eBay Reinstates Seller Protections due to Shipping Delays

by: The End

If you look at the BIG PICTURE,
eCommerceBytes exists partly because Ebay and the others keep stickin' their nose where is DOESN'T belong.
Shipping is NOT Ebay's business.
Money is NOT Ebay's business.
Inventory is NOT Ebay's business.
C'mon kids, what is Ebay's purpose ?
Time to TAKE 'EM DOWN.

by: lancecorp

As stated - we should always be protected but Ebay wants to keep the buyers happy - many of which are clueless as to the cost or delivery times of items even without the pandemic.
I sold an item with a 3 day handling time that was going across state. I emailed the buyer that the item would be in the mail the next AM - even though I have 3 days to send it. I received a very irate message the next day saying the item hadn't been delivered as I said it would in my message. I was professional but instructed the buyer to read the message again and informed them that 1st class packages take 2-3 days to be delivered even though they were in the same state.

One thing I have seen in various groups I belong to is that remorse returns are not automatically being closed after 35 days when the buyer fails to send the item back. A couple of sellers have called Ebay and been told that they have extended the return time to 60 days for the buyers while others have reported that the couple of return cases they had did close on day 35-37.

Now we give buyers extra time for a return but fail to protect sellers' shipping metrics during a pandemic.

by: The End

"As stated - we should always be protected"
HUH ?
I'm a Grown Up.
I control every aspect of my business.

by: pace306

..... %100 right that eBay is in the wrong for all of this - but since they will never back down - the solution is to go around them.

We need an INDEPENDENT seller rating board.

All you do is add the line in your listings "see our real ratings and reviews on realebaysellerratings.com" or something similar and bypass all the eBay BS

by: Shanna

I know the executives at eBay read, and fume, at this website. So my question to you is why did it take you 28 days to make this decision? It says way more about you than buyers or sellers.

by: The End

"but since they will never back down...."
Leave Ebay in the dust. Nobody needs Ebay. Nobody.
Envision this :
A website (NON CORPORATE, in fact pass legislation PROHIBITING corporate from ever getting involved) that ONLY hosts Independent people in a ** Mall Format.
The index page, or cover page of the website is laid out like a Pinterest page, like OfferUp.com but has TONS of Pins of various INDEPENDENT people selling TONS of different things.
Purchase right from that pin. Never mind that stupid shopping cart unless it's all from the same store.
Ya want soap ? click on a pin that goes to a page FULL O' pins of stores with Homemade Soaps, Commercial soaps, laundry soaps etc.....
Ya want Antiques ? Click on the pin that will bring you to at least one page full of pins representing ALL INDEPENDENT purveyors of that kind of thing.
Ebay is an irrelevant, USELESS Dinosaur now.
If I had the time to get this off the ground, it would be the beginning of REAL free enterprise which is NON EXISTENT in today's eCommerce arena.
I would be happy to storyboard this whole concept with someone willing to get it in gear.....

by: Geetar

This is good to hear.

But one other problem, why is it taking so long for ebay to upload tracking?

It seems to be behind by about 14 hrs. I am not sure but I dont think it was ever like that until recently. Unless because I never had to worry about it I never noticed? I am seeing a 14 hour lag tho!

by: CanBrit

ORDER DATE Jul 01, 2020
July 28th. Still not received. I could have picked it up faster.

See 28th days as well. Global shipping.....what can I tell you.

ORDER DATE Jun 02, 2020
21 Jul 2020 15:04  Delivered

Yes again. Global Shipping. In this case, eBay refunding me the end of June. Let me keep the refund and the item when it arrived 7 weeks later. Seller wasn't affected.

Nice they refunded......but......Global Shipping is another eBay disaster.

by: The End

SEE ? SEE?
If Ebay and the others no longer existed,
ONLY GOOD NEWS would be here.

by: DingDong

*  For a company (eBay) that knows (cough, cough) how a business is run, should of noticed the lag in shipping and not have these defects in effect for a couple of months.  
*  As a matter of fact, they need to keep their nose out of the Seller's business.

I do like eBid.net and my sales are starting to pick up.
A lot of the US sellers leave because they want sales to be there for them and not work at it.
Hey eBid, please add stripe to your payment options. They should be willing to work with you. Even eCrater has that payment.

by: toastedmutt

Well this tiny bit of seller protection is better than nothing.  

USPS is telling mail carriers no overtime ----  leave packages undelivered at the post office and wait until they have time to get to them. (Per national news, internet news sources, mail carrier interviews, local tv and newspapers).

What a load of crap.  

First, make epacket shippers pay the full cost of delivering their items and let them sit in warehouses until they do. Put a freeze on all incoming international packages until what is in the country already gets delivered.

Second, hire more carriers and shorten their routes so they have time to go back to the post office if needed and make a second delivery trip per day.  Or assign two delivery people per route.  One to deliver packages only and the other to deliver the regular mail consisting of envelopes, periodicals and advertisements.

Third, bring in the National Guard to clear the backlogs from USPS sorting facilities and warehouses.  Sorting facilities, like those in the Detroit area, with an abysmal rate of productivity should be closed, workers permanently furloughed and those jobs moved to locations where people will show up to work.

Pathetic

by: Geetar

@toastedmutt

   This coronavirus is a game changer. People are ordering more online, and it will not go back to what it was before. This online business is here to stay. So now is time for the USPS to make changes. They will have to do it anyway, so might as well do it the right way.

 I know Detroit is a horror, that was and is one that has consistently had problems from the start of this pandemic. One in Arizona also. I cant get packages out of New York city in a timely manner, and some are being lost.
The carriers should not have to go back to the office everyday to pickup more mail. Make the carrier outlets larger and give them bigger trucks. There is no need to have to go back.

As far a using the national guard, thats ridiculous. Its easy if 10 units go in the front door 10 should go out the back, en route. If there isnt enough room to organize, make it bigger.  They probably know what to do, but are just not being given what they need to do it. Law of diminishing returns. You can hire as many people as you want, but sooner or later production goes down, they start bumping into each other.

Its funny how other business' are making adjustments...restaurants buying canopy tents. But the USPS cant buy what they need, bigger trucks, more warehouse space. Until they do they will have these problems. But I can order an Amazon order on sat afternoon, and have it delivered on Sun at 10:30am.
What postage plan is Amazon on (I know parcel select plus) but who gets one day on a Sunday?

by: ddigler

I don't understand the concern here. USPS has been extremely reliable the last few years. I ship out of NYC through the COVID-19 and only saw delays of 1-2 days. Just put 3 days handling time, ship same or next day and unless there is a significant delay it will come in well before expected delivery date.

It has been obvious for a decade now that these people in eBay management making these decisions have never bought or sold anything online so they have no clue what they are doing. They are like Inuit fishermen trying to run a banana farm.  

by: COVID-19

None of this matters!  What matters is preventing idiot or scammy buyers from falsely claiming "Item Not Received" when trackings clearly show that items have been shipped and are being routed (even if stuck) throughout the various feet dragging distribution centers.  Protecting sellers from losing both their items and money via false refund claims, THAT'S what's important!

by: thriftyattireandstuff

The delay has NOTHING to do with COVID at this point. eBay  This has to do with the destruction of USPS as we know  it.  The shipping wasn't even bad at all during Covid.. Seller protections were welcome because we weren't having to go out and drop stuff off in a timely matter, but that was before mandates, masks (wear one).. and while the initial mispread of info was going on.  Now, we have a different situation.. a complete attempt to destroy the post office, which is a veiled attempt to destroy mail-in elections from mandated by a Republican fundraiser (well documented his contributions)... The thing that cracks me up about all this is that this man hates Amazon and their approach to things, but Amazon now has their own delivery service, so that sutff is pretty much moot at this point. All they are doing now is.. as I said, trying to destroy the election process, and hurting the little people who use USPS to ship their items on eBay.

This was called a pilot program, but it's nothing of the such. They've hit every battleground state. I'm intelligent enough to read between the lines and see where this mail slow down is occuring. I see the tracking.. I see what states and locales are being affected, and little to do with any hotspots of coronavirus.

eBay will never stand up to this because they are too fearful that he'll come after them next.  So they'll just placate us. Hopefully by January it won't matter, and my parents can live in their diverse suburban neighborhood where they already don't worry about all the crap that's being spewed and get my mom's medicines on time.

by: Snapped

“ USPS is telling mail carriers no overtime ---- leave packages undelivered at the post office and wait until they have time to get to them.”

Actually, (in case facts have merit)...

USPS Management is being directed by the New PMG, an inexperienced hand picked minion of the current administration - who would like nothing better than to render mail delivery perceptually ‘unreliable’ just in time to cause questions about mail-in voting - to leave ONLY mail behind if they NEED to at each station in favor of delivering ALL packages when staffing shortages (pandemic quarantine/leave/normal life) and the elimination of PENALTY overtime (>10 hrs/day - 56/wk) precludes full coverage for any route.

This is a rather severe paradigm shift. Leaving mail on the floor on purpose has no precedent. But it’s mail only, not packages. Even then, that mail is carried next day, or the next, in most cases.

The elimination of what would normally be ‘covered’ by mandating work on normally scheduled off days and that excess OT (Regular OT is not yet fully eliminated everywhere) is due to funding shortages that would not be there except for Congress directing exorbitant funding (75 years worth) into the USPS pension fund, instead of paying for what’s ‘needed’. That’s in the voter’s hands too, BTW. Maybe they’ll finally wake up.

Those who would contend that hiring more help will solve everything apparently are not thinking through the logic. If the USPS can’t afford to cover current needs, they can’t afford more bodies either. Bodies that would need training, benefits, incur taxes, and overhead. Those with real businesses might be familiar with the term ‘multiplier’ in that context. Assigning ‘two’ to a route? Sounds good to the uninformed. But....Where does that second one come from would you imagine?

The level of staffing ‘staying home’ is unprecedented too. So much so that you have supervisors and managers - even PM’s doing local distribution and deliveries daily when they can - since March. 12- 14 hour days are the new ‘normal’ - because the normal full day’s worth of tasks aren’t being curtailed. They’re ‘exempt’ though - no OT pay. There’s your ‘lazy’.

As for those packages - of every 10, 3-4 are Amazon’s (Sundays, all of them are), two are UPS handoffs, and maybe one in 20 from DHL and/or Fedex. The rest are network. And that volume overall is about double holiday volume since about mid March. A carrier that would have 25-30 now fills their truck with 200+, every DAY. So much so that even eBay is bragging about “its performance” - on the glitchiest web site in history (still).

Now ask yourself, if the ‘other’ parcel carriers are the ‘answer’, why are they handing off so many? Cost perhaps (wanna pay it?)? Capability? And they don’t (and can’t) carry the mail too, either.

Clearly there are severe and unprecedented delays at the sort and distribution centers too. Same causes. Lack of staffing and unprecedented volume. Pour a gallon of liquid into a quart size funnel and see what happens.

Coupled with shortage of air and ground assets (read pilots, crew, ground handling, drivers, etc. with everybody fighting for dwindling assets), you have the vendors themselves with staffing and business hour curtailments such that many parcels are not even getting TO the carriers in normal time fashion. Present co. excepted of course - but ya’ll aren’t shipping in bulk either. But there is a ripple effect, just like when there are 40M unemployed who impact twice that many in ALL facets of commerce, and payment into the tax base bailing them out.

National Guard? Right. How’d that work out in the 70’s?

So yeah, if eBay wants to meddle in shipping, they should be loosening the reigns a bit. Better yet, back off. Permanently.

One final thought to ponder. Receiving mail is a free service. So is shipping, if you want to believe that hype.

by: Disgusted

Just remember what ebay says it will do and what they actually do is another story.

by: CanBrit

@Disgusted

That is the only thing you can count on from eBay.

by: reybo

EBay will run this by bot with the usual one-size-fits-all. Beware of dings to your seller rating. Mine was dinged when eBay claimed my shipment went out after the expected date. I phoned and explained that the buyer asked me to delay shipment until he returned home in a week, so I did.  I asked the eBay person to check the mail exchange between us which documented this. She said it can't be done, dings are unremovable.  

by: CanBrit

@reybo

Was this recently? They are still so absolutely intolerant of what it is to respond to your customers needs. Why do they think they should have anything to do with a buyer. They don't know who they are anymore than they know their sellers.