Amazon announces relief for associated SME sellers to cope with economic woes amid COVID

Amid the deepening COVID-19 crisis in India, E-commerce giant Amazon has given relief to small and medium businesses associated with them which have been impacted due to the devastating COVID-19 crisis. In a blog post on Saturday, Amazon India Vice President Manish Tiwary announced a host of measures by Amazon to help the sellers navigate the economic challenges caused by the pandemic. Amazon announced policy relaxations, fee waivers and refunds to the small and medium businesses selling their products on Amazon in light of the lockdowns and restrictions imposed in several states to control the surge of COVID-19.

Sell-on-Amazon or referral fee waiver, storage and removals fee reimbursement, a full refund of referral and fulfilment fees for cancelled orders, relaxing claim and reimbursement policy, relaxing account performance metrics are some of the relaxations offered by Amazon till May 31 to mitigate any negative impact of COVID-19 on small and medium businesses associated with the e-commerce giant. Amazon also said it is working to relax its policies regarding late shipment rate, order cancellation and returns to better support the sellers during this period.

The e-commerce giant has also announced recently that it will cover the vaccination cost of its employees, eligible sellers, associates, and operations partner network ecosystem Delivery Service Partner associates and their eligible dependents.

"We recently announced that we will be covering the COVID vaccine costs for our eligible sellers and their dependents. All sellers with an active listing on Amazon since last year. For our sellers, we will bear the cost of vaccination for themselves and one eligible dependent. I would also like to remind sellers that they have the option to avail on-demand disbursal of their funds from Amazon to ensure better capital availability," Manish Tiwary said in the blog post.

The company in another blog post had stated that it has set up comprehensive support mechanisms for employees and associates working with Amazon and hired through staffing agencies. Amazon India supports cost coverage for COVID-19 treatment, hospital search and coverage of prescribed COVID-19 tests, its earlier blog post read. 

Amazon has also imported and donated 100 ICU ventilators and also worked with various industry partners and NGOs to urgently bring in 10,000 oxygen concentrators and BiPAP machines into India to aid the country's fight against the pandemic.