Announced this year, Amazon’s FBA Grade and Resell Program is bringing new life — and new opportunity — not only to Amazon sellers, but to their products and the customers that buy them.
FBA Grade and Resell is a win-win for the entire purchase and supply chain.
Key Insights
Impact
- Opens up the secondhand market to your products
- Reduces your workload when managing returns
Investment
- Items deemed Unsellable have no processing fee
- Items deemed sellable have a flat per-unit processing fee, from $1.50 to $4.10, applied at time of relisting
Opportunities
- Recover value: Turn customer returns into sales.
- Set it and forget it: Streamline customer returns management so you can focus on your operations.
- Support sustainability: Enhance your reputation with customers by offering pre-owned products.
Sellers who use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) can now take advantage of Amazon’s Grade and Resell service to recover value from their customer returns.
Eligible FBA returns are inspected to see if they can be relisted for sale, thus giving a second life to products that might otherwise have found no home.
What is FBA Grade and Resell?
“We do tend to see Grade and Resell has a higher recovery than some of our other channels. So it does help with sellers’ bottom line.”
~Kylee Brown, Senior Product Manager, Amazon
In a nutshell, FBA Grade and Resell allows you to recover value on unfulfillable inventory. After you enroll in Grade and Resell, eligible FBA returns are inspected to see if they can be relisted, instead of returning, removing or disposing of the product.
When an item is returned, Amazon evaluates its condition and creates the listing on your behalf, with you as the seller of record. If the item is deemed resellable, one of four conditions are assigned:
- Used–Like New
- Used–Very Good
- Used–Good
- Used–Acceptable
You set the price and manage the listing, just like you would for your current new and used items.
Listen as Brown explains re-commerce and the FBA Grade and Resell program:
Fees and Eligibility
A flat per-unit processing fee is assessed based on the size and weight of the item. If your item is graded as Unsellable, no processing fee will be charged.
The processing fee is applied at the time of relisting.
| Size Class | Item Weight | Fee |
| Small standard-size | 16 oz or less | $1.50 |
| Large standard-size | 21 lb or less | $1.80 |
| Small/medium oversize | 151 lb or less | $2.65 |
| Large/special oversize | Over 151 lb | $4.10 |
When an item is relisted through Grade and Resell, Amazon provides customers with a detailed description of its condition. This includes information about any minor imperfections, packaging details, and functionality.
Since you manage the used listing and control the price, you control the recovery value. To ensure a net positive transaction after fees are applied, Amazon recommends you enroll inventory with an average selling price above $13.
Seller Eligibility
The program is currently available in six marketplaces. Any seller that’s selling in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, or Spain is able to enroll in the program.
There are no seller-facing restrictions. However, there are product restrictions.
Product Eligibility
Eligibility for Amazon Grade and Resell is restricted to customer-returned FBA inventory located in fulfillment centers that are enabled for this program. Eligibility is also subject to legal, safety, regulatory, and other guidelines.
A list of a few ineligible products includes:
- Categories and products that cannot be sold in used condition (child car seats, for example)
- Dangerous goods (hazmat)
- Consumables, such as food
- Categories and products that require approval
- Meltable FBA inventory
Amazon gives examples, lists fees and covers all details of the program on their FBA Grade and Resell help page.
Getting Started
If all of the above sounds great, which in most cases it definitely does, the next question is simple: “How do I get started?”
Luckily, the answer is almost as simple as the question.
You can enroll in FBA Grade and Resell from your Automated unfulfillable settings. In your Seller Central, go into FBA settings, then automated unfulfilled settings. That just happens to be where a good bit of Amazon’s program settings are. There you can enroll, add your price settings, and choose ASINs’ to exclude.
Set Your Pricing
For each item, you provide a price for each condition type. This is the price the used item will be sold for. Prices are expressed as a percentage discount of the new price.
Example: Say you set the Very Good condition for a particular product at 75%. If that item is returned and assigned a condition of Very Good, it will retail for 75% of the new price when Amazon creates the listing.
Once you enroll, you’ll start to see these listings show up in your Manage Inventory page. From that point, you can basically treat them like any other listing. You can adjust the pricing if you want to, create removal orders and perform other actions you would with a standard listing.
Customers and the Secondhand Market
Sustainability is becoming more and more important to consumers. As proof of that positive trend, Amazon has recorded 100 million customer switches to sustainable alternatives.
This is great to see.
While “secondhand” isn’t quite the same as “sustainable”, both have the net effect of saving resources and reducing environmental impact. After all, a coffee maker that didn’t have to get tossed out but instead got put to use is a big step in the right direction.
Customers are flocking to that concept and embracing the secondhand market. Some even look specifically for used items.
“A lot of customers are really passionate about buying secondhand, and deal hunting, and providing a second life to products. Grade and resell allows you to tap into that customer base.”
~Kylee Brown, Senior Product Manager, Amazon
Outside of finding a second home for products and the added trust that comes with that, using Grade and Resell helps you save on things like removal, liquidation and disposal fees — fees that won’t have to be paid because Amazon is grading these items and relisting them for sale.
When it comes to the reselling of returned items, expect the uptake of both sellers and customers to increase.
Reduce Waste, Increase Profit
Amazon’s FBA Grade and Resell program is like giving returned items a second chance to serve the customers they were made to serve.
The program:
- Turns returned inventory into profit instead of a loss
- Reduces waste
- Makes a perfectly good item more affordable for a shopper looking to save
- Increases trust in your brand
With Grade and Resell Amazon does the heavy lifting, plus you get a chance to make something on a product you might otherwise have had to throw away or write off.
Consider this new service for FBA sellers. Give a second life to your returned items and, in the bargain, reap the rewards.
Carbon6: Your Smarter Path to Profit
From resources to free tools, services to software, Carbon6 is in your corner with the reimbursement and advertising solutions you need to scale your Amazon business. As a seller, you know how fast things move in that world, how competitive it is, and how valuable the exact-right help can be when it’s needed most.
Want the inside track? One way to connect and stay informed is through our weekly newsletter.
