FBM Second Day Shipping
I am considering on setting up several of my fbm items to ship Second Day Delivery (Fedex and UPS) instead of standard ground. I get decent rates for 2 Day shipping on certain packages that would fit well with some of my items. In some cases its cheaper to ship 2-Day than ground which at times I use anyway regardless of the ground shipping setting and gets there much sooner before the promised date.
I am starting to notice sellers are not only getting the buy box advantage by lower prices but Faster shipping and delivery options which this looks to start getting the buy box advatange in itself, and is casuing me an issue by losing a lot of sales.
My question is if I set my items to second day shipping by default (Not FBM Prime) am I Obligated to ship on Saturdays and Sundays and also does it requrie delivery on Saturdays and Sundays or just Monday - Friday Shipping and deliveries?
Example: Receive and Order on Thusday and requires delivery Saturday, or an order on Friday and required Sunday.
And one other requiment, If an order came in on a Thursday Night/Friday, would that deliverery require Monday because it is counting a weekend as Two Day, etc or would it require by Tuesday.
I understand Prime requires weekend shipping and deliveries for FBM in which I cannot offer that requirment.
It seems they are now requring FBM to compete with FBM weekend shipping and expect us to ship 7 days a week. Not every company works around the clock like they do.
5 replies
Seller_DdmPiA1p1S2Wu
If you are just listing it as standard shipping and using the SSA (Shipping Setting Automation) to calculate the shipping time based on FedEx 2-Day or whatever, then it shouldn't be expecting you to ship on the weekend. I also ship a lot by FedEx 2-Day as it is much less expensive to ship that way than by Ground for a lot of my items with the FedEx One Rate program.
Seller_aYYrd4l2F0yAV
I would be careful because if you do offer second day shipping, they require you to deliver on Saturday if the order is placed on a Thursday. We consistently lose our premium shipping eligibility because of this and also Next Day Air orders placed on Friday are expected to be delivered on Saturday (at least for shipping to residential addresses).
Seller_XSqPquQH4FvW1
You should also think about your customers' expectations. If they are paying big bucks for second day shipping, will they be OK with 3-4 days?
Seller_FcJ62CpbWSlbK
You can set a time for a cut off for 2 day shipping. Beware of some businesses that are closed on weekends. If they order 2 day shipping on Thursday, you are responsible to ship it so it arrives on a day they are closed i have several business customers that place orders on Thursdays. You can guess why.... they get free shipping and I get dinged for late shipping.
Seller_3QIhzNaiqbTwC
we ship around 75 FedEx 2-day orders a day. Yes, Thursday orders are required to be delivered on Saturday. That is not much of an issue as FedEx delivers 98%of the USA on Saturday.
There is an issue with Friday shipments however. Friday shipments must be delivered on Monday- according to Amazon. You will have to check with your local hub, but ours does not move the Friday shipments until Saturday night, so they don’t deliver until Tuesday- which is what FedEx promises for 2 day shipments on a Friday. So what we have to do is change the shipping template each Thursday at cutoff time so that all items ship free expedited and we remove the premium 2 day option. Then Friday after cutoff we change everything back.
No, you do not have to ship on weekends. You do want to make sure you use Amazon buy shipping- then as long as you ship by an approved method you won’t get dinged in your premium shipping metric for any late shipments.
