Delivery delay due to natural disaster

If you ship from an area where natural disasters and/or weather events (such as earthquakes or extreme precipitation) have recently impeded transportation access, there might be delays in carriers’ pick-up and delivery. To avoid negative impact to customers, follow the below procedures when you expect a delay in shipping.

For sellers using Seller Fulfilled Prime or Premium Shipping

When your ship-from location is located in an affected area, change your shipping settings to Standard Shipping. To know more about how to change shipping settings, visit Set up Shipping Settings and Regions.

For all MFN sellers

If you expect that carriers will need additional time to complete pickup of your orders because your ship-from location is an affected area, you can increase your handling time. If carriers are picking up on time, you don't need to do anything. Amazon automatically calculates and updates any changes needed for transit time due to large-scale transportation issues. For more information, visit Modify handling time or Change to Standard Shipping.

If you are unable to ship at all, set your account status to Inactive.

Communication to buyers

If a natural disaster affects your ability to fulfill existing orders, we recommend you inform buyers that it will take longer than expected to deliver the order by using buyer-seller messages. To send a message to buyers, visit Communicate with buyers using the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service.

Also, if you realize that you cannot fulfill an order, use Buyer-Seller Messaging to communicate this information to the buyer, explain the reason why, and request that they submit an official cancellation request.

• If the buyer is willing to submit an official cancellation request, follow the guidance in the Standard cancellation process that will not count against your metrics section of the Order cancellations help page.
• If the buyer does not submit an official cancellation request, please cancel the order and notify the buyer. This cancellation may impact your performance metrics. However, if we are able to confirm you notified the buyer using Buyer-Seller Messaging we will consider this unforeseen event when we evaluate your account's recent performance. To prevent other orders from impacting the metrics, we recommend reviewing the delivery time and making updates as needed. To make these changes, follow the guidance “Manage your delivery time” section in the Manage your delivery time help page.