Amazon limits OTDR deactivation to worst-performing seller-fulfilled listings from February 28, 2026, replacing blanket account penalties with targeted enforcement. 158 chars
Amazon this month announced a meaningful shift in how it enforces the On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR) requirement for seller-fulfilled listings, moving away from a blanket deactivation approach that had long frustrated third-party merchants. Effective February 28, 2026, the platform will no longer deactivate all seller-fulfilled listings when a seller's OTDR drops below 90%. Instead, only the specific listings most responsible for pulling down the metric will be removed from active status. The rest of a seller's catalog will remain live.
The original announcement was published on February 11, 2026, and an updated version clarifying specific details was posted on February 13, 2026, to Amazon's Seller Central forums under the tag "News and Announcements."
Under the previous enforcement model, a single seller whose OTDR fell below the 90% minimum threshold would see every one of their seller-fulfilled listings deactivated simultaneously. That all-or-nothing penalty drew consistent criticism from marketplace participants who argued the approach was disproportionate, particularly when delivery failures stemmed from carrier disruptions, extreme weather, or isolated product issues rather than systemic seller negligence. In Amazon's Seller Central forum thread on the policy update, which had accumulated 125 replies within days of posting and had been viewed 808 times, sellers pushed back sharply.
One seller described a situation where seven of their nine late deliveries were caused by a major storm and were marked "delayed due to weather" in USPS tracking data. "You need to INCLUDE FREE ECONOMY OR EXEMPT IT FROM THE METRIC," that seller wrote in the forum. Another argued that sellers "do not control Shipping Companies or the Weather," pointing out that USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL all experience delays. A third raised the question of sellers who ship from outside the United States: "even when shipped on time, a lot of factors can delay on-time delivery."
These objections underline a structural tension that has characterized Amazon's relationship with third-party sellers throughout 2025 and into 2026. Amazon sellers reported sales declines of 60 to 80% during the middle of 2025, driven by a combination of economic conditions, fee increases, and algorithm changes. The OTDR enforcement overhaul arrives in this broader context.
According to the updated Amazon announcement, the change preserves the 90% OTDR minimum but fundamentally alters which listings face consequences when a seller falls short of it. Starting February 28, 2026, only the listings "that have the most impact on your ratings drop will be deactivated." A seller's remaining listings stay active.
The policy contains an important qualifier, however. According to the announcement: "if your OTDR is significantly below 90%, or you repeatedly fail to meet the requirement, you will be notified and we may deactivate all your seller-fulfilled listings." The blanket deactivation power is not eliminated - it is reserved for more serious or repeated violations.
For sellers who want protection against even targeted listing deactivation, Amazon has defined a specific set of conditions that must be met. For standard shipping, all three of the following are required: enabling Shipping Settings Automation (SSA), enabling Automated Handling Time (AHT), and purchasing OTDR-protected shipping labels through either Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo. The protections differ slightly for Seller Fulfilled Prime and premium shipping. Those sellers do not need Automated Handling Time enabled, but must ship on time, enable Shipping Settings Automation, and purchase OTDR-protected labels through Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo.
The OTDR itself is calculated using a rolling 14-day window. According to Amazon's programme policy documentation, the metric considers delivered units with a promised delivery date from the last 21 days, excluding the most recent seven days since shipments from that period may still be in transit. Only tracked shipments with a valid delivery scan count toward the calculation. As an example: if a seller had 130 FBM units with a promised delivery date in the last 21 days, and 30 of those fell within the last seven days, the OTDR would be calculated from the remaining 100. If 90 of those arrived on or before the promised date, the OTDR would be exactly 90%.
Amazon's announcement also clarifies how sellers can recover deactivated listings. According to the documentation, the process is structured in three steps. First, sellers go to their Account Health dashboard and select "Other Policy Violations." Second, they navigate to Product Policy Compliance and look for listings flagged as "Order Performance - On Time Delivery Rate" under the Reasons column. Third, they select "Submit Appeal" to automatically reactivate their listings.
Tom C., Founder and CEO of Eleviam, summarized the change on LinkedIn, describing it as "a seller-friendly change" and characterizing it as "a meaningful shift from the old all or nothing approach." He also noted the conditions attached: "Shipping settings automation and automated handling time are not optional extras anymore, they are essentially the price of protection under this new structure. Sellers who haven't set those up yet are leaving themselves exposed."
That observation was echoed across the LinkedIn comments section. Prachi Shah, an Amazon and e-commerce ads specialist, characterized the change as "fairer enforcement, but automation is still the price of protection." Atlas Bennaghmouch, founder of Atlas Consulting, described it as "a fairer system, but only for sellers who actually operationalize the protections."
Amazon's programme policy document for the United Kingdom provides a more detailed enforcement breakdown than the US announcement, offering a tiered framework based on severity. For sellers with OTDR between 80% and 90%, individual product listings below 90% are temporarily deactivated, with immediate reactivation available through Account Health without additional documentation. For sellers in the 60% to 80% range, listings below the 80% threshold are first deactivated with the option of immediate reactivation; if the OTDR does not improve above 80% within 30 days, additional listings may also be deactivated, and reactivation will then require a formal request. For sellers below 60%, account-level enforcement applies: failure to improve within 30 days of an initial warning results in losing the ability to list any Fulfilled by Merchant products on Amazon.co.uk entirely.
The UK policy also specifies that Amazon will review reactivation requests within 72 hours. Sellers can alternatively pursue reactivation by using a combination of Automated Handling Time or zero-to-one-day handling time, Shipping Settings Automation, and Buy Shipping for at least 180 days.
On the UK marketplace, informative warnings began going out from October 16, 2025, but enforcement measures were not applied before February 2, 2026. The maximum transit time available in standard domestic shipping templates for the UK mainland changed from five days to four days as of January 19, 2026, based on observed carrier transit times. Non-mainland and certain remote areas were excluded from that change.
Not everyone in the seller community welcomed the conditions attached to protection. Several Seller Central forum participants criticized Amazon's effective requirement to use its own shipping tools. One seller wrote: "Also please stop pushing your shipping or that god awful veeqo at us. We use a lot of different sites to sell and for time management sake we do not buy off Amazon itself. And veeqo is just horrid (with horrible shipping rates) compared to Pirate Ship/Ship Station/Ship Rush."
Another seller framed the change as primarily beneficial to Amazon's operational costs rather than sellers: "Sounds more like a way to force businesses to use your shipping accounts and in return lower Amazon's operational costs."
The Seller Central thread also raised questions that the announcement did not directly address. One seller asked whether deactivated listings automatically reactivate after a period of time or remain permanently deactivated until action is taken. No direct Amazon response to that specific question appears in the published thread.
The OTDR update is one of several seller-facing policy adjustments Amazon has made in the first quarter of 2026. In January 2026, Amazon announced that all US sellers must use the Amazon Prepaid Return Label program starting February 8, 2026, eliminating a previous exemption for high-value items. That change drew sharp criticism from sellers over insurance coverage gaps, with prepaid labels providing only $100 of coverage regardless of item value.
Earlier, Amazon introduced a Seller Challenge feature for Account Health Assurance participants in October 2025, enabling enhanced reviews of enforcement decisions with a committed 48-hour response window. Sellers receive three challenges per six-month period. That development was itself described by some observers as a rare instance of Amazon introducing procedural fairness into an enforcement architecture that had historically offered limited recourse.
Taken together, these changes reflect a platform attempting to calibrate enforcement more precisely - while simultaneously tightening its grip on fulfillment processes through automation requirements and label purchasing conditions that funnel activity toward Amazon's own infrastructure or approved integrators.
The marketing and e-commerce community should note that the OTDR protections are not passive safeguards. They require active configuration of Shipping Settings Automation and Automated Handling Time, plus the ongoing purchase of labels through Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo. Sellers who have not configured these systems in advance of February 28, 2026 will not benefit from listing-level rather than account-level enforcement when their OTDR dips below 90%.
Who: Amazon, affecting third-party sellers using seller-fulfilled shipping (Fulfilled by Merchant) on its US and UK marketplaces. The policy particularly affects sellers whose OTDR metrics fall below the 90% threshold.
What: Amazon changed its OTDR enforcement process so that, when a seller's OTDR falls below 90%, only the specific listings most responsible for the decline are deactivated - not the seller's entire seller-fulfilled catalog. Protection against even targeted deactivation requires enabling Shipping Settings Automation, Automated Handling Time, and purchasing labels through Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo. Repeat offenders or sellers significantly below 90% may still face full deactivation.
When: The original announcement was published February 11, 2026, and updated on February 13, 2026. The new enforcement process takes effect February 28, 2026.
Where: Amazon's US and UK marketplaces, communicated through Amazon Seller Central forums and announcements. The UK policy document provides a more granular enforcement tier structure than the US announcement.
Why: Amazon framed the change as a more surgical approach to enforcement - targeting listings most responsible for OTDR damage rather than penalizing sellers broadly for isolated or carrier-driven fulfillment failures. Seller community reaction suggests the change is viewed as a partial improvement, with the automation and label-purchase requirements remaining contentious conditions for accessing the protections.
