For some time now, Amazon’s referral fee for Books, Music, Video and DVD (BMVD) products with a total sales value (product plus shipping) up to £5.00 has been set at 5.1% plus VAT (6.12% including VAT). The 5.1% rate seems to be applied correctly to Books, but Music orders are still being charged at the higher 15.3% rate (18.36% including VAT), which is intended for orders with a total sales value above £5.00.

Apologies if this issue has already been raised in another discussion thread (I couldn’t see one anywhere). Sellers of low-value Music, Video and DVD products should be aware that they are likely to have been overcharged on the referral fees for the last few months. I have raised this issue repeatedly with Seller Support, who say that they are aware of the issue and have referred it to the relevant ‘Technical Team’, but it is taking ages to get sorted. In the meantime, they do refund the overcharged fees periodically to my payment account.

Here’s the latest example of overcharging which I have had to report to SS (in addition to eight other instances where I’m still waiting for a refund):

Order # 205-4226636-3613164: ASIN B000002L9T (Music): shipped on 21 July: total sales value £4.99: you charged a total of £1.51 referral fee and variable closing fee, including referral fee at the rate of 15.3% plus VAT, which is meant for orders with a total sales price above £5.00. Please reimburse the sum of £0.60, since the correct referral fee plus variable closing fee should have been £0.91 (£0.31 referral fee at the rate of 5.1% plus VAT plus variable closing fee of £0.50 plus VAT).
Please refund this sum a.s.a.p. and PLEASE SORT OUT THIS ERROR IN YOUR SYSTEM WHICH REPEATEDLY OVERCHARGES ON LOW-VALUE BMVD (Music) ORDERS!! Thank you.

Athough the individual amounts being overcharged are small (less than a pound per order), they do mount up when there are several such orders, and Amazon should not be charging the 15.3% referral fees for these low-value orders!