Amazon's targeted policy has taken effect! Chinese sellers must pay attention!

Amazon recently issued a reminder that a policy targeting Chinese sellers has come into effect. Starting from August 9, all self-delivery packages shipped from China are required to have a VTR (valid tracking rate) of 95%!

Both the North American and European sites must follow this new regulation, which requires sellers who want an effective tracking rate to use a delivery service provider that has connected the delivery tracking to the store site, that is, they must use the several logistics companies marked in the drop-down menu.

In addition, additional requirements are imposed on express deliveries from China to the United States, Europe, Canada, etc.

1. Packages with a total shipping cost and value less than $5 must use a trackable delivery method and provide at least one real scan.

2. Packages with a total freight and value greater than $5 must be delivered with full tracking, with at least two scans provided, including a delivery scan and an attempted delivery scan. At the same time, Amazon does not support Chinese characters when entering the carrier name, so the English name must be correctly filled in to capture tracking.

The implementation of this policy means that VTR is officially included in store performance, and a yellow card warning will be issued if the tracking rate does not meet the standard. Performance is still very sensitive at this stage. There has just been a wave of performance violation warnings. It would be very uncomfortable to receive another warning because of VTR exceeding the standard. Here is a reminder that if you use domestic direct mail logistics, you must choose a logistics company that has a docking system with the official; and some freight forwarding channels are local online, and you also need to pay attention to the VTR exceeding the standard, but this method is not subject to the scanning and tracking requirements of Chinese shipping packages.

Also taking effect this week is another mandatory free return policy that you should be aware of.

Starting this week, all self-delivered orders in the fashion category (including clothing, shoes, jewelry, watches, etc.) on the European site must provide free returns. For all self-delivered orders in these categories that have returns and are approved, sellers must provide free returns and cannot let buyers bear the return shipping costs. In the event of disputed return shipping costs, Amazon will enable the Buy Shipping service and provide consumers with prepaid return labels. After the return is completed, the corresponding fees will be automatically deducted from the seller's account.

We mentioned before that this is an in-depth application of the prepaid label function that was updated some time ago. The prepaid label function can be said to be a major reform of self-delivery orders, which can greatly improve the return experience of self-delivery orders. However, Amazon uses it to force sellers to provide free returns, which is a bit too much.

Currently, this policy is effective for fashion categories (including clothing, shoes, jewelry, watches, etc.) on the European site. These categories have always been special in terms of returns. Amazon has a special FBA return processing fee, which is also levied on these categories. In fact, it is very similar to this new policy, requiring sellers to bear the return costs.

Because these categories do have certain special features in terms of returns, I estimate that other categories will not be affected for the time being, but the next step will definitely be to come to the US site, requiring North American sellers in these categories to provide free return services. Therefore, self-delivery sellers in the US and Canadian sites must also be prepared for the implementation of this policy, calculate the costs caused by returns, and see if the profits can be covered.