eBay simple delivery (merged)

se2020

savergrant said:

se2020 said:

Green_hopeful said:

Sorry I haven’t read everything but i have had some of my existing items switched to simple delivery. I have only had one sale since Simple Delivery came in. I was ok despite it being Evri which is less convenient. 

Anyways. I have an item that is listed for £749.95 (its a vintage map so quite small). Ebay have estimated the postage at £3.94 with Royal Mail.  I have excluded Evri because I am worried about it not getting to the recipient at all. £3.94 seems very cheap for such an expensive item. Normally I would just cover the difference in postage but I don’t think I can do that here. Is it going to be ok at this price. 

Yes.
Simple delivery items are covered upto £750.

I'd be cautious about that. Covered against loss of the parcel or damage in transit....if the carrier recognises the damage occurred in transit and the item was properly packaged. But not necessarily protected against "I received an empty box"

That's no difference to choosing the carrier yourself though. 
Most carriers don't have a claim option for 'we delivered an empty box' and you'll have a battle to try and get anywhere with them if a tracking number shows as delivered. 

The last time this happened to me ebay themselves let me keep the money under the seller protection and refunded the buyer as a goodwill gesture. 
That was about 5-6+ months ago and I am still awaiting a response from royal mail on the issue.

Emily_Joy

savergrant said:

Emily_Joy said:

soolin said:

Emily_Joy said:

soolin said:

Emily_Joy said:

Gosh. I have been using Royal Mail only for ages without any issues. I wonder if anyone else had an issue with EVRI, when the seller says it was dropped at their parcel shop on Wednesday morning, but EVRI tracking system says they got it on Saturday? The latter means that potentially I will not receive the item at all, because it is being delivered to a parcel shop and I am going away for a month so won't be able to collect it.

There has been tracking issues with all the couriers recently, including RM and Evri - but on the other hand some sellers do bend the truth a little when stating when they dropped a parcel off. 

Alas, it didn't work this time I am already in Oz and the parcel wasn't ready for collection before I was flying somewhere over Indonesia. It was also delayed by a day with respect to the estimated delivery time. There is nobody to collect it within the next 10 days. I obviously would like a full refund.

Any advice?

For future reference always allow extra time on top of the estimates for delivery if you know you can't pick something up. The delivery estimates are just that, estimates and on ebay are wildly inaccurate. I've got RM items showing today as standard 2nd class and a 2 day despatch on my business account estimating as arriving Monday - when technically I have until then to actually post, and RM suggest 2 or 3 days now for their 2nd class post. Evri are just as bad on SD, the last one I checked on my private account had an estimated delivery the same day as i could post till.

What will happen now is that after 10 days or so the parcel , assuming it doesn't show as collected, is that it will go back to the seller and at that point you will get a refund a week or so later. The time frame is a little loose, but you are talking a couple of weeks in total  if this is sitting in an Evri shop.

Thank you. I haven't realised that an item costing over 300GBP would be posted with EVRI and, despite the fact that I asked the seller to post it asap, 4 days after it was actually paid. In my mind something that expensive should go Next Day Special Delivery guaranteed. Of course, I understand it is more expensive etc, but it is just (again, in my view) too greedy to do otherwise. 

Was it a simple delivery listing? If so you should have had a choice between standard and express (although if the seller was paying for standard you'd have to pay the full cost of express). 

Yes, it was Simple Delivery; I am positive there is no choice, because I wouldn't take the risk. I really needed the item - in fact I needed it for the present trip to Oz, and the situation is causing me problems.

noitsnotme

Emily_Joy said:

savergrant said:

Emily_Joy said:

soolin said:

Emily_Joy said:

soolin said:

Emily_Joy said:

Gosh. I have been using Royal Mail only for ages without any issues. I wonder if anyone else had an issue with EVRI, when the seller says it was dropped at their parcel shop on Wednesday morning, but EVRI tracking system says they got it on Saturday? The latter means that potentially I will not receive the item at all, because it is being delivered to a parcel shop and I am going away for a month so won't be able to collect it.

There has been tracking issues with all the couriers recently, including RM and Evri - but on the other hand some sellers do bend the truth a little when stating when they dropped a parcel off. 

Alas, it didn't work this time I am already in Oz and the parcel wasn't ready for collection before I was flying somewhere over Indonesia. It was also delayed by a day with respect to the estimated delivery time. There is nobody to collect it within the next 10 days. I obviously would like a full refund.

Any advice?

For future reference always allow extra time on top of the estimates for delivery if you know you can't pick something up. The delivery estimates are just that, estimates and on ebay are wildly inaccurate. I've got RM items showing today as standard 2nd class and a 2 day despatch on my business account estimating as arriving Monday - when technically I have until then to actually post, and RM suggest 2 or 3 days now for their 2nd class post. Evri are just as bad on SD, the last one I checked on my private account had an estimated delivery the same day as i could post till.

What will happen now is that after 10 days or so the parcel , assuming it doesn't show as collected, is that it will go back to the seller and at that point you will get a refund a week or so later. The time frame is a little loose, but you are talking a couple of weeks in total  if this is sitting in an Evri shop.

Thank you. I haven't realised that an item costing over 300GBP would be posted with EVRI and, despite the fact that I asked the seller to post it asap, 4 days after it was actually paid. In my mind something that expensive should go Next Day Special Delivery guaranteed. Of course, I understand it is more expensive etc, but it is just (again, in my view) too greedy to do otherwise. 

Was it a simple delivery listing? If so you should have had a choice between standard and express (although if the seller was paying for standard you'd have to pay the full cost of express). 

Yes, it was Simple Delivery; I am positive there is no choice, because I wouldn't take the risk. I really needed the item - in fact I needed it for the present trip to Oz, and the situation is causing me problems.

As it was Simple Delivery the seller didn’t need to send it Special Delivery as they are protected by eBay SD anyway.  While the quicker delivery would have suited you, there’s no way the seller was going to pay the extra for Special Delivery when they didn’t need to.  I may have missed it, but did you tell the seller you needed it by a certain date or just relied on eBay’s estimates?

Emily_Joy

noitsnotme said:

Emily_Joy said:

savergrant said:

Emily_Joy said:

soolin said:

Emily_Joy said:

soolin said:

Emily_Joy said:

Gosh. I have been using Royal Mail only for ages without any issues. I wonder if anyone else had an issue with EVRI, when the seller says it was dropped at their parcel shop on Wednesday morning, but EVRI tracking system says they got it on Saturday? The latter means that potentially I will not receive the item at all, because it is being delivered to a parcel shop and I am going away for a month so won't be able to collect it.

There has been tracking issues with all the couriers recently, including RM and Evri - but on the other hand some sellers do bend the truth a little when stating when they dropped a parcel off. 

Alas, it didn't work this time I am already in Oz and the parcel wasn't ready for collection before I was flying somewhere over Indonesia. It was also delayed by a day with respect to the estimated delivery time. There is nobody to collect it within the next 10 days. I obviously would like a full refund.

Any advice?

For future reference always allow extra time on top of the estimates for delivery if you know you can't pick something up. The delivery estimates are just that, estimates and on ebay are wildly inaccurate. I've got RM items showing today as standard 2nd class and a 2 day despatch on my business account estimating as arriving Monday - when technically I have until then to actually post, and RM suggest 2 or 3 days now for their 2nd class post. Evri are just as bad on SD, the last one I checked on my private account had an estimated delivery the same day as i could post till.

What will happen now is that after 10 days or so the parcel , assuming it doesn't show as collected, is that it will go back to the seller and at that point you will get a refund a week or so later. The time frame is a little loose, but you are talking a couple of weeks in total  if this is sitting in an Evri shop.

Thank you. I haven't realised that an item costing over 300GBP would be posted with EVRI and, despite the fact that I asked the seller to post it asap, 4 days after it was actually paid. In my mind something that expensive should go Next Day Special Delivery guaranteed. Of course, I understand it is more expensive etc, but it is just (again, in my view) too greedy to do otherwise. 

Was it a simple delivery listing? If so you should have had a choice between standard and express (although if the seller was paying for standard you'd have to pay the full cost of express). 

Yes, it was Simple Delivery; I am positive there is no choice, because I wouldn't take the risk. I really needed the item - in fact I needed it for the present trip to Oz, and the situation is causing me problems.

As it was Simple Delivery the seller didn’t need to send it Special Delivery as they are protected by eBay SD anyway.  While the quicker delivery would have suited you, there’s no way the seller was going to pay the extra for Special Delivery when they didn’t need to.  I may have missed it, but did you tell the seller you needed it by a certain date or just relied on eBay’s estimates?

I have told the seller I need it by certain date before buying, as I was checking a few details via messages before sending the "best offer" and then re-iterated that in the comments box when I sent the offer (that was accepted).

se2020

Emily_Joy said:

A private seller will not have a choice of what carrier or service to use. Ebay will select the carrier and service for them and provide the label. This easily causes delays. For example,  eBay might give me an Evri label,  this means the dispatch has to wait until I have time to drive to an evri drop-off and then the label machine might be broken or the parcel bin might already be full.
Or, eBay might supply me a royal mail label.  I don't have an accessible post office near me but If I try and book a collection this evening the earliest available collection is Saturday so if you order today and pay the extra for Tracked 24 the earliest you will get is is Monday but it will more likely be Tuesday.  So that's 5 days even if I do everything as quickly as I possibly can at my end. Add 3 more days onto that if the postman fails to turn up on Saturday!

Thank you for taking time to explain this. May I just ask, do you see any advantage to the new system at all? To me it looks like something that was working fine for 15 years was replaced with something hardly functional.

As a seller,
Advantages:
Slightly cheaper postage on some items.
Don't have to fill in any address details manually. 
Don't have to add tracking details manually. 
Postage label costs comes out of my eBay funds.
£750 cover at no extra cost.
Ebay are responsible from when I hand the carrier the package (and it gets scanned) so if an item gets lost in the post I don't loose any money at all.
If I dispatch on time, any poor feedback left by the buyer for a late or lost item gets removed (to a point)
All items are now sent tracked and eBay are monitoring buyers that open claims. I have not had any "tracking says delivered but its not here" messages using simple delivery and only one genuine INR request.

Disadvantages:
Much more expensive postage on some items.
Mose expensive for combined purchases when 2 or 3 items would have been the same price before.
No way of seeing how much I will be charged for postage if a buyer makes offers on more than one item at the same time.
Some buyers enter the address incorrectly and I have to edit it manually.  Sometimes it's not possible to edit it. If that happens ebay say I should cancel the sale and ask the buyer to repurchase and the first two times I did that the buyers didn't purchase again so I lost the sales.
It's impossible (or hard work) to list some items. For example a tube that is 1m long but only 500g in weight. The only option for postage is dpd at £15 and that's using workarounds/time to list it. I could post it myself with evri for £3.29 
Postage costs are taken from my account automatically at the time of sale (if listed with free postage). If the buyer then cancels the purchase the refund amount come out of my account and I then have to manually fill in a long winded form and wait a while to get a refund of the postage I paid (if I ever do).
I don't get to choose the carrier. If I sell a few items over a weekend it would be better for me to just drop then all off with one carrier on Monday rather than have to drop some off at evri on Monday, leave one out for a dpd collection on monday and 2 out for a royal mail collection on Tuesday etc.
Lack of understanding (or explanation by ebay) from buyers. Some just buy multiple items then as me why ebay is trying to chage them £12 for a large letter size package. I can tell them to go ahead and pay and I will refund the excess but i run a risk then as I don't know if ebay will issue me 1, 2 or 3 lables for the 3 items or even how much they will charge me so I normally end up loosing out on it.
Slow claims for lost items. On the old system, if an item was lost in the post, I would just post a replacement if I had one or refund.  (This was supposed to be done within 4 days) Then battle with the carrier to get some money back. When a SD item is lost ebay seem to give themselves far longer to 'investigate before refunding the buyer. That means either I send out a replacement at my own cost or I run the risk of poor feedback due to the buyer waiting ages for a refund.
No options to alter the postage service. If a buyer wants something quickly the best I can do is tell them to choose the express option at checkout and let them know how soon I am able to Drip the item off with a carrier. Previously I could add a guaranteed 24hr service to the listing at whatever cost and book for a collection the same/next day.
You also get the buyers that purchase with a note saying 'please don't use evri' that I am powerless to help..

As a buyer:
Doesn't really make any difference unless I want something quickly or want a multi-purchase postage discount.
I do think it's wrong that the buyer pays the full cost to upgrade to an express service on a free postage listing. They should just pay the difference for the upgrade although I suppose it acts as a sellers 'handling fee' if they make a special trip to dispatch it quickly! I don't think paying for express actually changes the sellers handling time though..

se2020

noitsnotme said:

Emily_Joy said:

A private seller will not have a choice of what carrier or service to use. Ebay will select the carrier and service for them and provide the label. This easily causes delays. For example,  eBay might give me an Evri label,  this means the dispatch has to wait until I have time to drive to an evri drop-off and then the label machine might be broken or the parcel bin might already be full.
Or, eBay might supply me a royal mail label.  I don't have an accessible post office near me but If I try and book a collection this evening the earliest available collection is Saturday so if you order today and pay the extra for Tracked 24 the earliest you will get is is Monday but it will more likely be Tuesday.  So that's 5 days even if I do everything as quickly as I possibly can at my end. Add 3 more days onto that if the postman fails to turn up on Saturday!

Thank you for taking time to explain this. May I just ask, do you see any advantage to the new system at all? To me it looks like something that was working fine for 15 years was replaced with something hardly functional.

That something has been replaced by something else that more than likely makes eBay more money.  It doesn't really matter what we, the lowly customers think.

I expect that is the primary idea.
It makes ebay money and both royal mail & evri will be happy to get a client like ebay exclusively using them.

Hopefully it will weed out a few of the chancer buyers as well. 

Apparently the majority (both in numbers and value) of INR claims were for items sent without tracking and SD is supposed to reduce this.

I expect that by putting 'marketplace seller' on the labels the carriers are being held to account over missing packages as part of the contract now.

Not that I'm blaming dishonest buyers for false claims every time. Most of the items I have had to open an INR for are for low value things sent with no tracking. Occasionally one of these eventually arrives weeks/months later and I think some sellers that are drop shipping or falsely claiming item location as the UK are responsible for those..

Emily_Joy

@se2020 thank you again. So if the buyer wants something quickly you cannot charge them more and, ignoring Simple Delivery label (that will be refunded, I understand), use whatever suits? 

soolin

Emily_Joy said:

@se2020 thank you again. So if the buyer wants something quickly you cannot charge them more and, ignoring Simple Delivery label (that will be refunded, I understand), use whatever suits? 

No, the system doesn’t allow for that . At the moment an unused simple delivery label ‘may’ be refunded but I suspect the loophole for avoiding using SD is likely to be closed at some point. 

There’s also no advantage to the seller, in fact it is possibly a disadvantage to post direct. For sellers of expensive items SD is better as eBay take all the risks so as soon as item is sent they no longer have to worry, the tracking is automatically uploaded , label pre generated and their stars etc are protected. If they send direct, even assuming they can reclaim the SD cost (assuming it was sold with free delivery as otherwise buyer gets the postage back) they have to force the system to over ride the tracking which might result in funds being delayed, pay the postage out of their own pocket and deal with all INR claims, and even sort out buyer complaints if item is delayed. 

se2020

Emily_Joy said:

@se2020 thank you again. So if the buyer wants something quickly you cannot charge them more and, ignoring Simple Delivery label (that will be refunded, I understand), use whatever suits? 

Not easily. 
As a seller you can't see the buyers address even when they have paid for the item. 
You can download and print the label from ebay and get the address that way but as soon as you download the label it automatically adds the tracking number from that label to the order and there is no way to replace that tracking number with another if you post it using a different service.

Also, if the buyer sends you the address through ebay message or you send them payment details to pay for the extra cost of faster postage you run the risk of ebay scanning the messages and thinking you are trying to trade outside of eBay. 
They really don't like that.
I got blocked from selling for 2 weeks for telling a (potential) buyer they could send me a PayPal payment for the faster postage.
I expect if you get warned/blocked more than a couple of times you get banned permanently!

Also, if it's free post/seller pays the refunds are not guaranteed.  I have 2 or 3 refund requests that are well past the 30 days now and I have not had the funds returned yet.

scone_augmented_jubilance

soolin said:

scone_augmented_jubilance said:

Hello just wondering if anyone has any insight. I'm listing small items with a value off less than £20 on Ebay that will fit in a standard envelope, which means before Ebay's simple delivery I could post them for £0.85p or £1.55 which was covered by Royal Mail up for £20 and kept costs to a minimum. Now I can only send these same items with simple delivery at £2.70 which is eating into my already minimal profits.

Is there anything I can do or do I just have to put up with it? Thanks

Unfortunately the cost alone means it wouldn’t be exempt, so it will have to go as a tracked LL which will cost the buyer £2.70. However all private sellers are in the same boat, and of course it isn’t ‘profit’ as such so you should still be competitive against other sellers. 

It's ridiculous, having to inflate the price because of the buyer protection fee and now the extra postage is really making it not worth selling low value items at all on the platform.