Amazon has officially halted its plans to extract a two percent fee from Prime sellers who don’t use its in-house fulfillment. The company reportedly planned to start collecting the fee on October 1st, on top of the 8-to-15-percent commission it already gathers from merchants. After Bloomberg broke the story today based on information it had seen from inside Amazon, we reached out to the company to verify the decision.
Amazon PR manager Jonathan Hillson told The Verge in an email that “the 2% Seller Fulfilled Prime fee was intended to cover our costs,” but added that the company decided not to move forward because it was afraid “seller sentiment related to the fee” could affect participation in the program.
Hillson went on to say Amazon...