To my knowledge, yes. I never experienced it otherwise, but we always use Amazon Buy Shipping Services for delivery.
Side note: The Seller is required to pay the return shipping on an FBM order when Amazon Buy Shipping is used for delivery on an order which arrives too late, after the expected delivery date. Same situation with Shipping Settings Automation (SSA).
SSA does not protect you against paying for return labels on late deliveries, but you do not receive a metric ding for the late delivery.
Yes, it is the same protection as using Amazon Buy Shipping Services. SSA only attempts to help adjust the delivery dates for the buyers more accurately.
They’re at it again, but with a more-restrictive Message Body now; just got this to one of the accounts @ 5:07AM EDT:
Subject Line:
Shipping Templates Auto-upgrade to Shipping Settings Automation (SSA)
There has long been speculation that Amazon might eventually remove the ability to opt-out of SSA, and it won’t surprise me in the least if that eventually occurs - although for now the newly-appeared blurb on the Shipping Templates ‘tab’ does include the provision (n.b. the date disparity):
This topic has had much discussion, especially in light of all those horrible delays during the pandemic, delays that persisted for many months. Most of us came to the logical conclusion that under promising and over delivering is the percentage move.
My ship-out and transit times have always been much shorter than promised, for reasons most FBM sellers understand but that the Amazon bots refuse to even acknowledge. I am not going to change them because, like any seller who has even a little FBM experience, I know that as soon as I shorten delivery promises, I will get burned by some major crock-up. Case in point: We shipped a book BPM to San Ramon, Calif., on Monday, July 22, with the delivery estimate July 24-29. San Ramon is 60 miles from us, and many of our orders to that area are literally delivered overnight, even with BPM and MM. Guess where it was scanned this morning? That’s right: Carolina, Puerto Rico. USPS website says expected delivery is tomorrow, which is extremely unlikely.
To be fair, we don’t have many problems with USPS, and most of our shipments move quickly and efficiently. But what Amazon refuses to acknowledge is that even one major delay can cause soooo many problems, i.e. angry buyer, instant refund to buyer by some poorly trained customer service rep, negative feedback, hit to on-time delivery rate, etc.
It’s possible that book and media sellers who use primarily MM and BPM are less likely to get the switcheroo because the delivery times for those services that are promised by USPS are longer than GA or Priority.
If Amazon shortened my delivery promises to accurately reflect my true delivery times, their wonderful automation bot would not allow me to buy BPM or MM – ever, because the delivery estimates for those services are many days longer than in reality (unless they send your parcel to Puerto Rico instead of Northern California).
Well, you have me beat! My worst routing issue (not counting the multiple back-and-forth ones) was a book going from NJ to Alabama; got scanned in Anchorage, AK.
Amazingly, it still got delivered fast enough that I never heard from the customer (not sure if technically on time or not; my memory’s not that good)
I swear I am not making this up: Years ago, we sent a CD, via First Class Mail, to Wisconsin. Very small package. It was first sent to Guam. Then Hawaii. A full month after its posting, it was delivered in Wisconsin. Strangest part: We never heard a peep from the buyer.
That San Ramon, Calif.-bound book I mentioned that went to Puerto Rico this week, not surprisingly, did not in fact make it to San Ramon by today – but the USPS website still shows the estimated delivery date as today. I feel an INR coming on. And a hit to my 97 percent OTDR. (By our own meticulous calculations and tracking, we have had only ONE order delivered late this year, but Amazon says 97 percent).
