Amazon have introduced a new metric which you’ll be able to find in your Amazon account performance metrics. For eBay sellers it’ll be pretty familiar as it’s an On-Time Delivery Score for seller fulfilled items.
Amazon do one thing differently to eBay, the split out tracked from overall shipments and have different targets for each. The target for parcels delivered on time is 97%, but for tracked items they expect 98% or greater to arrive by the date you promised.
What do you think of the new metric? Here at Tamebay we’re quite liking the idea of offer reduced shipping or handling times if you’re able to despatch fast and deliver on time, this could be a real differentiator for sellers who don’t want to use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) but are able to provide a similar delivery promise – We’ll watch to wait to see how this is displayed on the site and promoted to consumers.
We’ve some sample metrics above from a Tamebay reader who seems to stack up pretty well against the requirements. Are you metrics as good, better or worse?
Amazon help page On-Time Delivery Score FAQs
Why is on-time delivery important?
If you meet Amazon’s targets for on-time delivery and tracking scores, you may be eligible to offer reduced shipping or handling times on your items.
Does Amazon display my on-time delivery score to customers?
We currently do not display these scores to customers.
What happens if I miss the on-time delivery target?
This metric is intended to help you understand the cause of negative feedback and claims. When packages arrive late or are shipped without tracking, buyers are more likely to leave negative feedback or file claims. This directly impacts your performance metrics. Therefore, it is important to review your on-time delivery and tracking-usage scores regularly.
Failure to meet Amazon’s target for this metric generally does not result in the suspension of your selling account. However it could cause negative feedback or claims, which could impact your selling account status. To help you monitor your on-time delivery metrics, we have added a performance indicator to the Customer Metrics dashboard.
How is the on-time delivery score calculated?
A package is considered on time if the following requirements are met:
- Tracking information is recorded within 48 hours of entering the shipment confirmation.
- The package is delivered by the estimated delivery date according to the carrier’s tracking updates.
12 Responses
Our on time delivery rate for our Amazon orders is 99.71%. That gives a late delivery rate of 0.29%. and Amazon have taken account of 4,586 parcels that were shipped.
We ship our Amazon orders in the same time-scales and using the same delivery methods as we use on eBay, yet eBay show a late delivery rate of 4.64%!
Conversely eBay have used the 2544 transactions that we had feedback left for, rather than the 5660 orders that we have shipped. Had eBay done the calculation on the orders that were shipped, the late delivery rate would be still not be comparable with that of Amazon, but at 2%, is still more realistic than the 4.64% they are currently calculating, and well within the TRS threshold.
I’m sure that Royal Mail don’t know which of our parcels are Amazon parcels and which are eBay parcels and deliberately deliver more eBay parcels late, so this only serves as a stark illustration of just how broken the eBay system is!
Pretty sure this has been there for nearly 6 months now.
We don’t send anything tracked as it’s mostly all low value items and there are no issues with this metric.
Conversely, on eBay we are showing about 11% late deliveries with the vast majority coming from problems we had with US orders over the Christmas period.
Non-of our items are tracked so the eBay percentage is based purely on customer feedback.
Great but again Amazon don’t support the couriers we use to upload tracking.
As ebay if your going to do these things it needs to be fair to everyone, we use DPD/Interlink voted one of the best couriers in the country as we want to have that service for our customers, however neither sites support tracking for it.
For sellers of low value items it’s becoming harder and harder to accomodate the postage in the price, delivery really quickly and it’s impossible to offer a tracked service.
This year we have dropped over 200 lines as we just can’t do it anymore.
Same as ebay it doesn’t seem to take account of failed delivery atttempts.
If you can’t get 100% delivered on time you shouldn’t be on ebay or amazon.
Its only on tamebay that sellers think it’s acceptable not to delivery netx day.
Orders placed on ebay over weekends, get a delivery promise from ebay of “fast & free delivered by Wednesday” for standard delivery (2nd class post), and that’s the problem. Royal Mail website says 2nd class post has a 98% target within 3 working days. If you post on Monday, then Monday is same day, Tuesday is next day (1 day), Wednesday is 2 days, Thursday is 3 days. Something is wrong there. Ebay claim that the “by Wednesday” they promise, is given to them by Royal Mail, and depends on the buyers location!
From experience, Royal Mail delivers Monday’s post by Wednesday (2 working days) most of the year, except busy periods. Most sellers that use Royal Mail as their main company now have 3-5% late on Amazon because of November and December orders.
HOWEVER:
Ebay asks a loaded question. “Did you receive your order by xxx date?”
If a buyer, has to be sent a replacement, or they miss the postman, they will often be “honest” and say they didn’t get it by the promised date, not realising that they are “reporting” the seller. They will still leave 5* feedback, and may not have any complaint with the delivery speed!
Peter King
Can you name me a parcel company with 100% success delivery rate for next day delivery?
Also I think you will find most retailers allow you to pay extra for next day delivery but offer free postage when spending over a certain amount for the item delivered with a slower delivery window.
A lot of sellers on eBay are small businesses where they may have other jobs and sell as a second income so offer slower delivery services and dispatch which suites them. If a buyer is not happy with this they shop somewhere else.