Amazon is hitting sellers with a fuel and logistics surcharge

Amazon $AMZN will begin charging third-party sellers a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge on processing fees, the company announced this week, citing high operating costs as the war in Iran drives up oil prices.

Third-party sellers using FBA Amazon in the United States and Canada will face new fees starting April 17, as well as merchants using remote processing to ship from the United States to Canada, Mexico and Brazil. A later rollout date of May 2 applies to Buy with Prime and Multi-Channel Fulfillment services in the United States and Canada. Amazon did not provide an end date.

Fees are calculated based on what sellers pay Amazon for order fulfillment – ​​not what customers pay at checkout. For a standard US FBA order, this equates to an increase of approximately $0.17 per unit. The exact amount varies depending on the size and weight of each item.

“High fulfillment and logistics costs have increased operating costs across the industry,” Amazon said. said in a note to sellers. “To date, we have absorbed these cost increases. However, like other major carriers, when costs remain high, we apply temporary surcharges on our processing fees to recover some of the actual cost increases we experience.”

Amazon is not the only one increasing costs. The U.S. Postal Service planned an 8 percent rate increase on some package services for April 26, while UPS and FedEx $FDX has steadily increased its fuel surcharge rates in the weeks since the start of the Iranian conflict.

This supplement is not the first of its kind for Amazon. A comparable decision took place in 2022, when Amazon imposed a 5 percent surcharge for fuel and inflation. A fee adjustment earlier this year increased unit costs for FBA sellers by about $0.08 on average.

Some e-commerce analysts doubt the surcharge will be short-lived. My Amazon Guy’s vice president of sales and marketing, Noah Wickham, posted on LinkedIn, predicting that the surcharge would outlast any drop in fuel prices, writing that Amazon “will keep it regardless.”

The war in Iran, now in its fifth week, has driven up oil prices. On the day of the announcement, June Brent crude futures rose above $107 per barrel, a gain of more than 6%. Markets were grappling with uncertainty over the conflict’s potential to choke oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

The broader economic consequences of the war in Iran have deepened since the start of the US-Israeli strikes. Gas prices have risen sharply. Oil is an input for freight transportation, manufacturing and other sectors. A prolonged energy shock has the potential to impact the prices of a wide range of consumer goods. With its market structure, Amazon has a mechanism to direct cost pressures towards merchants who sell on its platform – thereby insulating consumers, at least for now, from the direct impact of rising energy prices.