I use a small one person PO that is a 10 mile round trip from the house. It’s a 'satellite" of the actual city PO that is about the same distance but I hate the street parking there and they are busier so I end up in line.
Today the Postmaster of the “real” PO was working since the lady that is normally there needed a day off.
I asked him about the July rate increase and he pretty well had no idea about it – not really surprising.
I mentioned the DHL – PO agreement to extend their contract that is similar to the Ground Saver deal with UPS.
He then said this about the deal with AMAZON –
They now have ordered the PO delivery drivers to NOT START before 10am on the Sunday deliveries they have to do for Amazon. Apparently, Amazon had too many people complain about the doorbell ringing before 10am on a Sunday morning.
The problem from his standpoint is that the PO receives those packages at 5am and the person sorting them for the routes can’t leave until AFTER the last route is completed and back at the PO.
They have to sit around and wait for the drivers to start the routes, since it does not take 5 hours to sort the quantity of packages they receive. And THEN, that ‘poor’ (certainly not financially) individual is having to sit around hours for the routes to be finished.
They put in 12 hour+ days on Sunday to meet the requirements of AMAZON!
Doesn’t happen like that in our 1 person post office. Comes in at 8am and leaves at 3:30pm with an hour lunch between 11:30am to 12:30pm.
UPS drops off around 10:30am and DHL packages are handled by the local distribution center (which come on with the normal USPS truck in the morning). All packages are handled by either the post office person or the route driver with the regular mail.
It doesn’t in mine either. The Post Master of the REAL PO was telling me what happens at his main office location. My small, one person, shop doesn’t get any of those packages directly – they all go the the real deal about 5 miles away and the drivers there deliver.
Amazon could save on overhead if they went with a lottery system to determine which sellers were going to be suspended. Of course, Chinese sellers would be exempt.
S/he has also been vigorously attempting, over the last few days, to enlist 3P Sellers into tête-à-têtes with the ‘owning’ Partner Team; I’ve only seen two takers to date (and one of them seems so far undecided as to whether or not to participate) - another case of shutting the barn door after the mare has bolted, methinks.
Seems also to be another case mayhaps best explained by this:
Today, we needed to ship two orders, that we have held since we can not ship until the day it should ship. Amazon has just changed the way they present a “nasty gram” to us/you.
Standard
Ship by date: Wed, Jun 3, 2026 PDT
Deliver by date: Tue, Jun 9, 2026 PDT
Unshipped (1)
Confirm as shipped by 6/4/2026 to avoid late-shipment
Ok, thanks for that Amazon however, today is June third at 7am, are you now indicating we can ship tomorrow June 4th? Or should we ship by the “Ship by date:” today June 3rd?
That usually would have said the …“to avoid late-shipment” message today, not “by 6/4/2026” it just don’t add up!
only since there are no beating your head against the wall emojis.
In some places Amazon uses the last date of the window, in others it uses the day after the window as the “by” date. This is a thing that drives me nuts.
This has been on the Manage Order page for quiet some time for us. What this Confirm as shipped by 6/4/2026 to avoid late-shipment means is that you have to confirm that your order was shipped by 12:00AM on 6/4/2026 to avoid being a late-shipment. In other words, you have until 11:59PM today 6/3/2026 to make sure that you have confirmed the order has shipped.
This was put into place to stop those who shipped not using Amazon Buy Shipping from putting in (or uploading) their tracking numbers a day or two later than the ship by date. They were shipping on the 3rd but not putting in the tracking numbers until the 4th or 5th.
Is the wording bad? … Absolutely … when we see this, we know that the order needs to ship today and the tracking submitted today because tomorrow it will be late.
Just to offer some perspective, Amazon makes a habit of refunding the shipping fees to the customer when they don’t deliver an FBA order on time, and the customer calls them on it.
But they do nothing when they damage a product with the use of their &^$#(*@ PAPER BAGS for everything. I eat that cost, every time, as the customer complains about damage, and returns the damaged-in-shipment item, but Amazon calls it “customer damaged”, and returns it to me, at my expense, with no compensation.
Worse yet, when that customer gives a 1-star review because of the Amazon damage, Amazon does NOT remove the review (as they do if the comment is instead made about the seller in the “seller ratings” section).
So, I am out money, and I get a one-star from an angry customer, all because Amazon will jam the PAPER BAG containing my product in a truck, and then (apparently) drop an anvil atop that bag.
Does anyone have a strategy for reducing the harm here? I cannot ship my product in a steel or wooden crate, which would seem the only way to protect it, and while this percentage is tiny, it is very annoying to see this happen, and have no recourse.
On the updated policy, I asked KJ for clarification and suddenly got crickets.
Does anyone know if this replaces the current policy stating that if you ship 2 days early, that EVERYTHING goes to 1 day (or some form of automation). IOW, if I ship 20 skus in 1 or even 0 days, will other SKUs remain at the 2 day time that I set for them?
If anyone can get clarification, that would be great. And if this fully replaces the old system, then at least we booksellers are in the clear, as most of us never re-use a SKU. It would be great to be able to go back to providing the best customer service possible without the threat of punishment for doing so…
If you can consistently ship those 20 SKUs in one day, then set their individual item handle time to one day. Amazon wants sellers to be accurate with their handle times.
Pretty sure that the standing Handle Time Gap of over 2 will get your entire account on AHT. This could still happen without a single SKU hitting the new shipping early trigger (think a book seller who always ships early but doesn’t have multiple units of the SKUs).
The new trigger will hit the sellers who have some SKUs that they have always been shipping early but there volume on the remaining SKUs at the normal handle time keeps them from triggering the Handle Time Gap of over 2.0 days. The new trigger will cause Amazon to take control of the Handle Time of those SKUs. Since Amazon currently does not have a way of splitting inventory into two catagories (AHT and manual), the only way this can happen is if Amazon changes the item handle time of those SKUs and then locks the attribute. This has not been stated as such but it is the only way it could be done with the current coding. Now could this shot across the bow be a warning shot as to a coding change coming up? … Yes, but we will have to wait for it. Could Amazon just use this as another trigger to put a seller completely on AHT? … Yes, but we will have to wait to see as there has been no postings involving this new trigger.
What we are seeing now with a 2 day handle time with AHT and SSA turned on is that the ship by date is a single day and the deliver by date has a range which is reflecting how USPS is delivering.
only since there are no beating your head against the wall emojis.