Amazon Is Taking Control of Handling Times on June 29. Here Is What Seller-Fulfilled Brands Need to Do Now.

  Week 25 brought nine updates across listings, fulfillment, advertising, and platform tools. Several of them have hard deadlines in the next few weeks, so this is not a slow news week. Here is everything covered. 📌 Contents: New Subscribe & Save Feature "Buy Again & Save" launches July 23 Amazon tightening handling time rules for seller-fulfilled listings starting June 29 Amazon's new Item Highlights field changes how titles and search work Two new Seller Central features: Finance Workspace and Canvas in Seller Assistant Amazon DSP API now supports Audio campaigns Amazon Ads status checker most advertisers don't know about Amazon Australia's Prime Day is July 7-13 Amazon Nova: Amazon's broader AI platform explained ANavigator at eCom Hot Sauce Webinar: AMC free tools on June 24     1. New Subscribe & Save Feature "Buy Again & Save" — Launching July 23 Amazon is adding a new mechanic to the Subscribe & Save program called Buy Again & Save (BAS). It targets a different type of buyer — customers who reorder regularly but do not want a subscription. When a Prime customer reorders five or more Everyday Essentials items together from any combination of brands, they save 10% per item, no subscription required. The discount is funded from your existing S&S seller funding, so the mechanism is the same as current S&S, just applied to non-subscription reorders. Auto-enrollment starts July 23 for every FBA ASIN with 10% or higher S&S seller funding, with no opt-in notification in most cases. Brands with high non-subscriber reorder rates should audit their top SKUs, identify which ASINs should be excluded through Seller Central, and recalculate margin before the launch date. Brands running tight margins on consumables are the ones most exposed. Read more here by Noah Wickham   2. Amazon Tightening Handling Time Rules — Deadline June 29 Starting June 29, stated handling times on seller-fulfilled listings must match actual shipping performance. Amazon reports that over 87% of US orders ship within one day, but many sellers still list longer handling times. If your stated handling time is consistently off, the SKU gets flagged. You then have 30 days to correct it; if you do not, Amazon adjusts it for you. The practical fix is enabling Automated Handling Time (AHT), which calculates your handling time from real shipping history and provides protection against late-shipment rate penalties. If you manage seller-fulfilled inventory, check your handling time settings before June 29. Read more here by Kate Pavlenko   3. Amazon's New Item Highlights Field Amazon added a new listing field called Item Highlights — 125 characters, separate from bullet points, and searchable. Unlike bullets, the content appears below the title in search results, which means it is visible to shoppers and indexed by Amazon's search and AI systems. The field has a condition most sellers are not catching: it only activates when your title is under 75 characters. If your title is longer, the field does not display at all, regardless of what you enter. For content creation, AI tools can handle the mechanical work of drafting a clean 125-character line. The decision that requires human judgment is which keywords to keep — that call should come from your search term report data, not from a language model guessing what matters. Read more here by Jon Tilley   4. Two New Seller Central Beta Features Amazon rolled out two beta features inside Seller Central this week. Finance Workspace provides a consolidated dashboard of payouts, account balances, reserved funds, and cash flow, with visual reporting that improves on the current fragmented finance screens. Canvas in Seller Assistant opens an AI-powered analysis panel directly from within Seller Central and generates reports based on your store data — keyword opportunities, advertising strategy recommendations, business performance analysis, and custom reporting prompts. Both features are in beta. To find Canvas, look for "Access a canvas" inside the Seller Assistant panel. Read more here by Will Haire   5. Amazon DSP API Now Supports Audio Campaigns Amazon expanded its DSP API on June 11 to include Audio campaigns. Before this update, only Display, Streaming TV, and Online Video were manageable programmatically. Audio required manual work in the console. Now audio ad groups, audio creatives, deal management, and engagement reporting are all available via API. If your team was running a mixed workflow with audio as the manual exception, that gap is closed. Read more here by Kate Pavlenko   6. The Amazon Ads Status Page Worth Bookmarking status.ads.amazon.com is Amazon's official real-time status checker for its advertising infrastructure. It tracks Sponsored Ads, Amazon DSP, Measurement & Reporting, Brand Content, and Amazon Marketing Stream across NA, EMEA, and APAC regions. When a category turns orange or red, that is Amazon publicly confirming a system issue — reporting delays, attribution gaps, missing impression data. There is also a machine-readable JSON endpoint with full incident history, including start time, end time, region, and resolution notes, which can be integrated directly into a monitoring stack. With Prime Day approaching, checking this page before raising a flag to a client can save hours of unnecessary investigation. Read more here by Ritu Java   7. Amazon Australia Prime Day: July 7-13 Amazon Australia is running its Prime Day on a separate and later schedule than the US and Europe. The Australian event runs July 7 through July 13, a full week after other regions have finished. It is also structured as a 7-day event rather than the standard two days. Brands selling on the AU marketplace have additional time to get inventory in position, finalize listing optimizations, and set up promotions before traffic increases. Read more here by Nikolai Tahmin   8. Amazon Nova: The AI Layer Behind Amazon's Product Features Amazon Nova is Amazon's suite of AI models covering text, image, video, voice, and multimodal search. It appears to be the foundation connecting features like Rufus, AI-generated product images, and listing optimization tools into a single underlying system. Individual features have been rolling out for some time; Nova is the reason they are expanding across the platform at this pace. No immediate action is required, but understanding what lies behind these tools provides useful context for how Amazon's product and search experience will continue to develop. Read more here by Julia Malachowski   9. ANavigator at eCom Hot Sauce Webinar — June 24 ANavigator is joining the eCom Hot Sauce 15x5 Amazon Hacks Webinar on June 24, alongside 14 other Amazon experts. The format is 15 speakers, 5 minutes each, one practical hack per session. The ANavigator session covers AMC free tools and how to use Amazon Marketing Cloud data for better PPC decisions — specifically the shift from a $500/month paid tool to free access available until December 31, 2026. Registration is open at the link in the original post. Read more here by Oleksandr Kovalov     Week 25 had real deadlines attached to several updates — June 29 for handling time and July 23 for Buy Again & Save are the ones requiring attention now. Subscribe to the ANavigator Weekly Amazon Digest to get this every week without having to track it yourself.   If you want to stay updated on Amazon changes, subscribe to our blog. If you need support with PPC, DSP, AMC, analytics, or a long-term growth strategy, contact the ANavigator team at info@anavigator.co  Book a call to get a FREE AUDIT by the link below:     Book a call – FREE AUDIT   Follow my Weekly Newsletter on LinkedIn:  / amazon-digest-for-brands-7232361008185372672   Follow me on LinkedIn:  / ookovalov Follow ANavigator on social media:  / anavigator    /@anavigator_official  / anavigator7    / @anavigators     LinkedIn page to contact us:   Author: Oleksandr Kovalov Role: Founder & CEO @ ANavigator — The ANavigator Team

Starting June 29, 2026, Amazon is enforcing a new requirement for every seller-fulfilled SKU in the US: your stated handling time must accurately reflect how fast you actually ship. If it does not — and Amazon can tell — they will manage it for you. This arrives eight days after Prime Day ends. But the preparation needs to happen before Prime Day, not after. What Amazon Is Actually Enforcing Starting June 29, sellers must ensure that the handling time of their seller-fulfilled SKUs accurately reflects their actual shipping speed. Handling time is considered accurate when the actual time consistently matches the configured handling time for each SKU. The direction of enforcement is worth noting. This is not about sellers shipping late. It is about sellers stating longer handling times than they actually need. SKUs consistently shipped at least one day faster than stated will be flagged and need to be updated within 30 days. If accurate handling time is not provided, Amazon will start managing those SKUs on the seller's behalf and provide Late Shipment Rate protection for 180 days. Amazon's own data supports why they care: more than 87% of seller-fulfilled orders in the US are processed within one day, yet many sellers still set longer handling times for certain SKUs, causing slower estimated delivery dates to appear on product pages. Amazon cites an average 5% sales increase for every one-day improvement in promised delivery time. When your stated handling time is longer than your actual performance, you are leaving that 5% on the table voluntarily. Two Ways to Comply The first option — and Amazon's explicit recommendation — is enabling Automated Handling Time. AHT sets handling time for your SKUs based on your recent shipping history and provides Late Shipment Rate protection. It can be enabled now in your Shipping settings. For most standard seller-fulfilled operations, this is the lowest-friction path. The second option is maintaining accurate SKU-specific handling times manually. Amazon will monitor these SKUs for over 30 days. If a SKU is consistently shipped at least one day faster than stated, it will be flagged, and you will have 30 days to update it. If accurate handling time is not provided after that, Amazon takes over management of that SKU for 180 days. This requirement does not apply to custom, handmade, and Heavy and Bulky less-than-truckload shipments. If your business model involves production time before shipping, contact Seller Support before June 29 to confirm your compliance options. The Seller Frustration — and Why It Has Merit The policy has generated pushback, and not without reason. Amazon starts measuring handling time when a shipping label is created, not when the package is handed to the carrier. For sellers who pack orders on weekends for Monday carrier pickup, this creates a structural gap between label creation and actual shipment. The other friction point is the incentive structure. Sellers who consistently ship faster than promised — the classic under-promise, over-deliver approach — are being flagged for doing right by customers. Shipping one day faster than your stated handling time consistently triggers a forced update. Good performance leads to tighter constraints. Both concerns are real. Amazon's position is that accurate delivery dates drive purchase decisions and inflated handling times hurt conversion. That logic is sound. The implementation friction for sellers with genuine operational variability remains an unresolved tension. What to Do Before June 29 Check whether Automated Handling Time is already enabled. If it is, no action is required — Amazon has confirmed compliance for AHT-enabled accounts. If you manage handling times manually, audit your SKU-specific settings now. Compare your actual shipping performance against configured handling times. Any SKU where you consistently ship faster than stated should be updated before June 29 — both to avoid being flagged and to show shoppers your actual delivery speed during Prime Day traffic. Handling time accuracy is one of those operational details that looks minor on a spreadsheet and shows up meaningfully in conversion rate, Late Shipment Rate, and account health. June 29 is ten days away.   If you want to stay updated on Amazon changes, subscribe to our blog. If you need support with PPC, DSP, AMC, analytics, or a long-term growth strategy, contact the ANavigator team at info@anavigator.co  Book a call to get a FREE AUDIT by the link below:     Book a call – FREE AUDIT   Follow my Weekly Newsletter on LinkedIn:  / amazon-digest-for-brands-7232361008185372672   Follow me on LinkedIn:  / ookovalov Follow ANavigator on social media:  / anavigator    /@anavigator_official  / anavigator7    / @anavigators     LinkedIn page to contact us:   Author: Oleksandr Kovalov Role: Founder & CEO @ ANavigator — The ANavigator Team