Seller-fulfilled: Delivery promises to be extended during Royal Mail strike

#1

Due to expected Royal Mail strike action and disruption to delivery services across the UK, we'll extend customer-facing delivery promises for all seller-fulfilled offers, including Seller Fulfilled Prime, in the coming weeks.

We understand that these events might cause significant disruptions for some sellers. We're committed to working with you to mitigate any negative effect on your account health.

The strikes are planned for the following dates:

  • Friday, August 26
  • Wednesday, August 31
  • Thursday, September 8
  • Friday, September 9

To minimise the impact to your operations, we recommend the following best practices:

  • Inform your carriers in advance of volume forecasts and changes in demand.
  • Consider using multiple carriers to ensure that you can ship products out on time.
  • Provide customers with correct tracking information and regular updates if their order is delayed beyond the expected delivery date.
  • To avoid potential harm to your cancellation rate, continue to fulfil orders as soon as you're able.
  • If you’re unable to process customer orders at all, update your Listing status for holidays and other absences to deactivate all of your seller-fulfilled listings for the UK. You must still process and ship all orders that you receive up until you deactivate your listings.
#2

A surprising message from Amazon, is this a first?

It clearly doesn’t go far enough, eg what eBay have stated they will do but I guess anything is better than nothing.

But in reality, even though the will extend delivery promises, they don’t say what to and also, the likelihood of defects and account suspension is still there.

#3

I agree; anything is better than nothing. It will be interesting to see how it pans out (though it doesn’t affect us personally as we are 100% FBA).

#4

Good they’ve recognised there will be a problem - following a standard bank holiday weekend you can expect Royal Mail to be a week behind, so you can expect several weeks of delay here - and I’m sure Amazon will cut you some slack. Maybe give you an extra days grace…then suspend you! But don’t worry, as Amazon have said you can shut up shop and not work during these testing times as a fall back. Given their total incompetence over VTR previously I won’t hold my breath here.

#5

exactly!
it’s more than I expected!

#6

I am confused. I have my shipping times managed by Amazon for Merchant fulfilled. If a customer orders today, I have a 2 day dispatch after purchase and use Royal Mail tracked 48. Amazon is still stating delivery will be between August 27 - 30 even though they will be on strike on the 26th and it is a bank holiday on Monday??

#7

Hi,

Prior to seeing Amazon’s message, I had intended on increasing our lead time to ship today to allow for strike action and the bank holiday.

Not entirely sure what to do now, as this line is somewhat vague, ‘Due to expected Royal Mail strike action and disruption to delivery services across the UK, we’ll extend customer-facing delivery promises for all seller-fulfilled offers, including Seller Fulfilled Prime, in the coming weeks.’

  • extend it to what? We’re already seeing delays to some orders (more than usual) so I’m keen to know if Amazon’s ‘delivery promises’ would be in line with ours (am sceptical).
#8

When is this happening and by how much the dates will be extended?

I put my listings on holiday mode yesterday as my reaction to the strike but I would consider taking them off holiday mode now if I knew how long the dates were being extended for.

I have checked a couple of my competitors and they are showing delivery 27-30 August so there does seem to be any extension yet for the first strike on Friday.

#9

Great that Amazon is atleast doing something however it is clear as mud as usual.

Not sure how many products you’ve got MFN but might be worth extending your handling time to 4-6 working days by flat file (or API if you use any connecting platform(s)) instead of going on holiday mode.

#10

We assume the delivery promise extension will just be for sellers using Royal Mail and not impact Prime sellers using DPD who are operating like normal?

#11

It would be helpful for Amazon to give a guide on how to do this. Like many I have never done this before and without proper instructions I would struggle and I would worry I could do more harm than good.

I have done this on eBay which is relatively straight forward as you can do a bulk update of listings via the web page…

#12

We use some software that lets us easily change it so I haven’t really looked through the flat files that contain this info.

I don’t really understand why Amazon doesn’t simply let you input a number of days instead of the current radio boxes of 1/2 days.

#13

Hmmm… So are they stating they will allow those 4 extra days, to be non post days, i.e. treat it as a Sunday for seller fulfilled?
Not clear at all, wonder if one of their robots wrote this? Honestly, just simple example would have been very helpful.

#14

So my understanding of this is still that you need to ship on time therefore any orders that normally require shipping on Friday and Tuesday, will still be required to be shipped on those days

So yes, handling time extensions or holidays seem to be the only way around that specific metric

With regards to delivery, it would nice to see something in place re potential a-z claims

#15

Not necessarily

#16

I’ve just started this morning upgrading low value items which i’d normally send by 2nd class to 1st, I’d rather swallow the extra cost myself than risk more defects

#17

I am thinking the same thing.

#18

Any support for sellers like this is a step in the right direction for Amazon. Other platforms have historically offered far greater protection for sellers when incidents (out of our control) like strikes occur.

I think there could be more done (like proctecting defects and feedback related to the strike action), but it is certainly an improvement.

#19

Has anyone actually seen any extension to their delivery dates yet though ?

#20

An extension to the despatch deadlines would also be helpful
packages due to be sent Friday 26th automatically allowed to be sent on Tuesday 30th instead