Amazon is changing its cancellation policy for orders shipped late. Initially well received by those commenting about the change, sellers then began parsing how exactly the policy would play out.
The new policy impacts sellers who ship their own orders, as opposed to using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
The crux of Amazon’s announcement follows:
“Amazon automatically cancels orders if they have not been shipped and confirmed within 30 days of the estimated ship date (ESD).
“To protect and improve the customer experience, starting September 30, 2020, Amazon will automatically cancel any order which is not shipped and confirmed within 7 business days after the “ship by” date detailed in the “Sold, ship now” notification email.”
In general, sellers agreed 30 days seemed too long for an open order. One seller said they had no problem with the auto-cancellation policy but did have an issue with the manual cancellation process.
But it’s not just a matter of Amazon tightening up the timeline from 30 days to 7 days. The current policy applies to the “estimated ship date,” while the new policy applies to the “ship by” date.
Sellers asked questions such as when Amazon would consider an order “confirmed” as shipped.
The announcement along with seller questions and comments can be found on the Amazon Seller Central forums.
