Overview

When natural disasters, severe weather events, or other large-scale disruptions hit your shipping area, carrier pickups and deliveries can grind to a halt. Amazon provides several tools and procedures to help sellers manage these situations without taking a hit to their account metrics or customer satisfaction. Understanding these options before disaster strikes can save your business from unnecessary performance penalties.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Shipping delays are recognized by Amazon — When large-scale transportation disruptions occur, Amazon is aware that carriers may be unable to pick up or deliver packages on their normal schedules, and the platform has built-in mechanisms to account for this.

• Proactive shipping setting changes are essential — If your ship-from location is in an affected area, you should immediately update your shipping templates to reflect realistic delivery expectations rather than waiting for late shipment defects to accumulate.

• Handling time can be temporarily increased — If carriers need extra time to complete pickups from your location due to the disruption, you have the option to extend your handling time to prevent late shipment metrics from being impacted.

• Amazon adjusts transit times automatically — For large-scale transportation disruptions, Amazon's system automatically recalculates and updates transit time estimates, so sellers don't need to manually adjust transit time settings.

• Going on vacation mode is an option — If you are completely unable to fulfill orders, you can set your account status to inactive or vacation mode to temporarily pause incoming orders.

• Buyer communication is critical — For orders already in your pipeline, reaching out to buyers proactively through Amazon's buyer-seller messaging service helps manage expectations and maintain positive customer relationships.

Adjusting Your Shipping Settings

The first step when a natural disaster affects your area is to review and update your shipping templates. Sellers using Merchant Fulfilled Network (MFN) shipping should navigate to their shipping settings and either edit existing templates or create adjusted ones that reflect the current reality of carrier availability. This might mean temporarily restricting delivery to certain regions, extending estimated delivery windows, or pausing shipping from the affected location altogether. These changes help ensure that customers see accurate delivery estimates at checkout rather than promises your operation cannot currently keep. Once the disruption passes and normal carrier service resumes, remember to revert your shipping templates back to their standard settings.