Amazon are to cease offering customers Amazon Expedited Shipping from March, this will also impact Merchants as the option to offer Expedited Shipping will be removed from Seller Central.
Amazon’s reasoning is that they currently offer Standard Shipping, Expedited Shipping and Premium Shipping and the expected delivery dates for the three services have a large overlap. To fix this and make the proposition cleared to customers they will simply scrap Expedited Shipping leaving just Standard and Premium shipping options.
In the past, when economy services took 3-5 days they would have been classed as Amazon Standard Shipping. Amazon Expedited Shipping comes with a delivery time normally from 1 to 3 days. Premium Shipping includes same day, one day and two day deliveries and merchants must offer a tracked service. if you offer Expedited Shipping to domestic Customers with a transit time of 2 days or less, Amazon will automatically replace Expedited Shipping with Premium Shipping in your shipping template. Amazon will maintain the same transit time and shipping rate as set by you for Expedited shipping but only if you qualify to offer Premium shipping.
Amazon Expedited Shipping retirement dates
4th March 2019
You will not be able to add or make changes to Expedited Shipping in your Amazon shipping templates.
14th March 2018
If you offer Expedited Shipping to domestic Customers with a transit time of 2 days or less, Amazon will automatically replace Expedited Shipping with Premium Shipping in your shipping template.
Amazon Premium Shipping Eligibility
To be eligible to offer Premium Shipping on Amaozn, you must meet the following requirements for the trailing 30 days:
- Valid tracking rate of 100%
- On-time delivery rate of 97% or greater
- Seller-initiated cancel rate of less than 0.5%
If any of your performance metrics fall below the established thresholds for Premium Shipping, Amazon will revoke your eligibility. Premium Shipping options will be disabled on your offers, and your status will change to not eligible in the Premium Shipping Eligibility dashboard. If you suffer an eligibility revocation, you will need to a Plan of Action to request the restoration of your eligibility to Premium Shipping.
If you don’t qualify to offer Premium Shipping on Amazon then your offers on Amazon will only have the Standard Shipping option.
Impact on Chinese Sellers
The change is likely to have a major impact on Chinese sellers who offer Premium Shipping at exorbitant delivery rates. Chinese sellers often use this to game search but equally those who do often also have high cancellation rates as they are drop shipping from factories and if an item goes out of stock they have no compunction in cancelling orders.
Sellers in the UK who genuinely hold stock shouldn’t be impacted too seriously. It is only sellers of low value goods who’s businesses can’t justify tracking who will be unable to offer Premium Shipping on Amazon – otherwise there are few carriers who can’t offer a delivery within one or two days.
3 Responses
We have a handling time of 2 days and offer expedited delivery with a transit time of 1 – 2 days.
We also offer (on select items) premium 2 day shipping.
With regards to premium 2 day shipping, same day shipment is forced upon the seller (regardless of lead time) if the customer orders before 2pm and next day if ordered after this time.
Do we take this announcement to mean that expedited shipping in our case would simply be converted to straight 2 day premium shipping i.e. without the 2 day handling time breathing room?
This effects my business as we sell low value items and tracking is it viable. Currently we send everything first class post , does this mean that we might as well send everything 2nd class to be more in line with standard delivery timescales and make a saving? Would be good to hear anyone’s view?