Amazon's shipping policy has changed? Many sellers received performance warnings

Yesterday, a "new policy" of Amazon's reservation policy went viral, saying that if the estimated delivery time filled in by the seller is inconsistent with the scheduled warehousing date of the logistics company, the delivery reservation will not be made, causing an uproar in the seller group.

At the same time, many sellers have recently reported that Amazon's shipment performance assessment is becoming increasingly strict. As long as the delivery time is exceeded, a reminder of "delivered outside the delivery period" will appear, and some shipments will also receive a performance warning - "missed the delivery period." Some sellers have been interviewed for delivering outside the scheduled time period.

Amazon's new shipping policy is spreading like wildfire in the industry

A "Notice of Change in Amazon's Reservation Policy " spread quickly in the industry and was forwarded by many cross-border logistics companies, attracting the attention of sellers.

In this notice, the overseas warehouse reminded sellers: Amazon system upgrades will be implemented strictly from today. The date of planned warehouse entry filled in by the seller in the backend must be consistent with the date of the warehouse entry appointment made by the logistics company. If the date is incorrect, the appointment cannot be made, resulting in the inability to make an appointment for delivery to the warehouse, affecting delivery. The notice also emphasized: If the appointment date range is incorrect, it is no longer possible to get a new appointment! It will cause the shipment to be invalid!

Some logistics companies interpreted that the notice meant that sellers were asked to change the warehouse entry time to the cabinet ETA + 7 days later (Messen ETA + 3 days). Sellers need to fill in the warehouse entry time one week after ETA for the US West warehouse and the warehouse entry time range of 8-12 days after ETA for the US Central warehouse. The final warehouse entry time can be extended as long as possible. Here ETA refers to the estimated time of arrival at the port.

As soon as the news came out, the sellers couldn't sit still: Just because I looked down on the accurate delivery time yesterday, I can't afford it today?

Jack Chen, a senior freight forwarder in Shenzhen, has received inquiries from many sellers about the "new policy". He said: The appointment policy mentioned in the notice has always existed and is not a new policy. If the goods are not delivered within the scheduled delivery time, there will be a warning and it may affect performance. It is not just launched today, but has been "re-hyped". In addition, "if the goods are not delivered within the expected time, the freight forwarder cannot make an appointment for delivery" is also a bug on Amazon. As for the suggestions for filling in the estimated delivery time in the future, the reference value is also relatively limited.

At the same time, recent shipping situations have caused sellers to begin to pay attention to shipment performance issues caused by inaccurate delivery times.

Many sellers eat up shipment performance due to inaccurate delivery time

Starting from April 24 last year , Amazon US added a mandatory item to the FBA delivery process, that is, sellers must provide an estimated delivery time when creating shipments. This requirement applies to small packages or LTL shipments shipped by non-cooperative carriers, and has a wide impact. For shipments shipped from domestic addresses in the United States, the optional delivery date range is 7 days, and the optional delivery period for cross-border shipments is 14 days.

The purpose of Amazon's move is to gradually calibrate and provide more accurate estimated arrival times for future shipments so that they can be processed faster. Even if the shipment does not arrive on time, the seller will not be punished, and Amazon will not take mandatory measures. Therefore, in the past year, most sellers have only roughly filled in the time and have not worked too hard on accuracy, but now the situation has changed.

Some sellers have found that the recent shipment performance assessment is very strict. As long as the delivery time is exceeded, whether it is delivered early or late, a red exclamation mark will be received - "Delivered outside the delivery period."

This situation is very common. One operator said that because the delivery time he filled in was roughly estimated, 9 out of 10 times were incorrect, and he had been called in several meetings by his boss.

Some of these overdue shipments will also receive performance warnings. Amazon points out that they have "missed the delivery window" and that failure to deliver within the provided delivery window will affect its efficient receiving capabilities and may cause delays in the warehousing and sales of goods. Sellers are worried that once the accumulated performance exceeds the standard, the delivery function will be deactivated.

A seller mentioned on Zhiwubuyan that he had received a case of "violation of Amazon logistics delivery time requirements". Amazon required him to communicate by phone and train sellers on how to avoid this problem. Another seller suggested that his peers pay attention to such problems: "We have received emails about delivery outside the delivery time, requiring us to write a POA and call us, otherwise the shipping permission will be closed. Everyone should pay attention to it."

Recently, sellers have become much more cautious when filling in time ranges. A freight forwarder in Shenzhen told the editor: "Before, customers may have randomly filled in the estimated warehouse entry time, but now they are much more conservative. They will ask for the approximate delivery time, and then fill in the corresponding delivery time in the background within a week. For example, if I tell him that the delivery time is expected to be April 12, he will write 'expected delivery time between 4.12 and 4.19'."

Sellers are not clear about the criteria for generating this performance. After communicating with each other, some sellers believe that Amazon’s delivery standard is below 23.57%, and generally a few shipments that exceed the delivery time will be picked out for reminders, and not all of them will be counted in the shipment performance.

As Amazon's management becomes stricter, sellers hope to deliver within the delivery period as much as possible to avoid performance problems. The solution provided by Amazon is that if the estimated delivery time after the shipment is sent out is outside the delivery period filled in, the seller can edit and modify the delivery period in the last step of "Send to Amazon" before the delivery period arrives to match the actual progress; but after the delivery period begins, it can no longer be modified.

Therefore, some sellers suggest that when the estimated delivery time is approaching, you can check the logistics progress and edit the delivery time if necessary. However, this is easy to overlook after the delivery is completed, so you should pay attention to it.

If you want to ensure the delivery time is accurate, Jack Chen suggests that sellers can work well with logistics providers. For example, larger logistics companies can provide relatively accurate estimated delivery times, or have subscription functions that can provide updated information for each logistics node, and notify updates via SMS, WeChat, and emails as soon as possible. If the actual transportation progress of the shipment is inconsistent with the estimated arrival time, it is also convenient for sellers to modify the estimated delivery time.

In addition, after the warehousing configuration fee is launched, sellers face greater pressure in the shipping process.

To save this fee, some sellers used ERP to lock warehouses for shipments in March, but have received warnings recently. Amazon said in an email that its records show that sellers have a large number of shipment abandonment issues when creating shipments through Amazon API or third-party integrators. Any shipment that sellers ignore, delete or abandon will result in shipment abandonment issues, which will incur warehousing defect fees.

Cost increases are inevitable. But even if sellers ship as promised, they may still face problems with defective shipments and warehousing defect fees. A seller complained: "For example, create shipments in 5 warehouses and ship them in 2 weeks. According to the general shipping time of 35 days in the West Coast of the United States and 45 days in the East Coast of the United States, it is best to ship from the East Coast of the United States in the first week and from the West Coast in the second week. Otherwise, if the shipment to the West Coast arrives early, the second shipment will exceed 30 days and you will have to pay. It's really a rip-off and it's very time-consuming."

Throughout the entire delivery process, sellers' workload is increasing.