Let’s fight it together!

Amidst these extremely challenging and trying times, health and safety of our employees, sellers and customers is our number one priority. Different teams within Amazon are looking at ways to help the country in every way we can. At the same time, we understand this situation is impacting small and medium businesses (SMBs) the most and we are taking a host of measures to help our sellers navigate the economic challenges caused by the pandemic.

· SOA Fee Waiver – To help SMB sellers during this time, we are waiving off 50% of the ‘sell-on-amazon’ or ‘referral fee’ from 1^st May 2021 to 31^st May 2021. This will be applicable for those who have had average monthly GMS of INR 10,000 or below across Jan, Feb & Mar 2021.

• Storage and Removals Fee Reimbursement – For sellers impacted by the state lockdowns, based out of non-serviceable pin codes, we will reimburse the Storage Fees and Long-term storage fees that is charged for keeping sellers’ products at out fulfilment centers. For sellers whose removal orders are cancelled due to delivery issues, we will reimburse the applicable “Removals Fees”. This is valid till 31^st May 2021.

• Full Refund of Referral and Fulfillment fees for cancelled orders – Due to the on-ground restrictions imposed by various state governments and local authorities to serve only essential items, we recognize the impact on our sellers’ business due to the need to cancel non-essentials orders. We will refund all fulfilment and referral fees for such cancelled orders. We will issue 100% reimbursements on referral and fulfilment fees for orders already cancelled by Amazon due to the ongoing situation. This is valid till 31^st May 2021.

· Relaxing Claim and Reimbursement Policy – We are temporarily relaxing the claim windows for various types of reimbursements that the sellers file for to 30 days, or higher in certain kinds of reimbursements, to ensure they have adequate time to file their reimbursement claims.

· Relaxing account performance metrics – We are also taking steps across the board to mitigate any negative impact on sellers’ performance metrics due to defaults caused by the pandemic and the resulting restrictions, on the sellers’ account health. We are also working to relax our policies regarding late shipment rate, order cancellation and returns to better support our sellers during this period.

We recently announced that we will be covering the COVID vaccine costs for our eligible sellers and their dependents. All sellers with an active listing on Amazon.in since last year are eligible. For our sellers, we will bear the cost of vaccination for themselves and one eligible dependent. I would also like to remind sellers that they have the option to avail on-demand disbursal of their funds from Amazon to ensure better capital availability.

As part of our commitment to help India fight the devastating second wave of COVID-19, we are looking at ways to help the country in every way we can. We have recently announced that we are importing & donating 100 ventilator units. We have also joined hands with multiple partners to urgently bring in over 10,000 oxygen concentrators and BiPAP machines to India. The medical equipment will be donated to hospitals and public institutions to augment their capacity to help COVID-19 infected patients across multiple cities. Our number one priority right now is to help save lives and extend support communities across the nation including our employees, sellers, delivery associates, other partners and their dependents in this time of crisis. At the same time, we want seller partners to know that we are doing our best to help them get through this and continuously work towards enabling their business on Amazon.

- Manish