Paying a higher FBA fee than you planned? Check how big Amazon thinks your product is
When you price a product, you put the FBA fulfilment fee into the calculation: whatever the fee table says for its size and weight. Then the first settlements arrive and the fee is higher. Maybe only slightly per unit, but on every unit you sell.
Often the reason is simple. Amazon does not charge on the dimensions you entered. It charges on the dimensions it recorded. If its measurement puts your product a few millimetres or a few grams over a limit, the product lands in a bigger size band, and you pay that band's fee for every unit.
You do not have to guess at this. One report shows how big Amazon thinks your product is. Every claim below points at a column in a report you can download from your own account.
Where the report is
Seller Central, Reports, Fulfillment, then in the Payments group the Fee Preview report. Each of your FBA SKUs is one row, with the expected fees per marketplace.
These columns matter:
- longest-side, median-side, shortest-side. The three sides of the packaged unit, as Amazon recorded them.
- unit-of-dimension. Centimetres on the European marketplaces, inches on the US marketplace.
- item-package-weight and unit-of-weight. The weight of the packaged unit and its unit.
- product-size-weight-band. The size band Amazon assigned. On the European marketplaces you will see names such as LightEnvelope, LargeEnvelope, SmallParcel or StandardParcel.
- expected-domestic-fulfilment-fee-per-unit. The expected fulfilment fee per unit on the home marketplace.
- estimated-fee-total. All expected fees per unit, referral fee included.
Three questions to ask it
1. Is the band the one you priced with? Read product-size-weight-band. If it names a different band from the one in your price calculation, the difference is not rounding. It is a band change, and fees jump between bands rather than creep.
2. Does Amazon's measurement match reality? Measure the product the way it goes into the FBA warehouse: poly bag, bubble wrap and labels included. Compare that with the three sides and the weight in the report.
3. Does the fee match what you are actually charged? Compare expected-domestic-fulfilment-fee-per-unit with the FBA fee deducted for one sold unit in your transaction view. If they match, the report is showing what you pay.
Two situations, two fixes
Amazon measured it bigger than it is
If your own measurement of the packed unit is smaller, and the difference would put the product in a different band, Amazon's measurement may be wrong. Open a case with Seller Support and ask for the product to be remeasured. Attach photos of the packed unit next to a tape measure and on a scale, so that the size and weight can be read from the picture. Once the remeasurement is done, download the report again and check whether the band changed. The fix is something you can check, not something you have to take on trust.
Amazon measured it right, the packaging is big
This is the more common case, and it can be fixed too. Find which side, or the weight, crosses the band limit. Often it is a box that is thicker than it needs to be, an insert nobody needs, or a bag with too much slack. A few millimetres less packaging can move the product back into the cheaper band. For the stock you send in with the new packaging, check in the report that Amazon's measurement followed the change.
Two traps
The three sides are not length, width, height. The report gives the longest, the median and the shortest side. If you keep your own data as length, width, height, sort it from largest to smallest before you compare. Otherwise two identical products look different.
Read the unit, too. In the same account one marketplace can report in centimetres and another in inches. A 30 is only a 30 if the unit-of-dimension column says the same thing on both sides.
Ten minutes a month
Download the Fee Preview report and look at your ten best sellers. For each, two questions: is the band the one you priced with, and does the recorded size match your packed product? Check it again after every packaging change and after the first shipment of every new product.
The point is not to know the fee table. The point is to know which row of it is being applied to you. Your fee is set by how big Amazon thinks your product is, and this report shows you that in one line.