Amazon recently rolled out new rules and regulations on sellers intended to limit the sale of counterfeit goods on its site but has now announced that existing sellers are exempt from paying the $1,500 gating fee, according to CNBC.
“If a seller is already selling brands on Amazon that are now subject to a fee, they are not required to pay the fee to continue selling those brands. The fee only applies to new sellers of particular brands,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC. “Sellers can see whether a product requires a fee to sell when they search for that product using the ‘Add a Product’ tool on Seller Central.”
Amazon’s main global competitor, Alibaba, has been dealing with a highly publicized counterfeiting issue of late, but Amazon also does not seem to be immune to the issue. Many merchants acquire heavily discounted goods from third-party vendors and then resell them on Amazon for a marked-up price. However, there is no guarantee of the quality of the products, warranty or expiration date when it comes to perishable items.
In July, Birkenstock removed its popular sandals from the eCommerce marketplace precisely for this reason, and the company made it clear that any of its sandals for sale on Amazon are not authorized products.
“It’s hard not to be nervous about rules you don’t understand 100 percent,” Rania Sedhom, managing partner of New York-based Sedhom Law Group, told CNBC. “This is a reactionary step that Amazon is taking to all the grey market areas that have been percolating.”
