Amazon blinked. From this week's Selling From the Beach newsletter: Recently, a
By Max Sigurdson-Scott · April 23, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Amazon blinked.
From this week's Selling From the Beach newsletter:
Recently, a group of sellers got notices that credit cards were done for ad spend. Ad costs would be auto-deducted from their seller balance instead. No more float. No more points.
Word spread fast. Everyone assumed this was coming for all of us. Then Amazon-seller group MDS organized a one-day ad boycott. 700+ seven-figure sellers turned off their campaigns on April 15.
Amazon didnt even wait for boycott day. On April 14, they sent out a clarification email saying the change wont affect most sellers. "We understand this may have caused some confusion," they wrote. The corporate equivalent of "my bad."
The threat worked. Not because of lost revenue. It worked because the media picked it up. 700 of your highest-spending advertisers publicly coordinating a protest is the kind of thing that makes it into internal memos. Amazon deferred the rollout to August 1 (for some sellers) and threw in large $$ click credits for those affected.
MDS went ahead with the boycott anyway. Good for them.
Some armchair sellers (I think you know the most famous one) yelled loudly from the sidelines. I'm talking sellers with zero skin in the game. Who wouldnt dare show up at an Amazon event. Who didn't believe the boycott would do anything. Well they were wrong. Amazon caved. And they sat by the sidelines and warmed the bench.
Am I naive enough to think Amazon is actually going to permanently reverse course here? No. BUT… now that they've had to publicly say that people's credit cards are safe, they won't be able to change that decision soon… right?
If youre still earning points on your ad spend, enjoy it while it lasts.
But MDS proved collective action from sellers still works. It wasnt about the money. It was about the message.
Also in this week's issue: every Amazon fee in one 4-page cheat sheet you can tape to your wall, when letting customers just keep returns actually makes you more money, and the jetlag hack that uses your fork instead of melatonin.
If you missed it, the full issue is here: https://lnkd.in/gbgawdKQ
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