SLA recovery playbook

An SLA miss has just happened. The manifest closed at 00:14, fourteen minutes after the window. The deduction is coming, but it hasn't landed yet — you have roughly 14 days before the next settlement cycle posts it.

Here's the playbook to either prevent the deduction or shrink it.

Within the first hour

1. Capture the manifest closure timestamp. Screenshot the Ajio confirmation, and save it. The timestamp is the central piece of dispute evidence either way.

2. Capture the SLA breach reason. Was it slip-print delay, courier-pickup-window mismatch, system delay? The reason determines the dispute angle.

3. Pull the AWB tracking. If the actual delivery still happened on time (despite the manifest closing late), that's leverage in the dispute thread.

Same business day

4. Open a dispute thread on Ajio Seller Hub. Don't wait for the deduction to land — pre-emptive dispute is harder to refuse.

5. Use this template:

Subject: Manifest closure timing — [batch ID] — request for SLA review

The manifest [batch ID] closed at [timestamp], [X] minutes after the SLA window. The breach reason was [slip-print delay / courier-pickup mismatch / system delay].

Despite the late closure, the actual delivery occurred [on time / within X hours of the standard delivery window], per AWB [number] tracking [attached].

Requesting SLA-deduction waiver / partial waiver based on the operational mitigation.

Evidence attached:

• Manifest closure confirmation (screenshot)
• AWB tracking timeline
• [Anything else relevant]

6. CC your account manager if you have one. The thread is more visible.

Within the dispute window (7–14 days)

7. Follow up if no response in 48 hours. Marketplace dispute teams are busy; the squeaky wheel pattern works.

8. If the deduction lands anyway, the dispute thread is now the formal contest. Continue the thread — don't open a new one.

9. Be willing to accept partial waiver. Marketplace dispute outcomes are rarely binary. A 50% waiver on a ₹2,400 deduction is still ₹1,200 you wouldn't have had.

What stops working

Some patterns that don't recover:

• Repeat misses on the same SKU within a month. The marketplace flags repeat patterns and is less generous.
• Misses that exceeded the window by 60+ minutes. "We were 14 minutes late" is mitigatable; "we were 90 minutes late" is harder.
• Misses where the actual delivery also failed. If the manifest was late AND the delivery failed, you're disputing a chain of failures.

How to prevent the next one

The playbook above is reactive. The preventive layer is the SLA watchdog — visibility at 30% and 10% headroom, before the manifest is in scramble territory.

For a deeper dive into preventing midnight closures, see What "manifest at midnight" actually costs.

When the Protect pillar lands (Q3 2026)

The dispute thread above will be auto-drafted by Robnu — populated with manifest timestamp, AWB tracking, and the standard mitigation language. You review, edit, send. The follow-up cycle is automated. The outcome tracked.

In the meantime, the playbook is what the manual version looks like. It works.