Promised delivery date falls on a day when customer's business is closed.
Hello,
Does anyone know how to submit a suggestion to the SFP team? Here is the issue:
We've noticed for months now that we get a ton of orders on Friday with a promise delivery date of Saturday. When we click on Buy Shipping to purchase the shipping label, we see that the customer indicated to Amazon that they are closed on Saturdays. And yet, we are obligated to buy Saturday delivery option. This causes two issues:
-We spend more money for Saturday delivery compared to Monday delivery. Pure waste of money.
-Customer is not getting it Saturday, of course, because there is nobody to accept the package. This dings us in the On-Time Delivery metric at the SFP (yes, SFP metrics are different, and they count "Customer is not available or business is closed" delivery delay as seller's fault).
It will be smart and will make all sense to show the customer that Monday is the delivery promise day, and allow sellers to purchase a proper shipping label (standard next day/overnight, that works only during business days) instead of having them to overpay for the Saturday delivery label, which is a waste anyway, and will ding sellers in metrics.
Promised delivery date falls on a day when customer's business is closed.
Hello,
Does anyone know how to submit a suggestion to the SFP team? Here is the issue:
We've noticed for months now that we get a ton of orders on Friday with a promise delivery date of Saturday. When we click on Buy Shipping to purchase the shipping label, we see that the customer indicated to Amazon that they are closed on Saturdays. And yet, we are obligated to buy Saturday delivery option. This causes two issues:
-We spend more money for Saturday delivery compared to Monday delivery. Pure waste of money.
-Customer is not getting it Saturday, of course, because there is nobody to accept the package. This dings us in the On-Time Delivery metric at the SFP (yes, SFP metrics are different, and they count "Customer is not available or business is closed" delivery delay as seller's fault).
It will be smart and will make all sense to show the customer that Monday is the delivery promise day, and allow sellers to purchase a proper shipping label (standard next day/overnight, that works only during business days) instead of having them to overpay for the Saturday delivery label, which is a waste anyway, and will ding sellers in metrics.
16 replies
Seller_FcJ62CpbWSlbK
Is it expedited in anyway? I have several customers who I think purposefully order 2 day to be delivered when they are closed. Each time, they are 'delivered' late and the a to z refunded totally including the shipping. The first two times, after having them not only keep the item but get a total refund, I canceled. It is pretty bad when you have to cancel in order not to get ripped off.
Seller_8sP6ffckcRn6v
Here is my experience as a buyer.
Amazon Prime tried delivery on Saturday and Sunday.
Then returned the item to the seller.
UPS knows to hold it for us until Monday.
Seller_wdrrfs5epR4QL
Hello!
Do I understand right - Saturdays deliveries are more expensive than weekdays deliveries? How to eliminate wasting on delivery charging?
TaylorR_Amazon
Hi @Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ,
I would think that this should be a delivery attempt, therefor stopping the clock. Have you had a conversation with Seller Support about this?
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
Hi @TaylorR_Amazon,
Yes, we talked to SS about it. Case ID 14691743171. This is a known issue. SFP On-Time Delivery metric counts the following instances against seller:
-Customer not available or business closed.
-Carrier: Delay beyond our control
-Carrier service failure
-Weather Delay
Standard Premium Shipping metric (non-SFP orders), on the opposite, does not count such instances against sellers. It's only in SFP. See this discussion in forums:
On-time Delivery Rate Notification - stop counting things we can't control against sellers!
That's a new official policy for the SFP metrics: any delays, including delays caused by the customers, carrier failures, etc. are counted against sellers. You can read more about the SFP policy here:
Seller Fulfilled Prime performance requirements
It says that "The only exemption to the on-time delivery requirement will be units that have promise extensions applied, which is expected to occur only during severe weather or major events where carrier capacity is constrained."
But we see in the past defects reports that they don't follow their own policy either and we see plenty of weather delayed orders that are counted against us.
If you think that's incorrect, please take a look at my current SFP On-Time metric and let me know why order number 113-4203596-6538636 counts against me (customer was not available at the time of delivery or business is closed, as marked by FedEx).
In short, my question still stands: how to make a suggestion to the SFP team to stop wasting sellers' money by having to purchase shipping labels with the delivery date that falls on the day when customer will not be able to accept the package and we will end up with a ding in our on-time performance metric? :-)
Seller_24FzucbyGtgZS
Stopping what clock? Talking to what "seller support"?
We have lost and A to Z claim based on the fact that USPS did not scan the package until 1-hour after the ludicrous 24-hour shipping time frame that Amazon took upon itself to reset all our listings to (causing us numerous hours over several days to manually reset each listing because Amazon in its infinite wisdom disabled the global editing feature).
TaylorR_Amazon
Hi @Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ, I don't want to make any promises, but would like to at least get another review of this. Would you mind opening up a fresh case with Seller Support and provide a screenshot of the buyer indicating their business was closed? I think this is the most important detail.
You also mentioned that there were 29 other orders with similar circumstances. It would be great if you could paste those into the case as well so that I may review them. Thank you in advance!
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
Sure, @TaylorR_Amazon.
Case ID 14949886031. I didn't have time to submit the case right away. Now, when I pull the defects report in On-Time Delivery SFP metric for the past 30 days it shows 15 orders with defects. I uploaded the defects report, showing all delay reasons. Please see the case's attachments.
Seller Support associate offered to remove these defects, but I doubt she will be able to do anything about it, as usual.
Here is the list of the delays, so other sellers can also see what Amazon punishes them for:
-Customer not available or business closed / Business closed - No delivery attempt - 11 orders
-Incorrect Address - 1 order
-Carrier Failure - 2 orders
-Buy Shipping provided Standard Next Day label instead of Saturday (no Saturday delivery offered) - 1 order
That's the new SFP policy: all delays are counted against sellers, regardless of the reason. They do indicate that weather delays and major carrier constraints won't count against us, but that's not true. In late December - mid-January we saw a bunch of such delays and they were still counted against us as defects.
Let's see if you can do anything about it.
Thanks!
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
@TaylorR_Amazon,
After the promising start, everything ended as expected. I received a final reply in Case ID 14949886031, stating "As per policy we do not exempt orders. You are expected to work with carriers to prevent such issues." Funny, but true.
I asked them for a suggestion on how working with the carriers can cure the situation that the customers are not available at the time of the delivery, but that was more for kicks and giggles. I don't expect any response.
Anyway, here is your chance to take over the case and see what can be done.
The problem is that even if you manage to remove these unjust defects from our On-Time Delivery SFP metric, the issue lies in the SFP policy. The same thing might happen any week (customer order, we ship, but they are not available at the time of the delivery - bam, and we are hit with the defect). Until the policy and the metric calculations are fixed, all other efforts are worthless.
TaylorR_Amazon
Hi @Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ, I escalated this and the partner team reached out to you. Look for case 15002562821. Thank you!
Seller_24FzucbyGtgZS
Amazon does NOT care. Its your fault - always.
