On June 14, sellers noticed Amazon was expecting them to ship on a postal holiday (June 20) despite the fact the USPS would not be accepting or delivering mail that day.
That would be a major problem, since failing to ship by Amazon's deadline would harm a seller's shipping metrics, which could ultimately lead to account deactivation.
Amazon requires sellers to maintain a
Late Shipment Rate (LSR) under 4% in order to sell on Amazon (The LSR represents orders that ship confirmed after the expected ship date as a percentage of total orders, over both a 10-day or a 30-day period, the marketplace explains.) Obviously the metric doesn't apply to FBA orders fulfilled by Amazon.
The original post that kicked off the discussion about the Juneteenth postal holiday on the Amazon seller discussion boards follows:
Juneteenth National Independence Day - 06/19/2022
Tractor_man
Juneteenth National Independence Day - 06/19/2022, Amazon is not showing the 20th as the correct USPS Holiday for no USPS shipping or pickup. We can not ship orders if USPS is closed for observance of the Juneteenth National Independence Day on the 20th. I have contacted Seller Support but they dont seem to understand, he asked me to go in an change under Shipping Settings, They are not understanding, what are sellers to do about orders that wont be able to ship on the 20th?
KJ_Amazon
Hello from Amazon.
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. Our partner team is working to ensure Monday, June 20 is correctly designated as a USPS Holiday, and that shipping metrics are not affected.
KJ_Amazon (Amazon Forums Moderator)
Hello from Amazon. Thanks to @racingroxstore @ImageAbility @sc2 and everybody else who posted details. I shared this information with our partner teams.
It looks like newer orders are showing updated information, while earlier order still show June 20 as a ship-by date and as part of delivery-time calculations.
I am still researching orders, but I want to reiterate that our partner teams are aware of the issue and will work to make sure shipping metrics aren't affected by the ‘Ship by June 20' orders.
It sounded like sellers alerted Amazon in time to fix its system. This weekend, however, we received a
letter from a reader who said her Amazon account was showing a ding for late shipping due to the postal holiday.
We couldn't find any other reports on Amazon's boards of sellers being penalized by Amazon's June-holiday blunder. After we responded to the seller with a link to the Amazon discussion, she said, "The customer service rep understood the issue but in the end, even after long holds had nothing to offer me other than Amazon MIGHT by 2024 recognize June 19th as a federal holiday."
It wasn't as though Amazon had initially discounted the Juneteenth holiday this year - but as a
screenshot posted on the Amazon boards in April shows, the company had it listed on the actual date - June 19, a Sunday - but had failed to take into account the holiday was
observed on June 20th.
Unfortunately the issue may rear its ugly head next year. The screenshot shows Amazon's recognized holidays for 2023, and missing is Juneteenth.
Sellers Alerted Amazon to Its Postal Holiday Blunder