Amazon 2-day delivery is everyone’s favorite. But what happens to those sellers who fulfill products themselves through FBM and can’t meet this commitment?
Amazon wants third-party sellers to step up their game and deliver at the same speed as the company’s own Prime program, CNBC reported.
Since many of our clients have expressed their concerned, we took on the task of gathering all the information you need to know.
Amazon 2-Day Delivery Announcement
The Amazon’s Seller Fulfilled Prime program advertises suitable products for Prime members. With this service, the ones managing deliveries must guarantee their products will arrive to customers within two days or less.
The new is requiring its participants start shipping their wares on the weekends. According to the company, a lot of these sellers did not do this previously, which became a reason why items weren’t being shipped on time.
While the existing policy sets a practical limit to places within the vicinity of the seller, Amazon now requires their sellers to make Prime available to people across the nation.
These two changes- weekend shipping and cross-country Prime services- will be made effective in February of 2021.
Amazon will require sellers to be available for pick up and delivery on Saturdays, and make Prime-eligible products available for delivery nationwide.
Amazon 2-Day Delivery |Seller-Fulfilled Prime
In 2016, Amazon allowed 3P sellers, under the Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP) program, to make inventory eligible for two-day shipping. Without having to pay for Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA).
This with the purpose of making sure that products eligible for Prime arrived within the two-day promised delivery time. The same goes for same-day deliveries.
For a $119 fee, customers get access to free, fast shipping, streaming services like Prime Video and Prime Music. Additionally, they get discounts at Whole Foods.
Qualified sellers must join a waitlist to be considered for enrollment. Amazon has not shared how many sellers there are in the program.
As of now, only consumers in certain regions, can take advantage of the SFP program.
Prime transactions might only occur in areas selected by the sellers to ensure that they can meet the two-day delivery deadline.
Some sellers are allowed to limit two-day delivery to areas where they are confident they can meet the delivery expectations.
This new system allows Amazon Prime to bring customers closer to the products they want by not excluding sellers who can’t keep the promise to all areas nationwide.
Members of the SFP should be more vigilant to monitor which company they choose to deliver their products.
While carriers such as USPS, FedEx, and UPS handle the delivery aspect, sellers are responsible for the storage and packaging of their merchandise.
Sellers must keep an eye on how often their two-day and one-day deliveries are being successfully fulfilled. To make sure this happens, Amazon launched a new dashboard on Tuesday.
Amazon announced that, by February 2021, SFP members must be able to meet the target delivery speed metrics.
Sellers Have Not Been Hitting Amazon 2-Day Delivery Promise
Because of the pandemic, deliveries weren’t able to arrive on time. And to redress the situation, next-day delivery is becoming the standard.
Amazon has invested money in a goal towards growing their own logistics network, so that they would not lean so heavily on current carrier services like UPS and FedEx.
The company has grown its courier workforce comprised of professional, local couriers and Uber-like drivers to carry out so-called last mile delivery, and deliver packages from stations to the customers.
With 16% of U.S. third-party sellers claiming to give Prime service but failing to meet the two-day delivery deadline even before the pandemic began, Amazon looks to gain more managerial power over these sellers who did not keep to their standards.
“These changes will help deliver an experience our Prime customers expect, including fast delivery,” Amazon stated, as reported by Forbes.
James Thomson, chief strategy officer at Buy Box Experts, had something to say about this new policy.
“What I think is happening is they are using this as a test to see how many sellers can actually migrate to that level of performance.” If they do, this will help brands sell on Amazon and help Amazon to fulfill Prime orders so that Amazon doesn’t have to.
Will SFP Users Turn to FBA?
Sellers may be pressed to fall back on Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) if they are unable to find a way to get packages to customers’ doors nationwide within the one and two-day limits. This would mean that Amazon would handle storage, packaging, shipping and customer service, but at the expense of the seller.
Most Amazon sellers do not have a solid distribution channel or supply chain in place. This means that they may be forced to use FBA to get products to consumers in time. Customers expect a lot from Amazon in terms of delivery times, especially Prime users.
At the end of the day, next-day delivery is Amazon’s objective, and it’s possible that only the company itself can reach that goal. Sellers who fulfill their own orders rarely operate at the standard that Prime promises to customers. Moreover, Amazon keep raising that standard as it pushes for one-day nationwide delivery.
Final Thoughts
Amazon sellers are used to an ever-changing marketplace with new rules to follow and metrics to achieve. This standard of fulfilling within the Amazon-promised two-day Prime limit is going to be a tough one to live up to, however.
Since Amazon lost some customer’s trust when they were unable to cope with the COVID-led shipping crisis, now they are placing a big part of the burden for failed deliveries on sellers as they try to regain it.
It seems more than likely that sellers will start using Amazon FBA to shift the burden back on Amazon. Unfortunately, they will have to meet this expectation until shippers can make on-time deliveries under the strict deadlines.
Amazon FBA Marketing, https://amzadvisers.com/
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