Operator glossary
OTDR (On-Time Delivery Rate)
The seller-fulfilled metric with teeth since 2024 — deliveries arriving by promise date must stay at 90%+ or Amazon restricts your seller-fulfilled listings; late shipment and cancellation rates ride alongside.
OTDR measures actual delivery against the promise shown at checkout for seller-fulfilled orders, with enforcement beginning at sustained sub-90% performance: restricted listings, lost SFP standing, tighter promise requirements. Its sibling thresholds: late shipment rate under 4%, pre-fulfillment cancellation under 2.5%.
The system rewards honesty over heroics — using Amazon's Shipping Settings Automation (calculated promises from your real handling and transit data) and Buy Shipping (which protects on-time metrics when the carrier is at fault) largely inoculates the metric. Manual promises set optimistically are how healthy operations fail OTDR.
The numbers
- Threshold: ≥90% on-time delivery for seller-fulfilled orders; siblings: LSR <4%, cancellation rate <2.5%.
- Buy Shipping + Shipping Settings Automation protect the metric when carriers fail; manual optimistic promises are the classic cause of failure.
Related terms