Added to Amalert: Jan 30, 2026
Amazon Easy Ship API Changes Value Formats for Timestamps, Enums, and Measurements
Amazon’s Easy Ship SP‑API went live this week with new response formats: timestamps now include a signed timezone offset (e.g., 2023-09-15T10:30:00-04:00), handoverMethod enums are forced uppercase (PICKUP, DROPOFF), and dimension units are lowercase (cm). All Easy Ship operations—including createScheduledPackage, updateScheduledPackages, getScheduledPackage, and listHandoverSlots—are impacted.
Overview
Amazon has rolled out new value formats for the Easy Ship portion of the Selling Partner API. The update, which went live this week, changes how timestamps, handover‑method enums, and measurement units are presented in API responses. Sellers and developers with existing Easy Ship integrations must verify and adjust their code immediately, or risk silent failures that could disrupt order fulfillment.
Key Points
- Timezone offsets now mandatory — Every timestamp returned by Easy Ship includes an explicit offset (e.g.,
2023-09-15T10:30:00-04:00), replacing the older format that omitted the zone information. - Enum values forced to uppercase — Handover methods such as
PickupandDropoffare now delivered asPICKUPandDROPOFF, breaking case‑sensitive string checks. - Measurement units normalized to lowercase — Unit strings like
Cmare now returned ascm, affecting any logic that expects the original capitalisation. - All core Easy Ship operations affected — The change touches package‑creation, rescheduling, status retrieval, and handover‑slot listing calls across every marketplace where Easy Ship operates.
- Documentation now matches live responses — The SP‑API reference pages have been updated to reflect the new formats, eliminating the previous mismatch between docs and actual payloads.
What's Changing
- Timestamp format enrichment — The API now appends a signed offset to every ISO‑8601 timestamp.
- Example: A response that previously read
"scheduledPickupDate":"2023-09-15T10:30:00"will now read"scheduledPickupDate":"2023-09-15T10:30:00-04:00"for Eastern Daylight Time.
- Example: A response that previously read
- Uppercase handover enums — Values for the
handoverMethodfield are returned in strict uppercase.- : The field that once contained will now contain .
Analysis & Recommendations
Why This Matters
Because the API now returns different case and adds timezone offsets, hard‑coded string checks will fail, leading to dropped packages, missed pickup windows, and metric penalties for high‑volume sellers in markets like the US, India, and Germany.
Key Takeaways
- Timestamps now contain an explicit offset, e.g., "2023-09-15T10:30:00-04:00".
- handoverMethod enum values are now uppercase only ("PICKUP", "DROPOFF").
- Dimension and weight unit strings are always lowercase ("cm" instead of "Cm").
- All core Easy Ship calls (createScheduledPackage, updateScheduledPackages, getScheduledPackage, listHandoverSlots) return the new formats.
Recommended Actions
- →Search your codebase for literals "Pickup", "Dropoff", "Cm" and replace them with uppercase/lowercase equivalents or use case‑insensitive checks; d...
- →Replace any custom timestamp slicing with a proper ISO‑8601 parser (e.g., dateutil in Python, java.time in Java, luxon in JavaScript) that handles ...
- →Run end‑to‑end tests in Amazon SP‑API Sandbox (Seller Central > Developer Central > SP‑API Sandbox) for each Easy Ship operation to verify parsing ...
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