Why Timeszones Cause Amazon Seller Central Confusion
Timezones are a confusing topic when it comes to a global marketplace like Amazon. For example, a customer in New York places an order on March 11, 2021, at 1 AM (EST), but it is March 10, 2021, at 10 PM (PST) in Seattle. What when did the order occur? March 11th or March 10th? Another wrinkle is that Amazon defaults to using a Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard in its systems. In our example above, the timestamp of the order would be March 11th, 2021, at 8 AM! Seller Central User Interface So, where does a chunk of the confusion arise? Amazon Seller Central. The Seller Central interface displays information in the Pacific timezone (PST). However, Amazon stores information in its systems using UTC. Per Amazon: “Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) formats date- and time-related data similar to the RFC 3339 standard, which defines a subset profile of ISO 8601 for use in Internet protocols and standards. This section will clarify just how you should fo...