Amazon’s new handling-time rule take effect today, June 29, 2026. The change, announced on May 27th, impacts seller-fulfilled orders. Sellers who don’t enable the Automated Handling Time feature must maintain accurate SKU-specific handling time – otherwise Amazon will take control over their handling time settings.
Many sellers pad their handling time to manage buyers’ expectations and account for possible disruptions that could delay their ability to meet handling times. But marketplaces like Amazon focus on converting customers by promising speedy delivery. That means Amazon may step in and manage listings for sellers who give themselves extra handling time as padding but routinely ship their items faster.
Sellers have continued to react to the announcement on the seller discussion boards, and a seller created their own post on the boards to register their objection in a post titled, “I’m not your employee Amazon. This is MY business.” One seller who responded noted the unintended consequence of the new policy when they wrote, “IMHO the answer is to purposely NOT ship your product out a day early.”
In our coverage of the new policy announcement, we noted that Amazon was looking into whether print-on-demand items would be excluded. On Friday, a moderator responded to a seller who asked for an update by writing, “I have not seen any updates or policy changes specifically for Print on Demand. I will check again with our partner team for confirmation.”
