We have seen instances of carriers requesting customers to collect their orders from a collection point or post office and in some cases charging customers extra for duties and other charges at the time of delivery. This is NOT a level of customer experience that we find acceptable, as customers shopping on Amazon must have their orders delivered to the address of their choice and must not be charged any additional fees, including duties, at the time of delivery.
You must ensure that you select carriers and service options which guarantee that 100% orders made on Amazon are delivered directly to the address specified by the customer and are delivery duties paid (DDP). Not doing so can affect your seller performance metrics and your selling account may be suspended.
Valid Tracking Rate is a performance metric that measures how often you use valid tracking numbers on orders. This metric reflects Amazon customers' expectations that they should be able to find out where their orders are and when they will receive them.
Providing valid tracking numbers for all your shipments has the following benefits:
You can see if you're meeting the VTR target through Seller Central.
If your performance falls from green to yellow, you'll receive an email notification.
For orders placed through Amazon we will measure the VTR for non-FBA fulfilled packages on a category level over a rolling 30-day period. VTR will be measured for all Out of country shipments shipped through integrated carriers. Please allow 72 hours for the report and metric to reflect any updates.
To calculate this metric, we take the number of packages you ship with a valid tracking number and divide it by the total number of packages you have shipped and confirmed over a 30-day period. VTR is expressed as a percentage.
For example, if you confirmed shipment for 200 non-exempted packages and 190 of those packages had a valid tracking number, your Valid Tracking Rate would be 95% (190 ÷ 200 = .95 or 95%).
We use the promised delivery date to determine which orders are included in the performance metric. Your Valid Tracking Rate has a two-week latency period, which allows the data enough time to be statistically relevant.
We use the tracking information you submitted when confirming a shipment and verify it with the shipping carrier. Tracking numbers are considered valid only if they have at least one physical carrier scan recorded.
To provide a great customer experience on Amazon, items that are shipping directly from China to customers will require the following:
It is mandatory to put in the correct carrier name and valid tracking number for the target order. Providing details to enable the tracking of the shipment improves the customer experience and contributes to overall customer satisfaction.
If you do not maintain the required 95% target for tracked packages, your selling privileges for the category (or categories) involved may be suspended or removed. If any of your listings get suspended, you can submit a Plan of Action and apply for reinstatement to op-pso-vtr-appeals@amazon.ae. If your Plan of Action is approved, your seller-fulfilled listings in the affected product category will be restored.
Carriers appearing in the drop-down for order confirmation (apart from “Other”), provide tracking information to Amazon. Sellers are encouraged to use carriers from the following lists to ship their packages as these carriers provide real-time tracking status to Amazon. This helps reduce buyer contacts and improve seller feedback ratings.
We currently support tracking information for these carriers:
A package that does not include verified tracking information will have an "X" in the "No Valid Tracking" column of your Valid Tracking ID report. If you have uploaded a tracking number but it is marked as unconfirmed, this might be because of the following:
Please check to make sure you entered the carrier and tracking number for your package correctly. You can change, re-enter, and update the tracking information under Manage Your Orders until the order is delivered. Your metrics will reflect this change within 72 hours.
If you have a package marked with an "X" in the "No Valid Tracking" column, and you have verified that the tracking number for the Amazon-supported carrier is correct, try submitting the tracking number again. If this does not solve your issue, contact Selling Partner Support for additional investigation.
If canceled orders are showing up in your report, it is because you confirmed shipment before you delivered the package to the carrier. An order is not considered canceled when you have confirmed shipment because the buyer's credit card is charged. To cancel this kind of order, you have to provide a refund to the buyer. To prevent this sort of mix-up, we recommend that you confirm shipment only after the carrier has received the package.
The Valid Tracking Rate metric is recorded for the category of an item at the time an order is placed. If your item was previously listed in a category at the time an order was placed, then you will have a Valid Tracking Rate metric in that category even if the item is now listed under a different category.
When our system cannot process the tracking information you entered for an order, "InvalidId" will display in column F for that order. For example, if your order ID was 001-12345-67890 and we were not able to process the tracking information you entered for that order, column F will display 001-12345-67890-InvalidId.
This can happen if you left the tracking information blank or you entered special characters, such as punctuation, that our system cannot recognize in the tracking information. To correct any potential errors in the tracking information you provided, edit the tracking number.
This can happen if:
To correct any potential errors in the tracking information you provided, continue to How do I edit a tracking number?.
Before the delivery date, you can edit order tracking information.
Allow 72 hours for the report and metric to reflect the changes.
Verify that you’ve entered the tracking ID correctly. Make sure that it is not left blank and that there are no special characters such as punctuation.
When confirming the shipment from “Manage your order”, select a carrier from the dropdown menu in the Manage Orders page. Make sure to use a carrier that is integrated with Amazon.
The tracking information will be marked invalid if:
Make sure to confirm/update the tracking information before the package is delivered.
If the tracking information is confirmed/updated after the package is delivered, that means the buyer was not able to track the order. As this is not useful to the buyer the order will not count toward your Valid Tracking Rate metric.