Effective September 30, 2014, MFN sellers on Amazon.com will no longer be able to offer One-Day shipping to their customers.
Keep reading to learn more.
Here’s the official announcement, emphasis mine:
Changes to One-Day Shipping:
Beginning September 30, 2014, the One-Day Shipping option will no longer be available as a U.S. domestic shipping option for your merchant-fulfilled items on Amazon.com. Sellers can offer Two-Day, Expedited, or Standard Shipping. We will evaluate re-launching One-Day Shipping in the future.
Why the Change?
Remember, above all else, Amazon’s goal is to provide the best possible experience and value to their customers. It’s why they monitor seller metrics like ODR and Perfect Order Percentage so closely, why Toys & Games are gated during Q4 and why FBA exists.
That makes it easy to come to the conclusion that enough customers were disappointed by the service they received when ordering one-day shipping, that Amazon felt it wasn’t worth offering anymore.
The Problems with One-Day Shipping
One-day shipping promises a heck of a lot. Customers who request one-day shipping are expecting to get their item tomorrow.
For a 3rd-party merchant, fulfilling orders themselves, shipping cross-country, for even a small item, can easily cost $50 or more. This isn’t a good value to the customer. It’s frustrating and annoying to see that you’ll need to pay an arm and a leg for shipping. You know what is a good value to the customer? Having a Prime account and getting next-day shipping on an FBA item for $3.99.
Even worse than paying through the nose for shipping is not getting the item when you expect it. MFN sellers just can’t guarantee next-day delivery with the same accuracy that Amazon can through FBA.
Why is Amazon Singling Me Out?
Again, the answer to this question is that they’re not. You do a fantastic job offering one-day shipping at a fair price and orders always get to customers when they expect them to, right? Amazon doesn’t care that you’re doing a great job. Amazon just cares that overall, this shipping option doesn’t provide their customers with the best possible experience and value.
To paraphrase something I heard from an Amazon executive at a conference last year, “We’re too big to make decisions on an individual level. We have to automate as much as we can and trust that our data tells us to do the right thing. It just doesn’t scale otherwise.”
So, don’t take it personally.
Will We Ever See MFN One-Day Shipping Again?
Simply put, NO. This is just my opinion, and Amazon does leave themselves open to offering the option again in the future, but I can’t see a way that Amazon will be happy with the overall performance of MFN sellers offering One-Day shipping.
To give myself a little wiggle room, I will say that Amazon could offer One-Day Shipping as a “gated” shipping option where MFN sellers need to apply to have that shipping option. But that feels like a real long shot possibility. Don’t bet on it.