eBay allowing theft to take place

ballisticbrian

It's no more a 'waste of staff hours' than listing the items in the first place and posting them.

I have to disagree with at least the last point, but agree with your first point.
For the reason that if a seller runs a business outside of eBay they are hardly likely to use eBays in house postage offering which populates the data for you, and it does take extra man hours to do this task.
In the same manner, eBay have left the only way to do auto feedback without subscribing to a service that costs £60 per year (selling manager pro) and that would take a business user possibly hours each week to do manually. There is no reason left why eBay don't give this facility to all seller hub users except the money.

askmeaboutsofas

Surely if you're selling that many items a week that supplying feedback and tracking info will take hours, £4.99 a month for SMP isn't going to break the bank?
EBay are facilitating contact between you and the buyer, they provide the platform and you need to abide by their rules in order to use it. BUT, and this is important, - just because eBay rules allow a buyer to do something, does NOT mean that it is legal.
To put this another way, if your buyers are robbing you, you need to talk to the police. Then, once you have a crime reference number (best bet is usually Action Fraud), it's worth contacting eBay to dispute the case. If this is happening to you a lot you need to change the way you're doing business on eBay, and the easiest thing is to just upload the tracking info on time.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

askmeaboutsofas wrote: »

Surely if you're selling that many items a week that supplying feedback and tracking info will take hours, £4.99 a month for SMP isn't going to break the bank?
EBay are facilitating contact between you and the buyer, they provide the platform and you need to abide by their rules in order to use it. BUT, and this is important, - just because eBay rules allow a buyer to do something, does NOT mean that it is legal.
To put this another way, if your buyers are robbing you, you need to talk to the police. Then, once you have a crime reference number (best bet is usually Action Fraud), it's worth contacting eBay to dispute the case. If this is happening to you a lot you need to change the way you're doing business on eBay, and the easiest thing is to just upload the tracking info on time.

The £4.99 won't upload the tracking for you.

eBay are doing this to cut their customer services costs, I had a case closed recently due to the tracking showing as delivered, speaking to Dublin, extremely straight forward but they have to conference in a case handler and the call takes 10 minutes.

I think eBay are going to stop allowing you to appeal the late delivery blobs as well if you have tracking but don't upload it in time, the guy at CS said they get hundreds and it takes a long time to sort out.

The issue caused by this change is that eBay are no longer protecting sellers against the very small minority of people who are dishonest and claim INR when the tracking says delivered.

If you have tracking and it's on the order maybe these people will be less likely to try in the first place but if there isn't an automated system available to you then the time to upload the numbers can be depressing.

We are looking into an automated option but have started for now doing it manually, after 12 hours work yesterday I had the choice to spend another hour at the end of the day uploading 163 tracking numbers or go home to spend time with my family.

ballisticbrian

No, the SMP doesn't upload tracking. It's just another example how eBay could take away the sellers pain, but instead shifts the financial burden onto them. (also my gripe was that the feedback system just bolsters the eBay community so why pay £5 a month to help eBay out? but this digresses from the thread above)

RFW

Tracking doesn't, of itself, prove receipt. I've sent and received items that have been showing as signed for/delivered and were never received. Immediately calling the buyer a thief is jumping to the erroneous conclusion that the delivery services are infallible.


On another point there are plenty of delivery services that automatically upload the tracking details to Ebay if you hook them up. If your products aren't worth the effort of tracking then build that into the business model and put any losses down to shrinkage. It saves a lot of headaches.
Look at how much you've potentially lost over a period of time and see which ones are worth it. If you sell stuff professionally you'll incur losses not matter what you do, if it happens too much you may want to rethink your business.

ballisticbrian

Tracking doesn't, of itself, prove receipt. I've sent and received items that have been showing as signed for/delivered and were never received.

Yes, that's true but selling on the eBay costs £££ and part of what you get for that money is eBay seller protection. This is one place it "kicks in", in the circumstance you describe.

RFW

ballisticbrian wrote: »

Yes, that's true but selling on the eBay costs £££ and part of what you get for that money is eBay seller protection. This is one place it "kicks in", in the circumstance you describe.

I've actually been on both ends of that. Both times I sorted it myself. As a seller, the buyer was not refunded, I investigated and the courier admitted to having delivered the parcel elsewhere. I refunded the buyer.

As a buyer I ended up tracking the parcel down from the signature and a Google search with address in my area, it was about 20 doors away.



Immediately assuming the buyer is a thief is the worst approach, it won't do you blood pressure or feedback any good.

shapala

lindens wrote: »

If you buy your postage through ebay or Parcel2go then tracking is updated automatically anyway. This is the easiest option

Yeah, I thought that's what every eBayer did, whether private or biz?

I don't sell in bulk though, so no more than 10 packages a day and just buy postage through eBay. Hardly had an issue and most is either RM or UPS via Shutl.

hollydays

I received the email saying tracking has to be added straightaway , so I do that now.
On the upside, it might make some private sellers post more promptly

lindens

shapala wrote: »

Yeah, I thought that's what every eBayer did, whether private or biz?

I don't sell in bulk though, so no more than 10 packages a day and just buy postage through eBay. Hardly had an issue and most is either RM or UPS via Shutl.

exactly the same as what i do