The bol.com delivery-promise rule: why 93% is the hard floor

When I look at an account for the first time, I check the delivery-promise score before I look at revenue or advertising. Reason: bol.com enforces a hard floor here of 93% — the share of orders that has to arrive within the delivery window shown to the customer — and that floor applies to every account, regardless of category or sales model. Drop structurally below it and warnings follow, then visibility restrictions, and in the worst case, account-level measures.

Why bol.com enforces this so strictly is simple: a missed delivery promise is one of the biggest sources of buyer frustration, and that damages trust in the whole platform, not just in one seller.

Where it usually goes wrong

In practice, the problem is rarely one bad delivery. It’s usually one of three things:

• The delivery promise is set looser than stock can actually support. Setting an optimistic promise without the inventory and logistics to back it up is the fastest route to a compliance problem.
• Peak periods get underestimated. Around promotions and holidays, order volume rises right as suppliers and logistics partners are already busier. That’s exactly when the 93% floor comes under pressure.
• It gets checked after the fact instead of monitored ahead of it. The score shifts with every delivery. Checking it monthly instead of weekly usually means finding a problem once it’s too late to correct.

How I handle it

On the accounts I manage, the delivery-promise score sits in the weekly report alongside revenue and advertising, not as a separate check. That’s the difference between an account that stays commercially healthy, and one that looks healthy right up until bol.com steps in.