Seller Performance Measurement

Amazon places a high importance on maintaining the trust of our millions of satisfied buyers. We have established Performance Targets for sellers so that buyers can shop with a sense of safety and security about their third-party transactions.

Seller Performance Targets

All Amazon.co.uk sellers should be working toward achieving and maintaining a level of customer service that meets the following seller performance targets:

• Order defect rate: < 1%
• Pre-fulfilment cancel rate: < 2.5%
• Late shipment rate: < 4%

Failure to meet these targets does not necessarily put your Seller Account in negative standing, but failure to improve may negatively affect your Seller Account.

Measuring Seller Performance

These Customer Metrics are used to measure seller performance:

Order defect rate (ODR): This is the percentage of your orders that have received a negative feedback, an A-to-z Guarantee claim or a service credit card chargeback. It allows us to measure overall performance with a single metric.

• A seller who maintains a low percentage of negative feedback reflects our customer-centric philosophy. One- and two-star ratings are considered negative.
• A seller who works proactively with customers to resolve order problems will avoid most A-to-z Guarantee claims. We measure your claims rate using the percentage of all orders, of any status, that involved a claim.
• When a buyer disputes a purchase charged to their credit card with their bank, it's referred to as a service chargeback request.

Pre-fulfilment cancellation rate: This is the number of orders cancelled by a seller prior to dispatch-confirmation divided by the number of orders in the time period of interest. When computing this metric, we consider all order cancellations initiated by the seller for any reason.

Late shipment rate: This is the number of orders with a dispatch confirmation that is overdue by 3 (or more) days divided by the number of orders in the time period of interest. Orders that are dispatch confirmed late may lead to increased customer contacts and negatively impact customer experience.

Refund rate:  This is the number of orders refunded by a seller divided by the number of orders in the time period of interest. When computing this metric, we consider all refunds initiated by the seller for any reason.

Performance Review and Notification Process

We regularly review the performance of all sellers and notify them when they are off-target. This review process is designed to give you time to improve your performance.
In most cases, we contact sellers with poor performance to ask for measurable improvement within 60 days of the first warning. Occasionally, sellers with very poor performance are immediately suspended or blocked.

If your Seller Account has been suspended or blocked, you may be eligible for reinstatement. You can appeal our decision by providing our Seller Performance team with a plan of action for correcting the problems that have contributed to this action. Learn more about Appeals for Suspended or Blocked Accounts.

Monitor Your Performance with the Customer Metrics Tool

We strongly encourage all sellers to monitor their performance regularly using the Customer Metrics tool in their Seller Account. The Customer Metrics tool provides data on all of the performance metrics so you can easily see if you are meeting our targets. 

For detailed information about each performance metric and how to use the Customer Metric tool, read our Customer Metrics Overview and Customer Metrics Scorecard Help pages.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can I do to improve my performance?

The answer for each seller is slightly different. All sellers should use the following best practices:

• Carefully describe and categorise items to avoid any customer confusion.
• Provide helpful and timely customer service.
• Carefully pack items to avoid any damage that might occur during dispatch.
• Dispatch orders on time and confirm them promptly.
• Provide post-transaction support (refunds, returns, and exchanges) to help ensure customer satisfaction.

Why are you counting refunds against a seller?

Some refunds represent a quickly processed return, or an order cancelled at the customer's request. These are excellent customer experiences and we do not intend to punish sellers for providing this basic level of service.

However, in our marketplace the vast majority of refunds are due to inventory availability and accuracy problems. A low refund rate demonstrates a seller's ability to fulfil on inventory promises. For media product lines, the 5% refund rate threshold should more than accommodate buying customer requests for returned or cancelled orders.

Will you ever change the terms of the seller performance targets?

Yes. We do anticipate making adjustments to the seller performance targets over time. We also expect to expand the number of performance metrics that we expose to sellers.

How does having seller performance targets benefit the seller community?

The standards benefit sellers in two ways. First, they set clear performance expectations. Sellers will understand the difference between an excellent seller and an underperforming seller. Underperforming sellers will have the opportunity to make operational adjustments.