OTDR and Account Health and Buy Box
@Jim_Amazon @SEAmod @Micah_Amazon @Michelle_Amazon and the others... Case was immediately transferred to internal team, that has happened "never"
Case ID 15795759581
Since it has been over 14 days since this wonderful idea was put in to motion, I should now be covered 99% of the OTDR rating
(2 shipments needed USPS verification that Amazon never did so I had to use ShipStation, not my choice, but, I was forced to.)
Does it directly affect the buy box BEFORE the OTDR protection or AFTER.
Does it directly affect Account Health BEFORE the OTDR protection or AFTER.
They way it reads on the Account Health page it says 89%, yet since I am OTDR protected it should read 99.something)%
What is the super secret squirrel reason that many simple, directly relate, questions remain unanswered?
First answer from "internal team" Didn't answer either of the two questions that I can see.
"Hello from Amazon Selling Partner Support,
We are aware that you want to know more about the OTDR.
OTDR measures the percentage of your tracked seller-fulfilled units that were delivered on or before the seller-promised "Deliver by" date. OTDR is the average of all of your tracked shipped units, not just a specific SKU or shipment.
To calculate OTDR without promise extensions, we’ll consider a 14-day window of time. We’ll pull data from shipments that had a promised delivery date in the last 21 days, and exclude the most recent 7 days as the shipments from last 7 days may still be in the process of being delivered. For example, if you had 130 units with a promised delivery date in the last 21 days, and 30 of those has a promised delivery date in the last 7 days, OTDR will be calculated excluding the 30 units from the last 7 days (130 – 30 =100). Of those 100 units delivered, if 90 were delivered on or before the promised "Deliver by" date, your OTDR would be 90%.
Seller’s promised “Deliver by” date is calculated using seller-set handling and transit time, prior to the addition of promise extensions. This date may be different than the delivery date shown to customers if promise extensions were added.
For example, for a seller with a set handling time of 1 day and set transit time of 2 days:
The promised “Deliver by” date will be in 3 business days.
So, if an order is received on a Monday, this order would need to be delivered by Thursday (seller-promised “Deliver by” date) to be considered delivered on time.
However, if 1 day of promise extensions was added to that offer, the promised delivery date the customer saw while purchasing would have been Friday. Irrespective of the date shown to the customer (Friday), sellers must deliver by their set “Deliver by” date (Thursday) for the shipment to be considered delivered on-time.
Shipped units will be considered as OTDR compliant if either the delivery occurred on or before the “Deliver by” date shown on Seller Central, or the following 3 conditions were met:
The shipped SKU was assigned to a shipping template with Shipping Settings Automation (SSA) enabled.
Your account has automated handling time enabled.
You bought an “OTDR Protected” shipping label on Amazon Buy Shipping.
Note: OTDR Protection is only applicable to Professional sellers shipping from the US, as all of the required tools are currently not available on Individual selling plans or to Professional sellers that are shipping from outside of the US.
Note: For the US store, the "Deliver by" date is measured in Pacific Time (PST/PDT). For example, if an order has a "Deliver by" date of Jan 1, all items in the order must be delivered by Jan 1, 11:59:59 p.m. PST/PDT to be OTDR compliant.
If you want to know more about this matter, please feel free to check our help page about this: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/G200847280
Thank you for selling with Amazon,"
So I sent a follow up question
"I understand how it is calculated, how exactly does it affect my account health? I use Amazon Buy Shipping 99% of the time, only because Amazon does not verify USPS addresses from customers so once in awhile I need to buy a label from somewhere else (Paypal normally)
Even though it says I am covered, is the percentage included in how Amazon calculates my buy box eligibility?
and the next answer still didn't answer the simple questions asked, it seems like they just don't know.
OTDR and Account Health and Buy Box
@Jim_Amazon @SEAmod @Micah_Amazon @Michelle_Amazon and the others... Case was immediately transferred to internal team, that has happened "never"
Case ID 15795759581
Since it has been over 14 days since this wonderful idea was put in to motion, I should now be covered 99% of the OTDR rating
(2 shipments needed USPS verification that Amazon never did so I had to use ShipStation, not my choice, but, I was forced to.)
Does it directly affect the buy box BEFORE the OTDR protection or AFTER.
Does it directly affect Account Health BEFORE the OTDR protection or AFTER.
They way it reads on the Account Health page it says 89%, yet since I am OTDR protected it should read 99.something)%
What is the super secret squirrel reason that many simple, directly relate, questions remain unanswered?
First answer from "internal team" Didn't answer either of the two questions that I can see.
"Hello from Amazon Selling Partner Support,
We are aware that you want to know more about the OTDR.
OTDR measures the percentage of your tracked seller-fulfilled units that were delivered on or before the seller-promised "Deliver by" date. OTDR is the average of all of your tracked shipped units, not just a specific SKU or shipment.
To calculate OTDR without promise extensions, we’ll consider a 14-day window of time. We’ll pull data from shipments that had a promised delivery date in the last 21 days, and exclude the most recent 7 days as the shipments from last 7 days may still be in the process of being delivered. For example, if you had 130 units with a promised delivery date in the last 21 days, and 30 of those has a promised delivery date in the last 7 days, OTDR will be calculated excluding the 30 units from the last 7 days (130 – 30 =100). Of those 100 units delivered, if 90 were delivered on or before the promised "Deliver by" date, your OTDR would be 90%.
Seller’s promised “Deliver by” date is calculated using seller-set handling and transit time, prior to the addition of promise extensions. This date may be different than the delivery date shown to customers if promise extensions were added.
For example, for a seller with a set handling time of 1 day and set transit time of 2 days:
The promised “Deliver by” date will be in 3 business days.
So, if an order is received on a Monday, this order would need to be delivered by Thursday (seller-promised “Deliver by” date) to be considered delivered on time.
However, if 1 day of promise extensions was added to that offer, the promised delivery date the customer saw while purchasing would have been Friday. Irrespective of the date shown to the customer (Friday), sellers must deliver by their set “Deliver by” date (Thursday) for the shipment to be considered delivered on-time.
Shipped units will be considered as OTDR compliant if either the delivery occurred on or before the “Deliver by” date shown on Seller Central, or the following 3 conditions were met:
The shipped SKU was assigned to a shipping template with Shipping Settings Automation (SSA) enabled.
Your account has automated handling time enabled.
You bought an “OTDR Protected” shipping label on Amazon Buy Shipping.
Note: OTDR Protection is only applicable to Professional sellers shipping from the US, as all of the required tools are currently not available on Individual selling plans or to Professional sellers that are shipping from outside of the US.
Note: For the US store, the "Deliver by" date is measured in Pacific Time (PST/PDT). For example, if an order has a "Deliver by" date of Jan 1, all items in the order must be delivered by Jan 1, 11:59:59 p.m. PST/PDT to be OTDR compliant.
If you want to know more about this matter, please feel free to check our help page about this: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/G200847280
Thank you for selling with Amazon,"
So I sent a follow up question
"I understand how it is calculated, how exactly does it affect my account health? I use Amazon Buy Shipping 99% of the time, only because Amazon does not verify USPS addresses from customers so once in awhile I need to buy a label from somewhere else (Paypal normally)
Even though it says I am covered, is the percentage included in how Amazon calculates my buy box eligibility?
and the next answer still didn't answer the simple questions asked, it seems like they just don't know.
0 replies
Josh_Amazon
Hello @Seller_LTNvvFJ2jqJOv,
This is Josh from Amazon. Thank you for contacting our Forums!
Following up on this thread, I reviewed your case 15795759581 and I can see that our team replied to you answering both of your questions. Quoting what our support team replied below:
Does it directly affect the buy box BEFORE the OTDR protection or AFTER?: "It doesn't not effect the buy box after the OTDR protection"
Does it directly affect Account Health BEFORE the OTDR protection or AFTER?: For this, they have replied with the information regarding the Buy Shipping protections. "Amazon Buy Shipping protections
There are two types of protections available from Amazon Buy Shipping: Claims Protection and OTDR Protection.
FOR OTDR Protection: If you purchase a shipping label with the "OTDR Protected" badge in Amazon Buy Shipping and used Automated Handling Time (AHT) and Shipping Settings Automation (SSA), your OTDR will not be negatively impacted by late deliveries. Learn more about On-Time Delivery.
Note: Currently "OTDR Protected," "Claims Protected," and "Late Delivery Risk" badges are supported in Seller Central and on Veeqo, an Amazon Company. The Shipping API will indicate "OTDR Protected" and "Claims Protected" for shipping services, to opt-in for "Late Delivery Risk" services in the API, you would need to send an email request to buy-shipping-feedback@amazon.com.
If you use Amazon Buy Shipping on other multichannel Integrators, "Late Delivery Risk" shipping services will not be available. However, you can continue to purchase shipping services with high confidence of on-time delivery and they will offer OTDR and claims protection.
For Claims Protection: Amazon Buy Shipping shipments qualify for A-to-z and SAFE-T claims protections against "Package didn’t arrive" claims when all of the following conditions are true:
- The buyer was reimbursed by Amazon for not receiving their package.
- The shipping label was purchased with Amazon Buy Shipping and was a "Claims Protected" shipping service. The "Claims Protected" badge will be displayed in the Amazon Buy Shipping user interface before purchase and in the order details page "shipping label purchase" section after the label is purchased. (Note: "Late Delivery Risk" labels are ineligible for protections).
- Note: Based on Amazon's observation of millions of shipments, we have a high confidence that "Claims Protected" shipping services will deliver on time. "Late Delivery Risk" shipping services are those that, according to Amazon’s estimated delivery date, have a lower chance of being delivered on-time for the specific order.
- The order was shipped on time, which will be considered at the moment of the carrier’s first scan, not when you confirm shipment.
When all of the above conditions are true, Amazon will fund the buyer reimbursement and the customer-reported claim will not be counted against your order defect rate."
In case you need further support with this topic you can let us know. Also, you can reach out to our Seller Support team in case you need more help.
Kind regards,
-Josh
