How much in tariff refunds will you get?

This This is the Billiondollar Sellers podcast, your go-to source for cutting edge strategies and success stories from the world of Amazon and e-commerce. Buckle up and get ready to take your Amazon business to new heights. Don't forget to subscribe to the Billiondoll Sellers Newsletter. Welcome your host. Welcome your host, Kevin King. >> Hey everyone, welcome to the Billion Dollar Sellers podcast. I'm your host, Kevin King, and today is April 20th, 2026. Feels good to be back on a regular podcast after attending the Ecom Mastery AI event in Nashville last week, but man, what an event. If you were there, thank you for showing up. The energy was incredible. The speakers were topnotch, and I'll definitely be sharing some takeaways over the next few episodes. All right, big show today. We're talking tariff refunds because CBP just launched the system to start paying sellers back. We've also got some uncomfortable survey data on where Amazon sellers actually stand right now. A story about sellers literally recording a song out of frustration, a really smart hero image tip, Amazon's new review sharing rules, and why AI adoption is way smaller than you think. But first, here's your Stunt Bezos question for today. Google's AI overviews rely heavily on Facebook and Reddit as many information sources. So, the question is, how inaccurate can Google's AI overviews be in percentage of time? Think about that and I'll give you the answer at the end of the show. All right, let's get into the big one. How much in tariff refunds will you get? So CBP just launched their tariff refund system today, April 20th at 8 a.m. Eastern time. It's called CAPE, which stands for consolidated administration and processing of entries. Uh this is the system that's going to process refunds for those tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down back in February. And the numbers here are massive. They're expecting to handle roughly $127 billion in refunds based on the 82% of eligible importers who have already registered for electronic payment. Uh so here's how it works. Only importers of record or their authorized customs brokers can file. You need a secure data portal account with your bank info on file for a refunds. You submit a CSV file called a cape declaration through the ACE portal's upload button in the Cape tab. Each declaration can list up to 9,999 entries and you can submit multiple declarations. Once it's validated, ACE strips the EA tariff provision and associated duties from each entry. Then CBP liquidates or reiquidates and consolidates the refunds. Now, there are some important caveats here. Phase 1 only covers certain unlquidated entries and entries within 80 days of liquidation. The more complex scenarios come later. Refunds typically take 60 to 90 days after acceptance unless there's a compliance review. And heads up, your refund can be reduced by a overp payments or underpayments across the entire entry and it can also be diverted to offset any unpaid debts you owe the US government. So if you got anything outstanding, they'll take it out of your refund. Uh full details are on the CBP refunds website and there's a link in the show notes. All right, next up, some real talk about where sellers are right now. There is a survey of 900 sellers done in February and March of this year and the results are pretty sobering. Only 23% said they're thriving, meaning revenue up and margins up. 31% are what they call grinding. Revenues up but margins are flat or down. 38% the biggest group are distressed. Revenue and margins both declining. And 8% are consolidating flat revenue but margins improving. So, if you add it up, almost 70% of sellers are either grinding or distressed. There's a lot of people in pain right now. And that brings us to the story of sellers hitting a breaking point and actually recording a song about it. Amazon sellers aren't just frustrated anymore. They're fed up. Over the past few weeks, Amazon has piled on change after change. Each one squeezing margin and cash flow that was already thinned from tariffs and energy spikes from their Iran war. First, the 3.5% fuel search charge that hit April 17th. sellers eat it or pass it to consumers who are already stretched. Then back in mid-March, Amazon quietly flipped the payout clock for a chunk of US sellers. Used to be got paid 7 days after an item shipped. Now it's 7 days after delivery. That's a real cash flow hit, especially on slower shipping lanes. And then Amazon announced they'd stop letting some sellers pay for ads with a credit card, pulling ad costs straight out of your earnings instead. For a lot of small sellers, ad spend is their third largest expense, and that 3% cash back they earn on it is a real money. After serious backlash, Amazon punted the roll out to August 1st, 2026. But the message was loud and clear. Stack all of this on top of Amazon's average cut of each sale, crossing 50% for the first time back in 2022. And you get why Michael Patron put it bluntly. We're running out of margin. So, last Wednesday, Million-Dollar Sellers, that's a community of more than 700 members doing about $14 billion in collective revenue, organized a 24-hour advertising boycott. Hundreds of large sellers went dark on ads for the whole day. MDS co-founder Eugene Kairen framed it clearly. Sellers have complained for years, but this time it's different because it's not irritation anymore. It's cash extraction. EDSN Dream Hunter member Adam Ranquist called it a breaking point. And Charles Chakalo, a 15-year Amazon merchant, said the changes effectively shortened cash flow from 90 days to zero. A reminder that this is not your business. And then here's where it gets fun. Last Sunday, a group of Ecom Mastery AI attendees staying for the mastermind and Funan Nashville rolled into a recording studio with Tyler Kane and Megan Lindsay. Megan is a Billboard number one recording artist and was the runner up on The Voice season 8. The group crowdsourced the lyrics on the spot, channeling every bit of seller frustration. The fees, the squeeze, the delayed payouts, all of it. Tyler and Megan built a song around it. Took the group into the booth and recorded the whole thing. Lyrics to final track in a couple of hours. It's part anthem, part group therapy, and 100% what happens when you put a room full of fedup sellers in front of two Nashville pros who know how to turn a feeling into a hook. You can check out the song in the videos. A link to it in the show notes. Quick break. If you want to take your Amazon PPC game to the next level with AI, there's a free 5-day challenge coming up April 27th through May 1st. You'll learn the exact AI powered PPC systems, plug-andplay agents, and campaign templates that Sophie Society uses to manage over $4 million a month in Amazon ad spend across more than 800 brands. It's live daily from 12:00 to 2:45 Eastern. Link to reserve your spot is in the show notes. All right, now here's today's seller tip of the day, and this one's really good. It comes from Econ Mastery AI speaker John Aspenol. And the core idea is this. Your hero image has one job, and that's to sell the experience. Never show just a closed container. Shoppers can't touch, smell, or open your product on Amazon. Your hero image has to do that job for them. If it's a lotion, show the smear. If it's a supplement, show the capsules. If it's a powder, show the scoop. He shared a great example. A mint chocolate protein puff brand was losing a head-to-head product pinion test with the sealed rapper Hero image. Clean, professional, but forgettable. Three changes flipped it. They pulled the bar out of the wrapper so shoppers could see the actual product. Added a mint leaf and a piece of chocolate to visualize the flavor and boosted the green huge to reinforce the mint association. New image won the poll 27 to 23. Pride didn't change. The shopper could just finally imagine eating it. And it applies everywhere. Candle, show the flame and a whisp of smoke. Face cream, show the smear with visible texture. Coffee, show the beans or a steaming cup next to the bag. cinnamon product, put the ingredient right next to it, whether it's lavender, eucalyptus, or citrus. Amazon is a visual only medium. The more sensory your hero image, the small of a gap between browsing online and standing at a store holding it. So ask yourself, is your hero image showing a closed container or an experience? All right, next up, Amazon review sharing. This is important. Increments on digital is reminding sellers that between February 12th and May 31st, Amazon's rolling out category by category a new rule for how reviews share between child asens. The short version, reviews only share when the differences between variations don't affect product functionality. Things like color, size, volume, and set when it's a secondary attribute, those still share. But flavor, performance altering, size differences like a two slot versus four slot waffle maker, bundles versus standalone, platform specific versions like PC versus Xbox, and fit differences like slim versus regular, those no longer share. And here's where it hurts. In search results, your star ratings and review counts will only reflect eligible shared variations. So your 3,000 review family could become a 40 review child overnight. Sponsored products ads pull the new reduced counts automatically and Vine reviews get reinstated to the original child only. So sibling distribution unwinds. Now here's how Amazon decides. They read your variation theme attribute, not the actual products. If the theme says flavor, no share. But if the theme says pattern, then it shares. And don't try to game it. If Amazon catches inconsistent variation use, they kill sharing across the entire family, not just the mismatched children. So here's what you should this week. Open Seller Assistant and Seller Central and check which of your variations are eligible right now. Don't wait for the 30-day email. Audit your theme attributes and manage all inventory. Make sure the theme matches the actual difference, like color variation for color, not quantity. Redirect your value and request review efforts toward children that are going to lose share reviews but have strong sales and weak individual review counts. And consider consolidating variations that only work because of borrow review counts into fewer, stronger children. One piece of good news though, this isn't a oneshot window. If you fix your theme after the change hits your category, reviews will reshare for newly eligible products, so it's not too late. Now, quick shout out to Stack Influence. If you're looking to boost your Amazon rankings, check them out. They let you send free products to micro influencers at scale. We're talking thousands of collabs per month, all automated. Big brands like Magic Spoon, Unilver, and Mary Ruth Arx have used it to hit page one and increase monthly revenue as high as 13 times in as little as two months. You pay influencers with products only. No negotiating fees. And you get full rights to all the image and video content they create. If you sign up this month, you get 10% off. Links in the show notes. All right, last big topic today. AI adoption is still tiny. AI dominates the conversations, but it doesn't dominate behavior. Not even close. A small group of power users creates the illusion that AI is already everywhere. But the numbers tell a very different story. About 84% of the world has never touched an AI tool. The gap between awareness and actual daily use is massive. Only 15 to 25 million people globally pay around $20 a month for AI on any platform. And fewer than 5 million are advanced users running coding assistance or automation frameworks to build real workflows. The hype is universal. The adoption isn't. And that's your opportunity. If you're already using AI in your business, you're way ahead of almost everybody. Before we wrap up, a few more hot picks for you. California says Amazon punishes sellers for lower prices elsewhere. That's worth a read. It is a good piece on how a proper Amazon SEO strategy actually improves your PPC results. An interesting stat, only a fraction of Tik Tok trends last beyond 2 weeks. Google's new AI powered shopping is raising a bunch of new questions. and Andy Jasse just put out his annual letter to Amazon shareholders, which is always a good read. Links to all those are in the show notes. And here's your parting shot for today. Champions behave like champions before they're champions. They have a winning standard of performance before they are winners. That's from Bill Walsh. And I think about that a lot. It's not about waiting until you've made it to start acting like you've made it. The standard comes first. Oh, and remember that Stump Bezos question from the beginning? Google's AI overviews pull from Facebook and Reddit as top sources and that makes them inaccurate. What percent of the time? The answer is 10%. 10% of the time Google's AI overviews are flatout wrong. That's one in 10. So if you rely on those for your research, double check. All right, that's all for today, folks. I'll see you again on Thursday. This is Kevin King signing off from the Billiondoll Sellers podcast.