SFP orders over Christmas , do you ahve to ship on the bank holidays?
Hi,
We usually have seller fulfilled prime mon-fri with a 2pm cut off.
We will be in the office all of the working days over christmas but not on the bank holidays.
I’m guessing Amazon automatically doesnt include bank holidays as Prime shiping days, like it normally does with weekends for us?
Can anyone confirm this is case? We need to decide whether to switch Prime off for the festive period or leave it on.
Thanks
19 replies
Seller_KM2No8jybV32S
Looking at anticipated delivery dates they are expecting dispatch on 24th currently, Amazon shipping are collecting on 27/28 according to our login so be careful. Keep an eye on delivery estimates for your listings, if you can post the day before them you’ll be OK, if not suspend your prime.
I can’t believe they have not issued clear guidance to sellers on this. It’s not fair.
I quote from seller support tickets I have filled:
Q:
“What are the shipping requirements to maintain seller prime over christmas / new year?
We are planning to ship on 23rd/27th/29th/30th but not on any other days due to bank holidays.
Do we need to adjust our prime settings or will Amazon automatically adjust the shipping expectations based on bank holidays.
To be clear we will ship on all days that Amazon shipping are collecting which are not bank holidays.”
A
"As per your email, I understand that your concern is regarding the shipping requirements for bank holidays.
In this regard, I would like to inform that Monday through Friday are considered mandatory operating days. You may turn on Saturday and Sunday as optional operating days."
Follow up:
Q
"“In this regard, I would like to inform that Monday through Friday are considered mandatory operating days”
Are you telling me that christmas eve and christmas day are shipping days for amazon prime?"
A
"Upon investigation, we have still not received any update regarding the fulfilment of Prime orders during Christmas / new year time , and currently there are no special expectations for delivery for Christmas period and existing rules and conditions apply.
Q
“So what are you saying here. Should I tell my prepare my staff to work christmas day?”
A
“It is better to keep your employees informed that the Christmas day might be a working day for them if our team decides on sending in orders.”
Seller_w6wevyooKA8dx
We are in a similar boat here.
We have had no Christmas info from SFP at all. We had the Christmas shipping planner from Amazon Shipping which shows tomorrow as AM collections only.
Normally for this the back end of the Amazon seller central system will change and allow an earlier cut off (normally around 10am) giving our warehouse enough time to pick and pack the final orders.
This year it is showing final orders into the system at 1pm which is impossible to send the orders and make sure they arrive on time. Our final Amazon Shipping lorry leaves at 11.30am tomorrow.
Am I missing something here or has the SFP team guys just not thought about this?
Seller_46zyPWhdhcRIL
Yeah…
From past experience Amazon have been ‘fairly’ good at giving sellers enough information to go on - not directly, but by updating expected delivery windows in actual orders.
One slight oddity is that SFP orders we have had come in this afternoon seem to be marked as “ship by 24th Dec” and “Deliver by 26th December” now, i’m not sure how this is feasible given the fact that no courier will be delivering on Boxing Day, nor the following Monday 28th… as such, you’d think by now that Amazon would be making changes in their system reflective of the bank holidays.
I imagine in a week or two we will get a warning for items not delivered on time. The biggest issue i find is that they do not seem to have a team in the UK who handle this side of things and it’s more of a one size fits all type system for all marketplaces. Although that does not make things clearer, it does seem sellers are falling more and more frequently victim to this archaic system, whilst also opening the door for buyers to open A-Z claims for inaccurate delivery information provided… big sigh - Merry Christmas huh?
Seller_KM2No8jybV32S
“The order that has been placed at 13:00 on the 24th of December, should be delivered on 25th December as per SFP requirements”
Good luck with meeting that commitment.
Seller_tRuvBEHDedp4q
After this year I really did not want the stress.
I put holiday mode on, on the morning of the 22nd and told Royal Mail when they did that days collection I did not want any more collections until the new year.
I had one pending SFP order (pending for 4 days) at the end of the 22nd which, unfortunately went paid on the 23rd. I decided to take the metric hit and Cancel the order and messaged the customer to explain that as it took 4 days for payment to reach us we could no longer fulfil the order before Xmas as we were now closed but they were welcome to re-order when we opened in the new year.
Seller_GGzDKOkzQyKkd
I have just had to switch my account to holiday settings to stop any more orders coming through until after 2 pm today. As usual, Amazon seems to be incapable of understanding that the cutoff time for today and next Friday is not 2 pm but in our case is 11.30. I have just had an order come through a few minutes ago for dispatch today when our collection has already been made for the day.
We have just managed to get it into the post office which is not closing until 12 30 here.
I did go into my shipping settings to try to change the cut off dispatch time for today and the Amazon system won’t let me make any change to the SFP cut off time, so the only option was holiday settings.
I will switch back on after 2 pm, but it is not as if Christmas and New Year is something new they don’t know about, but still, we go through this same stupidity year after year.
Why is everything with them such a fight,
