We sell grocery items with expiration date. The new low-inventory-level fee policy stipulates that we keep healthy stock levels at parent product level. Amazon says that it decides what is minimum inventory at parent-product level. But low-inventory fee is applied at SKU-level. Imagine having 3 SKUs with varying levels of stocks. Amazon calculates historical days of supply at SKU-level for these 3 SKUs and they each have different metrics for the application of low-inventory-level fee. So if one of these 3 SKUs has low stocks, all customer orders dispatched from this SKU will incur while it may not be the case for the rest of the SKUs.

See below for 2 SKUs of the same ASIN, they have different historical days of supply figures: The one with the 253 units of stock has a minimum inventory level of 62 and the other with 200 units of stock does not even have a min. level because it is a new SKU. So, contrary to Amazon's announcement, low-inventory-level fee is applied at SKU-level and not at parent product level.

Why is this important for grocery sellers? As an experienced grocery seller on Amazon, we isolate each expiration date party with a unique SKU to avoid customers receiving out-of-date products. This has been the sector-wide practice among grocery sellers on Amazon. See this discussion to learn more about this practice. In short, we create different SKUs for the same expiration dated batch to ensure that we close that SKU before the batch goes out of date. For example, we create SKU-01.2025 for products whose expiration date is January 2025. When we need to replenish stocks of the same ASIN but with a batch with different expiration date (let's say 03.2025), we create SKU-03.2025 so we isolate this second SKU from the previous replenishments. When it is around November 2024, we close and dispose of all remaining inventory of SKU-01.2025 because it is no longer sellable as per Amazon policies. In this way, we avoid customer complaints about expired products. This has been the way since AMAZON DOES NOT HAVE FIFO AT US WAREHOUSES UNLIKE EUROPE.

With the introduction of these new fees, Amazon compels sellers to only use 1 SKU so that new incoming inventory will contribute to the stock levels at the same SKU level, ensuring that sellers won't incur the low-inventory-level fee. This policy will soon overwrite most grocery sellers' established practice of using unique SKUs for unique batches. This way sellers will save on fees and customers will likely to suffer with increasing number of expired products.

I believe Amazon should waive this fee for Grocery ASINs, otherwise customers will start receiving more than usual expired products.