Can't adjust shipping settings to something reasonable

My on time delivery has dropped below 90%, and my account is supposedly in danger of being deactivated.
I downloaded the orders that caused this, and all of them were in my home state of California. Upon further inspection, the delivery window for all of them was rediculously short. Amazon wanted the delivery done in three days.
This, mind you, is not expedited delivery. This is standard shipping.

So I looked at my shipping templates. The deliveries in my home state had been set to between 2 and 3 days. As best I can recall, I had it set to something like 5 to 8 days. ( California is a big state, with 10+ million people about 500 miles away in the SF Bay Area. Some parts of my own state are 900+ miles from me. )

I tried correcting this. There is one lower entry in the ā€˜transit timeā€™ menu. It allows me to set transit times to 2 - 4 days maxā€¦for standard shipping.
But I can set ā€˜expeditedā€™ to 5 to 8 days. :rage:

Yes, you read that right: the delivery time options for standard shipping are smaller than for expedited shipping.

Amazon has unilaterally changed my default shipping template to something that can cost me thousands of dollars per year. And that is just additional shipping expenses. Medicine to combat the increased blood pressure will cost more too.

Is there any way to correct or avoid this? I canā€™t afford to ship all of my books with a four day delivery time to anywhere in California. ( If someone near the Oregon border orders a heavy book, shipping costs could be in the hundreds of dollars )

The best that I have been able to do on short notice is to set my "order handling capacityā€™ to one order per day. According to Amazonā€™s description, this will add one day of handling time to all orders after the daily capacity is reached. ( On most days, the first order is from the east coast, so this effectively adds one day of handling time to all California orders )

I also checked the box next to economy shipping. Will that replace standard shipping? Or will the customer be offered both? What will the default be?

Next, I am going to figure out how to change the SKU-level handlling time on my thousands of SKUs. Any advice on how to do that easily and safely will be much appreciated.

But the essential problem remains: how do I get standard shipping to more than four days?

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Since Amazon has (in their infinite wisdom) decided 2-4 days is sufficient for standard shipping in your state, the only way I see around this is to use SSA and AHT to keep your OTDR above 90% or receive promise extensions. You would need to eliminate Expedited from a SSA shipping template as expedited shipments would not be OTDR protected.

Of course all of this would upset your handling time at some point and there may also be random times where you might be forced to upgrade the shipping for example from GA to Priority. This is all by design to bend over sellers (not in a stretchy kind of bend).

JMO

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And Amazon Buy Shipping

Only use Standard Shipping ā€¦ eliminate Economy, Expedited, 2 Day, 1 Day and Same Day from template.

In addition, have the SSA template set to have the preferred shipping service as ONLY USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb) if you have small packages or USPS Ground Advange Cubic if you have larger packages. Do not select the other shipping services. This doesnā€™t mean that you wonā€™t have the other services available to ship with. It just means that Amazon will use the one that you selected to estimate the delivery time with. We typically see 4 to 8 days estimated delivery times with this setting. Deliveries to remote places will have up to 10 days estimated delivery times.

We would do it with an excel template upload. If you are not familiar with this process, start with one or two items to learn the process. Then we would do them in blocks of similar products (maybe say up to 500 at a time).

If you do turn on AHT, remember to be consistent in your shipping. If you need a 2 day handle time, then ship those items always on the last ship by date of the order.

We have AHT and SSA turned on and use Amazon Buy Shipping. All of our orders are calculated based on USPS Ground Shipping (less than 1lb). We have maintained 100% on time delivery and items receive 2 day handle time. We had only one order that was late during the holidays (a USPS routing issue). It did not hit our OTDR.

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My understanding is that Standard Shipping in your home state has 3 options, 1-2 days, 2-3 days, or 2-4 days. I do not know any way to extend this.

For Free Economy shipping, your home state does not have unique requirements so you can set it the same as any other state.

Buyers are always offered Standard Shipping. Enabling other shipping options like Free Economy or Expedited will offer those options in addition to Standard, but they will not replace it.

This can be done in bulk via an upload. I had a thread from the early days of the OSFE where someone linked directly to the right page or template, but I donā€™t use the NSFE so I donā€™t have it anymore.

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What happens if I set the per-SKU handling time to several (maybe 3) extra days?

My initial assumption is that if I set the max transit time to 4, and handling time to 3, it will mean that I have at least 7 days to deliver. Any 7 day period will of course cover a weekend, so that becomes 9 days. Media mail will work with a 9 day delivery time.

I assume that I could do a bulk change of handling time with an excel template upload. If this true?

( BTW, I read suggestions of USPS GA, and UPS. I sell books, and use USPS media mail, bulk printed matter, or priority )

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Yes, you can. Iā€™m not near my Amazon logged-in computer right now so I canā€™t look up the template you need, but Iā€™m sure one of our ridiculously well organized members can hook you up.

Increasing your handling time does extend the delivery deadline, however you may start to run into issues with Amazon getting mad at you for having handling times more than 2 days longer than your actual ship times. (This nonsense specifically.)

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In Sept 2024, Amazon started tracking Handle Time Gap, Transit Time Gap and Promised Delivery Gap. This was to curb sellers from adding extra handle time to accommodate the transit time to maintain on time delivery.

If you set your handle time to 3 days, then you should ship on the last ship by date to maintain the 3 day handle time. If you ship early and your handle time gap becomes greater than 2 days, then Amazon will automatically change you to AHT and will not allow you to turn it off.

If you are always shipping on time, then your late deliveries are a transit time issue. In Aug 2024, Amazon announced that the 5 -8 day transit time would be no more and was being replaced with 3-5 day transit time. Even if you had 5-8 day transit time showing on your shipping template, Amazon was only going to use 3-5 day transit time when estimating the delivery time. Now ā€¦ if you have your business set up to be only open Monday thru Friday and closed Saturday and Sunday, then this 3-5 day transit time will actually translate into 3-5 days delivery time for orders placed on Sunday or Monday, 3-6 days delivery time for orders placed on Tuesday or Wednesday, 3-7 days delivery time for orders placed on Thursday and 3-8 days delivery time for orders placed on Friday or Saturday. On top of that ā€¦on holiday weeks like the one coming up on Jan 20, 2025, each of those could have an extra day added onto that. We have seen up to 10 days delivery when a holiday week falls within the delivery time window.

Yes on setting handle time to 2 days (or 3) at item level ā€¦ and then ship on the last ship by date.
Yes on setting business hours to Monday thru Friday and closed Saturday and Sunday.
Yes on setting your shipping template to Standard Shipping only (turn of Economy, Expedited, 2 day, 1 day and same day) and set your preferred shipping service to USPS Ground Advantage only.

And if you do all of the above, you might as well turn on AHT and SSA on the shipping template set up as described above. Doing so will protect your Late Shipment Rate and your On Time Delivery Rate if you use Amazon Buy Shipping.

And finally, it will take 30 days for your metrics to start to reflect the positive results across the different reporting areas.

Then you could set your shipping template to USPS media if that provides longer estimates (rather than USPS Ground Advantage). Remember, all of the other shipping services like priority will still be available as long as that delivery service will meet the estimated delivery time on the order.

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Yes ā€¦ the easiest excel template to use would be the Update Price and Quantity template.

Here is your path in seller central



Instructions will be on first excel tab with data definitions on the second tab. You will complete the 3rd tab called template. When completed, save to your computer and then upload on the page shown in the second image above.

Note ā€¦ you will need to know the quantity and price of each SKU. Set the last column ā€œfulfillment-channelā€ to ā€œdefaultā€ or leave empty.

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Their notes specifically say that his does not apply to media.

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To get Amazon to use
Screenshot 2025-01-12 at 12-52-22 usps media transit times - Google Search
ā€¦ it will have to be the only shipping service selected on Standard shipping template.

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I vaguely remember seeing this once, but where specifically can I go under the shipping settings to change which carriers are desired? I canā€™t find it anymore. Thanks in advance.

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It is available when you create a new template or on your SSA template when you are editing it (there is an edit to the right on the line where you turn SSA on or off). On the new template, it might be for just a template for SSA (not sure if it shows for non SSA template).

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OK, so only SSA-enabled templates. Bummer. As a book guy, Iā€™d rather just get rid of UPS altogether. I use BPM when buying Amazon for 95% of the time, and I can use Pirateship for the other 5%. I wonā€™t ever use UPS hereā€”too much hassle and not reliable in my experience.

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In another post I talked about being at 98% OTDR before the new metrics.

We didnā€™t change anything once implemented and we slowly dropped to 90.3%

We turned on SSA ONLY.
Automatic Handling time is turned off & we donā€™t use buy shipping.
The OTDR has been rising and is currently 96.6%.

**We do have out listings at 1 day handling time manually and we adjust using the Price & Quantity Template.

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USPS has not been helping. Last few weeks, Iā€™ve had priority shipments taking up to 14 days, albeit with weather delays. This one a Priority envelope (Seattle to Austin) been supposedly stuck in Kansas city 5 days for ā€œweather delaysā€. BS! Iā€™ve got plenty of GA shipped to Houston, San Antonio etc make it in 5 days shipped around the same time. In my opinion USPS service is getting much worse. OTDR protection may become a definite necessity.

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Itā€™s a luck of the draw with USPS routing and weather. Normally, ours all go through Amarillo TX. Recently, we had one go down to El Paso as the first distribution center to hit (over 300 miles away). We have seen a few go through Denver CO going to CA that would normally leave Amarillo TX and go straight to CA.

When USPS has distribution centers that get overloaded or closed due to weather, USPS will reroute to other areas that would normally go through the overloaded or closed ones. It can cause a domino effect and erratic movement of packages.

All of that effects all types of USPS services ā€¦ it doesnā€™t matter which one you use ā€¦ Priority, Ground Advantage ā€¦ etc ā€¦

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Right. Point is thereā€™s not any real benefit to Priorityā€¦ other than expensive packing supplies

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Agree ā€¦

  • Priority doesnā€™t get there much faster (if not exactly the same) than Ground Advantage
  • Ground Advantage comes with the same free $100 insurance

But ā€¦

  • Priority flat rate supplies are free
  • And Priority mail comes with inspection privacy ā€¦ Ground Advantage can be opened to inspect without really any reason ā€¦
  • Priority Flat Rate can be a cost saver if it fits in the flat rate envelope or box and the item is within the weight limit

However, we would agree that, with the slowing of delivery times and the creation of Ground Advantage, Priority Mail does not have the allure that it once did.

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The latest update in me vs Amazon.

I re-enabled ā€˜free economy shippingā€™. Free shipping used to be in all regions of ā€˜standard shippingā€™ in my default shipping template.

The economy shipping setting is 4-8 days. Since any 8 day period must necessarily include a weekend, it is effectively 10 days. Add one day handling time, and I have 11 days for anywhere in the country. ( That is essentially what standard shipping used to be until Amazon started meddling with it. )

I added $3.99 shipping charges to all ā€˜standard shippingā€™, on the assumption that doing so will push most customers to free economy. If not, that $3.99 adds up, and will allow me to pay for GA or priority to my fellow Californians without taking a significant loss.

If this works, then all is well here, and neither I nor the cats will starve. The sole effect will be that people in the flyover states will subsidize faster shipping to my fellow Californians.

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