Q3 figures, partial refunds and a €2 customs fee

Amazon Q3: the marketplace grows, retail stands still

Vendors can read a clear signal in Amazon's third-quarter figures: the company's own retail business grew only 1.6 percent, while revenue from marketplace sellers rose 9.4 percent. Retail's share of total revenue keeps falling and is now just under 34 percent. Amazon generated 201.9 billion US dollars in total, 12.1 percent more than a year earlier, and reached an operating margin of 13.9 percent, as high as it has ever been. AWS now delivers most of the profit: the cloud business grew 39.3 percent and accounts for 63 percent of operating income.

Prime Day shifts the curve

The drop from 19.6 percent growth in the second quarter to 12.1 percent in the third is mostly a calendar effect. In 2026 Prime Day fell in June, a year earlier it was in July. Back in August we already expected this to reverse in the third quarter. The effect shows most clearly in retail and in advertising, which grew only 10.9 percent. Across both quarters together, Amazon is up 15.7 percent. For the holiday quarter the company expects 240 to 247 billion US dollars in revenue.

We go into the Q3 figures in more detail in the November edition of our roundtable. The full recording is on our YouTube channel.

FBA partial refunds can now follow the return reason

Sellers who use FBA can apply partial refunds more precisely: Amazon now lets sellers decide for themselves which return reasons lead to a partial refund while the customer keeps the product. Until now the offer applied across the board to every eligible reason. For the whole catalogue, sellers can store different percentages by reason in up to three configurations. Alternatively they upload an Excel file and set the percentages per ASIN and return reason, while everything else follows the normal returns process.

What stays the same, and where Amazon still decides

Sellers already in the programme do not have to do anything. Until they change the settings, partial refunds still apply to every eligible reason. Whether a customer receives a partial refund at all is still checked automatically by Amazon, based on the customer profile and past purchases. The Returns and recovery insights tool shows which reasons pay off, with the most common return reasons. For every reason that is not selected, the item comes back to the fulfilment centre and can be inspected.

Our REVOIC podcast "Amazon News und Update" comes out every other Friday on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music. There we talk in more detail about the topics in this newsletter. We look forward to your feedback!

Real-time chat with customers: beta in Seller Central

In the US, Amazon appears to be letting some sellers chat live with shoppers who are still considering a purchase. In Buyer Messages, Seller Central shows a switch labelled "Enable Real-Time Chat", marked as a beta, as observations from the market show. We can see it in our own US Seller Central as well. Sellers who turn it on are shown to customers as online and can answer questions before the purchase, directly in the chat. Amazon has not announced the feature officially. The switch is also said to appear in Germany in isolated cases. The beta is active in our own seller account too, though we have not tried it yet.

An opportunity with a high support load

For sellers, the opportunity is a direct line to customers who have not decided yet: questions about fit, compatibility or delivery can be settled immediately. The catch is the effort. Someone has to cover the chats reliably during shopping hours, and in our view that is close to a role of its own. A slow chat, or one that goes unanswered, is widely seen in the industry as worse than no chat at all.

Our recommendation

Anyone who already sees the switch should turn it on only if someone can reliably cover the chats during shopping hours. A test works best on the most important ASINs, measured by the share of questions that turn into an order. Sellers in Germany can look under buyer messages to see whether the switch has appeared for them.

Full funnel in the US: one campaign, one budget

Advertisers in the US can now bundle Sponsored Ads, display, video and streaming TV in a single campaign with one budget. Amazon has opened full-funnel campaigns in the Amazon Ads Agent to all US advertisers, after they launched as an open beta on 29 September 2026. Amazon has not given a timeline for Germany or the EU. Anyone selling on the US marketplace can use the feature already.

Advertisers provide products, a budget, creatives and optionally a ROAS threshold. According to the announcement, Amazon's AI takes the rest: it chooses the formats and allocates the budget across funnel stages in real time.

What advertisers should expect on budget and measurement

Amazon charges CPC or CPM depending on the placement and does not add a fee for the orchestration, but it does require a minimum daily budget, and the amount is not disclosed. On Amazon's own beta numbers, long-term ROAS was 67 percent higher than with formats set up separately, and the cost per purchase from new-to-brand customers fell by 29 percent. The campaigns run alongside existing setups and do not replace them. They can be judged properly only after a learning phase of about two weeks.

Customs: €2 extra per line item since November

Anyone shipping goods from outside the EU directly to consumers in the EU has paid a customs processing fee of €2 per item, or per customs tariff line, since 1 November 2026. Amazon stresses that the EU requires this fee and that it is not an Amazon fee of its own. It applies to FBM and FBA, regardless of the value of the goods. On shipments up to €150 it comes on top of the €3 duty that has applied since July. On more expensive shipments it comes on top of value-based duty and import VAT.

Who pays the fee, and how

With FBM, the carrier invoices the seller and remits the fee to customs. With Remote Fulfillment, Amazon builds it into the price customers see on the detail page and at checkout. The final price in the EU stores can therefore sit above the seller's own price, while Seller Central still shows the price without import charges.

Since the same day, customs declarations for shipments up to €150 also require product identifiers such as the ASIN and the model number. If they are missing, the declaration can be rejected.

Since 30 October, Amazon has been delivering fresh groceries the same day in selected areas of Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich, directly in the regular Amazon.de basket.

With DVA+, Amazon bundles Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and DSP campaigns into one AI-optimised buy, which industry reports say starts in the US from the end of October.