So the issue is on orders where the customer chose 2nd day on Thursday:
UPS 2nd Day air doesn’t actually work because it arrives MONDAY & Amazon has Saturday as a delivery day so it’s a day late.
We now click on “Saturday Delivery” option for an additional $16 or so to handle Thursday orders.
But what do you use on Friday? Amazon Has Friday 2nd day order arriving on Monday due to counting Saturday as a delivery day.
Do you all ship UPS Next Day to get there Monday. I do not see the benefit of selecting Saturday delivery on a Friday Shipment other than paying more for a service that will never happen.
So I see the options as
Wednesday after 2pm run my 2nd day shipping price up to $35 from $14.99 till Friday after 2pm to cover anybody that wants 2nd day.
Does that mean make Saturday “No-Pickup” & change Sunday to “Prime offers only”?
We don’t have any prime offers but it will not allow you to turn them both off.
I’m curious as to how much offering premium shipping benefits you as the seller. Does offering it improve your shot at the buy box? How many customers choose the premium shipping? I’m assuming you don’t make additional money on the premium shipping as the cost goes toward the actual shipping cost + Amazon’s fees.
And someone who pays for premium shipping is almost 100% going to complain if it’s late or there’s something wrong with the order. It really seems like it’s just something that’s a benefit to a small # of buyers and is a hassle for the seller. Back when I sold on ebay/Amazon FBM everything shipped UPS ground, take it or leave it, because I didn’t want to have to process certain orders differently.
We do see an increase in orders when we are Premium Shipping eligible.
As for the number of Premium Orders it’s been 127 in last 30 days.
But we kept losing eligibility until we figured Amazon was counting Saturday & all our Thursday orders were being marked late.
We got it back in less than 24 hrs after reading this post:
We stopped offering 2nd or Next day delivery a couple years back after we finished trying/testing Seller Fulfilled Prime.
To compensate and make it work, we changed our Expedited shipping to offer 2-day deliveryso that we can use with FedEx One Rate. So we can still offer 2-Day delivery on our terms. FedEx OneRate offers Saturday delivery.
On Friday morning we turn the Saturday and Sunday pickup options to Prime Orders Only. The thing is - we don’t have any products actually offering Seller Fulfilled Prime, so this allows us to not have to ship anything on Saturday unless we want to get ahead, or ship an Expedited order early via USPS and save on postage.
Most of our items are customized, so if one of my competitors wants to sell via Prime I’m happy for them to give half, or more, of their profits in shipping expenses to Amazon Prime customers that don’t pay any premium to SFP sellers.
For Premium Shipping, we offer just 2Day shipping.
Thursday orders usually aren’t an issue for us because we are using FedEx’s One Rate program, and they include Saturday delivery for free. Currently, there is a glitch with Amazon’s Buy Shipping algorithm that is causing it to think it will arrive on Monday, and the mods on NSFE say they are aware and working on it.
Friday orders are an issue since FedEx won’t deliver until Tuesday, so we just turn off the 2Day shipping option on our shipping template at 2pm on Thursday and then turn it back on at 2pm on Friday.
Yepper, I’ve seen KJ_Amazon’s posts on the topic (citational references available upon request).
Self-deprecating as s/he has recently professed to be (link, 2Nov23 NSFE post) regarding matters concerning BSS/MSS, I remain convinced - largely, but not entirely, because I’ve discerned empirically-reproducible evidence on the Shipping Adjustments front which seems to be rather attributable to KJ going to bat on 3P Sellers’ behalf, there - that KJ’s intervention with the various ‘concerned teams’ is our Last Best Hope.
Ed Rosenberg of ASGTG (and federal criminal court) fame will fix that one for us, as he and his crew don’t work at all on Saturday, and work take affront at anyone else who shared his faith being asked to work on Saturday.
We just received a “2nd Day order” - but Amazon did not charge shipping!
Our shipping template clearly has 2nd day prices.
It’s only worked for 15 years, so look out for shipping template issues.
at 2pm we raise our shipping price for 2day because we need to pay for next day air to get there in time.
So i’ll ASSUME this order was placed just when the system is updating but it’s shouldn’t go to ZERO before it kicks in - it should still be at the reduced price. ARRRGH
I’ve been thinking about switching to doing similar to what you are, but I want to verify one thing first. Expedited shipping has handling time applied to it, right?
