We currently ship all products using our own shipping labels with UPS Ground or USPS Ground Advantage (whichever is cheapest). We are not able to buy Amazon Shipping labels currently for reasons I cannot explain here. I understand enabling SSA and not using amazon shipping labels doesn’t allow protection. This is more so to get better accurate transit times on the listings.
I had our shipping template delivery range very conservative just to be safe. Are there any cons to enabling SSA? Are there any bugs or “surprises” to be aware of? I had a Amazon rep e-mail us pushing us to change to SSA but I want to make sure it is safe to try. I did notice when you try to make your own template, Amazon limits you to using the “1-2” days only in the state you are based out of. I might be thinking this is a way for Amazon to force sellers into enabling SSA?
I’m not a fan of giving up control over my business. If you were doing it for added protections from metrics hits, INR claims, or something where you get a benefit in exchange, maybe it would be a good trade. In this case, you are giving Amazon control over your shipping in exchange for the hope that their shorter shipping estimates on listings will boost sales. I would argue that you could achieve this by adjusting your templates and not giving Amazon control.
In terms of “surprises,” plenty of people use SSA and it works for them, I don’t remember hearing about any major problems with it.
When you have SSA enabled, Amazon sets the transit time based on your past performance using the shipping service that you have selected. Amazon’s estimated deliver by date is usually 1 to 2 days longer than what USPS Ground Advantage typically does for us (customers get their order before estimated delivery time … so Amazon is padding the estimate by a day or two).
If you decide to do SSA … when you set up your shipping template, only choose Standard shipping and select only USPS Ground Advantage as the shipping service type. Do NOT enable Economy, Expedited, 2 Day, 1 Day, or Same Day. If you do, you will have issues as Amazon will choose what it thinks is best … so stick to just Standard with USPS Ground Advantage. This will make Amazon use USPS Ground Advantage for the calculation of the estimated deliver by date. If you want to use UPS or FedEx, you still can even though the estimated deliver by date was based on USPS Ground Advantage.
Not really … Amazon’s push is to make sure estimated deliver by dates are accurate.