Forced to use DPD over Royal Mail for Seller Fulfilled Prime?
Hi,
Apologies, if this is already covered but could not find any mention of this issue on the forums.
When we started using Seller Fulfilled Prime, it was great - we could choose between Royal Mail and DPD based on which option was best for the actual item (size and price).
But around 1 year ago I believe, it started forcing us to choose DPD with no Royal Mail option available on the majority of orders.
This costs us approx an extra £2.50 (excl. vat) to then despatch meaning we are forced to increase the overall price of items that were usually sent exclusively by Royal Mail.
When I questions Amazon CS about this, they reckoned the software was basically faulty/bugged before and consider it now fixed (correct). Basically they are saying Royal Mail wont meet the shipping criteria for that location.
I spoke to our Royal Mail rep and she reckoned that Tracked 24 is like 95% on time next day currently - so it will meet the criteria.
Where are Amazon pulling this information from that Royal Mail wont deliver on time per area?
This seems more like they are able to skim more off the top of DPD Buy Shipping as its basically their DPD account you are using whereas Royal Mail is our own account.
Thoughts?
Mike
6 replies
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
Are you sure that you have parcel sizes/weights correct?
If they are just a bit too large, then it will default to DPD.
Seller_hLHls2hV7bS8p
Been SPF for about three years with RM and DPD. I’ve had times where we’ve had to drop DPD due to them not collecting at a good time etc, in those times where we’ve only been able to use RM for SFP our ≤ 1-Day SFP Detail Page Views have been 0 or under 5%.
What’s wild to me, is that with Premium Next Day shipping we have DPD and RM and for those orders, we can choose DPD or RM 1st Class Parcel, but not Tracked 24…
I’m not sure why RM is a SFP Carrier when it’s clear for a lot of sellers that RM Tracked 24 can’t achieve Next Day
Seller_bhSWqoVh7Pn98
Amz check depots and many are under performing (they expect virtually all Tracked 24 to be there the next day), so they tend to either show as 2-day Prime, if you alter to show that the only company you use is RM (so you can alter to that usually). Or, if you have ticked DPD as well, then they expect you to use them instead.
If you alter your RM collection time to a later time, (eg to 8pm, 11pm, etc), then process all orders together immediately. It often then allows you to choose RM Tracked 24, but be careful as more orders may arrive before you process all your shipments. It ‘thinks’ if say it is 3pm cut-off as RM collect at 4pm, that the RM shipment will then not get collected that day, so will only allow DPD instead. If a later time is shown for the collection, it ‘thinks’ it will be collected that day, so still ok to send RM. (You do need to ensure they go out that day though of course)
