Sellers are finding themselves in a tight spot with the suspension of mail on Wednesday due to the day of mourning in remembrance of former President George HW Bush, who passed away on November 30, 2018.
The US Postal Service is providing some limited pickup and delivery services for business customers, and sellers are still trying to determine how it will impact their own packages and their marketplace metrics.
Amazon sellers who use Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) are forced to use an alternative method of shipping. The company sent the following message to sellers on Monday:
Dear Seller,
USPS notified all their customers that December 5th 2018 will be a national day of mourning for USPS in honor of former President George H.W. Bush. Due to this, USPS will not deliver or schedule pick-ups for USPS on December 5th 2018. As a result, USPS will not be available in Buy Shipping on Wednesday. Please purchase shipping from other ship methods that are available in Buy Shipping services.
*** Please note, you will have to maintain Buy Shipping usage rate of 98% during this period.
For questions or issues with your performance metrics as a result of this issue, you can reach out to sfp-performance@amazon.com.
For all other Buy Shipping questions, you can reach out to buy-shipping-feedback@amazon.com.
Thank you,
The Buy Shipping Team
eBay seller and regular Amazon sellers who don’t use SFP (or Fulfillment By Amazon) are wondering how the disruption will impact their seller metrics. We can’t find evidence of an announcement by either marketplace on how they would handle resulting delivery delays; we sent inquiries to eBay, Amazon, and Etsy on Monday.
Here’s the USPS Industry Alert sent on December 3, 2018:
USPS Announces Operations Plan for National Day of Mourning
President Donald J. Trump has proclaimed Wednesday, December 5, 2018 as a National Day of Mourning in remembrance of former President George H.W. Bush. Out of respect for the 41st President of the United States and to honor his vast contributions to our country during his lifetime, and consistent with the Presidential Proclamation, the United States Postal Service will suspend regular mail deliveries, retail services and administrative office activity on December 5.
The following are details for USPS business mailers and shippers:
Delivery – Regular mail delivery will be suspended, however there will be limited package delivery consistent with our Peak Season Sunday schedule.
Delivery Destination Units (DDU) – Will accept drop shipments.
Priority Mail Express Mail – Will be delivered.
Retail – All operations will be suspended. Post Offices will be closed.
Collections – Mail will be collected from boxes in front of Post Offices and high volume boxes that have a potential to overflow, while other collections will be suspended.
Package Pickup – We will conduct scheduled package pickup requests.
Plants – All plant operations , including Network Distribution Centers (NDC) and Sectional Center Facilities (SCF), will operate as scheduled except delivery point sequence (DPS) processing. FAST appointments will be accepted.
Transportation – Air and Surface transportation operate as scheduled, and scheduled dispatches to Post Offices will occur.
Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU) – The BMEU/Detached Mail Unit (DMU) in plant locations will be open, while BMEU operations will be suspended at Post Office locations.
Call Center – In operation but may have reduced staffing.
Administrative Offices including Headquarters – These offices will be closed.
Note: We’ve got some questions in to the USPS, and you can leave a comment on the AuctionBytes Blog post we published earlier today.
First problem is the post office is closed. The second problem is nothing is selling on Greedbay that needs to be shipped on Wednesday that cant wait until Thursday. Business is so bad on Greedbay that we have gone from daily pick up to on Monday and Friday pickup.