Fast and accurate delivery is essential for customers and often determines where they choose to shop. Over time, we've learned that the best way to ensure reliable on-time delivery for customers is to set accurate handling and transit times and to choose reliable shipping services. To help reduce late deliveries and improve delivery speeds, we’re changing our on-time delivery rate (OTDR) policy.

Effective September 25, 2024, you'll need to maintain a minimum 90% OTDR without promise extensions to have seller-fulfilled products listed on Amazon.com. We will start by addressing sellers with the lowest OTDR performance. For a great customer experience, we recommend that you maintain a 95% or greater OTDR for all seller-fulfilled orders. This policy does not apply to offers using the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service because sellers are not responsible for on-time delivery promises for FBA orders.

Also, we'll make the following changes to shipping settings to help sellers with Professional selling plans set accurate delivery dates:

• Transit time settings: On August 25, 2024, our transit time requirements will be updated to match the delivery capabilities of shipping services. If you're shipping within the contiguous United States (excluding Hawaii, Alaska, and US territories), you can set a maximum transit time of five days for standard shipping and eight days for free economy shipping. To learn more, go to Default transit time.

Note: The 5 day maximum Transit Time applies to all SKUs except media such as Books, Magazines, and DVDs.

• Handling time settings: On September 25, 2024, to help improve the accuracy of handling time, we'll enable automated handling time for sellers that have a manually configured handling time that is two or more days slower than their actual handling time (also known as a handling time gap). To see your handling time gap, review your Fulfillment Insight dashboard.

We understand changes like this are significant and require time to prepare. You can manage your delivery dates using the tools we've provided, or you can manually adjust your transit time and handling time settings. We designed these tools to set accurate delivery dates, reduce late deliveries, and to meet or exceed the minimum OTDR requirement, and because Amazon is making calculations on your behalf that affect OTDR, you will get OTDR protection from late deliveries on items shipped through standard shipping if you use all three tools as follows:

• Shipping Settings Automation (SSA), for Professional selling plans, sets accurate delivery dates through automated transit time calculations of your preferred shipping services. You must choose one of the preferred ship methods in the SSA templates, which will mark the transit time on the shipping template as "Managed by Amazon."
• Automated handling time, for Professional selling plans, sets accurate handling times per SKU based on how long it usually takes you to pass each SKU to carriers. You must ensure that automated handling time is enabled in your shipping settings.
• Amazon Buy Shipping, for both Professional and Individual selling plans, sells shipping labels that use highly-reliable ship methods. You can use Amazon Buy Shipping through Manage Orders, Shipping API, Veeqo, or select multi-channel integrators with access to Amazon Buy Shipping. You must choose shipping labels marked as "OTDR Protected" when using Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo.

You'll receive an email with your current OTDR and recommendations on how to improve if you're below the minimum requirement. To learn more, review your OTDR on your Account Health dashboard or go to On-time delivery.

Hi Sellers,

Welcome to our Ask Amazon Q&A with the OTDR team, focusing on your questions about On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR). This thread will be open today, Tuesday, October 1, from 8 am to 5 pm PT.

Please include any questions you have regarding OTDR in this Ask Amazon event thread. Our partner team will be reviewing the questions that come in throughout the day and we’ll do our best to respond as soon as possible.

What is the new OTDR policy?

Effective September 25, 2024, to help reduce late deliveries and improve delivery speeds, we’re changing our OTDR policy. The new policy requires a minimum of a 90% OTDR without promise extensions to have seller-fulfilled products listed on Amazon. We have also changed our recommended standard for a great customer experience to 95% or greater OTDR for all seller-fulfilled orders, but only an OTDR below 90% can result in restriction of a seller’s ability to have seller-fulfilled products listed. This policy does not apply to offers using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) because sellers are not responsible for on-time delivery promises for FBA orders.

We also changed the way we measure OTDR to now measures the percentage of your tracked seller-fulfilled items that were delivered on or before the seller-promised "Deliver by" date prior to promise extensions being added. Prior to this change OTDR was measured after promise extensions were added.

We designed tools to set accurate delivery dates, reduce late deliveries, and to meet or exceed the minimum OTDR requirement, and because Amazon is making calculations on your behalf that affect OTDR, you will get OTDR protection from late deliveries on items shipped through standard shipping if you use all three tools as follows:

• Shipping Settings Automation (SSA)
• Automated handling time
• Amazon Buy Shipping, to purchase shipping labels marked as "OTDR Protected" 

Additionally, starting October 25, 2024, the transit time settings for shipping from China to the continental US (all states in the contiguous US, excluding Hawaii, Alaska, and US protectorates) will change. You’ll have more transit time ranges to choose from on your shipping templates, with options ranging from 2-4 days to 14-20 days. The maximum transit time will be reduced from 28 days to 20 days. If you currently have 14-28 days as your manually set transit time, it will automatically be updated to 14-20 days as a part of this change.

For more information, see the Order Performance program policy and On-time delivery requirements.

Thank you for joining today's Ask Amazon!

Note: We cannot provide legal advice or otherwise interpret regulatory requirements on situations that are specific to individual sellers.