Sellers abusing "dispatched" on Ebay listings.

[Deleted User]

neverlikedpeas said:

It is a pet hate of mine when you pay for something at 8pm on a Sunday night and it is marked as despatched by Royal Mail 2 hours later.There is no chance the seller has posted the item when the Post Office is closed so you know it hasn't been despatched.I just knock a star off their communication and trust that people who tell lies about their selling activities get marked down and lose sales eventually

They have more than likely purchased their postage online and printed their own label and then added the item to their pile of items to drop off, in their eyes they have seen this as dispatched. I can understand though your thinking of it’s not dispatched until it enters RM. 

For me as a private seller, I only sell occasionally as I sell things from around the house I no longer need, when I have a sort out of clothes and shoes/trainers or even unwanted gifts, I only mark as dispatched once I have been to the PO and paid postage. 

neverlikedpeas

The point of the dispatched feature for me is to give the buyer an idea of when the parcel is likely to arrive.If it's marked as dispatched on Sunday night but isn't posted until Wednesday it isn't being honest with the buyer.Some buyers will stay in if they are expecting a parcel, it is messing those people about to mark an item as dispatched a day or two before it has been

Brywalker

neverlikedpeas said:

The point of the dispatched feature for me is to give the buyer an idea of when the parcel is likely to arrive.If it's marked as dispatched on Sunday night but isn't posted until Wednesday it isn't being honest with the buyer.Some buyers will stay in if they are expecting a parcel, it is messing those people about to mark an item as dispatched a day or two before it has been

The Spar shop in the next village to me is open until 10pm every night and has a Post Office counter there.  They accept parcels etc being dropped off at any time so you might want to hold off suggesting that anyone who marks dispatched on a Sunday evening is obviously lying. There are many such post office counters now.

lammy82

Not really fair to mark the seller down when it's eBay's system that automatically marks the item as dispatched as soon as you pay for postage through the site as you are prompted to do.

neverlikedpeas

Brywalker said:

The Spar shop in the next village to me is open until 10pm every night and has a Post Office counter there.  They accept parcels etc being dropped off at any time so you might want to hold off suggesting that anyone who marks dispatched on a Sunday evening is obviously lying. There are many such post office counters now.

Fair enough.I didn't know there was a realistic way of dispatching a Royal Mail parcel on a Sunday night

seatbeltnoob

Mark as dispatched as soon as the label is generated, postage is paid. So the postage process does not buy a new delivery label/postage for it again. Nobody will be holding on to stock that is packed, labelled and ready to go for no apparant reason. That's just silly, it will go out as soon as possible on the next drop off/courier collection.

Ebay has strong demands on sellers to dispatch ASAP. Maybe you can leave feedback on those sellers, a negative is probably too harsh, but a 1 star on the dispatch speed would seem fair if they took 8 days to send the item.

This time of the year though, logistics is hard. Sometimes parcels and given to the courier in a sack, and the items never get individually scanned until it is at the delivry hub. Make sure the item with 8 day delay til shipping has the tracking from every point. It clearly states item was dropped off/picked up at the date specified.

RM/Hermes are terrible with tracking. Routiinely miss steps in scanning.

ballisticbrian

neverlikedpeas said:

It is a pet hate of mine when you pay for something at 8pm on a Sunday night and it is marked as despatched by Royal Mail 2 hours later.There is no chance the seller has posted the item when the Post Office is closed so you know it hasn't been despatched.I just knock a star off their communication and trust that people who tell lies about their selling activities get marked down and lose sales eventually

Sunday night can be one of the busiest times in certain categories so for a company working Sunday night and putting the items into sealed Royal Mail bags, the item will be clicked dispatched on a Sunday night. What did you expect? The seller to remember which items are in which sacks and then click through potentially thousands of orders on screen clicking them dispatched only when certain sacks are collected?

soolin

ballisticbrian said:

neverlikedpeas said:

It is a pet hate of mine when you pay for something at 8pm on a Sunday night and it is marked as despatched by Royal Mail 2 hours later.There is no chance the seller has posted the item when the Post Office is closed so you know it hasn't been despatched.I just knock a star off their communication and trust that people who tell lies about their selling activities get marked down and lose sales eventually

Sunday night can be one of the busiest times in certain categories so for a company working Sunday night and putting the items into sealed Royal Mail bags, the item will be clicked dispatched on a Sunday night. What did you expect? The seller to remember which items are in which sacks and then click through potentially thousands of orders on screen clicking them dispatched only when certain sacks are collected?

Yes I suspect that is what people want 😕
Reading various forums, including this one had led me to believe that a lot of things I do which I think are good customer service might earn me a low star from some buyers who don’t understand the system. Before I used my current Royal Mail business account for instance I was able to print my labels say on the Sunday, bag it all up and my OH would drop the bag off on Monday , the reason being I often left for work before 7am on the Monday so the alternative would be to wait until the Tuesday to post when I often didn’t work Stupidly I thought buyers would appreciate getting their packages quickly. 

Niv

I have to admit, it irks me too. Dispatched means it has been sent off to another destination, not that you put it in a sack in your living room for possibly days before actually sending it off.

KxMx

I feel the same as above, but can fully appreciate with intergrated postage, printing a label is a legitimate and understandable reason for me to get a notification of despatch.

In the OP however the seller didn't even have the goods so it was totally wrong of them to mark as sent.