Delivery Date Based Reserve
Anyone else get this? We don’t have any reserve on our account at present and in the many many years we have been selling on Amazon, never have had so I am unsure whether it would be applied to our account as it says ‘your base reserve policy’.
Hello,
_Starting August 3, 2023, in order to unify base reserve policies for all selling partners, your base reserve policy will change to a “Delivery Date Based Reserve.” _
A base reserve policy is one of the factors that determines your Account Level Reserve, which is the amount of money that Amazon reserves to ensure that you have enough funds to fulfil any refunds, claims or chargebacks from buyers. Delivery Date Based Reserve is our worldwide standard for selling partner accounts since 2016 and determines when your funds become available for disbursement.
While your current base reserve policy uses the shipment confirmation date to determine how long funds are held in reserve, the Delivery Date Based Reserve policy uses the delivery date of an order. When you use an integrated shipping provider, we will use the actual delivery date of the order. In the absence of valid tracking data, we will use the latest estimated delivery date. This policy change may cause a one-time cash flow disruption until the new reserve is built up and funds become available for disbursement according to the estimated or confirmed delivery date.
Changing to Delivery Date Based Reserve will allow you to run non-Prime deals in the European stores, which are currently limited to sellers on Delivery Date Based Reserve. Note that other eligibility criteria for non-Prime Deals still apply.
The policy change will not affect your disbursement frequency, your ability to “Disburse Now” or the total amount of funds received. This policy change will only defer the availability of your funds according to the delivery date of the order plus seven days.
No action is required from you; the policy change will automatically be initiated on August 3, 2023. To prepare, we recommend evaluating if this change could impact your processes for handling payments from Amazon. We also recommend you ensure that you have enough funds to cover the one-time cashflow disruption and evaluate possible financial support options if required.
Seller_0UsCN5pKkU6bJ
Looks like we will now (I never had a reserve on my UK account either but I do on my US)
Its really unfair as other platforms pay on ship and will cause me cashflow issues.
Seller_0UsCN5pKkU6bJ
Actually does anyone know what this means for FBA orders? Will these be paid straight away or will I have to wait weeks for my money on these too!
Seller_24Bec1n3QCVmi
Just Amazon being Amazon and thinking of themselves as usual. The email clearly says they are aware it will cause cashflow issues for sellers but they don’t give a hoot and will carry on regardless.
For us, a 2 week period without income from Amazon could create big issues.
What makes Amazon think it’s ok for them to say “hey, we need your cash for an extra 2 weeks so we’re moving the goalposts”? Makes me wonder if Amazon are struggling too.
Seller_ts7ZiR2hey2ZO
Just another way to make more money for Amazon. Think of all that interest by holding all our money for a few extra days. Cynical, dressed up to say it benefits the consumer.
Seller_19xPhE8YgkmxW
Hi All,
Is this due to the lack of tracking or lack of integrated shipping provider?
Do you send many items overseas? Do you use a non-standard/integrated shipper?
Is this the basis for the ‘clamp-down’?
Best
Brian
Seller_AoC4u5sAjDpZ6
I got this tonight as well, been on here for at least 10 years, VTR 100% no a-z for months, all postage bought through Amazon so it look’s like everyone may be getting it. 2 questions, does FBA still get paid as normal? How long will we have to wait on CRL mail which doesn’t get scanned properly by the post man.
Seller_Nprc5XWvdLYk9
how old is your amazon account?
I think our one goes back to 2008 when they moved us from our old 2004 account onto the new platform (as it was then)
Seller_rGtEcZnu0JTRD
We have been selling on here for about 12 years, so started off without the reserve policy, but when we changed legal entity in 2018 we were hit with the reserve policy, and so have had it for the past 5 years.
From our experience it is normally 14 days before money comes available for disbursement, and then you have to wait 3-4 working days for the money to hit your account, so depending on how that works with weekends it can be 20 days before money is received from point of sale, so that is roughly what you need to budget for in the cashflow. We regularly see up to 100k owing from Amazon between reserved funds and monies in transit.
It then gets worse when you get bank holidays, as you have to add these into the equation with them not being working days, we saw a large jump over Easter when there were 2 Bank Holidays in a 4 day period.
We have only recently started to use FBA but from what we could see this is still subject to the same delays, so would not appear to be only for MFN orders.
Other channels seem to be going the same way, Onbuy have now departed company with Paypal, and seem to hold money for 15 days, but only allow one single dispersement per month, so you can now be waiting up to 6 weeks from date of sale to get funds whereas when it was Paypal you could get the money within an hour of selling the product.
Ebay seems to be the only platform now where you get payment within 24 hours, no questions asked and it comes thorough automatically without having to ask for it.
Seller_n7b5R7zqLpxeo
We’ve been here since 2008, selling to UK only. In the process of re-adjusting the balance of where we sell at the moment, for various reasons, but this new possibility is making me feel happy with what we’re doing.
Seller_u45vavd8UUHCF
So now we understand the move to force sellers to purchase shipping via Amazon. Is there any depth this company will not stoop to and do buyers understand this?
