For all you Amazon Pros... OTDR Not Actually a Thing for Free Economy Shipped Orders?
I check my Account Health each morning. A couple days ago I saw that my On-Time Delivery Rate had slipped from my normal 98-99% down to 95%. Now that is still well above the required but I still wanted to find out why. So I downloaded the report that showed the orders that didn't arrive on time and started looking at each of them.
I use Amazon Buy Shipping Services for 100% of my orders. When I looked at the orders that were counting against me I saw that ALL of them had OTDR Protected badges so I wrote Seller Support to ask why they were counting against me.
I set up both AHT and SSA months ago and these were recent orders so I did not understand how they could count as late against my metrics since they had OTDR badges. I was told after some research that for these orders that there was no SSA associated with them. So I kindly asked them to recheck since I knew I had enabled that months before the orders in question and after some research they told me the same thing.
So then I had them call me because I was very confused. Before I called I went to look at my Shipping Settings and saw that SSA was not enabled for Free Economy or Expedited but was for everything else. I then went and tried to figure out how to enable for those shipping catagories but to no avail.
What I was told is that SSA does not work for Free Economy or Expedited and only for Standard, Two Day and Next Day. So even though Free Economy is showing my the labels I am buying have OTDR Protection, that is not true. The rep was very good and easy to understand and we discussed this for a bit and at the end of the call I came to the conclusion it was best to turn off Free Economy during the holidays to protect my metrics.
Buy my question is... why are we being shown that labels are OTDR Protected under Free Economy when that is not the case? I don't decide if something is Standard or Free Economy, Amazon does that and tells me. If SSA is not applicable to Free Economy and we buy our labels through Amazon Buy Shipping Services, and they run a day late we get hit in our metrics but you woudn't know that to look at the label we bought.
I am including screen shots of my ship settings showing SSA not applying to Free and Expidited and a sample of one of those "Late" orders that had the OTDR Protection badge but wasn't really protected.
For all you Amazon Pros... OTDR Not Actually a Thing for Free Economy Shipped Orders?
I check my Account Health each morning. A couple days ago I saw that my On-Time Delivery Rate had slipped from my normal 98-99% down to 95%. Now that is still well above the required but I still wanted to find out why. So I downloaded the report that showed the orders that didn't arrive on time and started looking at each of them.
I use Amazon Buy Shipping Services for 100% of my orders. When I looked at the orders that were counting against me I saw that ALL of them had OTDR Protected badges so I wrote Seller Support to ask why they were counting against me.
I set up both AHT and SSA months ago and these were recent orders so I did not understand how they could count as late against my metrics since they had OTDR badges. I was told after some research that for these orders that there was no SSA associated with them. So I kindly asked them to recheck since I knew I had enabled that months before the orders in question and after some research they told me the same thing.
So then I had them call me because I was very confused. Before I called I went to look at my Shipping Settings and saw that SSA was not enabled for Free Economy or Expedited but was for everything else. I then went and tried to figure out how to enable for those shipping catagories but to no avail.
What I was told is that SSA does not work for Free Economy or Expedited and only for Standard, Two Day and Next Day. So even though Free Economy is showing my the labels I am buying have OTDR Protection, that is not true. The rep was very good and easy to understand and we discussed this for a bit and at the end of the call I came to the conclusion it was best to turn off Free Economy during the holidays to protect my metrics.
Buy my question is... why are we being shown that labels are OTDR Protected under Free Economy when that is not the case? I don't decide if something is Standard or Free Economy, Amazon does that and tells me. If SSA is not applicable to Free Economy and we buy our labels through Amazon Buy Shipping Services, and they run a day late we get hit in our metrics but you woudn't know that to look at the label we bought.
I am including screen shots of my ship settings showing SSA not applying to Free and Expidited and a sample of one of those "Late" orders that had the OTDR Protection badge but wasn't really protected.
0 odpowiedzi
April_Amazon
Hello @Seller_i8T5vppfKx5Hd,
Thank you for sharing such detailed and easy to understand information. I understand your questions and will provide some reference information. I see why you are concerned.
I do not have an answer for this question, but I will investigate. This is the help guide for OTDR: Frequently asked questions about on-time delivery rate (OTDR)
There are a few yellow highlighted notes, one that says:
- Note: OTDR Protection is only available for units shipped through Standard Shipping, units shipped through other shipping options such as Free Economy, Standard Prime, or Premium Shipping, are not eligible for OTDR protection.
I am reaching out internally, asking why then, does the protection badge show on those orders? This is a great question and thank you for asking it. When I get a response, I will update you.
As this is a weekend day, I do not have a time frame on when I might hear back from that team. I very much appreciate you posting about this.
Thank you for reaching out on the Forums. The Forums and I are here to support you.
April
Seller_roNdLQpqbVoOH
It might have been a great question way back, when Amazon began this nonsense of "ship right or ship out."
But it has been answered many times here by sellers who see what I see. The "protection badges" show on every order of mine. And I have not, and will not, enable AHT or SSA. The badges display even when the order is NOT protected. Amazon appears to be counting on sellers not reading the fine print involved.
No one knows how much it pains me to see sellers turning themselves inside-out as Amazon continues to tweak the shipping rules. It's sadistic.
Just say "NO."
Seller_QF5NQ9TSzrqNk
Is the moral here that OTDR protection applies to all shipments (other than Free Economy), or that it applies to all shipments (other than Free Economy) ONLY if you are using SSA?
Seller_v2bkIPsWJQHOn
Have you figured out how to enable SSA for free shipping?
I'm having the same issue here and an agent told me SSA does not exist on free shipments, still they penalize sellers for it being not active...
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/12807e96-9358-49cb-8a2a-1544577a95bf?postId=12807e96-9358-49cb-8a2a-1544577a95bf
