weird…I don’t have this on my order page.
This is what I have.
Did I miss something on my shipping template?
No … you just have more shipping methods for Amazon to choose from so none are listed as the method for estimated delivery time … you have Standard with USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb), 2nd Day and Next Day.
You have to make a decision.
Do you want to have control over Amazon estimated shipping time, be able to ship USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb), have Claims & OTDR Protection and avoid the “Late Delivery Risk”?
OR
Do you want to keep 2nd Day and Next Day and ship whatever shipping method that Amazon says will meet the estimated delivery time (which might be estimated as 2 day or Next Day even though the customer didn’t pay extra for it)?
The reason you are seeing “Late Delivery Risk” is that you want to use a shipping method that won’t make the estimated delivery time which you have given Amazon permission to use more than one to make that estimation.
In a month, how many orders do you get that you want to ship USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb) … include the ones you want to ship that way but have the “Late Delivery Risk”?
In a month, how many 2nd Day and Next Day orders do you get? Does the customer always pay for this shipping upgrade and does this payment always cover for the shipping method that you have to use to avoid the “Late Delivery Risk”?
We gave up Expedited shipping when we did SSA / AHT enabled. It didn’t effect the number of orders we receive when we dropped it.
In this case, Amazon basically gives you a choice … do you want cake or do you want ice cream? … but you can not have both … with the penalty of not deciding being the “Late Delivery Risk”.
Ok, this makes it clear. So I have to choose one or the other.
I charge a little more for 2nd/next day than what I pay for and it’s extra money. So it’s something I don’t want to give up.
I might go back to manual shipping. I have to give it some thoughts. I’ll lose OTDR protection but then I’ll still have INR protection. I’ll just have to cross my fingers and hope “postage assessment” issue doesn’t happen again.
One last question. Is it worth it to post this topic on NSFE and see what the mods will say?
What still gets me is, if Amazon thinks that USPS GA is “late delivery risk”, then why not add more days to my listing? Why advertise that the free shipping will get there sooner but then on the seller’s end, it will say “late deliery risk”? Should I post this on NSFE?
Found this on NSFE …
Note the last line …
If you are not using these tools, or if the order is not a “Standard Shipping” option, the OTDR Protected badge will not be displayed. This is a recent improvement to make the protection requirement clearer to sellers.
KJ_Amazon
This should help eliminate some of the confusion.
You can if you want but not sure you will get a different answer.
If you go manual, the best thing to do is to have your ASIN’s handle time set at item level, set your transit time on your Standard shipping to be 5 - 8 days (but know Amazon will calculate at only 2 -5 days) and recognize that the reason for seeing “Late Delivery Risk” is that Amazon has calculated an estimated delivery time for the order and only the shipping methods that Amazon calculates as the methods which will reach the destination on time will be the ones without the “Late Delivery Risk”.
Amazon will do a better calculation … but it will only happen with Standard shipping only and shipping method as USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb).
It’s all in how the shipping template is set up … but again … Amazon choice is one or the other but not both.
The only thing we can do at this point would be to challenge you to try Standard shipping only with just USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb) and drop the 2nd Day and Next Day. Do a 2 month trail. At that point you could gage whether the extra money on the 2nd Day shipping and Next Day shipping is really extra income verses being able to ship USPS Ground Advantage (less than 1lb), not having the “Late Delivery Risk” on your shipments and gaining Claims and OTDR protection.
Thanks again for taking your time to explain everything. Really appreciate you!
If I change back to Manual, I know everything will go back to normal and have all protection except OTDR. And I was ok with not having OTDR protection until the whole “postage assessment” issue.
Since I sell time sensitive items, I do get a lot of 2nd/Next day orders. I get average of two 2nd day orders a day and so the extra money adds up. Also, my competitors do not offer them so I have a little bit of a leverage there. On the other hand, I get less than 10 INRs a month so maybe I can still stay with AHT/SSA and just keep my fingers crossed that buyers do not open case for INR for the orders I shipped with “late delivery risk”.
All in all, I’m feeling relieved that I got to discuss this on here. Thanks everyone!
Just know that “Late Delivery Risk” will also be present if you choose to go manual.
“Late Delivery Risk” came into being after the September 2024 push to get everyone to use SSA and AHT. When it came into being a couple of months after that, several of us felt betrayed as the introduction of it could take away the very reason we transitioned to SSA and AHT.
Best of luck to you.
Yes, but when I do go manual, it’s a night and day difference with late delivery risk. I may get 1 or 2, but that’s it. This is why I’m so confused.
I’m going to keep it at AHT/SSA for a little longer and will post here if I stop getting late delivery risk. If it doesn’t happen, I’m switching back to manual.
This doesn’t address the issue of whether or not Amazon will cover these promises made when the label is purchased if you don’t ship that day.
And I still don’t know where you are getting that buying a label on time with AHT and SSA avoids a late shipment if you ship the order the day after the ship by date.
There was a time when every order detail page was showing both Claims and OTDR Protection badges whether or not a label was purchased having those protections. Now this doesn’t happen (or not suppose to happen as KJ_Amazon has stated). That is the premise of that statement based on KJ_Amazon’s post.
If you purchase the label a day ahead of the ship by date for use on the ship by date and the label purchase shows both Claims and OTDR protection, then the label qualifies and will be covered. We haven’t had a Claims one but can tell you that we have had USPS deliver late and we have not had the OTDR metric take a hit when we bought the label the day before we shipped. This use to be common practice about buying your labels the day before you shipped for several sellers but became an issue when Amazon introduced the Handle Time Gap metric and the 2 day gap limit. Several of us had to change the way we processed orders to stay away from mandatory AHT where you can not go back to manual ever.
1st … you wouldn’t be buying the label before the ship by date if you are trying to adjust AHT handle time to increase by a day. You would be buying the label and shipping the package one day late.
2nd … if you want to shorten the AHT handle time by one day, then you purchase the label and ship the package the day before the last ship by date.
In both instances above, how many times you have to do the process will be determined by the volume of the ASIN. There is a page that you can use to keep track of each ASIN’s AHT handle time so you know when you are at the handle time you wish to normally operate at.
From what we have experienced, the way Amazon has implemented that last line (in blue in the image) is to NOT count the Late Shipment therefore you maintain within the LSR Policy requirement. We have shipped both late and early to adjust the AHT for a couple of our ASINs. We have never had a Late Shipment metric hit. Our late shipments were one day after the last ship by date. AHT made the adjustment to handle time within a week so it has not been an ongoing issue.
The part about buying the labels early with a later ship by date and holding to and then ship on that later ship by date is what has been a work around for the “Late Delivery Risk” issue which has happened on each Monday holiday week since last September 2024 when Amazon implemented their policy revolving around force AHT. Another one that worked for a while was checking on both Amazon Bulk shipping and Amazon Individual shipping. At one point, one or the other of those would not show the “Late Delivery Risk”; however, as Amazon has tweaked the “Late Delivery Risk”, this method has not worked as they both seem to be in sync now.
There are a lot of moving parts with SSA, AHT and “Late Delivery Risk” that have evolved since last September 2024. It is easy to get confused when dealing with it.
All we can say is that we have been down that rabbit hole and survived. The methods we use have helped us achieve 100% on time shipping, 100% on time delivery and avoid and/or deal with “Late Delivery Risk” labels.
It took Amazon months to admit that Economy, Expedited, 2 Day, 1 Day and Same Day were not covered by OTDR protection. That was only one of the NSFE battles we fought and won in getting exposed.
Ahhh I get it now. You were not clear before that when you purchased the label, you were setting the ship date to the later date. I thought you were just buying the label as normal, then holding it until you were ready. I can see that using the later ship date when purchasing the label might help.
It’s interesting that this is your experience, as this is not what the policy actually says. On the other hand, this wouldn’t be the first time Amazon’s policies did not match what they say.
Wait, so I can still purchase the label the day before, but just make sure I change the ship date to the next day, then it is fine to purchase it the day before? Which means, I don’t have to wait until the last minute to purchase labels?
I’m asking this because some orders that I see it with protection, but then the next day (ship by date), it magically disappears and replaced with “late delivery risk”. I’m not sure when the cutoff time is but it seems like 11AM (I could be wrong).
There is an ongoing error where when using "Bulk Shipping, changing the ship date to the following day will give a “late risk” flag. I.E printing labels on Sunday to actually ship on Monday. Usually I can switch to buying individual labels and the problem goes away.
Recently, we have seen this method not working. Maybe it is one of those on again off again things. Amazon is probably trying to eliminate the glitch between the two systems.
Since you are one day handle time, it probably won’t hurt that much if you do it once in a while. However … if you start to have same day handle time pop up that you can not do, then you will know that you need to go back to purchasing on the day you ship to maintain one day handle time.
I actually never used bulk shipping before, I always do them individually.
My experience is totally opposite from yours. I see orders with protected status on Sunday but when I try to buy shipping on Monday, it changes to “late delivery risk”. This is why I want to purchase the label when it shows as protected but still ship the next day.
Same on weekdays as well. Not as bad as weekends but I still get them. Orders I received today that shows as protected, I know some of them will change to “late delivery risk” tomorrow when I actually go to buy shipping labels.
But it will be fine as long as my “handling time gap” stays under 2.0, right? It’s currently at 0.7.
Actually we have bought a label on a Sunday with a Sunday ship date to ship out on Tuesday (last ship by date) to get the label without the “Late Delivery Risk” over a Monday holiday week. But that isn’t what we would do on a regular basis.
Our stats are good enough it allows us to test the waters to see how Amazon handles the metrics involved. In the cases we have done this, the packaged showed as shipped on time and it happen to still be delivered on time so we wouldn’t have received a metric hit anyhow. Since Monday holiday weeks only come around so often, we can only test this one when they do come around. We recognize that Amazon coding can change in between these Monday holidays so are very cautious about putting out there what we see.
That is correct as far as Amazon mandating AHT on you but you could see Amazon create ship by dates that are same day when you want one day handle time.