Hi everyone,

So we messed-up a few weeks ago as we sent a number of “Second Day”, Non-Prime orders, by Royal Mail 48. What happened was we lost Seller Fulfilled Prime eligibility due to Royal Mail delivering late and had to wait for Seller Performance to review the Royal Mail responses before we were then reinstated. During this time our orders came in as Non-Prime Premium orders. We’d never had any like this before and wrongly assumed they could be sent Tracked 48 as they were not Prime.

So we have been marked as ineligible for Non-Prime Premium Shipping. We don’t intend to use this very often at all but thought it was a good idea to get it reinstated. We received the following email:

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Hello,

Our review of your account found that you do not meet one or more of the following requirements to offer Premium Shipping options:

– Selling on Amazon for at least 90 days.
– An order count greater than or equal to 10 orders in the past 30 days across all shipping options.
– A valid tracking rate of a 100%.
– It is possible to obtain a valid tracking number or inquiry slip number by using shipping traders that can be tracked from Amazon such as Royal Mail, MyHermes, Yodel, DPD, ParcelForce, TNT, DHL, DX Secure, UPS, Panther, ARROW XL, or Collect+.
– An on-time delivery score greater than or equal to 97%.
– A seller-initiated order cancellation rate less than 0.5%.

Learn more about eligibility requirements in Seller Central Help at https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/gp/help/G201503640.

To offer Premium Shipping options on Amazon.co.uk, please submit a plan that explains how you will meet the eligibility requirements in the future via email at op-pso-vtr-appeals@amazon.co.uk.

You can look at your performance metrics on the Account Health page in the Performance section of Seller Central at https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/performance/dashboard?ref=ah_em_op. For help creating your plan, visit Seller Central Help at https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/gp/help/200370560.

Once we receive your plan, we will review it and decide whether you may be eligible to offer Premium Shipping options on Amazon.co.uk again.

We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Seller Performance Team
Amazon.co.uk

On investigation we fell to 87% for on-time delivery for Non-Prime Premium Delivery orders. 3 of 21 orders were not delivered on time. We meet all the other requirements noted.

I have responded with the following Plan Of Action:

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Dear Seller Performance Team,

Thank you for your email. Please find our Plan Of Action below for the issue raised, as requested:

What was the root cause that led to the issue?

• A member of our dispatch team dispatched a number of non-Prime Premium Delivery “Second Day” orders using Royal Mail Tracked 48, which were then delivered late by Royal Mail, causing defects and dropping our “On-time delivery rate” below the required 97% target rate for Premium Shipping eligibility.
• We failed to recognise non-Prime Premium Delivery orders received with “Second Day” priority needed to be dispatched using a premium shipping service, as it is not an order type we have dealt with before and were not sufficiently aware of Amazon’s policy for handling it correctly.

What actions will you take to resolve the issue?

• I have already taken personal responsibility to re-read Amazon’s policy documentation that includes Non-Prime Premium Delivery and have determined the required updates to our company processes that will resolve the issue identified.
• As of today we have re-trained all dispatch team members of staff responsible for booking parcel deliveries to use Royal Mail Tracked 24, the Amazon approved Premium Shipping service, for all Non-Prime Premium Delivery orders received from Amazon customers.

What steps will you take to prevent future issues?

• I have updated our dispatch team parcel booking workflow process, PDF attached to this email, to ensure all types of Amazon orders, whether Prime, Non-Prime Premium or Non-Prime Standard orders are processed correctly, according to Amazon’s policies.
• Any new dispatch team employees will be trained according to this updated workflow process, so they will dispatch Amazon orders using the correct delivery service for all types of Amazon order received, including Premium Shipping.

I can only apologise for our error here and can certainly advise we will not have this issue again in the future due to the actions now taken. We take our performance metrics very seriously and it is embarrassing we failed to meet Amazon’s requirements on this occasion. I hope you will find these company process changes sufficient to reinstate our Premium Shipping programme eligibility.

Many thanks for your time.

Best wishes,

I received a a further email from the email address the POA was sent to less than an hour after. It is just the same email as they sent at the beginning, asking for a POA and no mention of having either received our POA or that it had been rejected.

I am now perplexed as to whether they have actually reviewed the POA or not. If they have and this identical email is a rejection notice without it saying so, can anyone suggest what changes I need to make to the POA to get it approved? It was a mistake we have taken responsibility for and made changes to our processes to remove the chance of it happening again. I thought that would be sufficient as it is not a very complex error to have made.

Any thoughts welcome.

Many thanks in advance.