#511 – Is Amazon Killing Its BEST Seller Perk? Get Ready for FBA Fee Increases! | Weekly Buzz 4/8/26
Audio version above. Video version below
We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s VP of Education and Strategy, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.
Is Amazon Killing One Of Its Best Perks?
An email suggests Amazon may stop some sellers from using credit cards for ad payments starting April 15, a move that could cost heavy advertisers tens of thousands in lost cash back, miles, and rewards.
Fuel and logistics-related surcharge: FBA, MCF, and BWP in US and CA
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHOTZRODY5N1pXWU1DR0I3
New Feature Alert! Helium 10 Black Box now lets Diamond users track the top three clicked products for a keyword over time, spot fast drop-offs or rising ASINs, and export competitor data for smarter product targeting.
Amazon Reaffirms USPS Logistics Partnership
https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2026/amazon-reaffirms-usps-logistics-partnership/
Amazon Conference in Bulgaria
https://h10.me/bulgaria
Helium 10 is offering a special April promo: new Ads users on the Diamond plan who create their first automation rule can get their full April ad management cost covered. New upgraders can also access discounted Diamond plan offers.
Go to https://h10.me/tacosapril for more information
That’s it for this week’s Weekly Buzz. Let us know in the comments which update impacts your business the most, and we’ll see you next week with more news, strategy, and tools to help you stay ahead in e-commerce.
In episode 511 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Bradley talks about:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 00:43 – Is Amazon Killing One Of Its Best Perks?
- 03:59 – Get Ready for an Amazon Shipping Fee Increase Next Week!
- 08:26 – New Feature Alert: Black Box ABA ASIN Search
- 13:04 – Amazon and USPS Aren’t Breaking Up After All
- 14:22 – How to Translate Amazon Keywords Instantly in Helium 10
- 17:47 – Amazon Conference in Bulgaria
- 18:27 – Free Month of Amazon Advertising Management
Transcript
Bradley Sutton:
Did Amazon just make a move that could cost sellers tens of thousands of dollars? There’s going to be extra FBA fees starting next week. Amazon and USPS aren’t breaking up after all. These stories and more on today’s weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AM PM podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host Bradley Sutton. And this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give a training tip of the week. So let’s get started and see what’s buzzing.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, everybody. First news articles, not really a news article. I don’t have a link.
And that in itself is kind of interesting. But last week some emails were being posted around. Actually, it seems like it’s the same email of a screenshot that Amazon sent a seller that said, Hey, in a nutshell, you are not going to be able to continue to use your credit card for your Amazon advertising. Wah, wah, wah. This like, as soon as I saw that, I didn’t even read the whole thing. I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. It’s crazy. Like that’s one of the best perks of selling on Amazon is getting those credit card points or getting cash back. Anyways, you know, that screenshot of this supposed email, you know, went on to say, Hey, you’re going to get $2,500 back and stuff like that.
Bradley Sutton:
Like I was like, this has got to be like an April, a late April fool’s joke, right? Can’t be real. But a lot of people are saying it’s real. It’s posted all over LinkedIn. But I went to all of my accounts and I tried to find this email because it said other people are posting this message that said, Hey, this is going to be implemented starting April 15th. And even today, April 8th, I don’t have any of that email in my accounts. I’m like, what is going on? Like how can Amazon make such a drastic move that you’re not going to be able to pay credit card for your advertising? Now remember, this is not like unprecedented.
Bradley Sutton:
Carrie announced in the weekly buzz a few weeks ago that Meta did this, right? So it would kind of make sense that Amazon might make this move. But the strange thing is this timeline just doesn’t make sense. Is it really going to happen for 15 and we’re only one week away and I don’t see it in any of my accounts, emails, multiple accounts. I opened up seller central cases and yeah, of course I know that a lot of these reps are not maybe equipped to answer all these questions, but they all said, no, there hasn’t been a policy change or at least not your account. And if you haven’t got that email, you’re still paying with credit cards.
Bradley Sutton:
So why is this to me, if this happens, one of the biggest changes? Well, a lot of us have been using our credit cards in order to get airline points and stuff. In two weeks, I’m flying to the Maldives, $4,000 business class flight. It’s one of the first United new Polaris flights. I’m going to be staying in a $2,000 a night hotel. I’m not paying anything. Why? Because helium 10 is paying for it. Nope. It’s because I’m using my credit card points that I’ve been getting from my Hilton American Express. I use my Chase Sapphire reserve. I’ve got the Chase or the Citibank Inc. I’ve got tons of cards that get different kinds of perks and points. Some people just go for the strict three and 4% cash back. So imagine you’re spending a hundred thousand dollars in Amazon advertising a month, you’re getting like three, $4,000 cash back.
Bradley Sutton:
At least we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars. You might be out if you were relying on that. And Amazon really is going to make you take the payments for advertising out of your disbursements. Right? So let me know guys in the comments below, did you personally get that message? I want to see how many people got it. I’m like crossing my fingers here. I didn’t get that message in any of my accounts. I’m like hoping, okay, no news is good news. Hopefully this is going to keep going. But if this happens guys, this is going to be the worst move for me and all my miles and points and stuff that Amazon has made in a while.
Bradley Sutton:
Next up, there is no debate about the veracity of if this new charge is coming through. This is a hundred percent confirmed. If you look in your seller central, there’s an article that says last week, fuel and logistics related surcharge, FBA, MCF and BWP in US and Canada. And there’s also things that affect things in Europe. So what does this mean? As we know, fuel costs are through the roof, right? And so a lot of, you know, carriers are increasing their price and Amazon is one of them says here in this article, starting April 17th, a 3% or three and a half percent fuel and logistics related surcharge will be applied to fulfillment fees across FBA in US and Canada, as well as remote fulfillment from the US into Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.
Bradley Sutton:
Starting May 2nd, this surcharge will take effect also for BWT buy with prime in the US and MCF multi-channel fulfillment, right? Amazon is proud that, Hey, this surcharge is less. Now when you see 3.5%, does that mean if you have a hundred dollar product, you’re having to pay $3 and 50 cents more? No, it’s 3.5% of your shipping fee. So, or your FBA, you know, fee, right? So let’s say that was $10. Well, it’s now going to be what 30 cents or so. One thing I appreciate about this is there’s no gaslighting here. You know, whoever wrote this doesn’t write Amazon’s other articles where they try and gas light. You think they’re doing your favor? Amazon is a being upfront about this hats off to Amazon. I appreciate it.
Bradley Sutton:
They’re just like saying how it is. Here’s a fee. And, uh, you know, this is not to benefit sellers. This is obviously to offset the rising costs. I think, Hey guys, we got to give Amazon credit here. This 3.5% is actually not much. I bet you wish your gas prices were only up 3.5% for most of us. It’s a lot more. Now Amazon actually wanted to even get ahead of this and give more information. So there’s some articles that I can’t show here on the screen, but they sent some FAQs that might help you guys understand this a little bit more and give some information from other marketplaces. Now, first question is how are you going to be able to know or verify what these fees are? Well, this article says that the surcharge is going to appear as a separate line item, right?
Bradley Sutton:
So you’re not going to have to like wonder or make calculations. When you look at your reports, you’re going to see a separate line item for this surcharge. Another question, does this fuel and logistics surcharge apply to inventory already in FBA warehouses? The answer is yes. Does it apply to subscribe and save orders? The answer is yes.
Does it apply to removal orders or disposal fees? No, does not apply to those things. If I, another question, if I use AWD is sending to AWD from AWD to FBA, could incur this surcharge? The answer is no. What about in Europe? Right? Well, actually starting April 17th, there’s going to be a 1.5% fuel and logistics surcharge for UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Netherlands, Ireland, and Belgium. And it’ll be MC. The MCF is actually going on the second and it’s going to be across Europe as well.
Bradley Sutton:
Another FAQ says, Hey, if the fuel costs keep rising, will you increase the fuel and logistics related surcharge again? Amazon says this surcharge will be in place until further notice and we’ll reassess as conditions evolve. So if you guys have any other questions that maybe weren’t answered let me know in the comments below, I can reach out to my representatives at, at Amazon and see if we can get it get it confirmed, but pretty straightforward.
Bradley Sutton:
Amazon went into detail here, 3.5% only in your fulfillment cost. And later on it’s going to also include MCF and buy with prime. And 1.5% if you’re in Europe I don’t have any information as far as like Australia, UAE or other places, but you know, I’m sure there might be something similar over there. So hopefully, you know, this fuel situation changes, but at least overall it shouldn’t be a humongous hit, you know, to pay 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents more per order. As long as, you know, hopefully you’ve got some, some decent profit margin. If, if a 3.5% on your shipping is going to crush your profit, well, you probably have a lot more, you know, pressing issues than just a fuel surcharge.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, next up, let’s get into our new feature alert of the week and very happy to show you something new about black box. All right guys, I’ve got a pretty cool new feature alert here and it’s in black box. This feature is available for diamond members. Elite members have had it for a while now it’s moving down Diamond. Maybe one day it’ll go down to Platinum like things usually do. Now this is pretty cool. Just so you know, in helium 10, we are the only tool that has a history of brand analytics, top search terms. Like for example, I can enter in an ASIN or group of ASINs and I could look back, you know, about 10, 20 weeks or so and see all of the keywords that were top three click. But then a while back I had the idea, you know, I was like, you know what, I’m doing research in my coffin shelf niche.
Bradley Sutton:
And I’m just wondering what are the top three click products for all those weeks until now, there’s been no way to look at that. I could look at all of the keywords over a number of weeks, but I couldn’t do the opposite where instead of entering an ASIN, I enter a keyword. Guess what guys, our team made it happen. Watch this. Let’s just go ahead and enter in coffin shelf here. And I’m going to go ahead and hit search. And now what I’m going to do is I’m going to see that there’s actually three keywords here related to coffin shelf as, as a core. Now what I can do is I can go down and expand this coffin shelf and I can see week by week, who were the top three clicked like for the, for, for the last few weeks of this, this time period. Like I can see the, the number one product Gothic curiosities is consistently the number one clicked product here.
Bradley Sutton:
And my Manny’s Mysterious Oddities also consistently than the number two, most click product week by week. Now this is interesting because I can see some consistency in this niche, other niches or other keywords. You’re going to see different products show up here at different times, right? So this is going to be interesting for me to say, Hey, you know what? I want to start targeting all the products that have ever shown up as one of the top three clicked for coffin shelf over the past 10, 15, 20 weeks. Well, what I would do is I can even export this list and then just take those agents, drop it into a product targeting campaign and advertising.
Bradley Sutton:
Just give it a try and see, you know what we can do here. Um, maybe I just want to overview of who were the top three click products over time. And, uh, is it my product? That’s always the first or second, how many weeks did I drop out of the top three click products? So tons and tons of use cases for this where instantly I can get this history of who were the top three clicked over different time periods. Something else that is new in the tool is if I had entered an ASIN, I have a couple buttons here, right? Or I can say fast drop-offs or trending up fast. So like for example, let me go ahead and choose my coffin shelf ASIN. Let me put it here. I’d probably, you know, want to put more products here. You like more of my products or with my competitors. But now over here, I can see under fast drop-offs that, Hey, I used to be one of the top three click for coffin gift box for coffin shelf, for wall, for coffin decor, but I have actually fallen off the list.
Bradley Sutton:
All right. So, so that’s something to look at. Maybe I want to know, Hey, am I trending up? Am I getting on a top three keywords? Nope. This product isn’t. But if you, if I had put in a whole bunch of competitors, I can see, Hey, where are they coming up? Where all of a sudden over the last 90 days, they are starting to show up on as one of the top three click products. So a lot of new use cases here in black box brand analytics. If you guys don’t have access to this tool might be because you’re not in the right plan. Make sure you guys have the diamond plan. Most powerful plan helium 10 has, you are going to be able to unlock all of these things that your competitors who don’t have Helium 10 do not have access to because only in Helium 10, can you leverage this brand analytics data in this way?
Bradley Sutton:
Well, as the team has been crushing it lately for black box last week, if you know, I announce a new, really super cool tool that I kind of call the zombie hunter. It’s not what’s the official name, but it allows you to look for products that are out of stock to have you been in stock in one or even two years to go ahead and do research on it. No other tool has that. And then this week, a pretty cool new way to look at Amazon brand analytics data. So make sure you hop into black box and start using these tools. I believe they’re available on the Diamond plan.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, next up, we’ve got an article here from payments.com and it says Amazon reaffirms USPS logistics partnership. If you’ve been watching the weekly buzz over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about how stories have come out where, where, Hey, Amazon might have to kind of like break up with USPS. And what would that mean for Amazon sellers? You know, Amazon does not have a way to deliver fast in rural areas, you know, like in the middle of North Dakota or something, you know, so it’s usually USPS. So if USPS completely stopped fulfilling Amazon orders, I think we as sellers might have been negatively affected because our shipments would have a little bit more delay. The buy box would show a later shipping date, et cetera.
Bradley Sutton:
However, per some announcements from Amazon and USPS says here, Amazon on April 6th has reached a new deal with USPS in which the postal agency will continue to make 80% of the package deliveries it currently makes. All right. So it is, it is reducing, right? But before Amazon said, Hey, we’re going to cut like two thirds of everything that we do with the USPS which was kind of scaring some sellers, including myself. So for now looks like we are kind of safe from having to worry about any major changes with shipping times, delivery times, or where our product is available. Next up, let’s go to our strategy of the week and Shivali, take it away.
Shivali Patel:
Expanding internationally without understanding your keywords is risky. You could be targeting a high search volume of terms that aren’t actually even relevant to your product. And worse, you might accidentally include a forbidden or misleading keyword in your listing.
When you truly understand what your keywords mean in your native language, you make smarter optimization decisions. You protect your listing health and position your product correctly in that marketplace that directly impacts your rankings, conversions, and revenue. So let me show you how to solve this right away. Yes, you can run keyword research in Helium 10 like normal. You can use Cerebro, use Magnet, but what happens when all those keywords are in a language that you don’t fully understand? Actually, the idea for this feature came from Ritu Java.
Shivali Patel:
She used to export Cerebro results into Excel or Google sheets, and then use Google translate to append translated columns. We thought there’s gotta be an easier way to do this. For example, here we looked up Tupperware looking product on Amazon España. We’ve got 477 keywords. Now we speak maybe 60 to 70% Spanish if we’re taking a look at our team, mostly Bradley and Carrie, because that is not me, no bueno. But some of these words we’ve never heard before, like Fiambrera, no idea. Tupper, we assume that’s Tupperware, but what about Tupper crystal hermetico? We know crystal, we know Tupperware, but what does hermetico mean? So maybe you don’t speak any Spanish at all like myself.
Shivali Patel:
And you’re looking at this thinking, what is going on now? Watch this. If you’re an English speaker, you can instantly translate everything to English. You can even generate it into a separate column. For example, this keyword right here, recipientes hermeticos para alime. I don’t know if I pronounced that right for my native Spanish speakers, if that’s incorrect.
I’m sorry. Feel free to let me know how to fix that little butcher of mine. That might mean nothing to you, but instantly we see the translation is airtight food containers. And that is exactly what this product is. Fiambrera crystal. That translates to glass lunchbox. Maybe Spanish speakers in Mexico didn’t even know that term. Maybe that’s specific to Spain. We don’t know.
Shivali Patel:
We have tapa micro on this crystal glass, microwave lid. Instantly every keyword is translated into the language you understand. And this isn’t just in one tool. It exists in Cerebro in magnet and keyword tracker. And as you expand internationally, you need to understand what keywords you’re actually targeting. What are the highest search terms?
What do they mean in your own language? You could be a Chinese seller expanding into Amazon, Germany, translate German into Chinese instantly and understand the intent before optimizing your listing. International expansion shouldn’t mean blind optimization.
Use Helium 10s keyword translation feature to make sure you know exactly what you are ranking for and why.
Bradley Sutton:
I hope you guys are selling in multiple marketplaces and probably if you are, unless you’re a linguist, you probably do not speak fluently all those languages and you can do the keyword research in Helium 10, but hopefully this feature helps you guys to understand, you know, some of the nuances of the keywords that are popping off in different marketplaces, understanding them in your own native language. So make sure to take advantage of that Keyword Tracker and Cerebro and more tools to come. Guys, we are going to be in the e-comm mastery in Nashville, Carrie, myself, Shivali, make sure to come out in a couple of weeks.
Bradley Sutton:
Shivali and myself will be at the amazing days summit in Sofia, Bulgaria. All right. So if you guys want to get more information on that, go to h10.me/bulgaria and you can buy tickets directly from there. Hang out with us in person. If you would like to be interviewed and you’re in Bulgaria, if you’d like to be interviewed for the podcast or maybe even for a Helium 10 case study, let me know in advance, reach out to customer service, tell them, Hey, you heard that Bradley’s looking for people to interview in the Bulgaria conference. And I’d love to interview.
Bradley Sutton:
That would be a great to have you there. Another thing we have a special this month or only April until the end of the month for anybody who has never used Helium 10 ads or done a rule automation, people who upgrade to the diamond plan or you already have the diamond plan and you make your first rule in Helium 10 ads, it’s going to be 100% covered your entire ad spend for the month of April. You know, the normal cost, I think is like 2% of your ad spend.
Bradley Sutton:
So if you spend a thousand dollars in Amazon advertising it costs 20 bucks to use Helium 10 ads. If you’ve got the diamond plan, right? Um, obviously if you have like $10,000 to spend, it’s a little bit more money than that, but you want to give it a spin special deal. You’ll see it at the top of your screen and just opt in to the special deal so that you can have your ads completely free of charge this month. If you don’t have the diamond plan and you want a crazy deal, go to h10.me/tacosapril and you could see a couple different discounts. We have one for 30% off every month or you can actually get up to $2,000 off the annual diamond plan.
Bradley Sutton:
And then with either of these, you’d be able to take advantage of that free April month of Helium 10 ads. So special deal going on this month. All right guys, not much news today, but the news that came out was pretty impactful with those new fees and the potential Amazon taking away the ability with credit card. Let me know what you guys think is going to happen with these things. Are these new fees going to go away soon? Hopefully. Do you think Amazon really is taking away credit card use for Amazon advertising? How is that going to affect you? Let us know in the comments below. Otherwise we’ll see you guys next week to see what’s buzzing.
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Want to absolutely start crushing it on eCommerce and make more money? Follow these steps for helpful resources to get started:
- Get the Ultimate Resource Guide from Bradley Sutton, Carrie Miller, and Shivali Patel for tools and services that he uses every day to dominate on Amazon!
- New to Selling on Amazon? Freedom Ticket offers the best tips, tricks, and strategies for beginners just starting out! Sign up for Freedom Ticket.
- Trying to Find a New Product? Get the most powerful Amazon product research tool in Black Box, available only at Helium 10! Start researching with Black Box.
- Want to Verify Your Product Idea? Use Xray in our Chrome extension to check how lucrative your next product idea is with over a dozen metrics of data! Download the Helium 10 Chrome Extension.
- The Ultimate Software Tool Suite for Amazon Sellers! Get more Helium 10 tools that can help you optimize your listings and increase sales for a low price! Sign up today!
- Does Amazon Owe YOU Money? Find Out for FREE! If you have been selling for over a year on Amazon, you may be owed money for lost or damaged inventory and not even know it. Get a FREE refund report to see how much you’re owed!
- Check out our other Amazon FBA podcasts including the Serious Sellers Podcast, as well as our Spanish and German versions!
- You can also listen to the AM/PM Podcast on YouTube here!
