Amazon are emphasising that a delivery date which is even one day earlier could be the difference between making a purchase or not, as they encourage FBM (Fulfilled By Merchant) sellers to offer same day despatch.
If you configure your account for same day despatch as your default setting, it will shorten the delivery date shown to customers when they purchase products and increases the likelihood of a purchase.
Amazon also have a useful feature that lets you set a maximum number of orders you can handle for same day despatch, with any orders over the limit you set having an additional day’s handling time automatically added to ensure you can meet delivery promises.
We found that, on average, EU seller-set handling times are 30% longer than the actual time taken to prepare and ship products. Many sellers may already ship on the same day they receive orders without the benefit of showing it to customers and getting additional sales. You can see this benefit by configuring your account to same-day handling time!
– Amazon
When setting same-day handling time, consider the following features:
- Order cut-off time: Setting same-day handling time requires sellers to ship and confirm all orders received before the cut-off hour within the same day. For orders received after the cut-off hour, sellers will have the next working day to handle these orders.
- The default cut-off hour is 2:00 p.m. local time but can be edited in shipping settings.
- Set order handling capacity: Set a limit for the number of orders you can handle with your default handling time. Every order above the limit with a 0 – 2 day handling time has +1 day handling time to avoid late deliveries.
- For more information, go to Modify order handling capacity.
- ASIN-level handling time: Switching to account to same day handling time will move your default handling to same-day. However, you can still set ASIN-specific handling time for ASINs that take longer to pack and ship. ASIN-specific handling time overrides the account level handling time for that product, while allowing the majority of a sellers products to showcase a faster delivery promise.
- To learn more about ASIN specific handling time, go to Modify handling time.
If you want to learn more, Amazon have a full Same-day handling time help page.
2 Responses
Cut-off time can only be 2pm or later, not earlier, which is not suitable when the courier collection is 3pm.
The reason why most sellers state a 2 day handling time (which is the maximum allowed) is simply because the delivery time from the couriers is not realistic. Sellers are not measured on the dispatch time but on delivery time and the time it takes for RM (or other) to deliver is outside our control….
The cut off time is a problem.
I rushed into changing, happy to believe Amazon had woken up to something ebay has known for a long time. Tomorrow, after the 24 hour period that Amazon doesn’t allow the settings to be changed back expires (WTF? why Amazon?) I’m going to have to change it back.
For my business, the courier can be here any time between 2pm and 3:30pm. Royal Mail also collect, after 4pm. Therefore, a 2pm order cut-off just does not work. The post items could still be managed, but all the courier items would be at risk of failure to dispatch in time. Yes, the ASINs for individual items can be changed, so those items that are always couriered could be changed to 1 day handling, but that is a lot of work and there would still be bulk orders to contend with. Normally, a £5 or £10 item can go in the post just fine. But if the buyer bulk orders 20 of them, weight/value dictates get upgraded to courier. If such an order drops in at 1:59, it’s a problem.
Over on ebay, you can set it when you want for each day and at 15 min intervals. If Amazon wants to reap the benefits, they need to be copying ebay on this, not setting a blanket 2pm minimum. That’s just going to drive a lot of us back to 1 day-handling.