This is too much for an old woman of excess poundage/high blood pressure-I’m panicking!!
How the h–am I going to get books sold on Sat/Sun delivered on the 5th-less than a week? Even with Priority Mail, our standard prices don’t include EXPEDITED SHIPPING, won’t arrive cross-country if run into a storm. Right now, data reflects our avg. delivery is 7.1 days. That’s w/ 2-day handling.
This morning’s sales reflect delivery on the DEC 11-so TPTB changed our DEL. DATE in the last few hours. Thankfully, haven’t sold anything since this morning.
We had Saturday as a business day, just removed it!!. Our settings still reflect 5-8 days delivery. Any ideas?
Changing Sat from a business day did give us a few days- now says delivery from Dec 4-8! Which is till faster than anyone other than those selling FBA. We don’t offer 2 day delivery!.
Anyone have any idea what occurred-or what I can do? Are we stuck w/ shipping every thing PRIORITY or GA?
Note: We’re not SSA(Settings agree but they do show handling as 1 Day Stuck on 1 day for a year or more but we changed everything from 2-5 day handling to 2 day back before the dead-line in Oct. Every listing I’ve checked still reflects 2 day.
Removing Sat. as business day did help, now we’re showing Dec. 4-8th as delivery. About the same as those selling FBA which reflect the 8th). Settings still reflect standard 5-8 day transit template.
Settings not showing SSA-that was my first thought. Wonder if TPTB changed us to 1 day handling, despite us changing all 2-5 day handling before the Oct. deadline to 2-day!
We have orders going out on 12/1 with delivery dates of 12/5 and 12/6.
We ship USPS GA.
Orders going out on 12/2 have delivery dates of 12/6 to 12/10.
Delivery location changes our delivery dates quiet a bit. Even with that, we have a Zone 3 showing 6 days for delivery and a Zone 5 showing 4 days for delivery.
Since we have SSA, AHT enabled and use Amazon Buy Shipping, we don’t worry about it because we get both Claims and OTDR protection.
When you changed the handle time, did you do it at item level?
Have you checked Manage Seller Fulfilled Products ? … and on the tab “Handle Time Settings” to see how Amazon is reporting the handle time by item ?
Default handle time is set to 1 day by Amazon (or 0 if a seller wants same day) but the default 2 day handle time is no more.
Yes, we changed it at item level. Afraid I don’t agree that 2-day handling is gone-unless taken away in last few hours!
Manage Seller Fullfilled Products says our promised handling time is 2.3 days-which is high, I think. We have .1(that one tenth) difference-actual handling is 2.1 calendar days-I’d say it’s been 1.4 days lately since have shipped some Mondays on Sat. and a few Sat orders on Friday!! Could that be our problem?
I have fought to keep out of SSA/AHT and don’t use AMAZON Buy Shipping except w/ FF and Aggregators. Don’t like it, won’t use it if forced. Glad it works for you-and I do appreciate your assistance @Lost_My_Marbles but it’s not for us. Maybe it’s my part IRISH heritage but don’t like being forced to do this or that! Forced to add to AMAZON’s profits by using their shipping.
BIG-BROTHER tactics get my IRISH DANDER up! And right now-I’m as much pissed as panicky!!
You can no longer set your Default Handle Time to 2 days (the one on the shipping template pages). You can set item level handle time to 2 days (or higher).
No … The promise handle time for a 2 day handle time will average more than two because of Thursday, Friday and Saturday orders having non working weekend days that get added into the mix.
Example (with store closed Saturday and Sunday)
Thursday order ships Monday (2 day handle time but the promise is 4 days … Friday handle time day … Saturday … Sunday … Monday handle time day and last ship by day).
Friday and Saturday orders ship Tuesday ( so Saturday and Sunday then Monday handle time day with Tuesday handle time day / last ship by day has promise of 4 days … Sunday translates into promise of 3 days).
When Amazon tracks this then your average promise handle time will be greater than 2 days. We have 2 day handle time and our promise average is 3.2 days.
Shipping some Monday orders early on Saturday will mess with your estimated delivery times as it messes with the overall actual delivery time. If you want to have some consistency with estimated deliveries, you need to ship consistently on the last ship by date on the order. Then your estimated delivery dates will become more consistent. Whether you use SAS & AHT or not, Amazon is still tracking your actual AHT and transit times to be able to give your customers their estimated delivery dates.
Only offering one type of shipping service also helps control the estimated delivery date. We only offer Standard.
75% Irish here … so understand … we won’t give in but will fight to find a way that works for us.
Sorry, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed concerning this. But I do appreciate your effort in trying to explain to me. I really do!!!
Husband tells me we batch-changed all our listings prior to the Oct 30th deadline. Changing everything to 2-day handling. It’s worked just fine till today. Have nudged handling a day or two on a half-dozen or so orders. Why make the trip to ship one order( we counter scan all orders) when you can ship two or three more that go next day?
Apparently, haven’t been doing ourselves any favor by shipping a few orders early! That’s what you’re telling me. So AMAZON is looking at our 4.8 calendar day delivery, we use a lotta GA on trade and MM, plus we had four PM deliveries lately. Very unusual since AMAZON purchasers don’t usually shell out for PM, even in the holiday,. but they were expensive/rare titles — and using that to come up w/ the blasted barely week delivery!!!
Well, apparently customers don’t believe it-and well they might be skeptical of such a short time-frame. We haven’t had a sale tonight. Thanks AMAZON-don’t do us any more favors!!!
Your Handle Time Gap is fine which means you are shipping on the last ship by date normally. When you have shipped an order a day early, it effects your handle time gap which is what you need to keep below 2.0 days (your 0.1 day is great). When you do this, Amazon will also see that the items you shipped that day early as having a handle time as 1 day which could effect future estimated delivery dates.
Your Promised Transit time is where you are getting a high number. This is calculated from your shipping template setting (you have said your is 5-8 days). You are using USPS which isn’t the most consistent and which we have seen as being a day or two slower since July 2025. Because you are using USPS and you need to protect your OTDR, we wouldn’t change the 5-8 day setting (if we were using manual setting, we would set it the same) but that means Amazon will be calculating this a bit higher than really needed if USPS is preforming better for you (which your 4.8 Actual Transit time shows).
When you look at our Promised AHT and Promised Transit times, we are very close and yet our Promise Gap isn’t. That is because Amazon adds days to the delivery date as Promised Extensions when the order is not going to be delivered on time by USPS. Our 2.4 days of Promised Extensions is caused by USPS not delivering on time. This is out of our control so nothing we can do about it except use SSA, AHT and Amazon Buy Shipping to get the metric protections.
We understand your business decisions … perfectly reasonable. It is just that, with Amazon, manual shipping settings are like a larger square peg being pushed into a smaller round hole (Amazon’s shipping set up … coding). It’s harder now to make that manual system meet a sellers different needs.
Another problem has surfaced! Listings are reflecting Dec. 4-8 delivery-but once there’s a sale, reflects Dec. 8-12 on Manage Orders. Thank you AMAZON, for s—everything up, royally!!
Can foresee all sorts of abuse from buyers and refund requests.
Should I break down, request help from Seller Support? (I rarely do-but this may qualify as an Emergency)
When you are checking, are you using a private window (in Firefox) or an incognito window (in Chrome)? Do you set the location in the browser to be something outside of your location area?
If not, then Amazon is giving you estimated deliveries base on your location. When the orders come in, the estimated delivery is based on the customer’s location compared to your shipping location.
If we look at our items without going into a private window and allowing the location to be our local area, the estimated delivery time is 4 days (2 days handling and 2 days transit … it goes to the local USPS distribution center and then back to our post office … thus 2 day transit). However, our orders come in with estimated delivery times of 6 to 10 days (2 days handle time and 4 to 8 days transit).
