Happy Friday,
Somewhere in your catalog there's a variation that's doing everything right. It converts, it ranks, it sells out a little faster than you planned.
Amazon has a fee for that.
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THE MAIN EVENT
It's called the low-inventory-level fee, and the math is one division.
Amazon takes your average stock and divides it by your average units shipped — over the last 30 days, and again over the last 90. That's your days of supply. If both numbers fall under 28, you pay an extra fee on every unit that ships: roughly 32 cents to $1.11 for standard-size, up to about $2.09 for bulky.
Look at which number is on the bottom.
Units shipped. The faster you sell, the bigger the denominator, the smaller your days of supply. Hold the same stock and sell twice as fast, and your days of supply halve. The fee doesn't measure how little you have. It measures how little you have compared to how well you're doing.
And it's charged per unit sold. So while you're under the line, the more you sell, the more you pay for being short.
Since January 15 it's measured per FNSKU, which means the variation that breaks out gets judged alone. Your navy medium can't hide behind the forty other sizes anymore.
The fee for running low is triggered by selling and charged per sale. It's the only penalty in retail that grows with your conversion rate.
Now add the calendar.
Q4 is when units shipped goes up. That's the point of Q4. So the quarter you sell the most is the quarter the denominator grows fastest. The obvious fix is more stock — and yesterday, standard-size storage went from under a dollar a cubic foot to $2.40. Store too much relative to what you ship, past 22 weeks' worth across the account, and a second surcharge starts on everything older than a month.
So in October the instruction reads: sell well, keep more than 28 days on hand, pay triple to hold it, and don't hold too much.
Q4 is the season you sell the most, stock the most, and pay the most for both.
Now the honest part, and it matters for the math.
Both windows have to fall under 28, and the 90-day window cushions a single spike. One great Prime Big Deal Days won't trip it on its own; a sustained run with a thin reorder can. Amazon's reason is real, too: a variation running low ships from farther away and costs more to deliver, and a stockout loses everyone the sale. New parent ASINs get 180 days' grace, and first-year FBA sellers and low-volume products are excluded. A steady replenishment cadence avoids the fee entirely.
Read that as fair. It's still a fee that finds your best product first.
This Week In Amazon
Quiet week on the policy page, which in October usually means the 2027 fee announcement is being formatted.
Seller Fulfilled Prime reportedly got stricter. Standard-size products now need 75 percent two-day delivery, up from 70, plus weekend fulfillment and roughly 93.5 percent on time, reviewed weekly. If you run SFP into Q4, check your shipping templates against the new line before December checks them for you.
Holiday deal fees reportedly held at last year's levels for Prime Big Deal Days next week and Black Friday. It's the only fee in this issue that didn't move.
Quick Win
Give it to whoever places reorders. Thirty minutes, one rule.
Seller Central → Inventory → Manage All Inventory. Filter Low-inventory-level fee to Fee will be applied. That's list A: the variations paying for being short. Two rows to pull out before you act. One restocked in the last week or two — the average hasn't caught up yet, so don't order it twice. One short because a shipment is stuck in receiving — it's paying for real, but the fix is a receiving case, not a reorder.
Inventory → FBA Inventory, the inventory-age columns (or Reports → Fulfillment → Inventory Age). Any variation with units past 180 days is list B. If you've been on FBA over a year and store 25 cubic feet or more, open the FBA Dashboard and read the storage utilization ratio for each size tier. Amazon measures it on the last day of the month, so October 31 sets November's bill. Over 22 weeks, every unit older than a month is surcharged.
Write one rule at the top of the reorder sheet: list A gets reordered first. Nothing on list B gets reordered until it's moving. A sibling on list B doesn't block a list A reorder — Amazon judges each variation alone, so you do too.
Artifact: two short lists and one written rule, where the next purchase order will see it.
Two shortcuts to skip. Don't fix list A with one giant October inbound — every unit that won't sell by December pays $2.40 a month, and a big enough shipment can push the account past 22 weeks and surcharge everything older than a month. And don't dump list B before Black Friday. Some of it sells in Q4. That's what Q4 is for.
Most penalties are for doing something wrong.
This one's for doing something right a little faster than you planned.
See you Tuesday.
Any questions? Book a meeting with me here.
Dan Head
Founder, AMZ Elite
