VTR advice and help please
Hello, I use amazon to sell my books and have up until this point had a perfect selling score with regard to quality and delivery performance. I do not sell enough to use Royal Mail 24 or Royal Mail 48 ship methods. I normally send Royal mail first class, or first class signed if an order is for more than one.
What I want to know is would 2nd class signed be sufficient to fulfil amazons VTR requirements. The profit margin is not high. Any advice would be welcome.
Regards Paul
VTR advice and help please
Hello, I use amazon to sell my books and have up until this point had a perfect selling score with regard to quality and delivery performance. I do not sell enough to use Royal Mail 24 or Royal Mail 48 ship methods. I normally send Royal mail first class, or first class signed if an order is for more than one.
What I want to know is would 2nd class signed be sufficient to fulfil amazons VTR requirements. The profit margin is not high. Any advice would be welcome.
Regards Paul
197 replies
Seller_P9WE9DmQhKbaT
Even at this point after several weeks and thousands of posts there is not complete clarity regarding these issues.
However it seems likely that if you send Royal Mail 1st or 2nd class and confirm dispatch using the dropdown boxes (Carrier- Royal Mail, Delivery Service- Royal Mail 2nd class- and leave the tracking number box blank) then the transaction will be counted as exempt and not impact your VTR rate at all. If you send all packages this way (it is thought) then you will eventually end with a tracking rate of N/A.
But if you send the odd package tracked then that one will be monitored for VTR provided you are completely honest about the service and upload the tracking number to Amazon . The potential problem, particularly the case with Royal Mail signed services, is that it is still possible that the packet will be delivered without a scan. In this case the transaction would be invalid. Thus a single failure could produce a VTR rate of 0%. Even a one in ten failure will produce a VTR rate of 90% which is below the published target.
In your position (and bear in mind this is not 100% certain and will only be completely clear once
a lot of sellers using the dropdown box method hit a VTR rate of N/A) I would use the non tracked services, manually confirm them and never use a tracked or signed for service
Seller_HbtEgJLFVZHWb
I’m in shock as today for the 1st time ever I have a VTR of 100%!
I am a little confused about calcualtions of the time range - do you have to deduct about 17 days from the 1st figure and about 2 days from the 2nd figure, to deduct the range of when the orders were PLACED?
Anyway; there’s at least 2 DVD orders that are clearly in the middle of the given range and were just RM 2nd class with no tracking whatsoever. These are clearly counted as exempted - so good news here!
(Confirming what the Little Shop always said; and Splendid-books above).
If my above calculations are correct, I had about 9 orders, with only 4 counted for the VTR, and these were RM signed-for except for 1 that was expedited (RM ‘Special Delivery’ by 1pm).
Tip: to make sure the postman remembers to scan on delivery, write in large letters on your packs stg to this effect:
“Please update tracking on RM site. Thank you”. / “Please scan on delivery”…
I now have an excellent rate of confirmed delivered on RM’s tracking page since doing this.
Seller_KjHQOlTKYaPEw
so…summing up, after about 2000 posts on the subject…
after using “buy shipping” directly from Amazon for the last week, I should now go back to my old faithful RM C&D account purchase my amazon postages from there, and manually mark
Despatched by (carrier) Royal Mail…(service) 2nd class ?
Seller_2JHxtoAhan54W
Can i just ask if there is a difference between having 7% or 94% as both will be under 95%. Ours is at 7% but a friend says he can never get any higher than 88% and he sends every single item click and drop using tracking numbers . Still cant see the point as we proved 2 items were delivered to the door with click and drop along with gps from royal mail still amazon paid out on the A-Z claims . I can never see the postie waiting till he gets to the door . Been chatting to a few and they said at any flats they can scan them from the van . To me the whole thing is pointless.
Seller_HbtEgJLFVZHWb
That’s because today is the 1st day that only my non-exempted orders are counted (exempted orders still counted as non-exempted yesterday).
So the new system has just taken effect for me.
Amazon said it would on the 19th, so for some it happens a little earlier, and for others a bit later - nothing ever happens to all sellers at the same time.
So don’t worry and wait to see the new system take effect in your account around the 19th or even a couple days later.
Seller_NysYCylpmztu2
Amazon has had everyone worried about this because they are incapable of explaining
their policies in simple terms . If you send non tracked please don’t worry this is acceptable. If you send tracked then they want you to have a royal mail account and then link it to their tracked system. In other words don’t worry. If you send something tracked don’t bother putting in the drop down box because they won’t accept it. Did they ever ? well no , not when it came to A_Z claims .
It has all been a lot of fuss about nothing all because of Amazons insistance on making all their policy announcements unintelligible .
Seller_bm9MCPckbwjAk
Still feels like that scene from the Deerhunter where you spin the barrel, hold the gun to your head and hope not to blow your brains out. I use stamps and my 2 options are Royal Mail 2nd class or Other - stamps - stamps - warning message - ignore. Earlier this month I went for Royal Mail 2nd class but this counted against my VTR. Having a lot more success with other - stamps. But the message from Amazon seems to be that incorrect ‘other’ entries that don’t match their menu of ‘other’ may be counted as invalid. Still inclined to run with other unless clear evidence Royal Mail 2nd class works. Am I right or wrong - seems nobody knows
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
I know a few regulars have seen this thread, but I only clicked on it by accident just now (it’s in one of the semi-hidden forum categories):
There is a reply regarding VTR about halfway from Amazon mod Dexter.
Maybe we should have been posting this stuff on the UK Account Health forum all along…
Oddly, the first link in Dexter’s post took me to Amazon.india… 
Seller_v7w0TJ6tSBaF8
None show as delivered - I sell very low cost books and could not afford to pay for tracking - i use RM second class
Seller_v7w0TJ6tSBaF8
Yes, thank you, I hope that is true. How up to date are your VTR figures please - mine are a month out of date
