We are a long-time Seller and use Amazon Buy Shipping as much as possible. In our busy season we receive several hundred orders every day. Part of our processes is to start packing orders in the evening of the same day they are received. So, tonight we are starting to pack orders received today April 16th that are due to ship out tomorrow April 17th.
We avoid using ABS when we are packing at night because we understand that, once the label is printed, it must be scanned the same day by the carrier in order to qualify for the protections of ABS. The shipping software we use, which has the ABS rates integrated, will allow us to select the next-day as a ship-date for a label that we are printing. But of course, when that tracking information is automatically uploaded to Amazon, Amazon will post the ship date as the same date the tracking was posted.
As a test tonight I used the Buy Shipping option on the actual Amazon platform. I clicked into an order, clicked on the Buy Shipping button and it does gave the option to select a future ship date. In my screenshot you will see it presented an option of April 17th as a ship date. I selected that and much to my surprise the Amazon tracking posted showing April 17th as the ship date. I did notice that the tracking details read as it always does when a label is created, and has April 16th as the as event date for "carrier picked up the package" which we know it just means the label was created and not actually picked up.
My big question is, in the event that something goes wrong with this package, will Amazon be using the April 17th date (the Shipped Date) as the benchmark by which they will determine our eligibility for protections? The carrier will be scanning this tomorrow so the date scanned will match the date shipped, and the order will have shipped on time by April 17th as required.
I've looked through Seller University, help articles and the forums for anything related to this question but I have not found anything similar. I'm familiar enough with many of the intricacies of Amazon and of Amazon Buy Shipping so I have to raise the question that things may not be as they appear in this case. And yet I'm hopeful because I would hope that Amazon does have a process by which a Seller can package and process orders at night or on the weekends to assure that they ship by their due date.
Any thoughts or help with this scenario would be greatly appreciated, especially an official word from an Amazon moderator. Thank you!
