Amazon to help sellers improve business for benefits such as fee waivers, priority support, more

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Over 7 lakh sellers on Amazon are now offered a performance-improvement and level-based benefits programme to help them “accelerate their growth” on the marketplace, according to the company. The e-commerce company would provide “customized and actionable recommendations” to sellers to improve “key customer experience metrics” and unlock benefits such as fee waivers, faster disbursement cycles, priority seller support and free account management, Amazon said on Monday. The programme called STEP would have levels including Basic, Standard, Advanced, Premium and more and would provide a dashboard on Seller Central for sellers to track their performance and benefits. 

Amazon said cancellation rate, late dispatch rate, return rate, etc are key “seller controllable” metrics that the latter can improve upon under the programme. December 1, 2020, onwards, all sellers would enjoy Standard benefits up to March 31, 2021 but effective April 1, 2021, they will be eligible for other levels depending on their performance from January 1 to March 31, 2021. Level upgrade and corresponding benefits would happen as per the performance every quarter.

“STEP provides objective and transparent criteria along with benefits designed to help sellers improve their performance on these metrics in a predictable manner,” said Manish Tiwary, VP, Amazon India. The company has also revised its fee for sellers to be effective December 1, 2020, and will be linked to STEP levels. This would include a waiver on “weight handling fees and lightning deal fees” as part of the benefits. Also, closing fee charges would be reduced for products ranging between Rs 250 and Rs 500 and zero disposal fees for items shipped from Amazon fulfillment centers.

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Meanwhile, Amazon and Future Retail continue to fight the legal battle in Delhi High Court over the latter’s deal to sell its retail, wholesale, logistics, and warehousing units to Reliance. According to a PTI report, Future Retail last week told the court that Amazon was not its shareholder and that it has no say in its affairs while the Singapore International Arbitration Centre’s interim order (to bar Future Retail from selling assets) had no value. According to a Reuters report, Amazon had asked the market regulator SEBI to investigate Future Retail for insider trading.