Santa claus… I mean Amazon doesn’t trust FedEx to deliver Christmas and as of Wednesday third-party sellers on the site will no longer be able to ship Prime orders through FedEx Ground and FedEx Home.
First we saw FedEx dump Amazon air deliveries in June, then FedEx decided to dump Amazon small package ground deliveries in August and now it’s Amazon’s turn to dump FedEx during the Christmas period. In an email sent out last weekend Amazon told merchants that the decision was made after they were fed up with a recent drop in FedEx’s performance. Amazon are clearly working hard to maintain their high consumer satisfaction and reliably fast shipping without even second guessing the changes it makes to prevent issues.
“We have seen a drop in the delivery performance of FedEx Ground and FedEx Home ship methods for Seller Fulfilled Prime shipments.”
What does this mean for merchants?
Not all hope is lost for FedEx and merchants who want to ship with them as Amazon have stated that sellers can still use the speedier Express service to ship Prime items and FedEx Ground for non Prime items.
Third-party merchants who don’t want to go for the options above will need to choose a different courier service for Prime shipments and if that isn’t an option they will have to disable their badge.
Amazon may trust FedEx again
Amazon are open to lifting the ban if FedEx improve their service. The courier service have expressed their concern over how this move will effect sellers negatively causing short term pain and expense at such a vital time for selling.
At this time of the year it’s no surprise that Amazon are being a little over attentive to their delivery networks and keeping control of the delivery process is something they are good at. Amazon Logistics are already set to eventually surpass UPS and FedEx in shipment volume.
One Response
Amazon is the bigger company so this is expected. Not this affects FBA significantly but FBM seller might have a problem.