Is this worth complaining about?

[Deleted User]

What feedback have you left?

Goldiegirl

I don't mind things being marked as dispatched over the weekend or evening, as long as it's in the post by the next working day.

But I do find it annoying if it's marked as dispatched, say on Monday, and it doesn't go into the post until Friday. I try and make sure I'm in when I'm expecting a parcel to be delivered, and I would have spent the whole week waiting around for something that wasn't even posted yet.

euronorris

prowla wrote: »

So anyway, I've been an collected it from the depot today, as I was out when the delivery was attempted on Saturday, which is a bit annoying.

So, to summarise:

• Item purchased Saturday.
• Marked as despatched Sunday with note of date of despatch Monday.
• It did have a pre-printed label, so that probably does explain the Sunday vs. Monday despatch.
• Posted 48 hours delivery.
• No timestamp, so don't know when actually posted.
• Attempted delivery Saturday.
• I had to go and collect it.

The "next day despatch" and 2-3 working days delivery wasn't quite what was delivered.

They're not responsible for Royal Mail's delivery times (and stated estimates) though, or Ebay's systems automatically noting those on a listing. They are only estimates, so I think it's illogical and unfair to expect a seller to put a longer estimated delivery time in every listing, on the off chance that Royal Mail takes longer than expected. If they had, and your item arrived according to Royal Mail's estimated time frame, rather than later than this, and you were out because you had not expected it for another few days, you would still be in the same position you are now.

So, I would suggest that, for the future you take all estimated delivery times for items sent (from anywhere and anyone) via royal mail as just that: estimates. And you may have to go and collect them from sorting office if you are out when delivery is attempted.

It's certainly not the fault of the seller.

campdave

prowla wrote: »

Now, in terms of it only arriving on the Saturday, that either means that the seller didn't send it on the Monday after all, or the PO's "48 hours" delivery took 5 days.

Although it says 48, they don't hold themselves to it - neither are guaranteed services

http://www.royalmail.com/parcel-despatch-medium/uk-delivery/royal-mail-24-and-48

The only GUARANTEED service is Special Delivery - all other items are subject to delays.

Had the seller marked as dispatched on Monday, and the item didn't arrive until Saturday, would you still be making this fuss?

prowla

I'm just having a discussion about the expectations that a seller gives to their buyer.

If the seller had marked it as despatched on the Monday, then I wouldn't have queried what "despatched" meant, but I would still have expected it to have arrived on Wednesday or Thursday.

It doesn't really matter to the buyer if it is the seller or ebay who actually produces the misinformation; the seller implicitly agrees to ebay's T&Cs when they choose to do business there.

As for the "48 hours isn't really 48 hours" thing, the provided link gives the following statement:

*For Royal Mail 24™ we aim to deliver the next working day, and for Royal Mail 48™ we aim to deliver the majority of items within two working days, with a small minority within three working days.

So would that imply that it would be a really small minority in 4 days, and a really really small minority in 5 days?

In terms of whether things are the fault of the seller or not, I don't know when it was really sent; it could have been any day Monday to Thursday for all I know. And as a result I don't know whether the delay was with the seller or the PO.

That was the point of querying the veracity of the despatched date. And following that vein, I wouldn't have minded if the seller had told me they'd posted it on Thursday on a 48 hour service; at least I would have known and wouldn't have sat around waiting for it to arrive when it hadn't even been sent.

campdave

prowla wrote: »

I'm just having a discussion about the expectations that a seller gives to their buyer.
.

An item I posted first class took 8 days to reach a buyer last week, so it arrived after the date ebay said it should arrive by. They were understanding and accepted the delay was down to Royal Mail.

In such situations, how do you expect me to "manage a buyer's expectations"?

Can you explain which T&C you're referring to by the way? As it's been pointed out in several places it does state on all listing pages that delivery times are estimated.

prowla

campdave wrote: »

An item I posted first class took 8 days to reach a buyer last week, so it arrived after the date ebay said it should arrive by. They were understanding and accepted the delay was down to Royal Mail.

In such situations, how do you expect me to "manage a buyer's expectations"?

Can you explain which T&C you're referring to by the way? As it's been pointed out in several places it does state on all listing pages that delivery times are estimated.

As I said, I don't know right now whether the seller really sent it on Monday or not, and thus whether I could have expected it on the Wed/Thu.

The variations could have been that they posted it on the Monday morning and the mail was slow and took 5 days, or they could have posted it on the Friday and the mail was fast and exceeded the 2-3 days, or any variation in between.

People are saying that it's not the seller's fault; it's ebay's. But choosing to operate within ebay's environment implicitly ties you their processes and procedures, whether written or de-facto.

Until this item, I always took a despatch notice as a confirmation that the item had been sent (I'm sure that as a seller I have had a flag to mark items sent?).

As it stands, the despatch notification is unreliable and thus meaningless.

[Deleted User]

I'm still very interested to know what feedback Prowla left the seller, as his first post in this thread mentioned leaving 'a best a neutral'.

prowla

Deleted_User wrote: »

I'm still very interested to know what feedback Prowla left the seller, as his first post in this thread mentioned leaving 'a best a neutral'.

he hasn't left feedback yet.

[Deleted User]

OK, if we're being pedantic:

I'm still very interested to know what feedback Prowla is planning to leave the seller, as his first post in this thread mentioned leaving 'a best a neutral'.