Update to US Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping program policies
We wanted to let you know that we're making some updates to our Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping policies. In October 2023, we reopened Seller Fulfilled Prime to new seller enrollment with updated program requirements. Since then, we’ve gathered data on program performance and listened to sellers’ feedback to provide additional clarity, address frequently asked questions, and help sellers succeed in SFP. To consistently meet customers’ evolving expectations and ensure that the Prime badge and Premium Shipping continue to represent the experiences that customers have grown to trust and expect, we’re updating Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping program policies, effective June 29, 2025.
If you're interested in enrolling in Seller Fulfilled Prime or are currently enrolled as a Seller Fulfilled Prime seller, we're updating our program enrollment and eligibility requirements. For more details, go to Upcoming changes to Seller Fulfilled Prime.
If you have or would like to have Premium Shipping enabled, we're updating our performance requirements. For more details, go to Upcoming changes to Premium Shipping.
Additionally, to protect your account health when Amazon is setting promises on your behalf, Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping offers will now receive on-time delivery rate (OTDR) protection from late deliveries if Shipping Settings Automation is enabled on your shipping template, you've purchased shipping labels marked as "OTDR Protected" when using Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo, and you have shipped on time. We designed these tools to set accurate delivery dates, reduce late deliveries, and to meet or exceed the minimum OTDR requirement. Even if you do not use these tools, if there is a major disruption event that impacts all sellers shipping to a specific region (as determined by Amazon), Amazon will not count deliveries that are late as a result in your OTDR. For more details, go to On-time delivery.
Update to US Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping program policies
We wanted to let you know that we're making some updates to our Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping policies. In October 2023, we reopened Seller Fulfilled Prime to new seller enrollment with updated program requirements. Since then, we’ve gathered data on program performance and listened to sellers’ feedback to provide additional clarity, address frequently asked questions, and help sellers succeed in SFP. To consistently meet customers’ evolving expectations and ensure that the Prime badge and Premium Shipping continue to represent the experiences that customers have grown to trust and expect, we’re updating Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping program policies, effective June 29, 2025.
If you're interested in enrolling in Seller Fulfilled Prime or are currently enrolled as a Seller Fulfilled Prime seller, we're updating our program enrollment and eligibility requirements. For more details, go to Upcoming changes to Seller Fulfilled Prime.
If you have or would like to have Premium Shipping enabled, we're updating our performance requirements. For more details, go to Upcoming changes to Premium Shipping.
Additionally, to protect your account health when Amazon is setting promises on your behalf, Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping offers will now receive on-time delivery rate (OTDR) protection from late deliveries if Shipping Settings Automation is enabled on your shipping template, you've purchased shipping labels marked as "OTDR Protected" when using Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo, and you have shipped on time. We designed these tools to set accurate delivery dates, reduce late deliveries, and to meet or exceed the minimum OTDR requirement. Even if you do not use these tools, if there is a major disruption event that impacts all sellers shipping to a specific region (as determined by Amazon), Amazon will not count deliveries that are late as a result in your OTDR. For more details, go to On-time delivery.
32 replies
Seller_yoBaUhzkFJuPI
1.) When can we expect UPS Letters and Fedex Envelopes will be supported by ABS for OVERNIGHTS?!? That's a difference between paying $15-$20 for your real envelope rate versus $28-$40 per INCORRECT packaging because ABS doesn't have a letter/envelope selection... so therefore you get billed as though you're shipping a BOX, but you're NOT.
The accurate letter/envelope packaging rate is doable, the other incorrect rate is not feasible to eat for SFP. OH and do NOT get me started on the BS where I was slapped saying charging $24.95 for Overnight shipping for non-Prime members was TOO HIGH.... even though I only get $19.96 of that after 20% category fees..... but I'm paying $28-$40 per piece through ABS, ONLY BECAUSE OF AMAZON'S refusal to support the proper packaging selections to ship with. SO SERIOUSLY FU FOR THIS!!!!!! Yes, I am and will be VERY angry and bitter about this UNTIL YOU FIX IT.
And NO this is NOT a carrier issue. This is 100% ABS issue not having a way to 'select' the letter/envelope packaging, like you do for USPS flat rate envelopes. This packaging is supported on EVERY 3rd party shipping integrator, but NOT with ABS and therefore also NOT with Veeqo @VeeqoMatt.
SURELY you're fixing this before the deadline, right? I'm happy to ship everything through ABS, but you need to FIX IT FIRST.
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2.) If it's "effective June 29", does that mean you're required to ship 100 during the month of June? Or starting in July?
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3.) The email makes it sound like you're required to ship 100 Prime packages per month, period. But then when you go to the Changes to SFP page it says:
"As a result, if you have not shipped at least 100 Seller Fulfilled Prime packages per month, or if you have not shipped Seller Fulfilled Prime packages consistently throughout the month, we will limit your maximum daily Prime order volume until you resume shipping Prime packages consistently and ship at least 100 Seller Fulfilled Prime packages in a month."
3A.) PLEASE TRANSLATE. Does NOT meeting the 100 per month kick you out of SFP, or slap you with a limit? WHICH IS IT?
And I LOL'ed at this concept of "you don't ship enough, but we're going to limit how many you can ship" 🤡🤡 ONLY Amazon would think this is okay.
3B.) Define "consistently" in this context. Technically the rule said 100 per month. Is it ALSO 25 per week?...... Or what? Expand on this.
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4.) Speaking of "misclassification" SFP rules.... Would be nice if SOMEONE would address an ongoing issue for SEVEN WEEKS without any response of substance, that includes a FALSE misclassification issue, from this thread where the last response from a mod was 2 weeks ago, with ticket 17477701811.
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5.) This "Exemption period to address performance issues.".... I think ya'll are confused about how this works, and need to fix your workflow first, before saying WE are responsible for it. I just had my 1st SFP issue a few weeks ago (see #4 above), and when they deactivated my SFP I could NOT toggle on OR OFF my SFP. So when SUPPORT reactivated my SFP it was midweek. THEY chose this, not me. And then I had to submit escalations to get this sorted because I got performance notifications for a partial week, even though I had no control over that. So you're pointing the finger at the wrong direction here, unless if you've "fixed" this?
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6.) The increase in OTDR from 93% to 97% is DISGUSTINGLY HILARIOUS, given that Amazon Shipping delivers late 30% of the time and gets people kicked out of SFP. I tried to join Amazon Shipping when I had a couple Fedex's deliver late in February and had me borderline on metrics. But guess what the Amazon Shipping rep response was when I asked if they handle SFP too, he said "we don't recommend Amazon Shipping for SFP right now" 😆 Geez, ya don't say!! What a joke! Rules for thee, but not for Amazon.
Seller_NSbl7f707brUh
@Jim_Amazon I am confused and trying to get some clarity of 2 things
1.) Is this now saying that any SFP template with SSA enabled and shipped according to "Amazon Buy Shipping" recommendations and scanned "shipped on time" will now be exempt from OTDR rates? (So basically if we buy all Shipping thru buy shipping and ship according to "plan" we have no reason to worry about OTDR)
2.) Is SFP requirement OTDR 97% or still 93.5%? It is not clear to me if the change is referring to SFP or Premium Shipping separately of SFP?
Seller_Voz2CFVuAvKkx
Are you saying FBM sellers will be required to use Prime and Premium shipping? My items are inexpensive. I can't afford using free shipping option and every time you push premium (even though I don't offer it) you don't charge them enough and I have to cancel the order because I would literally lose money.
Seller_LAhuiXJ4eMubd
I have been doing SFP for many years now, but I do not even get close to the new requirement of 'ship at least 100 Seller Fulfilled Prime packages a month'.
So, I guess I will no longer be participating in the SFP program. What's going to happen to my SFP SKUs? Should I just go ahead and change the shipping template to a non-Prime template for the affected ASINs?
Seller_RnoJYdlqCE5Tw
Jim, the crazy thing from our perspective is that we would dearly love to ship way more than 100 SFP packages per month but Amazon doesn't give the Buy Box often enough to provide that. We offer 1 day shipping to anywhere in the USA from Texas which is better than most FBA offerings. But still Amazon prefer to give the buy box to an FBA seller. I had a product that i looked at yesterday where there was just me and another seller on the listing. The other seller was FBA and it looked like their stock was still clearing the book in process at FBA as it gave a 1 week estimate for the delivery. My listing was next day SFP and guess who got the buy box.
All i'm trying to say is that we have the capacity to ship way over 100 SFP orders per month but we dont always get the traffic from our listings. So in turn we would be penalized for not getting enough orders by getting even less orders. It doesnt make sense.
Seller_NzEmZKTEdcpPZ
The ridiculousness of Speed Metric remains unaddressed. Many posts with detailed explanations that rival PhD theses have been written by sellers in these forums, but Amazon remains unfazed.
For most SFP sellers who play by the rules (same day dispatch, overnight delivery, etc.) this metric will remain an unjust threat. We already set the same-day dispatch cut-off time to the maximum possible, leaving us only one hour or less before the UPS/FedEx pick up time of 5 pm. Setting the cut-off time to a later time will result in packages not being moved by the shipping carriers until the following day, even if we bring them to the carrier on the same day.
There is no delivery on Sunday by any carrier, except for FedEx Home delivery to certain addresses/areas, and the carrier's pick-up/drop-off cut-off time for that (in our area) is noon on Saturday. This kills Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in this metric. East-Coast sellers suffer the most because of the time-difference. West-Coast sellers have extra 3 hours every day Monday through Saturday to help them with this metric. That's 21 extra hours a week, or 10-15% of the metric's value. Amazon doesn't give any break to East-Coast sellers for this.
Also, we see more and more bots running Amazon's pages to gather data on products and data. These bots, usually, are running in the evening, mostly hurting 1-day speed metric. For example, I pulled a report for last week and found that one of our ASINs had an absurd number of clicks/page views after cut-off time. That's an unpopular ASIN, which, normally has only 5-10 page views a day. Within a span of two days, it shows we had close to 700 after cut-off time pages views on this ASIN, resulting in lowering our speed metric significantly. With the age of AI, it doesn't take long for just about anyone to create such bot. And, apparently, Amazon doesn't recognize it as a bot and counts them as real clicks. This problem will only increase.
Weather/carrier network overload and struggles promises that Amazon stated here to help us with the On-Time Delivery metric are the same as before. There is absolutely no change. And we all saw plenty of examples when sellers would get hit with SFP program participation warnings, even though weather disrupted large portions of the country. Apparently, Amazon mean it when they say it will be up to them to decide, regardless of what the weather was and what the tracking information shows (delays due to network congestion or bad weather).
My advise - do you best, play by the rules, and don't worry about things you can't control. There is not much we can do. We complained enough, but nothing helped.
