SFP Frustrations
How do people make SFP work , it is a daily battle to make sure you buy Amazon shipping even when it doesnt give you the correct options especially with businesses that have opening hours loaded on to the system. I can understand when i make mistakes, but being penalised for things outside of my control despite all my best efforts to ensure my customers get the best possible experience
Issues we having
1. It appears now that Royal mail is only avliable for next day for 8% of the country - as majority of our items go RM Large Letter this is proving a challenge as half the orders we cant buy RM through Amazon shipping so we have to send outside of Amazon which is a negative for us.
2. We also find that the system thinks at weekends when businesses are closed Evri is the only option not RM, yet in my experience RM deal with business hours far better then Evri, as Royal Mail will have their routes planned around business opening hours and wont try and delivery on days they know business are cvlosed, yet Evri will attempt all hours and days with no regard for business Hours - so we prefer to do whats best for the customer which again is a negative as we cant buy shipping through Amazon as its not one of the options they think is right
3. We have no control over the shipping performance of any of Amazon Partner Shippers yet if they fail then we are penalised - this has resulted in my Prime offer showing as 2 day delivery for past 3 weeks as either Royal mail or Evri have a bad day - this has resulted in orders being down evryday by at least 100 which then makes every failed parcel a bigger deal on the percentages.
4. I tried to set up Amazon shipping as I thought this might resolve the issues with the other shipping partners, agreed a deal to then be told they couldnt collect from me on a saturday it would have to be a sunday - so this would mean chnaging my employment contracts and working hours from a saturday to a sunday - are you telling me Amazon dont have the staff to collect from me on a saturday I am just 4 miles from one of their biggest hubs
Feels a bit better to write this down just wish someone in Amazon would help.
SFP Frustrations
How do people make SFP work , it is a daily battle to make sure you buy Amazon shipping even when it doesnt give you the correct options especially with businesses that have opening hours loaded on to the system. I can understand when i make mistakes, but being penalised for things outside of my control despite all my best efforts to ensure my customers get the best possible experience
Issues we having
1. It appears now that Royal mail is only avliable for next day for 8% of the country - as majority of our items go RM Large Letter this is proving a challenge as half the orders we cant buy RM through Amazon shipping so we have to send outside of Amazon which is a negative for us.
2. We also find that the system thinks at weekends when businesses are closed Evri is the only option not RM, yet in my experience RM deal with business hours far better then Evri, as Royal Mail will have their routes planned around business opening hours and wont try and delivery on days they know business are cvlosed, yet Evri will attempt all hours and days with no regard for business Hours - so we prefer to do whats best for the customer which again is a negative as we cant buy shipping through Amazon as its not one of the options they think is right
3. We have no control over the shipping performance of any of Amazon Partner Shippers yet if they fail then we are penalised - this has resulted in my Prime offer showing as 2 day delivery for past 3 weeks as either Royal mail or Evri have a bad day - this has resulted in orders being down evryday by at least 100 which then makes every failed parcel a bigger deal on the percentages.
4. I tried to set up Amazon shipping as I thought this might resolve the issues with the other shipping partners, agreed a deal to then be told they couldnt collect from me on a saturday it would have to be a sunday - so this would mean chnaging my employment contracts and working hours from a saturday to a sunday - are you telling me Amazon dont have the staff to collect from me on a saturday I am just 4 miles from one of their biggest hubs
Feels a bit better to write this down just wish someone in Amazon would help.
9 replies
Seller_ae51e0CJoHqCX
Yes I feel your pain on this one as I have also tried.
You even know when this is going to happen and try and raise a case with Amazon only to find that they want to get back in 24-48 hours, which of course is no good as you usually need to apply the postage immediately and just don't have the option.
I don't even have amazon as an option so completely restricted to Royal Mail but just manage to muddle through. Cases are more than 3 month old and by the time Amazon get back to you they just say the issue has been resolved because you dispatched the package 3 month ago.
My way of getting around it is that I sometimes have to just roll with whatever they say. Look at the dispatch date. Sometimes it may say you can ship the following day but you think oh I could do it early only to find there is no option, sometimes waiting until the following day opens up the option.
My other tactic is to just roll with it, I know it is not the best option but if it is the only option sadly in this day and age towing the policy line is more beneficial than using your common sense. There are no grey areas with Amazon it is just black and white and you have to serve the system not the customer.
Most of the time if Royal Mail is not an option, I just choose Evri and then take it down the drop shop knowing full well it will be treated with less care and I'm probably going to have an issue with it. Sadly the issue with a delayed parcel is less frustrating than coming up with a pointless action plan to satsify the Amazon bots.
Seller_IWK4g9qFkcf5C
We use both Royal Mail and Amazon Shipping, and it works perfectly fine for us.
We have Royal Mail collection on Saturdays and Amazon collection on Sundays.
The way we manage this is by setting Saturday as a non-collection day in our shipping settings. If an order needs to be shipped via Royal Mail, we fulfil it on Saturday before the collection. Once Royal Mail has collected on Saturday, we know they won’t come again until Monday — so we temporarily untick Royal Mail as a chosen carrier for Sunday.
That way, on Sunday, our SFP orders only offer Amazon Shipping as an option, and we avoid being penalised for missed dispatches.
Just remember to tick Royal Mail back on Monday so you can continue using them as normal.
We do this adjustment every weekend, and it’s worked well to keep our SFP metrics stable.
Seller_IVuzF5F26xipN
Hiya, we use tracked24 and SFP all large letter and we send everything to all parts of the uk absolutely fine, we are based in lancashire, are you at one end of the country or something?
seems strange you are only getting 8% coverage, now a lot of the time when buying in bulk we get shown evri as the only option but if you change the shipping by a gram the order resets and tracked24 pops up dunno if you tried that? or if when buying in bulk it shows just one option if i go into the order and buy through the order page more options show up than were shown when bulk purchasing all orders together
also we have two shipping templates prime and premium, we have had issues where the collection didnt turn up for the bag etc and prime was briefly disabled so we swap all listings to premium offering 1 day delivery, prime and premium delivery eligibility are assessed separately so we just swap between till the plan of action is accepted etc, lose the badge but can still offer next day delivery,
hope it sorts itself out mate.
Spencer_Amazon
Hello @Seller_EEPvHaAR3chek,
You received some great advice, I hope you are able to fix your issue with shipping. Let me know if I can help.
Regards, Spencer
