Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime Update Forces 6 day week from June

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There is a significant Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime Update from June which will include later cut off times and a requirement to ship on at least one day over the weekend – either a Saturday or Sunday.

Cut off times are moving from 2pm to 4pm with a carrier pick up time of 4.30pm or later which will impact many merchants. Not only may this give you very little time to pick and pack orders, perhaps only half an hour from a last pick run at 4pm before your carrier arrives, but for some it will mean renegotiation the pick up time by your carriers.

Perhaps even harder to handle is the requirement to use shipping which provides for a pick up on at least one weekend day. For merchants who currently work Monday to Friday, this will mean opening up the warehouse on either Saturday or Sunday if you want to maintain Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime status.

The good news is that Amazon recognise that business certainty is crucial and have given 5 months notice on these changes. This gives you time to either adjust your operations or make plans to migrate away before the Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime Update and either switch to regular FBA to serve Prime customers or sacrifice the advantage that Prime qualification offers to merchants. An alternative option which may work for some merchants will be to switch a part of their business to a fulfilment house who can offer Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime service and let them work the weekend.

This will be a major change for many merchants who have never worked 6 days a week before. Take time to consider your options and decide what works best for your business.

Main Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime Update detail

  • 4PM cut off Times (previously 2pm)
  • Starting June 30, 2021, the required cut-off time to maintain eligibility for SFP will be later. The minimum carrier pickup time on weekdays will be 16:30, which will set your order cut-off time to 16:00. A later order cut-off means more customers shopping on the store will see your offers with faster delivery available. You can set your cut-off time in Order Fulfilment Settings under Fulfilment Settings for Shipping Region Automation.

  • Mandatory weekend pickup
  • Starting June 30, 2021, you will also be required to use ship methods that support pickups on at least one weekend day (Saturday or Sunday) to maintain eligibility for SFP. Shipping on weekends provides customers with a more consistent delivery experience throughout the week. You can set a different order cut-off time on weekends vs on weekdays. You can set your weekend shipping preferences in Order Fulfilment Settings.

  • Carrier collection times
  • While you set your order cut-off time in Seller Central, you must work with your SFP carrier(s) to ensure they will arrive for parcel pickup at an appropriate time after you process your orders. You can find instructions on how to contact your SFP carrier in Seller Central.

  • New multi-warehouse capabilities

    To help you provide faster delivery promises and increase your Prime coverage, we have also launched multi-warehouse functionality. This feature allows you to select up to 10 ship-from addresses in your Prime shipping template to ensure the delivery promise customers see reflects your warehouse locations.

“We recognise these changes are meaningful. We want to make sure you have time to determine how these changes affect your business and to make any adjustments you may need in conjunction with your carrier, which is why these new requirements will not take effect before June. If you already meet these requirements, nothing changes. If you choose not to meet these new program requirements, you are welcome to continue offering your products through our Merchant Fulfilled Network or Fulfilment by Amazon.

You and SFP are important to Amazon and our customers, and we will continue innovating with tools and offerings that help deliver a more compelling experience. To help you navigate these changes, we have also launched a guide in Seller Central with details, examples and answers to your questions, and set up a dedicated support team, which you can contact at [email protected].”
– The Seller Fulfilled Prime team

12 Responses

  1. Bye to SFP, we do not have an option of a Courier collection on a Weekend & currently the courier arrives at 3pm.

  2. We tried SFP but never sold any more than just offering next day delivery on Amazon directly. I am now glad that we did drop it becuase this is madness. DPD are both our courier and the SFP courier we used to use and we just don’t do the volume to dictate to them that we want a weekend collection.

    Sometimes we need to stand together and against the ability to control so much of other peoples business. If enough people suddenly drop SFP they might think again. At what point do they change to 7 days.

  3. We all know the majority of small businesses will not get a DPD/RM collection after 4.30pm. Nevermind on a weekend!

    You could always drop the parcels off at the depot but who has time for that, and 6 days per week?

    I don’t really get this decision, we are enhancing the product range available to Prime members. We saved Amazon’s bacon during the first lockdown. FBA warehouses can’t even cope, SFP allows us to do all the hard work and all Amazon has to do is take their cut and provide the technology platform.
    Goodbye SFP.

  4. It’s interesting reading all the comments on the Amazon forums.
    Even the sellers that use Amazon’s own couriers as their shipping option say that they don’t get a collection at the weekend.

    Many mention that it is Amazon’s way of killing it off!!

  5. Amazon needs to change the fulfillment times for Prime orders to be when Payment Is Cleared. Sellers cannot touch an order until payment clears and sometimes that comes up to 2 hours after they submit payment, forcing the seller to have little or even no time to process the order before the carrier is ready to depart for the evening. If the seller is forced to accept orders until 4:00PM and a customer purchases an order at 4:00PM and payment does not clear until 6:00PM, how can the seller be required to ship that order on the same day? Something will have to change.

  6. massive joke – i tried SFP last year and it made only a 10% -20% increase to orders – if that – and even then it took over my life – evening drives to the post office after the collection for late pending orders coming through – even after switching it off for the day. and at the end of the day you are judged by the speed that your sorting office scans anyway.

    and don’t get me started on the fact it’s not compatible with click and drop. hours spent weedling out orders and then having to go through amazons ancient labeling system, double printing packing list then label and entering sizes and weight for each parcel – madness

    never in a million years, even though they call me every month to go back on

  7. Amazon have no regard for smaller businesses . I cant possibly do this we use Royal Mail Amazons click and drop ( who charge over £1.00 more than the 24hr tracked on our own Click and Drop account) we cant get Royal Mail to pick up from us on a Saturday ! We use FBA ( only for them not to send during the first Lockdown as our goods werent essential) we then went onto SFP but now that option is effectively being taken from us. We should all pull out of Prime when the time comes in June not give in to their demands.
    I have sent in an email on their Seller Support ( how hard is it to get there now!) Wonder if they read and respond in the 24hrs we have to . Amazon are turning into a corporate Behemoth doubt they even want the smaller sellers. I have been with them since the beginning when they dropped a card at a trade show how different are things now.

  8. Bye to SFP, we do not have an option of a Courier collection on a Weekend & currently the courier arrives at 3pm.

    Same here, at the moment with lockdown measures in Scotland our SFP is more switched off than on so come June it will be bye bye for us.

  9. This decision is bonkers! Amazon seems to be blaming 3rd party sellers for the failings of the carriers. Adding an extra 2 hours to the cut off time is only going to make things worse and good luck trying to get DPD or RM to collect after 4:30

    You can also forget most sellers sacrificing their weekends. We work hard enough jumping through hoops as it is.

    Just putting it out there… One solution may be to switch Prime off between 2 pm – 4 pm weekdays & from 2 pm Friday till 4 pm Saturday. I expect Amazon will put a stop to manual control of Prime status at some point.

  10. what a joke. They suspend us from SFP due to royal mail not meeting the delivery metrics but that did us a favour. We have now put all our sales on a 2 day dispatch and send tracked at less cost than SFP and sales have actually stayed the same or in many case risen.
    Hopefully they will see a drop off in prime subscriptions as people definitely dont wat it for the TV rubbish. shipping due to Prime is also rubbish as they often miss their own targets. so free is free whether prime or not. Many dont like Amazon and go for individuals.

  11. This is Amazon’s typical MO dangling the carrot and a bombardment of sales rep trying to get you to sign up to whatever the latest scheme is. Once you’re in its great for a year or two and the turning of the screw comes. We don’t do any of these schemes (FBA / SFP / VCS service) yes we could probably boost sales a little but their disregard and treatment of sellers and the move to flawed automated enforcement of infinite policy violations I’d rather concentrate our efforts into other platforms and our own site. They don’t deserve our time and its not worth the risk anymore. We just let it tick over with the minimum of effort.

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