Important Updates to Seller Fulfilled Prime
Dear seller,
We are always listening to our customers, and Prime members consistently tell us they want free and fast shipping. This is why Amazon is making significant investments in our fulfillment and transportation capabilities to make Prime faster, transitioning from a Two-Day to a One-Day delivery program. As we continue to improve the Amazon Prime experience for customers, we want to ensure Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) meets customers’ expectations of Prime.
We know that as a seller enrolled in SFP, you work hard to provide customers with a delightful shopping experience. Despite these good intentions, even before COVID-19, fewer than 16% of SFP orders in the US met the Prime Two-Day delivery promise customers expect, in large part because many sellers do not operate on weekends. As a result, we are making the following changes to this program in the US:
•Starting February 1, 2021, SFP sellers will be required to use shipping methods that support Saturday delivery and pick-ups to provide customers with a more consistent delivery experience throughout the week. View your Shipping Settings here (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/sbr/ref=xx_shipset_dnav_help?#settings) and click ‘General Shipping Settings’.
•Starting February 1, 2021, SFP sellers will be required to meet targets for one- and two-day delivery promises. These delivery promise metrics measure the percentage of customer page views that displayed a one or two-day delivery promise when your SFP offer was the featured offer, regardless of whether a purchase was made. The delivery speed targets (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/GM2KN7HAZM4WHA6L) ensure that customers have a consistent experience regardless of who fulfills their Prime order.
•To help you meet the targets for one- and two-day delivery promises, we are launching a new dashboard (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-fulfilled-prime/seller-performance) that measures the quoted delivery speed of your SFP offers (please note dashboard may not be available to all sellers until later this afternoon). This dashboard monitors two new metrics: Percent of One-Day or less Detail Page Views and Percent of Two-Day or less Detail Page Views.
•Starting February 1, 2021, SFP sellers will be required to have nationwide delivery coverage for all standard size delivery products. You can see which of your products are standard size or oversize on the Manage SFP page (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-fulfilled-prime/analytics/).
We recognize these changes are meaningful. We want to make sure you have plenty of time to determine how these changes affect your business and to make any adjustments you may need, which is why these new requirements will not take effect for more than five months. While the current performance of the program is not meeting customer expectations, these changes will help deliver an experience our Prime customers expect, including fast delivery. We will continue innovating with tools and offerings that help make SFP more compelling to you and our shared customers. You and SFP are important to Amazon and our customers, and to help you navigate these changes, we have launched a guide in Seller Central (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/GVB5YNDGLQG4GYGR) with details, examples, and answers to your questions. We have also set up a dedicated support team that you can contact at sfp-performance@amazon.com.
Regards,
The Seller Fulfilled Prime Team
Seller_6AbcMHDCVOuQB
I honestly have no clue if it will make sense to do SFP anymore.
It is one thing to make sure orders arrive by Saturday, it is another thing to have to ship on Saturdays as well.
Seller_nkBcHPWfscgWg
Blech.
Seller_Om5AiXcBkAhzD
So to understand this correctly we need to ship Saturdays and also offer Prime Nationwide. I don’t know about others that do SFP but we do very well with it only doing regional on the east coast. This is a huge blow to my business as I am not interested in shipped items nationwide prime it would cost way more than the orders themselves. I do SFP because I like to keep my business in my own control and have our own personal touch on it. I don’t understand the rationality of forcing sellers to do nationwide prime, other than they want us to use the Amazon warehouse. Hopefully there is enough of a blowback from this that they reconsider it. Extremely disappointed in Amazon with this one.
Seller_jceOzRHLPQ3DZ
Amazon can’t get a Prime order to me themselves in 10 days let alone 2. Not only that, we dropped to 98% on time delivery once and lost prime for a month. How in the ever-loving universe is there only a 16% on time rate across the board for SFP? Who are the companies you’re allowing to keep up those terrible metrics?! Are you sure you don’t mean FBA is 16%? Because getting shipments from Amazon directly take longer than any SFP seller or any other American ecommerce site. Every. Single. Time.
I’m not going to add a day of labor and keeping the lights on for Saturday pickups. It’s not going to happen. In February your chickens will come home to roost.
Seller_e0mOaORRvrg4n
Amazing how shortsighted Amazon is. If you do this you will lose a very large majority of SFP sellers. Most of us will end prime. Less product for customers and less money in Amazons pockets. Hopefully this will change by February but I doubt it.
Seller_3QIhzNaiqbTwC
And what about one day delivery ? In typical Amazon fashion they aren’t clear at all- but they seem to be saying that either 30% (standard) or 17% (oversize) of our offers must display as one day delivery ?
If that is true- then of course there is no way we could continue with prime.
Seller_DYigzOHupV0FE
Personally, during the last few months I’ve had more delays in receiving Amazon fulfilled Prime orders than the ones from SFP sellers.
Seller_yovmzQTPG8BxX
So disappointed in this announcement, If Saturdays are mandatory then I’m out. It’s a good program, why on earth change it? Amazon you can’t even ship out your PRIME orders on the same day? Why do you demand it of SFP?
Seller_1UjgrsBO52hr3
Are the small and light templates being phased out? Or do they remain the same (3 day/4 day) just with Saturday now counted?
Seller_zc50DVO3FE5fz
I’m sorry but the email is honestly confusing as all heck. It’s not clear at all. “Required to have nationwide delivery coverage” - notice how it doesn’t say Prime? So does it mean that you just need to offer your products nationwide and not limited to only your Prime regions?
The “new dashboard” doesn’t exist with their new metrics. Email makes it sound like it’s available now, but nothing there except the normal dashboard. And no ETA. So how are we suppose to judge these new metrics without even seeing them, and not even providing an ETA?
