Amazon's main targets are an Order Defect Rate under 1%, a late shipment rate under 4% and a pre-fulfillment cancel rate under 2.5% for orders you ship yourself. Fall behind and you can lose selling privileges. An appeal has to explain what broke in your operation and what you have changed.
What does Amazon measure?
- Order Defect Rate (ODR): the share of orders with negative feedback, an A-to-z Guarantee claim, or a credit card chargeback. The target is under 1%.
- Late shipment rate: seller-fulfilled orders confirmed as shipped after the expected ship date. The target is under 4%.
- Pre-fulfillment cancel rate: seller-fulfilled orders you cancel before shipping, often because of stockouts. The target is under 2.5%.
- Valid tracking rate: seller-fulfilled shipments with valid tracking. Amazon expects at least 95% in most categories.
For orders fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), Amazon handles shipping, so the shipping metrics mostly apply to orders you ship yourself.
What usually pushes the numbers too high?
- Inventory that isn't synced across channels, leading to overselling and cancellations.
- Handling times set shorter than you can actually meet.
- Carriers or 3PLs that miss pickups or don't upload tracking.
- Slow replies to buyer messages, which turn into A-to-z claims.
- Product quality problems that cause negative feedback and returns.
How do you appeal a performance deactivation?
- Find which metric failed in Account Health and download the defective orders.
- Look for the pattern. Was it one product, one warehouse, one carrier, or one busy week?
- Fix the operation before writing the appeal: adjust handling times, sync inventory, change carriers, or move problem items to FBA.
- Explain it with numbers. A good performance POA shows the specific cause, the changes made, and how you'll monitor the metric going forward.
- Submit through Account Health and keep monitoring daily while you wait.
Our POA template shows the structure. If only your seller-fulfilled offers were turned off, see our guide on seller-fulfilled offers being deactivated.
How do you stop it from happening again?
- Check your performance metrics every day, not just when a warning arrives.
- Use vacation settings or pause listings when you can't ship on time.
- Answer buyer messages within 24 hours.
- Consider FBA for fast-moving or hard-to-ship products.
Metrics slipping? It's far easier to fix before a deactivation. Send us a screenshot of your Account Health page and we'll point out what to address first.
This guide is general information. Amazon's targets and how they're calculated can change, so check the current figures in your Account Health dashboard.