, and a good standing status without which you cannot import at all. The clock runs out around 30 November 2026, in the middle of Q4 inbound. Written for a seller doing four containers a year rather than for a corporate trade department.

The referral fee is charged either way, the Buy Box is still earned rather than bought, and Multichannel Fulfillment is the third option most beginners never hear about. What actually separates the methods, what Seller Fulfilled Prime commits you to after the July 2026 threshold rise, and why the April fuel surcharge broke every comparison run earlier in the year.

Four identifiers doing four different jobs, and only one of them comes from outside Amazon. Why cheap third-party UPCs fail against the GS1 database, what the GTIN exemption actually asks for, and the March 2026 barcode change that loosened labelling for brand owners while tightening it for resellers.

Amazon publishes five sourcing guidelines and the fifth one - auctions are not a valid source of supply - is the one nobody repeats. Where gating actually sits, what makes an ungating invoice hold up, and why a sourcing decision surfaces months later as an Account Health violation rather than a listing error.

Fraudulent A-to-z claims and "materially different item returned" abuse are a live pattern on the seller forums in 2026, and a claim counts against your Order Defect Rate while it is still pending. The response window, the 30-day appeal that removes the defect, why SAFE-T is usually unavailable, and the cancellation cluster that shows up first.

Referral fees, selling plans, FBA fulfilment fees, and the low-inventory-level surcharge your own sales velocity switches on. January raised US fees by about $0.08 a unit and Europe moved the other way - then April added a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge worth roughly twice the January increase, on fifteen days notice rather than ninety.

Seller Central has a real notification system - orders, returns, account events, emergencies. The order emails exist but Amazon says not to rely on them and offers no filtering, the Selling Partner API has no fee-change notification at all, and nothing fires when a settlement posts light.

The most common FBA fee complaint on the Amazon seller forums is a product being re-measured into a higher size tier with no warning - one seller reported a jump from $40.43 to $88.93 per order. Here is how to confirm it happened, request a Cubiscan remeasurement, and claim back the overcharge.

Amazon can move part of a settlement into reserve without warning. This explains why it happens, what the delivery-date-plus-seven policy actually promises, why release dates are estimates rather than commitments, and how to plan cash flow around it.

Amazon closes reimbursement claim windows quietly, and the 60-day figure everyone quotes covers only one loss type. Inbound shortfalls run nine months but open only once the shipment closes, customer returns run day 45 to day 105, and removal orders have three windows of their own. Every published deadline, and the two places Amazon contradicts itself.

A suppressed listing exists but is not shown. Stranded inventory is FBA stock with no offer attached, and it runs on a deadline - Amazon can require removal after 30 days notice, or 7 days for anything with an expiration date, then dispose of it. Includes what the Fair Pricing Policy actually says about pricing-error deactivations, which is not the 50% rule everyone repeats.

Capacity limits replaced restock and storage limits in 2023, so the allowance is one number in cubic feet and packaging size is inventory strategy. Fees now push from both directions - storage and aged surcharges against overstock, the low-inventory-level fee against running lean. Includes why the popular September send-in tactic does not do what it claims.

Amazon started removing Featured Offer seller eligibility requirements in July 2026, completing globally by year end - so every guide listing eligibility as a checklist is describing a stage being retired. Selection itself is unchanged and rests on three named inputs. Two of them belong to your competitors, which is why you lose the Buy Box on days you did nothing.

Order Defect Rate under 1% over 60 days is the only order performance metric that applies to FBA orders at all - Cancellation, Late Dispatch, Valid Tracking and On-Time Delivery are seller-fulfilled only. The published thresholds for each, the Account Health Rating bands, and the February 2026 change that stopped one bad SKU deactivating your whole seller-fulfilled catalogue.