Amazon Adds USPS Ground Advantage as a Shipping Option

In mid-July, Amazon informed sellers about the new USPS Ground Advantage offering but told them it wasn’t yet prepared to offer it through its “Buy Shipping” program, which lets sellers purchase shipping labels on Seller Central. On August 24, Amazon finally updated its shipping-label program to include Ground Advantage.

The US Postal Service had consolidated First Class Package Service, Parcel Select Ground, and Parcel Select Cubic into Ground Advantage on July 9. It gave shippers a grace period through September 30 – meaning shippers could continue to mail packages featuring FCPS and Parcel Select labels.

Amazon sellers were still able to print shipping labels for the legacy products with the equivalent Ground Advantage pricing on Buy Shipping – and importantly, because of the USPS grace period, there should have been no issues.

However, a thread on the Amazon discussion boards showed some sellers did experience problems when they attempted to drop off their packages featuring the Amazon labels that displayed the legacy shipping methods.

An Amazon moderator addressed the concerns on July 28, telling sellers it was “especially concerned about sellers reporting that their shipments were refused or returned by their local USPS locations,” and saying they had notified the USPS, and provided another update on August 8.

Amazon has now updated Buy Shipping to offer Ground Advantage and sent the following letter to sellers on August 24, 2023:

USPS Ground Advantage Now Available on Amazon Buy Shipping

Dear Seller,
The United States Postal Service (USPS) Ground Advantage domestic shipping service is now available for your Amazon shipments.

This service consolidates the current First-Class package service, Parcel Select ground, and Parcel Select Cubic shipping methods into the following ship methods:

• USPS Ground Advantage Light: For packages that weigh less than 1lb
• USPS Ground Advantage Heavy: For packages that weigh 1lb to 70lbs
• USPS Ground Advantage Cubic: Cubic prices based on package size and distance rather than weight

USPS has adjusted its shipping service prices with the USPS Ground Advantage launch. These new prices have been reflected in Amazon Buy Shipping.

When you purchase Amazon Buy Shipping labels, you can now choose USPS Ground Advantage. Your existing shipping templates will automatically update to the equivalent USPS Ground Advantage ship method over the coming weeks.

If you use a third-party order management tool, or your own software, to automate order fulfillment, you may need to manually update the ship method name to ensure you can continue to automatically purchase USPS labels.

To learn more, go to USPS Ground Advantage.

Thank you

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She’s a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of “Turn eBay Data Into Dollars” (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, “Blogging Heroes” (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 – present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 – present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.