Amazon Lets Sellers Speed Estimated Delivery Time

Products on Amazon that feature faster estimated delivery times have a major advantage, since they are more likely to be the featured offer on product detail pages. Amazon is now letting sellers set a faster default handling time, which theoretically could lead to increased sales.

However, some sellers said it could lead to problems at a time when shipping carriers are experiencing performance issues.

Previously Amazon used a default handling time of 2 business days to set the estimated delivery times for seller fulfilled standard shipping orders.

Now, sellers can set the default handling time to 1 business day. Note that only sellers with a professional selling plan can take advantage of the change, which took effect on May 25, 2021.

Among the FAQs included in Amazon’s announcement were the following:

What is handling time?
Handling time is the number of days taken by a seller to pick, pack and ship a product after the order is received. Estimated ship date for an order is defined based on handling time.

What is default handling time?
Default handling time is the handling time set at an account level and applies to all your products unless you specifically change the product level handling time. You can set the account level default handling time to either 1 business day or 2 business days (this does not affect products that have a product level handling time set).

What will be the impact on order fulfillment when I set 1 business day default handling time?
The expected ship date for orders from products with 1 business day handling time will be the next business day. It’s important to confirm the shipment of orders by the expected ship date so that you meet the Late Shipment Rate (LSR) requirement for your account. Click here to learn more.

Some sellers commenting on the announcement post said they couldn’t find a way to change the settings – one explained that was likely due to old shipping templates for sellers who had been Pro sellers for a long time and provided a possible workaround.

The thread provides a window into the challenges sellers are facing with delivery performance. As one seller wrote, “I’ll stick with two day, no reason to have more chances of late shipment strikes.”

Amazon included information on how to change the default handling setting in the announcement found on Amazon Seller Central.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.