Winter storm impact on order fulfillment

#1

SEAmod updated Paragraph 2 at 6:20 pm PST

If you live in Texas or any of the areas impacted by the severe winter storms, your safety and the viability of your business are important to us.

If the storm and any resulting seller-fulfilled order issues affect your performance metrics you may be receiving automated warning emails regarding your order performance metrics. When you are able to return to business operations, if you are required to appeal, please include a brief description of how your business was impacted. We will mitigate any impact to your account health as a result of the severe weather and its effects on your operations.

Here are some actions you can take to help protect your business:

  • Consider temporarily setting your seller-fulfilled listings to inactive if you anticipate that you are unable to meet your shipping service levels. For more information, see the Listing status for vacations, holidays, and other absences Help page.
  • If you anticipate that you cannot meet your shipping service levels, we encourage you to temporarily turn off the Prime badge on your offers to contain the impact on the customer experience. Once the weather improves, and you are able to ship orders on time, you can turn on your Prime badge.
  • Contact buyers through the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service about the status of their orders for seller-fulfilled orders to be shipped within areas potentially impacted by the winter storm.

No action is required for products fulfilled by Amazon, and Amazon will handle messaging for all FBA orders impacted by the storm. If you have shipments en route to fulfillment centers in the impacted region, you should expect delays and potential carrier reschedule notifications.

For more information, see the Delivery delays due to natural disasters Help page.

Late shipments due to the storm
Buyer from Texas opened an A-Z Claim
Amazon Suspensions Due to Fedex backlog from winter storm
Premium shipping eligibility suspended - Fedex
#2

This is really helpful. But honestly Amazon, it’s now Thursday afternoon. This would have been much more helpful 4-5 days ago.

#3

I stand corrected- I’ve said that Amazon would not take a kind approach several times. With that, I am truly and deeply impressed by this move. This is kind, considerate, and thoughtful of Amazon, and I respect them for helping their sellers out in this way. I’ve rarely been this happy to be wrong. Thank you, Amazon, for making a good choice. Despite the incoming vitriol from disgruntled sellers, you have my respect for this

#4

Surprising and great that Amazon is doing this. Bad that you put the statement above with no method or instructions on how to do it.

#5

The post offices were closed until today, I shipped all my pending orders in the morning when I confirmed I could drop off packages, but now I have the dreaded “Your account is at risk of deactivation” due to late shipment rate.

Where exactly is it that I can describe my situation on my account? I’ve clicked everywhere and there’s no field available or anything of the sort.

#6

So, IF we are to assume that the Buyer’s delivery MAY be affected we, the Sellers are required to preemptively contact the Buyer?

And tell them WHAT, exactly? How are we (the Sellers) to know WHICH deliveries MAY be affected, and HOW they may be affected? Exactly WHAT are we supposed to tell the Buyers?

And more importantly, IF the package delivery is delayed, will the Sellers be held responsible by Amazon even if they used “Amazon Buy Postage” and “shipped on time”?

I do not find Amazon’s message to be helpful at all… :frowning:

#7

This is how/where.

#9

what are you talking about? I have a notification in my account, it says " Your account is at risk of deactivation". How do I address that?

In other cases there’s an appeal button at least. For this, I have not gotten an e-mail, or appeal button somewhere in SC

#10

I have done all the advised, SFP off, vacation on, Everything dropped off USPS and UPS on Tuesday.
No orders pending.
However, contacting buyers is another obstacle all together. Amazon buyers are are amongst the most unresponsive between all platforms.

#11

So do you have an actual Performance Notification then?

#12

I’m going to add one more pertinent concern.

Am I to understand that we can “violate” the update to the Seller Agreement prohibiting pre-emptive buyer-seller contact? In other words, am I to understand this is a license to contact customers when common sense dictates that contacting them to apologize about shipping delays would in fact serve to delight Amazon customers?

Because:

  1. The way I understood the changes to those rules, this is not allowed. If I were a Terminator, which order do I follow? They conflict.

  2. I was going to update my customers in the Bay, but, surprise surprise, eBay already changed the order tracking page to display a weather advisory, and I was notified on Tuesday that (above all!!!) negative feedback due to weather related delays will automatically be stricken out [I misspoke, they aren’t Amazon, they _remove_ it outright] and performance metrics impacts will be automatically reversed. Their message basically ends with “You don’t have to do anything. Love & peace.”

Come on. You can’t tell me you’re incapable of that. Feedback reversal is a pipe dream here at this point, but Amazon should be far better equipped to automatically reverse metrics impact due to a severe weather event. Or can AWS not handle that?

For crying out loud.

#13

I agree. Amazon knows where the sellers are located. They know where the buyers are located. Why does the seller need to do anything? This included metrics.

I still say it is an odd change of stance by Amazon. But if you are going to do it. Then do it the easy way.

#14

I see the message “Your account is at risk of deactivation” when I go to Performance > Account Health which is what I want to address
There’s nothing under Performance > Performance Notifications

#15

My interpretation of their text is that you would include your explanation only if and when you receive a related Performance Notification.

#16

As I stated above, slim chance you would get in touch with any buyer. I had one contact me about a missing package and when I responded his mailbox was shot. So I just let it ride and have Amazon handle it as that is their responsibility.

#17

I see. . . well, there’s a big yellow box I see every time I go into my account reminding me that at any time my account could be deactivated. It’s kinda hard to wait until a Performance Notification shows up to act on it.

#18

I can certainly empathize with that. But since I don’t think one can email Seller Performance anymore, I’m not sure there’s much else you can do. I suppose you could try opening a case with Seller Support, but that will likely be a waste of your time and emotional energy.

made this a banner . It will appear at the top of every page until it is dismissed by the user. #19
#20

Oh come on, don’t you know that what Amazon posted is just a copy and paste from their help systems? The advice to contact buyers isn’t actual advice being offered by an actual living, breathing, thinking human in response to the situation in Texas. It’s just a generic copy and paste from some help page buried somewhere in Amazon’s files.

What you should take from their message is this:

OK, we’ll give everyone in Texas (or orders heading to Texas) a pass on this storm because it’s way worse than we thought and there’s a huge wave of demand for us to do something about seller metrics. If your metrics are affected, just tell us you were part of the Texas storm/power problems and we’ll push a button to ensure you don’t get suspended.

It’s the same way they reacted to the COVID issues. So, consider your account safe and deal with any customers the way you normally would.

#21

What about the orders that are going to Texas area and delayed due to bad weather condition? Are you going to do something about it too?