For the past few days, we’ve noticed that Buy Shipping is no longer defaulting to the cheapest option that fulfills AHT/SSA/etc… in several cases. All are “Standard” ship speed.
As an example, one order defaulted to Priority Mail today despite that being $2-3 more expensive than the next option that Amazon said would still meet delivery requirements. Another defaulted to UPS 2nd Day, when Buy Shipping indicated that USPS Ground met the requirements for significantly less.
There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to what it DOES default to, though if we were to hazard a guess it looks like whatever shipment option was used for the last order of that particular SKU.
A minor annoyance for our volume compared to some of the other shipping issues currently under discussion, but has anyone else seen the same thing happening? Is there a shipping setting that could have changed (our templates remain unchanged)?
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How did you set up your SSA template(s)?
Did you set it up with only Standard shipping option?
Did you set up the Standard shipping option with ONE preferred shipping services? (example: set up with only USPS Ground Advantage)
If you have more than ONE preferred shipping service, then this could produce results like that.
If you are running more than one SSA shipping template with different items attached to each one, then you would have to check each SSA shipping template.
Remember … if you have just one preferred shipping service on an SSA shipping template, that you will still have other shipping services available as long as they meet the estimated delivery date for the order.
In addition, you can have one preferred shipping service for each of your SSA shipping templates. This allows for you to set ASINs that are small to USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb) and to set other ASINs that are larger to USPS Ground Advantage / USPS Ground Advantage Cubic.
If you select different shipping options other than Standard on the same SSA template, you could see different results also depending on what Amazon uses for the shipping option to calculate the estimated delivery date.
We have just one preferred shipping service (USPS Ground Advantage - less than 1lb) on our SSA shipping template and we always see USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb) as our default option.
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I do notice Amazon Shipping Ground is lower than USPS Ground Advantage Cubic on this particular order. (not including the Amazon pickup fee charged later)
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It will even default to a Late Delivery Risk at 10¢ higher cost.
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With SSA enabled, it should default to your preferred shipping service. In both of your examples above, we see that USPS Ground Advantage Cubic is the default offer. Is USPS Ground Advantage Cubic your preferred shipping service on your SSA shipping template? If so, then having USPS Ground Advantage Cubic as the default offer would be correctly programmed and the rest of the offers become lower price secondary in offer.
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It defaults to our preference. I like that, because I want Ground Advantage even if it is a late risk, because it’s the cheapest option. I often go to Shipstation if I’m not offered it as an option, so now I can still choose it.
For late delivery risk, I check the USPS estimated delivery date, which is often about two days earlier than Amazon predicts. I just go with that and if it’s late, I eat it.
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Thanks very much for the feedback. We do have more than one shipper and service set up on our SSA template and it’s the same template used for all of the orders in question.
What seems to have changed is that now for some reason even among those services that are valid and on our preferred list, it isn’t sorting them by price or even delivery date in all cases. It seems to be choosing one, even though there are others that still fit their constraints and are cheaper and on our preferred carrier/service list. This behavior seems to be new as of the past few days.
In the screenshot below, the services circled in red are on our SSA template. In the past, the $14.46 choice would have been lower on the list, but for some reason is now first even though there are other choices that are both valid and will be delivered sooner.
As an aside - looking at the estimated delivery dates it seems like Amazon still has some issues there. I believe that’s been brought up on another thread.
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We set our SSA shipping template to just one preferred shipping service … USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb).
In Amazon Buy Shipping (individual from the order detail page), we see …
And when expanded to see more …
We still see FedEx, UPS and USPS types of services and they are listed in order of lowest to highest AFTER our default USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb).
Last week on Thursday or Friday (probably Friday) Amazon made some changes in the buy shipping program which caused an uproar over the Late Delivery Risk showing up on orders controlled by Amazon through AHT, SSA and Amazon Buy Shipping. Amazon fixed that but there are other issues coming to light like Economy and Expedited having “Claims Protected” and “OTDR Protected” status on the order after the label was purchased.
If your sorting issue just started, then it is probably part of the same update problem Amazon created last Friday.
If you want to control Amazon a bit, we suggest setting your SSA shipping template to use only ONE preferred shipping service. You will still get all of the rest of the shipping services and it should come out with the preferred service in the #1 spot with the rest of them following sorted by price.
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Thanks very much!
We’ll continue to keep an eye on it and I’ll definitely talk with the folks in shipping to discuss the rationale behind one vs. many options on our SSA template.
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