Auto Shipping Settings

[Medic]

@Setalpz

Amazon doesn’t appear to specifically mention if your shipping metrics are protected from late deliveries (unless I missed that).

In the email, it includes the Policy link ⮕ Shipping Settings Automation

Under the policy, it states:

Additionally, with Shipping Settings Automation enabled your account health is protected from negative feedbacks due to late deliveries, and we will suppress negative feedback related to late deliveries on your Shipping Settings Automation orders, as long as:

• You shipped the orders on-time
• You provided valid tracking information
• You used the same (or faster) shipping service than what was used by Shipping Settings Automation used to calculate delivery promise, which can be seen on the Order Detail page and the Order API.

No mention of metrics that I can see..
A Seller wouldn’t be protected if they shipped late (obviously), but there is no mention of On-Time Delivery metrics, which is strange, you would think Amazon would address that.

I don’t think On-Time delivery even tracks anymore. I might be mistaken, but Amz turned it off during Covid, and I wonder if it was ever turned back on. I have had 100% for years now, and I know I’ve had the occasional lost or delayed shipment, and my 100% never changes.
Have you had or noticed any on your account?

[Setalpz]

I too have been 100% for a long time (months to 2+ years). I don’t recall the last time I’ve been below 100%.

[Medic]

@Old-Timer

I would say it is satisfactory.
Not great. Not bad. Above mediocre.

It works well for us, and we have been using it for quite some time.

I stopped using SSA because it often wasn’t giving me the option of First Class mail for orders that were in my own State. It was so strange, I could ship 4 oz FC across the country but the same item/weight for an order that was only a few towns over; the only option was Priority which was double the cost.

@Medic

Additionally, with Shipping Settings Automation enabled your account health is protected from negative feedbacks due to late deliveries, and we will suppress negative feedback related to late deliveries on your Shipping Settings Automation orders

I’m really curious how the negative feedback works with SSA and if you have noticed any difference.

Amazon says they “suppress” any negative feedback, which I interpret as 'vanish," not just a strikethrough.
If they do indeed remove it altogether, maybe the seller doesn’t even see it or know it was left because it never makes it onto their page.

Have you experienced any removals or received any emails with regard to this?
I could be overthinking it, and it’s still a strikethrough..

[Roxy]

I under promise for my sanity.

If you’re using the shipping automation, you are not either ‘over’, or ‘under’ - promising. Amazon is setting the promise for you.

Mainly UPS.

If you ship by UPS, the automation should do an ok job. But a manual template set-up would do an equally ok job. It’s Amazon’s bogus claim that the automation is “better” that’s all f’ed up.

But with UPS shipments, it’s 6 of one (automation), half dozen of the other (manual set up). UPS transit times from Point A to Point B are highly predictable and don’t vary much. You gain nothing with the automation, but don’t lose much either - unless you’re expecting it to do all the stuff Amazon promises like increase your sales.

So far, knock on the wooden stove top cover, UPS has been reliable for me.

Carrier reliability isn’t really the issue when it comes to the automation. It’s simply the ability to predict what the carriers will do. For UPS and FedEx, it’s pretty simple (which is why the automation can handle it) - Point A to Point B takes X days.

USPS is far more variable, which is why the automation can’t get this even close to right. The automation has always been unable to figure out what is needed to allow you to buy the label you want through Buy Shipping too, although that may be improving, as I’ve noticed changes within Buy Shipping lately.

But anyone who trusts Amazon’s claim that they use carrier data to make highly accurate predictions about transit times is foolish, at least when it comes to USPS services. They haven’t got a clue.

If my stuff were small and shipped USPS I’d be concerned about “peak” times.

It isn’t peak times that are the issue, it’s that the automation has zero knowledge about actual USPS transit times, and Amazon’s claims to the contrary are flat-out lies.

My first-class packages go from OR to FL in 2 days about 2/3 of the time, and 3 days the rest of the time. Why? I don’t know. It’s not supposed to be that fast, but I can look back at years of deliveries and tell you that’s how long it takes. Amazon’s automation says it takes 5 days. Nope. Not hardly ever. Maybe once in a blue moon.

Buy Shipping is also convinced that OR to FL takes 5 days, so I set that as my manual promise to ensure I can buy a FC label through Buy Shipping. If not for this, I’d give FL buyers a 3-day transit time because that’s how long it actually takes.

If Amazon’s automation could do what it claims, that’s the time it would set. But it can’t, so it doesn’t. They’re just clueless when it comes to USPS.

They’re better with UPS/FedEx but again, they’re only doing the same as you could do yourself with a manual set-up. They aren’t giving you anything better as they falsely claim.

[Old-Timer]

@Medic

I’m really curious how the negative feedback works with SSA and if you have noticed any difference.
Amazon says they “suppress” any negative feedback, which I interpret as 'vanish," not just a strikethrough.

Have you experienced any removals or received any emails with regard to this?
I could be overthinking it, and it’s still a strikethrough…

Amazon does suppress the feedback automatically when related to shipping.
They suppress by using the strikethrough method.

click for seller central display

click for displayed feedback on Amazon

[Roxy]

The issue is, (and correct me if I’m wrong) is that Auto shipping does not separate your own State or allow you to adjust the Transit times.

The (supposed) point of SSA is to let Amazon set the transit times for you, because apparently they can do it more accurately. So if you opt into the automation, you do give up the ability to set your own transit times. You let Amazon set them for you, and when Amazon does it wrong, oh well. That’s the problem.

What Amazon claims happens (lies! lies! lies!) is that, with the automation, they set transit times for the whole country on a zip-code level, and that they pull data from the carriers that lets them update these transit times near instantly if an unexpected issue (excess volume, weather event) occurs.

So, in theory, you would have a shipping template with the most accurate transit times possible, that is regularly updated on the fly to stay on top of every issue nationwide.

In practice, however…

Amazon claims that when they set your transit times, they will be far more accurate than ones you would set yourself and therefore, the buyer would see a much more accurate (implied: shorter) delivery date and be more likely to buy.

In reality, I’ve found the times they set range from somewhat accurate to wildly off base.

I had one ‘automated’ template I used as a test. It had one product assigned to it and ‘first class mail’ as the only shipping service. After the fact, I compared the actual delivery dates of my packages to the ‘promised’ delivery dates Amazon had set, based on their supposedly super-accurate data. They were way off. They frequently over-estimated by 3 days.

In the best case scenario (for example, those who ship by UPS), a seller would use the UPS Ground map based on their shipping zip code to set up their shipping template.

Amazon’s automation would use that same data to set it up for you. So it’s a wash. You’d both end up with the same settings.

In the worst case scenario, for USPS shippers, we set up our templates to match our known transit times.

Amazon’s automation would set them up based on inaccurate data, resulting in potential:

• Longer delivery promises to buyers
• Your inability to buy the label type you want in Buy Shipping

Additionally, if you opt into the automation, you’ll have no way of knowing the transit times Amazon sets for various buyers. Your templates will just show this:

[Roxy]

@Medic

But on Manual Template, your State is listed separately; I had to increase the Transit Time to 5-8 days before 2 pm, and after 2 pm could be 3-5, or my only option for 15 oz or less would be Priority, especially for same State Orders.

FYI, you can adjust that 2 pm cut-off time. Are you on the west coast? You’d change it in your General Shipping Settings under Order Fulfillment Settings. Set your USPS times to these -

I use 2-day handling time and 2-4 day transit (6 total days) which gives me FC mail all the time, as long as I ship on day 1. It gives you the same result as having 1-day handling and 3-5 day delivery, which is no longer an option under Standard shipping.

[Medic]

@Roxy

USPS is far more variable, which is why the automation can’t get this even close to right. The automation has always been unable to figure out what is needed to allow you to buy the label you want through Buy Shipping too, although that may be improving, as I’ve noticed changes within Buy Shipping lately.

It isn’t peak times that are the issue, it’s that the automation has zero knowledge about actual USPS transit times, and Amazon’s claims to the contrary are flat-out lies.

That is very well stated; I also see this issue on eBay predicting and promising 4-day delivery for every USPS order.

[Roxy]

Under the policy, it does say negative feedback related to late deliveries is suppressed, which sounds different from a strikethrough.

Thanks for looking that up. But again, my belief is it’s better to make accurate delivery promises that don’t result in negative feedback that needs to be removed in the first place.

Isn’t that better than making falsely short delivery promises that result in late deliveries that disappoint the customer and make them angry enough to leave negative feedback?

Why not just do things right Amazon? (Accurate shipping templates → no late deliveries)
Instead of screw-ing them up, leaving the buyer disappointed, and then removing the penalty for sellers? It’s assbackwards.

[Old-Timer]

@Old-Timer

Amazon does suppress the feedback automatically when related to shipping.
They suppress by using the strikethrough method.

Correction, I made an error above:

The strikethrough appears on the Seller Central backend, but the actual listing does not show the feedback. The feedback was actually suppressed and is not visible to buyers.

[Roxy]

@Old-Timer

Amazon does suppress the feedback automatically when related to shipping.

For the sake of comparison, my last negative feedback for delivery (struck through, suppressed, or otherwise) was in early 2019.

[joebcrafts]

Preface by saying: Most of my sentences were mild sarcasm and the post I made first was 100% sarcasm. Trust me, I don’t believe for a second that Amazon’s automation is doing me any favors.

Please don’t just grab a single sentence to quote my thought as you missed to what I was referring and inferring other things in your text.

I under promise my production time for my all made to order items. Most are set to 6 days but generally I am faster than that. Yes, Amazon is currently in “control” of what they believe the transit time is for UPS from my zip code to each zone. They’re getting that directly from UPS as can I. I am well aware that Amazon isn’t doing something “amazing” and expect that sometimes they’ll be wrong.

As to carrier reliability, what I am referring to is that if UPS says it is 2 days from IN to NC that it actually happens (and so far they’re consistently hitting their marks). USPS no longer “guarantees” priority (which is how my item would ship). Yes I would be a lot more leery of using “automation” (Amazon’s guess) if my products shipped USPS. The only time I do ship USPS is when it has to because of going to a PO Box (very tiny percentage of my orders in the last several years). I can adjust to make sure those orders are done well ahead of schedule (my safe production time) if I feel that USPS is struggling (“peak times” = possibly any time) in the area it needs to go to (usually high population density, complete opposite the sticks, or all the way to one coast or other).

[Medic]

@Roxy

FYI, you can adjust that 2 pm cut-off time. Are you on the west coast? You’d change it in your General Shipping Settings under Order Fulfillment Settings. Set your USPS times to these -

It’s strange I don’t have that option; could it be my settings are limiting it?
I have Default Handling Time Same-day (0 day)

This is the only option showing under General Shipping Settings /Order Fulfillment Settings; there are no carrier-specific preferences.

I would love to have one day handling to give me some breathing room but..
the reason I have (0 days) selected is to gain the BB advantage on one of our most popular items; there are 3 other very competitive sellers, and since I switched to (0) I seem to be at an advantage with the BB because my estimated delivery date shows 1-2 days less than the competition.

[Tallytony]

I have 0 days handling and do get to see that box.

[Medic]

@Roxy

Thanks for looking that up. But again, my belief is it’s better to make accurate delivery promises that don’t result in negative feedback that needs to be removed in the first place.

Why not just do things right Amazon? (Accurate shipping templates → no late deliveries)
Instead of screw-ing them up, leaving the buyer disappointed,

I completely agree!!

I can’t remember the last time I had a late delivery issue that resulted in negative feedback; I’ve been very happy using the manual shipping template, and thankfully, very few issues on the USPS end as well.

I was more just curious regarding the feedback claim/phrase they are trying to use to sell SSA; if it’s just a strikethrough, then it is no different for us who use Amazon Buy-Shipping; we all have that protection as well. So it’s not like we are getting some great gift or reward…

[Old-Timer]

@Roxy

For the sake of comparison

Out of our 25,000+ feedbacks received we do have a few hundred neutral and a few hundred negative but over 25K in positive.

[Medic]

@Old-Timer

The strikethrough appears on the Seller Central backend, but the actual listing does not show the feedback. The feedback was actually suppressed and is not visible to buyers.

So to clarify, the strikethrough shows when you access your feedback from your Seller Central Feedback page but the same feedback is not showing or visible on your storefront page..is that correct?

[Roxy]

Preface by saying: Most of my sentences were mild sarcasm and the post I made first was 100% sarcasm. Trust me, I don’t believe for a second that Amazon’s automation is doing me any favors.

OK, I missed that. Sounds like I rubbed you the wrong way, and I’m sorry.

Many people seem to misunderstand what the automation promises/claims it can do, so if I interpreted anything you said incorrectly, I do apologize for that.

I understood what you meant about carrier reliability, I was just saying that whether carriers meet their delivery promise or not isn’t really relevant to the shipping automation topic. It sounded like you thought otherwise, but I may have misread your comment.

[Medic]

@Tallytony

I have 0 days handling and do get to see that box.

Interesting; I wonder what’s going on if it’s user error.. , or if it has something to do with my Carrier preferences, which are not showing at all

I’m going to need to do some more digging.

[Roxy]

It’s strange I don’t have that option; could it be my settings are limiting it?

Yes, probably. I think it’s because you don’t have any templates that use the automation currently. Can you create one (don’t add any products to it) then see if you get this section added?