MLK - UPS Closed - 0% 1 Day SFP Shipping Speed Metric
UPS was closed due to MLK day yesterday. Thus, none of our items were "Get it One Day." Which means our 1 Day Speed 0%. Amazon needs to not count this day against our weekly Speed Metric score, but I am sure they will since they treat Sellers so poorly these days and are trying to force everyone off SFP.
MLK - UPS Closed - 0% 1 Day SFP Shipping Speed Metric
UPS was closed due to MLK day yesterday. Thus, none of our items were "Get it One Day." Which means our 1 Day Speed 0%. Amazon needs to not count this day against our weekly Speed Metric score, but I am sure they will since they treat Sellers so poorly these days and are trying to force everyone off SFP.
24 replies
Seller_hvvNUJjgodXWj
@KJ_Amazoncan you confirm if Amazon is going to penalize for 0% 1 Day Page Speed views on MLK day, since UPS was closed?
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
USPS was closed too.
I just received notification from the SFP Performance team, telling me that my Speed Metrics fell below threshold. I pulled the graphics from SFP Metrics. It appears that Amazon does not calculating Speed Metrics properly. I'm attaching them below. First graph is for the previous week. Second graph is for this week.
Discrepancies for Previous week:
-2-day delivery on 1/12 and 1/16 are less than 100%. Why? All orders placed on 1/12 (Sunday) can be delivered on Tuesday, regardless of the time the order was placed. We would simply overnight them on Monday, 1/13. Same goes for 1/16 (Thursday). It should be 100%, regardless of the time the order is placed. We would overnight them for Saturday delivery on 1/18.
-1-day delivery hoovers in low-mid 30% between Monday 1/13 and Friday 1/17. Our order cut-off is at 4 pm, which is the latest that can be done with UPS and FedEx to have enough reasonable time to process, prep, and ship the order before UPS/FedEx pick it up at 5 pm. 4 pm is equal to 16:00 hours. 16 hours out of 24 hours in a day is 66%. Your metric shows an average of around 33%. This means that 66% of page views occur after 4 pm? I don't believe that. Especially for our kind of products that is business oriented, i.e. most businesses stop operating after 5 pm and no longer look at our listings until next day. I understand that we are in ET and Amazon lives by PT, which hurts us more, but those extra 3 hours still should not lower our score by half from 66% to 33%. Plus, that puts East Coast sellers into disadvantage compared to West Coast sellers. Amazon should count this metric based on the seller's location. If Amazon is crazy about getting the products to customers faster, then Amazon should program Buy Box to show West Coast sellers to West Coast buyers after East Coast sellers' order cut-off time.
This week's Speed Metric data is even worse in terms of incorrect calculations:
-1/19 (Sunday) is showing 0% for 2-day delivery. Why? We could have shipped everything on Monday for delivery on Tuesday with FedEx - they were open on Monday (and we shipped all orders on Monday).
-1/20 (Monday) is showing 0% for 1-day delivery and less than 100% for 2-day. Why? FedEx was open, we shipped all the orders and could have shipped overnight, if told by Amazon.
-1/23 (Thursday) - showing 0% for both 1-day and 2-day. Not sure if it's a glitch or it's too soon to for the graph to update since it was yesterday. We shipped all orders yesterday as required.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that not only the SFP policy is unrealistic (ship on holidays and Sunday, even though all carriers are not available to ship anything on those days), Amazon doesn't even calculate the metrics correctly, triggering warnings and unjust SFP suspensions.
Seller_hvvNUJjgodXWj
It is insane what they are doing to SFP Sellers. They are pushing us all out. Our products don't work for FBA as they don't turn fast enough. We are trying to do this right but AMZ doesn't care. Low priced Chinese companies backed by tons of money can afford to do all their auto parts FBA and pay the late storage fees, while we cannot.
Another thing it seems like they are doing is padding handling time because of the weather. In doing so they may be showing longer than regular handling/shipping times which then hurts our Speed Metrics. So, a change Amazon is making that we have no control over is penalizing our scores! But if they don't add the padding then our orders may be late and there goes out OTDR!!! So, we out of luck both ways.
KJ_Amazon
@Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ Thanks for these detailed questions. Our partner team reviewed them and confirmed that the Speed Metrics are accurate and being calculated properly. They provided some responses for me to share.
The product can be delivered on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday depending on the carrier service and where the customer is located. Overnighting the orders on Monday would be a factor for on-time delivery but not the speed metric.
-1/19 (Sunday) is showing 0% for 2-day delivery. Why? We could have shipped everything on Monday for delivery on Tuesday with FedEx - they were open on Monday (and we shipped all orders on Monday).
Our partner team suggests reviewing the following instructions to make sure the speed metric is working on holidays when certain carriers are operating:
- Enable seller toggle holiday to override national holiday
- Review which carriers are operating on said holiday. Please review carrier holiday service on their website.
- Template should have said carrier service enabled in Shipping Setting Automation.
-1/20 (Monday) is showing 0% for 1-day delivery and less than 100% for 2-day. Why? FedEx was open, we shipped all the orders and could have shipped overnight, if told by Amazon.
The only exemption to the delivery speed requirement will be page views that have promise extensions applied, which is expected to occur only during severe weather or during major events where carrier capacity is constrained.
Amazon Prime is a national program and not regionally selected. Some sellers have warehouses set up closer to West Coast customers to account for this issue.
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
Thanks, @KJ_Amazon, for looking into this.
I'm quite sure we had the MLK day marked as operational, but I can't confirm that now because Holiday Settings page goes by the calendar and it shows only future days. MLK Day is no longer on the list. Next test day to check if it works properly will be the President's Day (Washington's Birthday) on February 17th. I just checked again and it's set as operating day by us. Both UPS and FedEx are operational that day (confirmed with both carriers) and our SSA has been enabled for many months now.
I disagree with the partner team that they think Speed Metric is accurate and is being calculated accurately. They did not answer my question about 1/23 (Thursday, an absolutely ordinary shipping day) where Speed Metric shows 0% for both 1-Day and 2-Day. At first I thought it was a glitch or too soon to be updated (I posted my comment on the next day, 1/24). But, almost a week later, it's still showing 0%. We received and shipped a ton of orders that day with the 1-Day and 2-Day requirement (and correct promised delivery dates) and shipped them accordingly - all can be confirmed by looking at our orders that day. This means one system was working properly (promised day calculator), while the other was not (speed metric).
See the screenshot from today (1/29) below). This fact alone says something is off.
Seller_hvvNUJjgodXWj
I opened a case and asked the same question as my original post on here. There response is below. Our rates with Fedex are much higher than UPS. I guess I have to turn off SFP next time UPS has a holiday and Fedex doesn't??? And, the Fedex schedule link that the AMZ rep linked to shows that Fedex had a modified schedule on MLK, so somethings may have not even gotten out!
"Dear BuyAutoParts,
Thank you for reaching out regarding the impact of the MLK holiday on your Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) speed metrics. I understand your concern about UPS being unavailable on that day and the resulting 0% on your speed metrics.
Please note that Amazon only exempts speed metrics in cases where we observe degraded carrier performance due to factors like weather or capacity constraints. Since FedEx was available for the MLK holiday, as evidenced by the FedEx holiday service schedule, the speed metric is working as intended.
*FEDEX SCHEDULE LINK WAS HERE BUT CANT PUT NON AMAZON LINK IN FORUMS*
While I understand UPS is your preferred carrier, as an SFP seller, you are responsible for fulfilling orders and meeting the program's shipping requirements, even during holidays. For more information on managing holiday settings and SFP preparations, I recommend searching Seller Central for "Manage Holiday Settings" and "Seller Fulfilled Prime preparations for the holiday season".
Thank you for selling with Amazon"
Seller_lCX40xAkSs1xm
In Amazon's eyes this is your fault for not motivating UPS to work this day!
/s
KJ_Amazon
Thank you for providing these details about your Seller Fulfilled Prime Speed Metrics. Our partner team has reviewed the results and feedback and asked me to provide an update.
Seller Fulfilled Prime performance requirements
SFP Speed Metrics are accurate and working as designed. Sundays and holidays count towards delivery speed metric calculation.
Our team provided the following instruction for sellers to make sure the speed metric is working on holidays where certain carrier are operating:
- Enable seller toggle holiday to override national holiday
- Review which carriers are operating on said holiday. Please review carrier holiday service on their website.
- Template should have said carrier service enabled in Shipping Setting Automation.
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
@Seller_hvvNUJjgodXWj ,
I followed @KJ_Amazon's advice and asked the SFP Performance team directly why 1/23/2025 (Thursday) is showing 0% for both 1-Day and 2-Day in Speed Metrics for us, despite being an ordinary everyone-is-open-and-operating day.
You've got to see that conversation. It's hilarious. Basically, it was an admission of the case where left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Plus, they admitted that the Speed Metric is not calculated properly, as I suspected.
At first, they tried to get rid of me by telling me that January 25th was a holiday (insinuating that 2-Day delivery was not available because all shipping carriers were closed). I looked up the holidays for that day and the only national holiday listed there was National Fish Taco Day. Something tells me that Amazon was not celebrating it by shutting down their operations. Neither did we, UPS, FedEx, USPS. Even Taco Bell was open. When I called this BS, they admitted they were wrong. At any rate, even if shipping carriers were closed on the 25th, it doesn't explain whey 1-Day speed was showing as 0% two days prior.
They also pulled some sample orders of mine from that day, but, conveniently, they were all placed after the 3:30 pm ET same-day shipping cut-off times that we have set in our shipping settings, i.e. looking at those orders was a moot point. I gave them a list of orders placed on 1/23 (Thursday) before the cut-off time and they started talking about Sunday and Monday, for some reason, ignoring the issue I pointed out.
At last, they admitted that 1/23 data was calculated incorrectly, said they are going to escalate it to the internal team and marked the case as answered, which means it went into a Black Hole and we're probably not going to find out what's going on.
However, the most valuable info I gained out of this conversation is Promise Extensions. @KJ_Amazon mentioned it in one of his replies, but I did not understand the scope of it at first:"The only exemption to the delivery speed requirement will be page views that have promise extensions applied, which is expected to occur only during severe weather or during major events where carrier capacity is constrained."
SFP Performance Team expanded on this: basically, they said, Amazon decides when to pad delivery timeframe that is shown to the customers and when to use promise extensions.
For example, it's a normal day, you offer an item with 1-Day Prime delivery, but Amazon might show the customer 2-3 days out for the soonest delivery. Sellers can't control that. Amazon takes all the data and reports from the shipping carriers, weather reports, etc., and decides on its own when, how, and whom to pad.
Now, here comes the funny part: Speed Metric will still calculate on what is actually shown to the customer, i.e. if there was a 2-3 day padding, we are screwed, it will show low percentage for those page views. However, SFP team said that promise extensions are excluded from speed metrics when they evaluate seller's performance against program requirements.
The problem is that low numbers will still trigger SFP program requirements warning emails, informing sellers that they fell below the thresholds. I don't know if SFP automatically discards such warnings that were caused by Promise Extensions, or if that's something they will have to do manually when a sellers is kicked out from the SFP program and files for re-instatement. If it's second, then it stinks, because that means hours/days/weeks of a stress trying to get to a right person at SFP who knows about this and can separate the data and re-instate participation i n the program. Sales and revenues are lost. It's an unnecessary stress.
What SFP Metrics team should do is to show a true Speed Metric with promise extensions applied, i.e. if a seller offer 1-Day delivery on a certain day, then the metric should give full credit to the seller for that page view, regardless of what Amazon decided to show to the customer.
I asked SFP team how to get re-instated quickly if such issue happens and I was ignored.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you.
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
Well, as I suspected, the same thing is happening today (Friday, February 14th) because Monday is President's Day (February 17th).:
-Our Holiday settings at Amazon are showing that we set President's Day as operational.
-Both UPS and FedEx are operational on President's Day (at least for all services that we use).
And yet Amazon is padding the Promised Delivery Date to customers until Tuesday, thinking that we don't work on Monday. Buy Shipping is finicky: some orders give us UPS Next Day option and some don't.
Basically, this shows that the issue is still there and Speed Metric is going to be messed up for us again today.
Next time to test this again will be June 19th (Juneteenth). Amazon's army of engineers has over four months to fix this. We'll see how they do.
