Amazon issued a reminder to sellers who use its FBA fullfillment service: clean out or pay up. FBA’s next long-term storage fee inventory cleanup date is August 15th. Sellers who don’t remove slow-moving inventory from Amazon’s facilities by then will incur a surcharge.
As Amazon explained, inventory that has been in US fulfillment centers for more than 365 days incurs a long-term storage fee of $6.90 USD per cubic foot or a $0.15 USD per-unit long-term storage fee, whichever is greater. The long-term storage fee is in addition to the monthly inventory storage fee.
One challenge with the policy involves the upcoming holiday shopping season: sellers who remove units that would be subject to long-term storage fees at the next inventory cleanup date won’t be able to send in more units of that ASIN for three months. (“The exception is your inventory of that ASIN falls below our projection of its sales for the next eight weeks,” Amazon says.)
Amazon explains FBA long-term storage fees on Seller Central.
It’s been a difficult year because of the coronavirus pandemic; some sellers have said they have had removal orders in place since March. One such seller asked how the August 15th deadline would impact them.
You can find the announcement and seller reaction on this page of Amazon.com Seller Central.