IT suppliers: Amazon is starting to pay its debts. Some of them, anyway

'I have no idea how many pence in the pound Amazon has offered to others'

Amazon has presented irate distributors and vendors with a deal that will see them receive some payment for historical disputed deliveries stretching back a year.

As we exclusively revealed last month, suppliers are battling the retail giant to get paid for orders they claimed were delivered from the spring of 2015.

The figure is believed to run into seven figures.

The problem first showed up after Amazon switched over internal systems in calendar Q1 last year, suppliers had told us. Subsequently, delivery queries mounted as it tried to reconcile deliverables to actuals and invoices.

Suppliers tell us Amazon has agreed to cough up for some of the bills for specific dates – payments to each differ, so we will not publish the details because we don’t want to give Amazon ammo to fire at sources for making their grievances public.

“There is a settlement on the table but Amazon has not agreed to pay the total bill,” said a source at one of the companies affected. “I have no idea how many pence in the pound Amazon has offered to others. I have talked to half a dozen suppliers about this.”

Others confirmed Amazon had contacted them and agreed to cough some of the monies owed following the El Reg expose.

“Amazon is not saying it won’t pay [additional future payments], they are chipping away at it. They are being quite straight forward – they are open to further settlements”, another expectant supplier said. It seemed, the industry figure added, that Amazon was working through its own systems to determine what it owes.

A third supplier said it was in the process of getting bills resolved: “We never stopped having dialogue, and were not at the level of panic that others got to”.

A couple of distributors last year made the decision to stop supplying Amazon. We are told this was linked to the payment issue and the levels of margin available. Others haven’t – yet – taken this hardline approach with one of the largest retailers in the world.

We asked Amazon if it is committed to settling its bills in full, and when this might be. The PR team has yet to confirm if it will comment. ®