We’ve come back from holiday to find a bunch of Subscribe&Save orders drop through from Pending to Unshipped status while we were away, making us late and affecting the On-Time shipping metrics. We thought you shouldn’t be receiving FBM orders of any kind while you’re away but it doesn’t appear to be the case.
We want to make sure our metrics don’t get affected next time we go away but AMZ support have not been able to explain how to prevent this.
Is there anyway to stop these pending S&S orders from coming through while you’re in Holiday Mode so it doesn’t hurt your account?
No way to prevent this from happening. What you can do is setting your store on vacation way sooner before you go away, ensuring any pending orders already go through.
Yeah, that’s a frustrating one and you’re not alone, Subscribe & Save orders are a weird exception because Amazon generates them automatically from customer subscriptions, so even if your account is in Holiday Mode, they can still drop into your queue once payment clears.
Unfortunately there’s no way to stop or pause those from coming through while you’re away. The safest workaround is to temporarily switch those listings to inactive or zero inventory a few days before you leave, since that prevents S&S orders from being triggered during your absence.
You can also extend handling times manually on your FBM listings right before the break so any unexpected orders won’t count as late. Other sellers sometimes cancel the delayed S&S orders with a polite explanation, but that risks hurting metrics unless you can get Account Health to remove the defects afterward.