Marketplace charges turn in opposite directions this winter

As of November 9, 2026, Amazon has told US sellers that from 15 January 2027 a Buy X Get Y promotion will carry a $5 upfront fee plus a 2 percent variable fee capped at $2,000, with all promotions billed monthly from February, and that average FBA fulfillment rises by $0.19 a unit, about 0.8 percent of the selling price. In the same fortnight Thailand cut commission rates across three marketplaces for six months. Two directions, one pricing problem.

A fee cut in Bangkok and a fee rise in Seattle

Thailand's three largest marketplaces will cut commission rates for six months, from 1 December 2026 to 31 May 2027, covering roughly 1.2 million sellers and an estimated 1.93 billion baht in fees. Shopee narrows to a range of 8.03 to 13.91 percent from 8.03 to 19.26 percent, TikTok Shop to 11.24 to 17.66 percent from 13.38 to 21.94 percent, and Lazada to 7.50 to 11.60 percent from 9.00 to 17.50 percent. Advertising and other optional charges stay outside the cut, so the headline reduction is smaller than the top-line comparison suggests.

Amazon US notice runs the other way. Promotional mechanics that were free become items with a fixed cost, and fulfillment gets marginally more expensive per unit. For a seller running the same catalogue in both regions, the two announcements arrive in the same planning window and pull the promotional calendar in opposite directions.

• Same catalogueTwo fee directions land in one planning cycle.
• CommissionA cost input, not a back-office detail.
• PromotionNow priced per event, not per season.

Amazon moves the promotional floor up

A fixed fee per promotion changes which offers are worth running. A five-dollar upfront cost is trivial against a promoted line that sells thousands of units and material against a slow mover that sells thirty, so the rational response is fewer, deeper promotions concentrated on proven items. From February the monthly billing removes the option of running a promotion quietly for a week and reconciling later, because every event now appears on an invoice.

The fulfillment increase is small in percentage terms and uneven in effect. Nineteen cents on a unit priced at twenty-four dollars is under one percent, but the same nineteen cents on a unit priced at six dollars is more than three percent, which lands directly on the low-price end of the catalogue where discount depth is thinnest. Storage simplification and the revised low-inventory-level rules matter for the same reason: they change the cost of holding stock, and holding stock is what makes a deep promotion possible.

Run the fee math per unit, not per campaign

A campaign-level margin hides the lines that lose money. Divide the fixed fee by expected units, add the variable fee and the fulfillment change, and compare that number with the planned discount per unit. Sellers who do this usually find that two or three lines carry the whole promotion, and that the rest exist only to fill a grid.

Commission is a price input

Landed price equals list price minus discount plus shipping minus platform subsidy, and the commission rate sits inside that equation. When the rate moves by five points in one market and the promotional cost moves up in another, a price file built on list prices stops describing what a shopper actually pays. The comparison that matters is the take-home price per unit per channel, held to the same date and the same fee schedule.

This is where price monitoring and fee tracking have to share a table. A gap that appears between two channels may be a deliberate positioning choice, or it may be the arithmetic of a fee change that nobody updated. Without the fee fields in the same record, the two cases look identical, and the review meeting spends its hour guessing.

Keep the effective date in the record

A fee change without an effective date is unusable six weeks later. Store the date, the range, whether optional charges are included, and the source of the number. When a seller reviews a price gap in March, the question is not what the rate is now but what it was when the price was set.

Rebuild the price file before December

The Thai cut starts on 1 December and the Amazon changes start in January, which leaves a narrow window to rebuild the price file while both schedules are known and neither is live. Rebuild it once, at the level of channel and category, and the promotional calendar for the first quarter falls out of the arithmetic instead of being negotiated line by line.

FAQ

• Does the Thai commission cut cover advertising spend?

  No. Advertising and other voluntary charges sit outside the reduced range, so the effective cost reduction for a seller who buys visibility is smaller than the headline percentage suggests.

• Why does a small fulfillment increase matter more than it looks?

  Because it is a fixed amount per unit. On a high-priced item it is under one percent, but on a low-priced item it can exceed three percent, and low-priced items are where promotional margin is already thinnest.

• How should a price gap between two marketplaces be reviewed?

  Compare take-home price per unit on the same date, with the same commission range and the same promotional cost. A gap computed from list prices is not a price gap, it is a formatting difference.

• When should the price file be rebuilt?

  Before the first new schedule takes effect, and again on the day it goes live. Building it once while both dates are known avoids renegotiating the promotional calendar line by line in January.

Sources

• Ebrun, cross-border e-commerce weekly, 8 November 2026
• Thailand Times, marketplace fee cut
• Tumwebsme, GP cut across three platforms