Changes to handling and transit time settings for orders shipped to the US
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 ensure the accuracy of our promised delivery dates, we’re making the following changes:
-
Transit time settings: 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.
-
Handling time settings: Automated handling time will now automatically set a more accurate handling time for SKUs sold on Amazon.com and shipped from warehouses outside the US. Automated handling time sets a handling time for each SKU based on how long it has historically taken you to process orders and hand them to carriers. If you have no shipping history for a SKU, your manually set handling time will be used.
Starting October 25, to help improve accuracy, we’ll enable automated handling time if your manually configured handling time is two or more days slower than your actual handling time (known as a handling time gap). If automated handling time is enabled for this reason, you won’t be able to disable it.
If needed, you can request a manual handling time override for custom-made, media, and heavy and bulky SKUs. Any exempted SKU won’t receive on-time delivery rate (OTDR) protection from late deliveries.
To help you keep in good standing with other account health metrics related to handling time, your late shipment rate will be protected from late shipments if you have automated handling time enabled.
To review your current handling time, go to the Fulfillment Insight dashboard.
55 replies
Seller_OvL8C4BJWiuS9
There are many variables that aren't taken into consideration with this new policy, but no one at Amazon seems to want to or care to hear about them.
Seller_NXbqvZ48ChbPj
How do we Disable now? We have already had a hit on our Metrics and its been 100% beyond our control. We set 2 days handling in the event of life and to give 1-2 days extra for shipping. Had this NOT been changed we would have 100%. Ive gone in and added and deleted my items and put in a manual time frame in which is always automatically over ridden. We print our tags daily and it goes to the warehouse for picking. So this 100% impacts our store for the bad.
Seller_PNwUQLkqFLu1F
Nothing to worry about - just set handling time to 10 days and then intentionally wait for the last day to dispatch and confirm shipment.
If Amazon wants to punish some sellers for late delivery so they will loose 100% of their money then new ways will have to be found. How can anyone develop the idea just simply cut 1/3 of maximum delivery time and hope that everything will be delivered in time?! If someone needs 4 weeks then it's 4 weeks, not 3. There are many sellers who offer Same Day local delivery but there are also way more sellers who needs 2-4 weeks for very specific items.
Seller_IlwjJKqpD81nL
Am I reading this right? If we actually ship faster than our manually configured time, Amazon is going to *punish* us for shipping faster? And take our padding away?
If I am willing to miss out on a few sales by having slightly padded delivery expectations, shouldn't that be MY choice as a business owner? Why is Amazon wanting to tell MY team how fast we should be working?
Am I running my company or is Amazon running my company? I want to decide how much breathing room we have to work on orders. I want to set shipping expectations that I am comfortable with, and I want to to be able to EXCEED customer expectations when we can.
Further, we have many SKUs where we currently pad the handling time with an extra day or two to give ourselves a little bit of breathing room and to allow us more shipping options.
USPS is being TERRIBLY slow this year, but they are still often the cheapest shipping option for items under 1 lb. It can cost an extra $1 or more per order to ship via UPS instead of USPS for items in this category. But often USPS doesn't show up as a protected shipping option for us unless we add 2 handling days worth of padding.
I do not want to be forced to work my employees harder, and be forced to keep up with a pace that I did set, and be forced to spend more on shipping than what is already built in to our prices.
We ship *thousands* of packages under 1 lb per month. Forcing us to add $1 or more per shipment to ship UPS instead of USPS could cost us an entire person's salary per year.
Seller_ZWJu6SC7QqWWD
As usual, confused with Amazons vague announcements
So is this now moved from Sept 25th to Oct 25th ?
Will transit time increase if you use the one managed by Amazon ?
Soooo many unanswered questions
Seller_7rNklHYkq1IwY
Thank you so much, Amazon for adding yet another cut to the thousands that struggling small business owners face every single day.
Constantly squeezed between supply chain issues and increasing fulfillment costs, what we definitely need now is for Amazon to mandate and override our handling times for Merchant Fulfilled orders. Nevermind the million and one challenges that small (often family-owned) businesses face in order to procure, store and ship physical products to our...I mean Amazon's customers. Now we can look forward to Amazon "helping" us by overriding our handling times, even though we rarely have control over our providers or Amazon's Preferred Shipping Carriers. We recognize the challenges that our shipping carriers face to meet On Time Delivery dates and we may intentionally adjust our handling times to help buffer these challenges and ensure that our OTR is not negatively impacted. But now it appears that Amazon will now "help" us with yet another feature that no 3rd Party Seller fulfilling their own orders has requested. /s
Please be sure to share this fascinating update with Congress the next time Amazon is called in for questioning. While you are at it you should also include this new "feature" within any press releases or advertising promoting Amazon as an ally and "supporter" of small business, for full disclosure of course.
Seller_HeQS0FjsDTZSA
So if we need extra time for custom products, we will not get OTDR protection. Which we know isn't accurate to begin with, and we will not get LSR protection.
That means that anyone who has automated shipping enabled doesn't have to be concerned with their OTDR or LSR? Correct?
What an incredibly poorly explained policy update and from the poor explanation it's a terrible update. Will definitely hurt the customer experience.
Seller_QuiCGlo4qOlID
Dear Robot Overloads: The key to customer satisfaction is underpromising and overdelivering. You don't get that, do you? It's human nature.
Seller_r9wMm8LrE5iKj
Am I reading this correctly? Are you saying Chinese sellers have OTDR protection simply for enabling AHT, without the additional requirements that domestic sellers have?
If transit time is such a big deal now, why are you even allowing shipments from China?
Why do you hate America and the middle class?
Changes to handling and transit time settings for orders shipped to the US
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 ensure the accuracy of our promised delivery dates, we’re making the following changes:
-
Transit time settings: 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.
-
Handling time settings: Automated handling time will now automatically set a more accurate handling time for SKUs sold on Amazon.com and shipped from warehouses outside the US. Automated handling time sets a handling time for each SKU based on how long it has historically taken you to process orders and hand them to carriers. If you have no shipping history for a SKU, your manually set handling time will be used.
Starting October 25, to help improve accuracy, we’ll enable automated handling time if your manually configured handling time is two or more days slower than your actual handling time (known as a handling time gap). If automated handling time is enabled for this reason, you won’t be able to disable it.
If needed, you can request a manual handling time override for custom-made, media, and heavy and bulky SKUs. Any exempted SKU won’t receive on-time delivery rate (OTDR) protection from late deliveries.
To help you keep in good standing with other account health metrics related to handling time, your late shipment rate will be protected from late shipments if you have automated handling time enabled.
To review your current handling time, go to the Fulfillment Insight dashboard.
Changes to handling and transit time settings for orders shipped to the US
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 ensure the accuracy of our promised delivery dates, we’re making the following changes:
-
Transit time settings: 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.
-
Handling time settings: Automated handling time will now automatically set a more accurate handling time for SKUs sold on Amazon.com and shipped from warehouses outside the US. Automated handling time sets a handling time for each SKU based on how long it has historically taken you to process orders and hand them to carriers. If you have no shipping history for a SKU, your manually set handling time will be used.
Starting October 25, to help improve accuracy, we’ll enable automated handling time if your manually configured handling time is two or more days slower than your actual handling time (known as a handling time gap). If automated handling time is enabled for this reason, you won’t be able to disable it.
If needed, you can request a manual handling time override for custom-made, media, and heavy and bulky SKUs. Any exempted SKU won’t receive on-time delivery rate (OTDR) protection from late deliveries.
To help you keep in good standing with other account health metrics related to handling time, your late shipment rate will be protected from late shipments if you have automated handling time enabled.
To review your current handling time, go to the Fulfillment Insight dashboard.
55 replies
55 replies
Seller_OvL8C4BJWiuS9
There are many variables that aren't taken into consideration with this new policy, but no one at Amazon seems to want to or care to hear about them.
Seller_NXbqvZ48ChbPj
How do we Disable now? We have already had a hit on our Metrics and its been 100% beyond our control. We set 2 days handling in the event of life and to give 1-2 days extra for shipping. Had this NOT been changed we would have 100%. Ive gone in and added and deleted my items and put in a manual time frame in which is always automatically over ridden. We print our tags daily and it goes to the warehouse for picking. So this 100% impacts our store for the bad.
Seller_PNwUQLkqFLu1F
Nothing to worry about - just set handling time to 10 days and then intentionally wait for the last day to dispatch and confirm shipment.
If Amazon wants to punish some sellers for late delivery so they will loose 100% of their money then new ways will have to be found. How can anyone develop the idea just simply cut 1/3 of maximum delivery time and hope that everything will be delivered in time?! If someone needs 4 weeks then it's 4 weeks, not 3. There are many sellers who offer Same Day local delivery but there are also way more sellers who needs 2-4 weeks for very specific items.
Seller_IlwjJKqpD81nL
Am I reading this right? If we actually ship faster than our manually configured time, Amazon is going to *punish* us for shipping faster? And take our padding away?
If I am willing to miss out on a few sales by having slightly padded delivery expectations, shouldn't that be MY choice as a business owner? Why is Amazon wanting to tell MY team how fast we should be working?
Am I running my company or is Amazon running my company? I want to decide how much breathing room we have to work on orders. I want to set shipping expectations that I am comfortable with, and I want to to be able to EXCEED customer expectations when we can.
Further, we have many SKUs where we currently pad the handling time with an extra day or two to give ourselves a little bit of breathing room and to allow us more shipping options.
USPS is being TERRIBLY slow this year, but they are still often the cheapest shipping option for items under 1 lb. It can cost an extra $1 or more per order to ship via UPS instead of USPS for items in this category. But often USPS doesn't show up as a protected shipping option for us unless we add 2 handling days worth of padding.
I do not want to be forced to work my employees harder, and be forced to keep up with a pace that I did set, and be forced to spend more on shipping than what is already built in to our prices.
We ship *thousands* of packages under 1 lb per month. Forcing us to add $1 or more per shipment to ship UPS instead of USPS could cost us an entire person's salary per year.
Seller_ZWJu6SC7QqWWD
As usual, confused with Amazons vague announcements
So is this now moved from Sept 25th to Oct 25th ?
Will transit time increase if you use the one managed by Amazon ?
Soooo many unanswered questions
Seller_7rNklHYkq1IwY
Thank you so much, Amazon for adding yet another cut to the thousands that struggling small business owners face every single day.
Constantly squeezed between supply chain issues and increasing fulfillment costs, what we definitely need now is for Amazon to mandate and override our handling times for Merchant Fulfilled orders. Nevermind the million and one challenges that small (often family-owned) businesses face in order to procure, store and ship physical products to our...I mean Amazon's customers. Now we can look forward to Amazon "helping" us by overriding our handling times, even though we rarely have control over our providers or Amazon's Preferred Shipping Carriers. We recognize the challenges that our shipping carriers face to meet On Time Delivery dates and we may intentionally adjust our handling times to help buffer these challenges and ensure that our OTR is not negatively impacted. But now it appears that Amazon will now "help" us with yet another feature that no 3rd Party Seller fulfilling their own orders has requested. /s
Please be sure to share this fascinating update with Congress the next time Amazon is called in for questioning. While you are at it you should also include this new "feature" within any press releases or advertising promoting Amazon as an ally and "supporter" of small business, for full disclosure of course.
Seller_HeQS0FjsDTZSA
So if we need extra time for custom products, we will not get OTDR protection. Which we know isn't accurate to begin with, and we will not get LSR protection.
That means that anyone who has automated shipping enabled doesn't have to be concerned with their OTDR or LSR? Correct?
What an incredibly poorly explained policy update and from the poor explanation it's a terrible update. Will definitely hurt the customer experience.
Seller_QuiCGlo4qOlID
Dear Robot Overloads: The key to customer satisfaction is underpromising and overdelivering. You don't get that, do you? It's human nature.
Seller_r9wMm8LrE5iKj
Am I reading this correctly? Are you saying Chinese sellers have OTDR protection simply for enabling AHT, without the additional requirements that domestic sellers have?
If transit time is such a big deal now, why are you even allowing shipments from China?
Why do you hate America and the middle class?
Seller_OvL8C4BJWiuS9
There are many variables that aren't taken into consideration with this new policy, but no one at Amazon seems to want to or care to hear about them.
Seller_OvL8C4BJWiuS9
There are many variables that aren't taken into consideration with this new policy, but no one at Amazon seems to want to or care to hear about them.
Seller_NXbqvZ48ChbPj
How do we Disable now? We have already had a hit on our Metrics and its been 100% beyond our control. We set 2 days handling in the event of life and to give 1-2 days extra for shipping. Had this NOT been changed we would have 100%. Ive gone in and added and deleted my items and put in a manual time frame in which is always automatically over ridden. We print our tags daily and it goes to the warehouse for picking. So this 100% impacts our store for the bad.
Seller_NXbqvZ48ChbPj
How do we Disable now? We have already had a hit on our Metrics and its been 100% beyond our control. We set 2 days handling in the event of life and to give 1-2 days extra for shipping. Had this NOT been changed we would have 100%. Ive gone in and added and deleted my items and put in a manual time frame in which is always automatically over ridden. We print our tags daily and it goes to the warehouse for picking. So this 100% impacts our store for the bad.
Seller_PNwUQLkqFLu1F
Nothing to worry about - just set handling time to 10 days and then intentionally wait for the last day to dispatch and confirm shipment.
If Amazon wants to punish some sellers for late delivery so they will loose 100% of their money then new ways will have to be found. How can anyone develop the idea just simply cut 1/3 of maximum delivery time and hope that everything will be delivered in time?! If someone needs 4 weeks then it's 4 weeks, not 3. There are many sellers who offer Same Day local delivery but there are also way more sellers who needs 2-4 weeks for very specific items.
Seller_PNwUQLkqFLu1F
Nothing to worry about - just set handling time to 10 days and then intentionally wait for the last day to dispatch and confirm shipment.
If Amazon wants to punish some sellers for late delivery so they will loose 100% of their money then new ways will have to be found. How can anyone develop the idea just simply cut 1/3 of maximum delivery time and hope that everything will be delivered in time?! If someone needs 4 weeks then it's 4 weeks, not 3. There are many sellers who offer Same Day local delivery but there are also way more sellers who needs 2-4 weeks for very specific items.
Seller_IlwjJKqpD81nL
Am I reading this right? If we actually ship faster than our manually configured time, Amazon is going to *punish* us for shipping faster? And take our padding away?
If I am willing to miss out on a few sales by having slightly padded delivery expectations, shouldn't that be MY choice as a business owner? Why is Amazon wanting to tell MY team how fast we should be working?
Am I running my company or is Amazon running my company? I want to decide how much breathing room we have to work on orders. I want to set shipping expectations that I am comfortable with, and I want to to be able to EXCEED customer expectations when we can.
Further, we have many SKUs where we currently pad the handling time with an extra day or two to give ourselves a little bit of breathing room and to allow us more shipping options.
USPS is being TERRIBLY slow this year, but they are still often the cheapest shipping option for items under 1 lb. It can cost an extra $1 or more per order to ship via UPS instead of USPS for items in this category. But often USPS doesn't show up as a protected shipping option for us unless we add 2 handling days worth of padding.
I do not want to be forced to work my employees harder, and be forced to keep up with a pace that I did set, and be forced to spend more on shipping than what is already built in to our prices.
We ship *thousands* of packages under 1 lb per month. Forcing us to add $1 or more per shipment to ship UPS instead of USPS could cost us an entire person's salary per year.
Seller_IlwjJKqpD81nL
Am I reading this right? If we actually ship faster than our manually configured time, Amazon is going to *punish* us for shipping faster? And take our padding away?
If I am willing to miss out on a few sales by having slightly padded delivery expectations, shouldn't that be MY choice as a business owner? Why is Amazon wanting to tell MY team how fast we should be working?
Am I running my company or is Amazon running my company? I want to decide how much breathing room we have to work on orders. I want to set shipping expectations that I am comfortable with, and I want to to be able to EXCEED customer expectations when we can.
Further, we have many SKUs where we currently pad the handling time with an extra day or two to give ourselves a little bit of breathing room and to allow us more shipping options.
USPS is being TERRIBLY slow this year, but they are still often the cheapest shipping option for items under 1 lb. It can cost an extra $1 or more per order to ship via UPS instead of USPS for items in this category. But often USPS doesn't show up as a protected shipping option for us unless we add 2 handling days worth of padding.
I do not want to be forced to work my employees harder, and be forced to keep up with a pace that I did set, and be forced to spend more on shipping than what is already built in to our prices.
We ship *thousands* of packages under 1 lb per month. Forcing us to add $1 or more per shipment to ship UPS instead of USPS could cost us an entire person's salary per year.
Seller_ZWJu6SC7QqWWD
As usual, confused with Amazons vague announcements
So is this now moved from Sept 25th to Oct 25th ?
Will transit time increase if you use the one managed by Amazon ?
Soooo many unanswered questions
Seller_ZWJu6SC7QqWWD
As usual, confused with Amazons vague announcements
So is this now moved from Sept 25th to Oct 25th ?
Will transit time increase if you use the one managed by Amazon ?
Soooo many unanswered questions
Seller_7rNklHYkq1IwY
Thank you so much, Amazon for adding yet another cut to the thousands that struggling small business owners face every single day.
Constantly squeezed between supply chain issues and increasing fulfillment costs, what we definitely need now is for Amazon to mandate and override our handling times for Merchant Fulfilled orders. Nevermind the million and one challenges that small (often family-owned) businesses face in order to procure, store and ship physical products to our...I mean Amazon's customers. Now we can look forward to Amazon "helping" us by overriding our handling times, even though we rarely have control over our providers or Amazon's Preferred Shipping Carriers. We recognize the challenges that our shipping carriers face to meet On Time Delivery dates and we may intentionally adjust our handling times to help buffer these challenges and ensure that our OTR is not negatively impacted. But now it appears that Amazon will now "help" us with yet another feature that no 3rd Party Seller fulfilling their own orders has requested. /s
Please be sure to share this fascinating update with Congress the next time Amazon is called in for questioning. While you are at it you should also include this new "feature" within any press releases or advertising promoting Amazon as an ally and "supporter" of small business, for full disclosure of course.
Seller_7rNklHYkq1IwY
Thank you so much, Amazon for adding yet another cut to the thousands that struggling small business owners face every single day.
Constantly squeezed between supply chain issues and increasing fulfillment costs, what we definitely need now is for Amazon to mandate and override our handling times for Merchant Fulfilled orders. Nevermind the million and one challenges that small (often family-owned) businesses face in order to procure, store and ship physical products to our...I mean Amazon's customers. Now we can look forward to Amazon "helping" us by overriding our handling times, even though we rarely have control over our providers or Amazon's Preferred Shipping Carriers. We recognize the challenges that our shipping carriers face to meet On Time Delivery dates and we may intentionally adjust our handling times to help buffer these challenges and ensure that our OTR is not negatively impacted. But now it appears that Amazon will now "help" us with yet another feature that no 3rd Party Seller fulfilling their own orders has requested. /s
Please be sure to share this fascinating update with Congress the next time Amazon is called in for questioning. While you are at it you should also include this new "feature" within any press releases or advertising promoting Amazon as an ally and "supporter" of small business, for full disclosure of course.
Seller_HeQS0FjsDTZSA
So if we need extra time for custom products, we will not get OTDR protection. Which we know isn't accurate to begin with, and we will not get LSR protection.
That means that anyone who has automated shipping enabled doesn't have to be concerned with their OTDR or LSR? Correct?
What an incredibly poorly explained policy update and from the poor explanation it's a terrible update. Will definitely hurt the customer experience.
Seller_HeQS0FjsDTZSA
So if we need extra time for custom products, we will not get OTDR protection. Which we know isn't accurate to begin with, and we will not get LSR protection.
That means that anyone who has automated shipping enabled doesn't have to be concerned with their OTDR or LSR? Correct?
What an incredibly poorly explained policy update and from the poor explanation it's a terrible update. Will definitely hurt the customer experience.
Seller_QuiCGlo4qOlID
Dear Robot Overloads: The key to customer satisfaction is underpromising and overdelivering. You don't get that, do you? It's human nature.
Seller_QuiCGlo4qOlID
Dear Robot Overloads: The key to customer satisfaction is underpromising and overdelivering. You don't get that, do you? It's human nature.
Seller_r9wMm8LrE5iKj
Am I reading this correctly? Are you saying Chinese sellers have OTDR protection simply for enabling AHT, without the additional requirements that domestic sellers have?
If transit time is such a big deal now, why are you even allowing shipments from China?
Why do you hate America and the middle class?
Seller_r9wMm8LrE5iKj
Am I reading this correctly? Are you saying Chinese sellers have OTDR protection simply for enabling AHT, without the additional requirements that domestic sellers have?
If transit time is such a big deal now, why are you even allowing shipments from China?
Why do you hate America and the middle class?
