For the second time in as many weeks, BPM was not available from Amazon’s buy shipping. And both times, the item was clearly, indisputably a book.
As Ian Flemming observed in one of his James Bond books, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
Bond never faced an enemy like Amazon. I am assuming enemy action on the second occurrence.
Does anyone know why this might be happening?
No idea; although I had similar today. Of the 15 books I bought labels for this morning, one of them did not have BPM or MM as an option. It was properly in the Books category (which is a common cause of this problem, especially gardening and car books). And I got other USPS options, so not an address issue. The rest of the books were no problem (although to be fair, not 100% sure that MM was on all of them; I don’t search for it).
But I’ve never had a case where I was offered MM but not BPM on any item elible for BPM.
Media mail was offered for both of these. So it is not a categorization problem.
There are a couple of other possibilities (although Amazon screwing up is at the top).
Was the weight correct in the listing? BPM has a weight limit of 15#.
And is it actually bound? Loose leaf qualifies for MM, but not for BPM.
But probably just Amazon being Amazon…
Most likely, because it does happen.
My top issues on this:
My understanding is that MM and BPM are lumped together. I’ve never seen a difference in the expected delivery date. If NEITHER was offered, then this would be my top suspect.
Buy Shipping always shows me the same delivery estimate for BPM and MM, and often lately Ground Advantage shows the same date as well. Thankfully we continue to see nearly all our orders delivered quite quickly, regardless of mail class. All of our parcels are initially sorted in Sacramento, and it seems the postal workers there are on the ball. I also think, based on our own experience and the anecdotal reports of other sellers, that MM and BPM parcels are more and more frequently being placed and transport in the same bins with Priority Mail, for logistic practicality.
I will note that, until last year, the USPS did send back our undeliverable BPM parcels even though official policy is to discard them. But since summer 2023, we have had a handful of BPM parcels with delivery issues never make it back to us. Tracking shows they are being returned to sender, but that’s where it stops. Filing Missing Mail Search Requests yields no results. We have always, however, willingly accepted this risk as part of getting the cheap rate. I really wish Pirate Ship offered BPM.
Agreed. With the new MM rates, it’s now usually over $1 per book. Doesn’t take many of those to pay for the rare one that gets lost; so far, I’ve had one out of hundreds (and Amazon covered that, so no problem anyway!)
Once a book gets expensive (that threshold continues to increase; now maybe $75+) I’ll usually switch to another shipping method; quite often, GA Cubic is cheaper than MM, at least for orders going close.
That would explain the occasional ultrafast BPM movement. I’ve recently had a BPM package go coast-to-coast, delivered to the customer, in just under 48 hours.
I use an ink stamp that says “return service requested”. I haven’t lost a returnable BPM package in years…err…not ever that I can recall.
It happened a third time. And the third occurrence was on the same ISBN as the second.
From this I conclude that it is not a random failure, but an ISBN-specific failure.
Somewhere, deep in the Amazon database, the box that is labeled ‘eligible for BPM’ has gone unchecked.
I’m glad this has worked out for you, and I wish you nothing but the best, but my experience doing that was an unmitigated and costly disaster, and I would highly recommend against it, based on what we had happen.
Some years ago (can’t recall exactly when), someone on the OSFE suggested putting “Return Service Requested” on outgoing BPM parcels, so I did. I’m old enough to remember, many years ago, seeing this verbiage on a lot of mail, even on letter mail, especially from businesses, so I knew what it meant.
We soon began receiving a large number of BPM parcels returned to us, with scans showing they never left the state or sometimes even the post office where they were mailed. We figured out why when postal clerks at the counter (in those days we dropped off some of our parcels at the counter; now we take ALL of them to the counter so they get scanned) started saying to us, politely enough and obviously bewildered, “Oh, this is a return? You’re returning this? You want this returned to sender??” No clerk to whom we explained our intent had the first clue what “Return Service Requested” meant. And not only young clerks, either – people who were multi-decade postal workers. At the time, we happened to be making a lot of out-of-town trips either to scout books or visit family many counties away, so sometimes would mail books at post offices other than our usual one here at home. And we encountered this complete bewilderment at a number of post offices in Northern and Southern California.
It was a huge problem for a little while, with parcels being delivered late and sometimes having to pay twice for postage to send the book out again. So we stopped the practice and, until last year, never had a problem getting BPM returned if undeliverable. Again, we have always understood the risk and fully accept it. It’s a pain to completely lose merchandise once in a while, but the lower cost is worth the risk.
BTW, we feel incredibly fortunate in general to get such fast delivery times on MM and BPM; I know that is not the case for all booksellers, depending on multiple factors. But most of our books and media are delivered within 2 to 3 days (a bit longer if there’s a Sunday or holiday in between) anywhere in the lower 48. For some reason, anything we send to any Washington, D.C., address is delivered in exactly 2 business days, like clockwork, without exception, regardless of mail class. It’s kinda weird. (Not the same for Maryland or Virginia, even on the outskirts of D.C.) My only guesses are maybe there are more flights to D.C. out of Sacramento because it’s the state capital, or maybe D.C. mail just gets some expedited treatment that I’m not aware of.