Amazon’s Rumored Seller Fee Overhaul Is Causing Panic Inside the FBA Community

Something is stirring inside Amazon’s Seller Services division, and the FBA community is not sleeping well because of it. Over the past three weeks, whispers have circulated through private Slack channels, seller forums, and aggregator boardrooms about an unconfirmed — but reportedly credible — overhaul to Amazon’s referral fee architecture. Sources close to the matter say the changes, internally codenamed “Project Meridian,” would introduce a tiered referral fee model that penalizes sellers in oversaturated categories while offering modest relief to sellers in underserved verticals Amazon is actively recruiting into the marketplace.

Amazon has not confirmed any such program. A spokesperson declined to comment specifically on Project Meridian, saying only that the company “regularly evaluates its fee structures to ensure a healthy and competitive marketplace ecosystem.” That non-denial denial has done absolutely nothing to calm nerves.

What Is Amazon’s Alleged ‘Project Meridian’ and Who Does It Target?

According to two aggregator executives who spoke on background, Project Meridian would restructure referral fees in categories like supplements, electronics accessories, and home goods — where seller density has made competition brutally thin and organic rank manipulation rampant. Sources describe a model where referral fees in these categories could rise by 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points for sellers generating more than $5 million in annual GMV on the platform, while sellers under that threshold would see no immediate change.

“The math is ugly if this is real,” said Josh Silberstein, co-founder of The Fortia Group, an Amazon brand aggregator that manages roughly $180 million in annualized marketplace revenue. “We’re talking about a potential 8 to 12 percent compression on net margin for our top-performing SKUs in the beauty and wellness categories. That’s not a rounding error — that’s an existential conversation about repricing and channel diversification.”

“If Amazon raises referral fees on high-volume sellers in crowded categories, the aggregators who over-levered on thin-margin CPG brands are going to have a very bad Q3.” — Josh Silberstein, Co-Founder, The Fortia Group

💡 Article Summary

Key Insights

1

What Is Amazon’s Alleged ‘Project Meridian’ and Who Does It Target?

2

Which Amazon Categories Are Reportedly at the Center of the Fee Changes?

3

How Are Top Aggregators and Large FBA Sellers Actually Responding?

4

Is Amazon’s Buy Box Algorithm Also Getting a Quiet Update?

5

What Do Helium 10 and Jungle Scout Data Actually Show Right Now?

Source: Ecommerce Times

Silberstein’s concerns are shared across the aggregator sector, which has spent the past 18 months already absorbing inbound placement fee hikes, rising CPC costs on Sponsored Products, and the lingering hangover from over-leveraged acquisitions made at peak multiples in 2021 and 2022.

Which Amazon Categories Are Reportedly at the Center of the Fee Changes?

Sources identify at least four categories that are allegedly under review for upward fee adjustments:

• Supplements and vitamins — already one of the most contested categories for listing integrity and review manipulation
• Phone accessories and cables — where Chinese direct-ship sellers have compressed margins to near zero for domestic brands
• Kitchen and home goods — a category that reportedly saw a 34% increase in new seller registrations in Q1 2026
• Beauty and personal care — where Amazon’s own private labels compete directly with third-party sellers

Interestingly, sources say Amazon is allegedly considering reducing referral fees for industrial supplies, auto parts, and commercial B2B products — categories where Amazon has been aggressively courting new sellers through its Business division and reportedly struggling with thin inventory depth.

How Are Top Aggregators and Large FBA Sellers Actually Responding?

Brands and aggregators aren’t waiting for Amazon to make it official. Several operators told Ecommerce Times they are already stress-testing their P&Ls against a 2-point referral fee increase and modeling what that does to their Buy Box pricing strategy and Sponsored Products budgets.

Boosted Commerce, one of the larger remaining aggregators after the 2023-2024 consolidation wave, reportedly convened an internal working group in early May to evaluate whether a more aggressive push onto Walmart Marketplace and TikTok Shop would be viable as a hedge. Sources familiar with the matter say the company has already begun preliminary conversations with Walmart’s third-party seller team about accelerated onboarding for 12 to 15 of its hero SKUs.

“Every serious aggregator should have had a Walmart fallback plan two years ago. If they don’t have one now, Project Meridian — real or not — should be the wake-up call.” — Carina Duffield, VP of Marketplace Strategy, Downstream Commerce Partners

Carina Duffield, VP of Marketplace Strategy at Downstream Commerce Partners, an agency managing over $400 million in Amazon ad spend annually, said her team has been fielding calls from panicked brand owners daily since the rumors broke in mid-May. “The information vacuum is actually more damaging than the fee change would be,” she said. “Sellers are making reactionary decisions — cutting Sponsored Products budgets, pulling inventory, repricing aggressively — and some of that is going to hurt their organic rank heading into Prime Day prep.”

Is Amazon’s Buy Box Algorithm Also Getting a Quiet Update?

Separate from the fee rumors, sources close to the matter allege that Amazon’s Buy Box eligibility algorithm underwent a quiet update in late April that is now more aggressively weighting seller-fulfilled Prime (SFP) metrics against FBA sellers in specific product categories. Two PPC agency owners and one prominent Amazon consultant — all speaking on background — reported that several of their FBA clients in the toys and sporting goods categories saw unexplained Buy Box suppression events in early May that coincided with SFP competitors capturing rotational ownership.

Brad Moss, a well-known Amazon consultant who runs the popular Seller Mechanics newsletter and community, posted publicly about the anomaly on May 14th, writing that “something is different in the Buy Box rotation logic” and that his clients with 98%+ feedback scores and strong IPI were losing suppression events to SFP sellers with lower prices but objectively weaker fulfillment metrics.

“Amazon has every incentive to quietly expand SFP’s competitiveness right now — their fulfillment network is under capacity pressure and SFP offloads that cost. This isn’t charity toward sellers. It’s infrastructure economics.” — Brad Moss, Founder, Seller Mechanics

Amazon has not confirmed any Buy Box algorithm change. The company’s standard position is that Buy Box eligibility is determined by a combination of price, fulfillment method, seller performance metrics, and Prime eligibility — none of which it discloses in granular detail.

What Do Helium 10 and Jungle Scout Data Actually Show Right Now?

Third-party data platforms are starting to reflect some of the market anxiety. Helium 10’s Market Tracker tool has reportedly flagged unusual volatility in BSR rankings across the supplements and home goods categories over the past 30 days — the kind of noise that typically precedes either a major algorithm update or a wave of sellers making simultaneous strategic pivots.

Sources at Jungle Scout, meanwhile, say its internal category trend data shows a meaningful uptick in sellers researching migration to Walmart Marketplace and eBay as secondary channels — a shift that one Jungle Scout analyst described as “not a panic exit, but definitely a defensive posture we haven’t seen at this scale since the FBA storage fee hikes of 2022.”

Neither Helium 10 nor Jungle Scout has issued formal statements attributing the data patterns to Project Meridian specifically.

Will Amazon Actually Pull the Trigger on Tiered Referral Fees?

The honest answer, per every source Ecommerce Times spoke with, is: nobody outside of Seattle really knows. Amazon has a long history of testing fee structures in limited seller cohorts before rolling out changes broadly — or quietly abandoning them if the seller community reaction is severe enough. The 2024 inbound placement fee rollout, which sparked significant backlash from FBA sellers and prompted several high-profile public complaints from aggregators, was itself a softer version of a more aggressive proposal that Amazon reportedly walked back after internal modeling.

What sellers can count on is that the uncertainty itself has a cost. With Prime Day 2026 reportedly scheduled for mid-July, the timing of these rumors is particularly disruptive. Sellers who would normally be ramping inventory send-ins, locking in PPC budgets with agencies like Downstream, Tinuiti, and Perpetua, and finalizing pricing strategy are instead sitting on their hands waiting for clarity that may not come before the biggest revenue event of their year.

“Amazon has trained sellers to absorb fee increases and adapt,” said Duffield. “But the uncertainty window is the real killer. You can model a 2-point fee hike. You can’t model ‘maybe, maybe not, we’ll let you know.'”

For now, Project Meridian remains unconfirmed and Amazon’s official position remains a non-answer. But in a community where $100 million businesses can turn on whether a referral fee is 8% or 10.5%, the absence of denial is doing all the work.