Issues with Royal Mail Tracked 48 for Prime orders
Hi guys,
I thought i would wade in here and give some information which has recently come to light.
Historically, we have been told that this is nothing more than a tech issue which would be resolved in due course.
However, this morning we have had some very interesting and quite frankly shocking revelations brought to our attention which i feel is important to let you guys know, as per the below response:
would like to inform you that we have received a response from the Leadership team regarding this issue. Please allow me to share it with you.
Based on the complaints received from the users of Royal Mail service a research was conducted on the success rate of Royal mail. As you know, Royal Mail offers the Tracked 24 and the Tracked 48 Services. Royal mail has been successful with the Tracked 24 service as it delivers the orders in 1 day.
However, the Tracked 48 hour service has not been a favorable outcome. As mentioned earlier a lot of complaints were received from Buyers and seller as the orders took more than 2 days to be delivered. Hence, due to the lack of quality in delivering on time, the leadership team has taken an executive decision of temporarily holding the Royal Mail Tracked 48 hour Service from being available in the Amazon Buy shipping service.
Having the Tracked 48 hour service removed, sellers will have other Prime service available including the Tracked 24 hour service to fulfill their Prime Orders. I certainly understand that the Tracked 24 is very expensive than the Tracked 48 service. Given below are the workarounds you may wish to consider.
Getting Onboarded with additional Partnered Prime carriers, the Amazon logistics or/and DPD. By doing so, you may keep using the Royal Mail for fulfilling your Next day delivery orders and use one of the other Prime carriers for fulfilling the Second day delivery orders.
Overcoming the pricing issue by editing the item price to cover the difference in the shipping cost incurred because of using Tracked 24 service.
I would also suggest you to contact Royal Mail and discuss if they can lower the cost for your Tracked 24 service. I hope this addresses your concern.
I would also suggest you to contact Royal Mail and discuss if they can lower the cost for your Tracked 24 service. I hope this addresses your concern. I would also suggest you to contact Royal Mail and discuss if they can lower the cost for your Tracked 24 service. I hope this addresses your concern.
Having said this, we at seller support are in no position to give you advice on how to run your business, the above advice is only suggestion which you may wish to consider."
So, yeah… we are now being told that in fact this is not a tech issue, but rather an “Executive Decision” made by some leadership team, which we all apparently have to swallow. To suggest we simply send orders on a T24 service or increase our prices is somewhat short-sighted, especially for those listings which actively encourage competition and price wars.
I find it highly irregular that Amazon have made this decision but have failed to inform sellers of said decision.
As i say, it’s important that this information is shared before other sellers (like ourselves) fall foul of this decision and have their selling metrics impacted by situations out of our control.
I feel personally that this is a complete lack of regard for the sellers bottom line and to suggest we simply send Second Day and Standard orders as a 1 day service is quite frankly short-sighted. Surely Amazon’s ‘Leadership Team’ understand that we work the costs of shipping into the final price of our listings?!
Your thoughts, as always are welcome and i hope that this can be a platform in which to not only vent, but come up with solutions as to how we combat such a blatant disregard for us the seller.
Regards,
LiveMoor.
Seller_lBVct58q3uKGC
To be honest this is perfectly reasonable.
As a buyer nothing is more frustrating than buying ‘Prime’ only to realise I’ve actually bought an SFP which will arrive 1-3 days later than the FBA item. I’m still surprised Amazon allowed such a dilution of the Prime brand rather than adding a seperate badge for SFP like ebay have Fast & Free.
Buyers expect Prime to mean free next-day delivery, maybe the day after if the order is late in the day. It’s why they buy Prime in the first place.
Seller_lBVct58q3uKGC
Clarification of exactly what Prime is and isn’t would be good, for both sellers and buyers.
As a buyer I’m now far more willing to shop on places other than Amazon - for years Amazon was my go-to entirely because of Prime delivery. At least it was clear before - want it quickly? Buy Prime. Not so urgent? Check MFA for a better price. Now it feels like a shot in the dark and too much effort which is why I say Prime is diluted.
Equally, if SFP sellers are actually delivering a service at the same level as FBA in terms of next-day delivery and fast dispatch then you should be presented to sellers as Prime with accurate delivery estimates.
Tbh at this point I’d rather be given clear, explicit choics as a buyer:
[Tomorrow - £59.95]
[Saturday - £59.00]
Seller_aOogeQQcgrYam
I was seeing the same issue this week with my SFP orders, and had just assumed that Royal Mail had some kind of glitch.
To hear that Amazon have made this policy decision without communicating it with anyone is deeply upsetting.
Both these help pages still specify that Tracked 48 is part of the Royal Mail shipping option for SFP:
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/GMRGPWMT8H3UAGLW
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/GM5VN7QHKPMUX3Y9
This change alongside RM’s hike in prices earlier this year will have a significant impact on the viability of SFP for us. I’m probably going to remove SFP delivery options for any items below £20 this weekend.
Seller_46zyPWhdhcRIL
Hi guys,
Thank you for all of your input here.
A couple things i wanted to mention…
I’ve spoken with my contact at Amazon who has informed me that we are still able to select T48 for SnL listings (apparently) they have also re-enabled T48 for Standard Prime (again, apparently).
With regards to your postage increase on Amazon, i would speak with your RM Account Manager as i believe RM are now for some reason including the 4% fuel surcharge onto your base rate for tracked services, which would explain the additional £0.20 you’re seeing - but i would urge you to confirm this with you Account Manager at RM to be doubly sure.
Ultimately, the way in which this change has been brought about by Amazon leaves a lot to be desired, but as with everything lately, it seems we’ll have to swallow the pill and deal with it the best we can - no matter how hard it is to swallow.
I hope that they realise the error of their ways, but somehow i doubt it. If there is any support or advice needed, i’ll do my best to answer.
LiveMoor.
Seller_bhSWqoVh7Pn98
There are TWO other threads already with regard this issue.
I had already copied in approx the same letter as the start of this thread, I also have spoken for a few hours to various SS people over the last week.
SS thought it was a problem with Amazon and RM linking, so told us to use RM direct and log all used direct so our metrics could be noted as to the issue.
This week they have now been told of the LEADERSHIP decision that Royal Mail’s Tracked 48 has been checked and their 2 to 3 day delivery service uis not being delivered 2 days every time (Mon-Sat), so even though these are Standard Delivery orders generally shown as 2 to 5 day deliveries, we are being made to use Tracked 24 to get them there the next day.
Effectively if you no longer pay £79 a year for PRIME and you are Buying from SFP (not directly from Amazon), you will get a PRIME delivery speed for free. So a waste of £79 a year subscription!
Amazon suggest if in an Amazon Shipping area to use their own shipping Company instead (although in my opinion they are useless at deliveries in my are) and they do not collect in my area either, so we have no choice other than to use RM24 Tracked and increase prices.
Seller_bhSWqoVh7Pn98
Ref PRIME Buyers and delivery times:
(1) If buying from Amazon, or FBA: They all have different cut off times according to Fulfilment Centre, so if it is now 2.30pm on a Tuesday, the cut off time is set at 3pm from Fulfilment Centre A, then it may show delivery tomorrow. Then another Sellers stock is in Fulfilment Centre B, if the cut off time is 1pm, it may show delivery the day after.
To also be aware, a lot of Amazon Fulfilment Centres can be abroad, so even when buying from Amazon themselves on Prime, it may show a delivery date several days ahead and they still annoyingly show as PRIME for them to ship and not even get a fast delivery (which Sellers cannot do that).
(2) SFP: Again different cut off times are allowed, so if set at 2pm, again looking at the above at 2.30pm, it would show as to ship by the next day and delivery the day after that.
Amazon also adjust times if they think your RM are not performing as well as can be expected, ie not all deliveries the next day, even if most of them are!
So, even if it says delivery the day after tomorrow, when the order is received by the Seller, as long as before the cut-off time, it still has to be shipped that day on a Tracked 24 service. So, in those cases a lot arrive the day before the Buyer is expecting them (which can cause problems to have to re-arrange delivery, etc).
The only difference between SFP and FBA should be the cut-off times, and clearly shows that when ordering. That mainly makes a difference over a weekend, as Sellers do not ship until the Monday and they still ship over a weekend or Bank Holiday.
The issue now though is not this, it is Sellers were not informed in advance of a very important rule change to have to ship even non-Prime Buyers deliveries on a Tracked 24 service, which is totally not necessary as Amazon expect Royal Mail to deliver within 2 days, even though it is a 2 to 3 day delivery service (and up to 5 days in remote areas of the UK)
Seller_SyIlHo4s0vbwi
Well I wouldn’t discount that it isn’t just a glitch just yet.
We like other sellers can’t select Royal Mail Tracked 48 in “Buy shipping”, but the good thing is that we generally confirm everything via API anyway, and API had so far no issues confirming orders with Tracked 48 service.
As far as I can tell even the OP of this thread said that amazon rep(?) has backtracked and no longer says that Tracked 48 are discontinued to be a valid SFP service.
So this all can be usual amazon seller support misunderstanding.
Seller_wZsO8DK3gw0Ww
Actually as a follow up I’ve looked run a report on all the standard Prime orders we’ve received this week that were for non -Prime customers
I can see that there are definitely orders that we have sent Tracked 48. I can also see that there are some orders that have been sent Tracked 24 when they didn’t need to be. There is a mix of both on all days
So I’m correct in saying that I can use Tracked 48 but it isn’t all the time when I should be able to do so - it’s intermittent
The difference seems to be that those orders that have come through with a Delivery Service of Standard CAN be sent tracked 48 whilst those that come through with a Delivery Service of Second Day can only be sent tracked 24. Then we have the ones which come through as Next Day which again can only be sent Tracked 24.
There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it which seems to suggest some sort of glitch.
Seller_bhSWqoVh7Pn98
AMAZON INFORMED AS SHOWN:
(She was also saying about using Amazon Shipping, but it is not in our area yet)
==
Dear Seller,
Greetings from Amazon.
My name is Anisha and this is in regards to the recent telephonic conversation that we had about the Royal Mail Tracked 48 service. Please note that in order to use Amazon Shipping, your warehouse needs to be located in an area that is currently served by Amazon Shipping and you must ship more than 20 packages every day.
If you would like to sign up, please login to your seller central account and then click the link https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/seller-fulfilled-prime/register/thank-you.
On the opened page,
- Click “Check Amazon Shipping Eligibility” button that is located below point 1 “REQUIRED: Complete set up with a Prime Carrier”.
- Please follow the instructions on the page that pop up. If you are eligible, you can request orders’ collection and Amazon shipping team member will contact you 5-7 days prior to selected pick up date to help you with set up.
If you do not see “Check Amazon Shipping Eligibility” button, it means that unfortunately Amazon Shipping cannot serve your account.
Also, as per the latest update that has been received by our internal team, I would like to inform you that based on the complaints received from the users of Royal Mail service, a research was conducted on the success rate of Royal mail. A time period of the past 12 months were considered and only the Tracked 48 Service was investigated. The investigation team could see that a huge number of orders were not delivered within the promised 48 hours window.
As you know, Royal Mail offers the Tracked 24 and the Tracked 48 services. Royal mail has been successful with the Tracked 24 service as it delivers the orders in 1 day. However, the Tracked 48 hours service has not been a favorable outcome. As mentioned earlier a lot of complaints were received from the buyers and the sellers, as the orders took more than 2 days to be delivered. Hence, due to the lack of quality in delivering on time, our internal team has taken an executive decision of temporarily holding the Royal Mail Tracked 48 hours service from being available in the Amazon Buy shipping service.
We sincerely apologize that this message could not be not passed onto the sellers before making the changes, as the issue was investigated in high priority basis and we were receiving numerous complaints regarding the service, for which the changes were made within a very short span of time.
Throughout the year, we make changes to the prime promise based on the growth of Seller Fulfilled Prime and the order volumes that we see going into the delivery networks, and the performance of the network. With any change we make, customer experience is always the top priority. As the program grows in size and its’ services expand, we need to ensure that the high bar on customer experience is maintained. By making any changes, Amazon aims to increase the proportion of orders that are delivered within the promised delivery time.
Having the Tracked 48 hours service removed, sellers will have other prime services available including the Tracked 24 hours service to fulfill their prime orders. I certainly understand that the Tracked 24 service is comparatively expensive than the Tracked 48 hours service. Given below are the workarounds you may wish to consider.
- Getting onboarded with additional supported prime carriers, the Amazon logistics or/and DPD. By doing so, you may keep using the Royal Mail for fulfilling your Next day delivery orders and use one of the other prime carriers for fulfilling the Second day delivery orders.
- Overcoming the pricing issue by editing the item price to cover the difference in the shipping cost incurred because of using Tracked 24 service.
The Seller Fulfilled Prime Team is looking for suggestions on new Seller Central features that will help to improve your experience with Seller Fulfilled Prime. If you would like to share your suggestions with them, kindly email to ‘uk-sfp-feedback@amazon.com’ and add your Seller Central login email address for identification. Please be aware that this address is for collecting suggestions only which means that emails sent to this address cannot be answered.
If you have a Seller Fulfilled Prime inquiry that requires assistance, please open a new case through ‘Contact Us’ in Seller Central - https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/cu/contact-us
Your understanding in the same is much appreciated!
Take care!
Please let us know how we did.
Were you satisfied with the support provided?
(ABOVE WAS FROM SFP TEAM)
Seller_SyIlHo4s0vbwi
cram:Yeah, this seems to suggest some kind of bug with Seller central’s “Buy shipping” interface in particular.
DAE-1: this seems like a copy pasted response - same LiveMoor(OP) got originally, from which amazon seem to have backtracked already on follow up.
So while you could be right and it’s a policy change, there’s nothing official yet. Seller support copy pasted bogus info before, wouldn’t be a major shock for this to be the case here too.
Isla: You’ve linked to thread we are on right now.
