Amazon rolls out Ship by Region in Europe

Amazon is rolling out Ship by Region for European sellers. With the new feature, they can provide a wider selection of countries to which they deliver their products and set tailor-made delivery rates and delivery promises by each country selected.

The email Amazon sent to its sellers can be found on the support forum of Linn Systems. In this mail it explains to sellers that they now can select specific countries to which they deliver their products to. This can be done by creating certain shipping templates. It’s also possible to set the different delivery rates and delivery times.

Before, some Amazon sellers have experienced problems with selling into Europe, because there was not much flexibility in terms of delivery promises. There was only one setting for the transit time. So while a seller could service countries like Germany of France in one or two days, for other countries it might have taken at least four or five days for an order to arrive at the customer’s home. Sellers had to deal with ‘Sophie’s choice‘: they could either offer a slow delivery promise, which might put off potential buyers, or they could offer a faster delivery promise, which means they have to disappoint some buyers who won’t get the products in time.

Not for books, music, video and DVDs
The feature will increase flexibility in managing international sales of all products, except for those of the BMVD categories: books, music, video and DVD. Shipping rates for these kinds of products are set by Amazon and can’t be changed. “If your seller account is enabled for listing BMVD products, you can edit the default settings for your BMVD shipping service levels”, the American ecommerce giant explains.

The new shipping settings were being revealed on 3 August, but as this is a phased roll-out, it will take at least until later this year before all Amazon sellers will be migrated to Shipping by Region.