Estimated Delivery time is calculated as
Handle Time + Shipping Transit Time = Estimated Delivery Time
HT of 2 + STT of 2 to 4 = Yields EDT of 4 to 6
HT of 1 +STT of 5 to 8 = Yields EDT of 6 to 9
As you can see, a longer Handle Time with a shorter Shipping Transit Time could provide the better offer.
Why would a longer handling time cut the shipping time though?
The carrier’s going to move the package in the same amount of time regardless of when you tender it to them.
By Amazon’s stats (quoted in the notice), 85% of orders are shipped this quickly.
But anything less than 95% results in a defect.
Personally, I usually ship out same or next day; but sometimes I have other stuff going on; and sometimes the mail doesn’t get picked up. I want that extra day. I really don’t care if I lose a sale every once in a while; if a customer is passing up my offer because there is another a day faster, then it’s probably on something that will sell within a few days anyway. Much better than a defect; or worse, losing INR protection because the sub mail-carrier was sick (happened last week; no pickup)
Having the default for new accounts start out at 1 is one thing; what I don’t want is for them to change my default on a whim. If I set it, it should STICK. They shouldn’t be changing my shipping settings at any level, with the possible exception of showing extended times to customers in areas experiencing delays (due to hurricane, blizzard, etc.)
Well, apparently they’re promising to “protect 2-day handling time metrics” by “intelligently” changing the handling times. Of course that doesn’t account for reasoning like yours where you want the buffer because you’re a small operation.
Changing defaults for new listings is fine, but the only reason I can think of for forcing the change onto existing listings is they want to suspend people for not shipping on time so your only option is to appeal with a plan of action saying you’ll use FBA to avoid violating FBM metric requirements.
This is abominable, and was totally predictable.
This is my experience. I have the Same Day toggle set on my shipping templates (I turn it off as needed, hence my wanting to change my SKU-level default to 2). I’m always offered USPS Ground Advantage. Having same day handling hasn’t affected that.
My recent real-life experience proved it did affect winning the buy box. A personal situation required unpredictable time and attention so I changed my handling time from 1 to 2 day for a little breathing room. I did not change any transit times. I lost the buy box on many listings that I had been winning, even with lower prices. My estimated delivery windows were now later than the buy box winners.
After a few days I changed it back to 1 day and became the winner again (a bit more stressed but I recovered sales at least).
I did not get the email, perhaps because it is set to 1 day?
Exactly this. When I occassionally take a longer vacation, ideally I can turn my store back on the day before coming home and pick up an extra day’s worth of sales, and just ship the next day I’m back. But this kills that and will cost me $ over the course of the year in the extra days I have to keep on vacation now.
With me, it’s not so much going on an actual vacation (although that happens from time to time), it’s more often the fact that, as a bookseller, I have days where I’m sourcing inventory. When there is a big sale 75 miles away, I may leave the house at 8:00am, and since I’ll try to add other sourcing while on the trip, might not get home until 6:00pm (thank goodness for frozen pizza!). Obviously, an order that comes in that day, or even late the next day, is not going to be a priority when I’m getting ready to head out the door. And this isn’t even anything as “selfish” as “wanting to have a life”; it’s actually a vital part of the business. But Amazon seems to feel otherwise…
(and yes, I do the same as you when on an actual “vacation”; I turn things on as soon as possible, knowing (or at least hoping) that I’ll be busy packing up after getting home)
Where do I find this file?
ETA: Never mind. I found it.
Also, has anyone seen their handling times changed by Amazon yet?
No, my default is still 2 days.
Your analogy makes sense if the seller had control over both parts of the equation, but you can’t “speed” the delivery part of it (unless you pay the carrier a ton of extra money), you can only control when it leaves your facility.
This is your lack of knowledge of how FBM works showing up again.
The seller CAN control both parts of the equation.
This may be a good time to review how sellers ‘set’ the delivery time buyers see, as more than one person seems puzzled by my earlier post.
To show the buyer an estimated delivery date, Amazon adds two numbers together. The first is - how many days until you ship? (Handling time, or processing time for handmade sellers) The second is - once you ship, how many days until the buyer gets it? (Transit time)
For the sake of this discussion, a ‘transit’ day is any day except Sundays and holidays.
Don’t be confused by Amazon’s choice to call them ‘transit’ days. We know that if you ship a package on Fri or Sat, it is still “in transit” and moving on Sunday, but that’s not what this term means.
So how do you set your transit times? Via your shipping templates. You can either set the times yourself (manual template set-up) or let Amazon do it for you (bad idea… bad, bad, bad - through automated template set-up). When you turn this task over to Amazon, you risk two main things:
When you open a shipping template for manual editing, you’ll see something like this:
You have 3 choices for transit times. You have unlimited choices (but only a couple good ones) for handling time. Remember that ultimate delivery time, and thus, the delivery date buyers see while they’re shopping, is determined by adding the two together. That gives you a lot of options for setting different total delivery times, depending on how fast you can get a package delivered.
Let’s consider an order placed early on a Monday. These are some of the options a buyer could see, depending on a seller’s settings (handling time + transit time):
Depending on your selections, you can set a total delivery promise of 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10 days. More, if you set a 3-day or longer handling time.
The only thing that should impact the Buy Box is your total delivery promise. And you can use whichever combination of handling plus transit times that gives you the total delivery time that you want.
If Amazon estimates 2 - 7 days delivery time
Amazon doesn’t estimate anything unless you choose to let them automate your shipping settings for you, which most people shouldn’t do.
Why would a longer handling time cut the shipping time though?
The ‘transit time’ a seller can set does not have to equal the time a carrier will take to deliver. The total delivery time (handling time + transit days) does have to equal the total time it will take you to process the order plus the time for the carrier to deliver, but these 2 numbers do not have to equal the handling time and transit time numbers you set on Amazon.
If it takes you 1 day to process and 6 days to deliver, you need to tell Amazon your total delivery time is 7. But you could set that up as 2 handling days plus 5 transit days, or 3 handling days plus 4 transit days, or even 5 handling days plus 2 transit days, or you could, of course, say 1 handling day and 6 transit days. The only thing that matters is that the breakdown adds up to seven. HOW you break it down within the total 7 days doesn’t matter at all.
I changed my handling time from 1 to 2 day for a little breathing room. I did not change any transit times. I lost the buy box on many listings that I had been winning, even with lower prices. My estimated delivery windows were now later than the buy box winners.
Of course, if you set a longer handling time without changing your transit times, your total delivery time will be longer. No one is saying that a longer (or shorter) total delivery time doesn’t impact the Buy Box because, of course, the total matters. It’s just how you break it down within the total that doesn’t.
After a few days I changed it back to 1 day and became the winner again (a bit more stressed but I recovered sales at least).
Here’s where using 2 days can free you from that stress. If the numbers add up, increase your handling time to 2 days and decrease your transit times by one day, so your total delivery time stays the same, but you have the freedom to not ship on day 1 if you need it. Of course, if you wait to ship until day 2, you’ll need to use a delivery method that will still arrive on time.
I have the Same Day toggle set on my shipping templates (I turn it off as needed, hence my wanting to change my SKU-level default to 2). I’m always offered USPS Ground Advantage. Having same day handling hasn’t affected that.
Whether GA is offered or not depends on the number of days available between the date you ship on, and the final ‘deliver by’ date of the order. If you set a long-enough transit time that there are always enough days available regardless of your handling time, then GA will always be offered.
But not everyone understands how it works, nor sets their shipping templates up right to make this happen. For example, I have exceptional (no idea why) USPS service from here to Florida. GA packages usually arrive there in 2 days. But Buy Shipping is programmed to believe that Ground Advantage from me (OR) to FL takes 5 days, so I always need to set at least a 5-day total delivery promise to Florida buyers in order to buy a GA label to Florida, even though actually delivery time is much shorter.
That’s kind of stupid that the options go from 2 - 4 straight to 5 - 8. I see what you mean by longer handling + shorter shipping now. I only ever used the default FBM setup.
A really motivated seller could be setting exact transit times for every UPS/USPS zone, but with those options you really can’t.
This is actually an incredibly arcane way to do it for a sophisticated AI giant like Amazon. You would think that you provide a ship from address, select which carrier(s) you plan on using to ship with, and then Amazon can use that information along with carrier delivery time maps along with some AI (for regions that frequently have delays) to show the customer exactly how long the transit time will be for their address.
Wow, that is a big eye-opener.
I have no words to convey politely how I feel about Amazon doing this again.
We dealt with this two to three years ago the last time they did this. It did not effect us since we actually have the shipping time on the ASIN, so the shipping template does not really apply.
I see what you mean by longer handling + shorter shipping now.
A really motivated seller could be setting exact transit times for every UPS/USPS zone, but with those options you really can’t.
Sigh. I’m not really motivated to teach you all about FBM, but if you explore your shipping templates, you should be able to teach yourself.
Click ‘Edit’ next to the ‘regions’, then click the down-pointing arrows to see the sub-regions within each state.
That’s kind of stupid that the options go from 2 - 4 straight to 5 - 8.
Amazon has reasons for giving up the options they do, and excluding the ones they don’t want us to have. Many times the ‘reason’ is they want to make it so hard for us to do what we need to so that we’ll turn the control over to them.
Also, much of what you see is due to the fact that Amazon originated as a bookselling site. 5-8 days was the transit time for media mail. Everything else you see now is built on top of the original design of the site, which is part of why you don’t see integration with carriers to obtain real time price and delivery data.
Wow, that is a big eye-opener.
Hence, why many of us use 2-day handling and either 2-3 or 2-4 day transit. That way, you create your own 3-5 day (or 3-6) delivery window.
I have always used 2-day handling and 2-4 day transit, just to ensure that I always have the Ground Advantage (previously First Class) shipping option available, even if I ship on the second day. Shipping on day 1 gives me a 6-day window until delivery is required, shipping on day 2 gives me 5 days. Since 5 days is the max time Buy Shipping requires for a GA label (some locations are 3 days, some are 4, but none are greater than 5), then I know I’ll always be able to buy the label I want.
Same for me. Maybe Amazon is pushing this thing out in batches? Have to keep an eye on it for a while to see if anything changes.
I always set my SKU level Production time as “2”, just checked and most of them has not been changed by Amazon either, although I did found some items with no SKU level production time, guess they got deleted the last time I changed them from FBA back to FBM and forgot to re-set them.
I wonder what happens if we set our ‘order handling capacity’ number to 0 or 1?
That might be a quick and easy way to get around Amazon’s unwanted change, depending on how they implement it. According to the pop-up box -
So, if I say I can handle one order in a day, as soon as I reach that number, handling time will automatically be extended to the next available shipping day.
Of course, knowing Amazon, they could screw this up in any number of ways, but if the logic says - once you reach your limit of (let’s say one) one order per day with 1-day handling time, then any subsequent orders that come in will have an additional day’s handling time (ie two days, which is what we want).
For what it’s worth, my default handling time also still says 2 days. Is there any clue when Amazon says they plan to implement this?
