Amazon Lays Off Seller Support Staff in New Cuts

Amazon cut fewer than 1,000 corporate jobs this week, including selling partner support staff, according to Reuters and GeekWire reports.

If you sell on Amazon next to a Shopify store, the people who handle suspended listings and account-health cases just got thinner, and nobody outside Amazon knows by how much. If you run only your own store, this is a clean reminder of what a rented sales channel costs when the landlord restructures. That is the lens I use at Ecommerce Paradise for every marketplace headline, and it matters most for high-ticket stores where one stuck order or one suspended listing is worth thousands.

Below: what Amazon confirmed and what it did not, how this fits a run of cuts that began in October 2025, what it means for a store selling big-ticket products, and five moves to make this week. If you are new to the model, start with my guide to high-ticket dropshipping.

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Amazon Cuts Under 1,000 Jobs, Including Seller Support Staff

Amazon confirmed on Wednesday, Oct. 7, that it cut a small number of roles, mainly in its Stores business, which runs its main shopping site, according to Reuters. Business Insider reported the layoffs first, per Reuters.

An unnamed person familiar with the matter told Reuters that fewer than 1,000 white-collar workers were let go. Employees in the US, India and the UK received notices, per Reuters. Workers said they got emails on Tuesday, Oct. 6, according to Benzinga, which cited an internal Slack channel of almost 37,000 members as a source.

The teams hit differ by report. Reuters, citing posts from internal Slack channels, said the affected divisions include customer service and selling partner services. GeekWire listed customer service, selling partner support and retail engineering. Benzinga described customer service, marketplace support and engineering roles within retail operations. The labels vary, but all three name a seller-facing team.

Employees reportedly questioned severance terms, access to internal job postings and whether more notices are coming, per Benzinga. Amazon shares slipped about 0.58% to $258.41 in premarket trading Thursday, per Benzinga, and are up 12.61% year to date.

The cuts landed during Prime Big Deal Days, which ran Tuesday and Wednesday, per GeekWire. I covered the event’s results in my write-up of Prime Big Deal Days spending.

An unnamed Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement Wednesday night that the company adjusted parts of its Stores business to better deliver on its priorities, adding, “we’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles,” per GeekWire. Amazon gave no further detail. As of GeekWire’s report, Amazon had not filed a notice with Washington’s Employment Security Department, which is required for layoffs of 50 or more workers in the state.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chairman, discussed the earlier cuts in a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday. Asked by Bret Baier how 30,000 cuts fit with his view that AI will make work less necessary, Bezos said Amazon was “in a very special position” after growing headcount during the pandemic, per GeekWire.

The Stores business is most of Amazon. In the second quarter, online store sales rose 15% to $70.4 billion and third-party seller services revenue grew 16% to $46.8 billion, together 58% of the company’s $200.6 billion in revenue, per GeekWire. Quartz noted the cuts come as Amazon prepares to spend $220 billion on AI infrastructure but did not explain a link between the two.

From 30,000 Corporate Cuts to Selling Partner Services

This is the latest in a run. Amazon announced 14,000 corporate cuts in October 2025 and confirmed about 16,000 more in January 2026, roughly 30,000 roles or about 1% of its 1.56 million workforce, per Benzinga.

Selling Partner Services was already in the file. Retail Insight Network, in a report carried by Yahoo Finance on May 15, said Amazon had trimmed roles in the organization that supports third-party merchants with onboarding, logistics and account management. It put corporate eliminations at more than 57,000 since late 2022. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, has said AI-driven automation could reduce overall headcount, per Business Insider as cited by Retail Insight.

The seller side has been moving too. On Sept. 24, Marketplace Pulse reported that at its Accelerate seller conference Amazon announced sellers will be able to manage their eBay, Shopify, TikTok Shop and Walmart businesses from inside Seller Central.

In my June coverage, I wrote up Marketplace Pulse data showing active US sellers on Amazon fell from 584,000 in January 2025 to 500,000 in March 2026, and that fewer than 8,000 sellers generate half of an estimated $300 billion in US third-party sales volume. Those figures are Marketplace Pulse’s, not mine.

The counterpoint is that Amazon’s framing is mundane. The spokesperson said the changes help the company deliver on its priorities, and Benzinga reported Amazon told Business Insider the restructuring is aimed at “moving faster.” For scale, fewer than 1,000 roles is about 0.06% of a 1.56 million workforce, my arithmetic from Benzinga’s headcount and Reuters’ ceiling. In the coverage I reviewed, no outlet reported a change in seller support response times. Whether anything gets slower is unknown.

What Thinner Amazon Seller Support Costs a High-Ticket Store

My read is that the headcount is the smaller story and the pattern is the bigger one. Third-party seller services brought Amazon $46.8 billion last quarter, yet the teams that onboard sellers and sort out account problems showed up in cut lists in May and again this week. That tells me where Amazon ranks seller hand-holding: something to automate.

What follows is forecast and opinion, not reported fact. Humans matter when a listing is suspended, an account-health review stalls or a reimbursement case needs a second look. For a seller of $15 phone cases, a week of waiting is an annoyance. For a high-ticket seller it is real money.

Hypothetical math, labeled as such: you sell 8 units a day at an average $1,400 with a 20% gross margin. That is $2,240 a day in gross profit. A suspension that used to take three days to resolve and now takes seven costs you four extra days, or $8,960, while the ad spend keeps running. Swap in your own numbers; the shape holds.

Here is my rule of thumb on exposure. If Amazon is under 20% of your gross profit, a support delay is a bad week. Between 20% and 40%, it is a cash-flow event. Above 40%, Amazon is your employer and you have no benefits. Those thresholds are mine, not an industry standard.

Big-and-bulky goods raise the stakes further. A $1,400 grill or treadmill that arrives damaged is not a $12 refund. It is a freight claim, a pickup and a dispute. Customer service cuts, whatever their size, tend to push more of that work back onto the seller or the supplier. That is a guess about direction, not a measured effect, but it is the scenario I would stress-test first.

Amazon’s reach is real, so I am not telling you to quit. I am telling you to price the risk. My write-up of Prime Big Deal Days found just 2% of items topping $100, which suggests Amazon’s crowd is not mainly there for big-ticket purchases. Your best margins live where the buyer wants a human, financing and a real phone number, and that is your own store.

The Seller Central announcement raises the stakes. Amazon wants to be the dashboard where you run eBay, Shopify and TikTok Shop too. That makes Amazon’s support quality matter to more of your business, so keep your Shopify admin as the source of truth for products, prices and customers, and treat Seller Central as a sales channel that reads from it.

The other half of the fix is owning the support experience. A helpdesk like Gorgias puts every ticket in one queue you control. A good Klaviyo setup means the customer list is yours when a channel stumbles.

Stores that handle disputes early also avoid the worst costs, which I broke down in my guide to chargeback prevention for high-ticket stores.

The same logic applies to money. If one marketplace can restructure its support floor, one processor can freeze your payouts, and I laid out the backup plan in why your payment processor is a single point of failure. Dependence on a single channel is also one of the traps in the brutal truth about high-ticket dropshipping.

The counterweight to all of this: Amazon may well use automation to resolve cases faster than the old queue did. If so, the people who wasted days on hold win. I would still plan as if the human queue gets longer, because that plan costs little and the opposite plan costs a lot.

If you would rather not build the support, tracking and email layer yourself, my team builds and runs high-ticket stores through the turnkey done-for-you service. Not sure whether an agency or a done-for-you build fits you? See my breakdown of when a done-for-you build beats an agency.

Want 1-on-1 coaching to build a high-ticket store that does not depend on Amazon’s support queue? Get the coaching details →

Five Moves to Protect Your Margins From Amazon Support Cuts

Five moves for this week, in order of how fast they pay off:

Pull 90 days of gross profit by channel and compute Amazon’s share against the 20% and 40% lines above. Bookkeeping tools built for online sellers, such as Finaloop, make channel-level profit easy to see. If you have no clean numbers, that is your first project.
Build a suspension packet before you need one. Gather supplier invoices, authorized-dealer letters and your business documents in one folder so an appeal is a single send. Suppliers sourced through Inventory Source or Wholesale2b should be able to provide paperwork on request. Ask now, not mid-crisis.
Confirm your Amazon account is registered to a business entity, not your personal name, and that the business address on file is one you control. My guide to getting a business address without renting an office covers the options. I am not a lawyer, so check entity questions with one.
Tighten your own support. Set a response-time target for your store, route tickets through one helpdesk and add order tracking with AfterShip so buyers stop asking where the freight is. Shopify’s new automatically generated policies, which I covered in Shopify Now Writes and Updates Your Store Policies, can cover the boilerplate while you focus on service.
Put a 15-minute weekly account-health check on your calendar, and if you want a second set of eyes on your channel mix, Explore Turnkey Builds with my team. Use AI to draft first-pass replies, as I laid out in Claude for ecommerce, and keep a human on anything involving money.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many jobs did Amazon cut?
Fewer than 1,000 corporate roles, according to a person familiar with the matter cited by Reuters. Amazon itself said only that it eliminated “a small number of roles.”

Which Amazon teams were affected?
Reports differ. Reuters named customer service and selling partner services, GeekWire named customer service, selling partner support and retail engineering, and Benzinga named customer service, marketplace support and engineering.

Will Amazon seller support get slower?
Nobody has reported that yet. Amazon says it is restructuring to move faster, and the cut is small against a 1.56 million workforce. Plan for a longer queue anyway, using the high-ticket model of owning your customer relationship as your hedge.

Should a high-ticket store sell on Amazon at all?
That depends on your category and margins. Amazon brings reach, but my look at Prime Big Deal Days spending suggests its buyers skew toward lower-priced items. Treat it as one channel, not the business.

Is this a WARN Act event?
Washington requires notice for layoffs of 50 or more workers in the state, and GeekWire reported Amazon had not yet filed one when it published. Whether a filing follows is not yet known.

I do not have a store yet. Where do I start?
Pick a niche first. My high-ticket niches list has 150+ options. The free list at ecommerceparadise.com/niches is a quicker shortlist.

Do I need an LLC before opening a seller account?
Many marketplaces ask for business details, and an entity keeps personal assets separate. I walked through the timeline in how long it takes to get an LLC before you launch. I am not a legal advisor, so confirm specifics with an attorney.

Want my team to scale the store you already have so Amazon is one channel, not your lifeline? See the scaling service →

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Trevor Fenner

Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and world traveler from Seattle, Washington, and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.

He maintains homes in Seattle and Bali, spends most of the year overseas, and usually returns to Seattle for about a month each summer.

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