Hundreds of large sellers boycotted the site over unpopular ‘cash extraction’ policy changes.
Hundreds of large sellers on Amazon boycotted the platform’s advertising services following policy changes which sellers are calling “cash extraction”.
The changes include automatically deducting charges for advertising services from sellers earnings (rather than allowing sellers to pay by credit card), and Amazon paying out seller earnings seven days from the point of delivery, rather than the point of shipment.
The boycott was organised by a seller community of over 700 members called Million Dollar Sellers (MDS), CNBC reported. It’s not yet known how successful the boycott was, but the sellers collectively generate roughly $14bn in revenue, which could have a serious impact for Amazon.
“Sellers have complained for years, but this feels different,” MDS co-founder Eugene Khayman said in a post on X about the boycott. “The reason is simple: this is no longer just about irritation. It is about cash extraction.”
Amazon recently announced it will change how it pays seller earnings, and how payments are collected for advertising services, but this was delayed after the community backlash.
“We recently let a small number of advertisers know that we’d be updating their available payment methods to pay with their seller or vendor account balance or pay by invoice,” Amazon wrote in a message to advertisers posted on Tuesday on the Amazon Ads blog.
“Based on feedback we heard, we’re deferring this change until August 1, 2026 to give this group of advertisers more time to prepare.”
Fury at Amazon’s fuel surcharge
Despite the delay, advertisers continued with the collective action, as a reaction not only to the payment changes, but also to a recently implemented 3.5% temporary fuel surcharge to offset the surge in oil prices due to the geopolitical conflict in the Middle East
“We’re running out of f*cking margin,” said Michael Patrón, who runs an eight-figure Amazon business on X. “I think that’s why it keeps getting more and more frustrating.”
Patrón documented the impact on his X account, where he showed sales metrics for his site after he turned off pay per click (PPC) on his Amazon store.
“Sellers turned off PPC and are going to be more profitable because of it,” he says. “13 hours into the day and will most likely crack more profit today than any other day in the last week. Tomorrow could be a disaster but it looks like this is for sure going to lead to sellers pulling back on PPC – everyone was too scared to turn it off before but data doesn’t lie.”
Other sellers have followed suit in turning off ads, and have seen similar results. E-commerce seller Cameron Walker also said: “Our UK sales were up day-over-day today with 0 ads. Profit obviously way higher too. Not sure what is going on, but I like it!”
Amazon confirmed to Affiliate Leaders that this update “applies only to the small group of advertisers who have been contacted directly”. The tech giant did comment further on boycott.
