Hi,

For those sellers thinking about SFP, we are a small family business that invested heavily to go through Amazons Seller Fulfilled Prime Trial. We shipped 898 orders to Amazon customers with FREE 1 and 2 day shipping, sometimes spending $70 per shipping at a huge loss in order to meet the demands. We spread our inventory out to 6 States, 7 Warehouses and had amazing coverage all over the country that easily rivaled any other business. Our Valid Tracking Rate was 99.8% and we way exceeded our 1 and 2 day page views

In the end, we hit all metrics EXCEPT 1: The OTD (on time delivery) metric. Here were our results:

On-time delivery

92.56% Without promise extensions: 797/861 Units fulfilled

93.14% With promise extensions: 856/919 Units fulfilled

Requirement: ≥ 93.5%

Result: FAIL

Your Seller Fulfilled Prime performance has failed to meet the program minimum performance requirements as either an enrolled or trial seller. Your SFP eligibility has been revoked. Evaluate your performance data, and if interested, consider starting the trial period to regain your SFP eligibility.

Now lets dig at some eyebrow raising facts..

You can hand off your orders to the major carriers on time. But neither UPS nor USPS independently hit Amazon's requirements. And Fedex isn't an option because their peformance is historically bad.

Amazon set their OTD bar at 93.5%. Why did they choose that number? UPS and USPS missed this metric after they received packages by <1%. Are you in control of UPS or USPS?

That leaves you with no options unless you, like powerful Amazon, build a nationwide fleet of vans and cargo planes.

Got a fleet like that?

Amazons rules at the time of this writing do not allow you any exceptions to late delivery, whether it might be weather (except for promise extensions) late planes, customer held deliveries, no delivery location, etc.

This process is awfully rigged against small mom and pops, which is too bad since Amazon is trying to prove to lawmakers that they want to help 3rd party sellers. What is this looking like so far?

Think about the gateways to entry: Orders for people in the trial are not excepted, but they might be for people that pass the trial. That means that people in trial who have a 99.8% tracking rate (timely order hand offs) are treated differently than people who are not in the trial. Is that fair?

Amazons response to you missing the OTD will be to "work with your carriers". This is easy for Amazon to say since Amazon has got to be UPS' biggest contract of all. Imagine the influence Amazon has vs the influence you have to make 1000 delivery drivers in 1000 cities brave the weather to get packages delivered.

Anyway. We missed OTD by <1%. Amazon won't let us in. Even if I lose my house tomorrow because I invested in selling with the Amazon.com platform.

One thing seems clear. Some bars are set so that you can't get over them. Most people only have access to the major carriers and in most cases, our furthest deliveries were only 3 zones away or less.

Should we push this message up the chain? So disheartened by this. Opening this program and setting goals that cannot be achieved by the largest shipping organizations in America, and holding that against sellers seems to point to the possibility that the program was reopened for reasons that on their face look good, but in practice are unattainable.

Amazon, if you're listening, you can find us or you can message me and I'll reply.