@Simon_AmazonFor clarity, here is what we've sent to the managing director, which lays out the problem in succinct bullet points - provided in case this is of any assistance to you or others:

Dear Sirs,

I would like to raise a formal complaint about a change in your OTDR metrics that was implemented with no notice, which also backdated the stats recorded on that metric by approx 40 days. I would also like to register a formal complaint regarding how your Seller Support & Account Health teams have handled the support case assigned to this issue.

The support case in question is:10059570802.

Background:

• My On Time Delivery Rate (OTDR) metrics have been above 98% for YEARS, without fail.

• Suddenly on 1st August, my OTDR stats dropped to 90%

• I immediately downloaded the OTDR report to see what had caused the issue.

• After investigating, the issue was discovered to be that there was a change in what was being counted as late.

• Previously you did NOT count post that was sent by Royal Mail 24/48 that remained unscanned.

• Whilst Royal Mail are supposed to scan all RM24/48 post, their levels are actually only around 75% scanned on delivery. This is known and accepted by Amazon and allowances have been made in the Valid Tracking Rates metrics, whereby if we provide the delivery (tracking) confirmation number, before any action is taken on low VTR scores, Amazon will confirm with RM if the numbers are valid, and no action will be taken where the number are valid, whether they are scanned as received or not.

• When, on the 1st August you suddenly DID start counting unscanned Royal Mail 24/48 on the OTDR report, you have caused a major issue, because the report is a 30 day period, but delayed by 10 days, so it went all the way back to around June 25th and counted all the unscanned RM24/48 post since 25th June for 30 days.

• Clearly, Amazon would not have meant to implement a change without notice, that caused a back dating of targeted stats which resulted in Amazon market place sellers who use the RM24/48 services to fail the stat.

• When the OTDR stat is under 95%, a penalty is applied by way of "padding" to the expected delivery date the customer see. (Policy is: https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/help/hub/reference/G202167920)

• The fact that an untracked RM24/48 did not receive delivery confirmation DOES NOT mean the item was late. It simply means the item fell within the 25% of items that are not scanned by the postman (as accepted by Amazon in the VTR policy).

• Due to the introduction of this new addition to the count of "late" items, we have instantly become liable for the Delivery Promise Extension because of the backdated report.

• We completely understand if Amazon intended this change, as it is totally within your rights to alter your own policy. However, to do so without notice on a report that is backdated approximately 40 days would clearly be unfair and is likely to be a mistake.

• All I wanted in the support case was for someone to look into this mistake to confirm sellers should have been notified and to make sure we were not unfairly penalised.

• I uploaded two OTDR reports to Seller Support that proved that Amazon DID NOT previously count unscanned RM24/48 postal items, but now do. One is a OTDR report from April with zero unscanned RM24/48 on it, and one from August that shows you now do. I have attached both of these reports to this email.

• All the replies from Seller support and the Account Health team are about VTR or disregard the fact there has been a change on the OTDR report on the 1st August.

As is standard with Seller support, they have failed to read the complaint over and over, no matter how many times we attempt to re-word it, or point out they are not addressing the issue, they simply send the same reply copy & pasted about a different subject. I spoke to an account health team member yesterday evening, who was clearly out of her depth in terms of policy knowledge and did not understand the difference between VTR and OTDR. She was also convinced there was no penalty for the failed OTDR stats, despite me explaining exactly what the penalty was from your policy guidance.

I would be grateful if you could look into the implementation of this OTDR change in policy and confirm if it was intention to penalise all Sellers who used the RM24/48 untracked service, or if (as i believe) it was a genuine mistake that needs to be rolled back and re-implimented with a fair notice period. I would also appreciate it if you could identify those in support and account health teams who worked on this case, and re-train them in this weak area of their knowledge.