Amazon FBM Delivery Date Extensions Raise Concerns About FBA Preferencing In Q4 Peak Holiday Season

Amazon sellers are noticing some items display abnormally long delivery timeframes, raising questions about whether they are artificially preferencing Fulfilled By Amazon over Fulfilled By Merchant products in the critical Q4 peak holiday shopping season.

The issue has come in several posts on the Amazon Seller community and across social media over the last week.

Amazon is displaying incorrect delivery estimates to customers!

I've noticed a steep drop off in my sales numbers since October 1st - they have seemingly fell off a cliff and are currently down 45% from this time last month (with September historically being a slow month for us).

This morning I dove into everything, trying to figure out what changed and came across something pretty shocking.

My handling time is 1 day (with most orders going out same day) - my transit time is set to 1-3 days. My maximum delivery date estimate should be 4-5 days out for buyers across the country.

My listings are showing delivery estimates 2 weeks from order date on ALL my offerings.

This is unacceptable and causing my business to suffer, I am getting the sense this is done purposefully and maliciously as my shipping templates have not changed and I have received no correspondence from Amazon regarding this.

Other sellers say their delivery timeframes are wrongly being extended with Amazon saying their On Time Delivery Rate (OTDR) has fallen below the minimum requirements, but the information they see in their dashboards shows they are above the minimum and should not have a shipping time extension added to their items.

SSA – Still extends delivery promise with perfect OTDR?

I understand that the additional time that Amazon may add to your configured promised delivery date to account for logistical factors that might delay a delivery, including extreme weather, transportation network constraints, or a recent history of delivering after the delivery date without promise extensions.

But that's not the point, because this has been going on since September 3rd to this day, and because I'm not the one who configures the promised delivery date, it is Managed By Amazon.

• We ship on time and the orders receive the first scan the same day.
  
  

• My current On-Time Delivery Rate 99.87%
  
  

• The Fulfillment Insights Dashboard page shows that my delivery promises were extended by 0.4 days. But in fact, customers see 4-5 days longer than what I see on the Order Details Page in Seller Central.
  
  

If Amazon still extends my delivery promise to customers even though I use SSA, AHT, ABS and my metrics are perfect, I want to know why, by how many days, how long will it last, and what I need to do to keep it from being extended.

I assume that some of my orders may still be delivered after the "Deliver by" date in Seller Central, but these statistics are not displayed anywhere and are taken into account in the metrics behind the scenes, and therefore Amazon is extending the delivery promise that customers see. I have looked into all possible policies on this and still have not found an answer.

My sales have dropped 60-70% in the last month because of this.

One seller even provided screenshots showing that they were told their promised delivery dates were being extended because their OTDR without the extension would be 84% (below the 90% minimum) but their Order Fulfillment Insights Dashboard shows they are currently at 99.8%, not 84%.

Others shared similar stories and screenshots, all coming to the conclusion that something must be seriously broken - or that Amazon may be intentionally showing slower delivery times for Merchant Fulfilled items in order to make items Fulfilled By Amazon a more attractive purchase with faster delivery times.

I still see no acknowledgement to this threads existence from any mods, very scary considering it is damaging so many businesses.

This is starting to seem like it's been done to push buyers towards FBA sellers to increase overall revenue for Amazon, which is a violation of FTC laws, consumer protection laws, and unfair competition laws.

Similar speculation is happening across social medias as well, with some thinking Amazon is trying to clear space in fulfillment centers ahead of the Christmas rush.

So far it does not appear that Amazon community mods have responded to address any of these concerns and sellers who are experiencing the issue aren't getting any answers from other support channels either.

Meanwhile, they say their Q4 has gotten off to a rocky start with sales dropping off a cliff at a time when they should be growing.

Are you having extended time added to your Merchant Fulfilled items on Amazon even though your dashboard shows OTDR over 90%? Let us know in the comments below!