Yet that poloicy is not adhered to in several incidents.
I follow my shipping closely. I use the Leave feedback page to see ebay's opinion for expected delivery & actual delivery. Many many screens shots fill my hard drive lol
Example of that policy not applied as it reads:
I had an item sell on a wednesday, with expected delivery the next wednesday.
This was including 1 day handling, there happened to be a holiday on the friday after the item sold, and 3 days travel. I am in MO, buyer in southernmost FL.
This was in a horrific timespan where incompetent mail carrier on my route was erratic performing acceptance scans of scheduled pickup items. And... this was one of times items I had scheduled to be picked up thursday went into the USPS system without getting scanned. Gah! All but item mentioned did get a scan at Distribution Hub across town in wee hours of the night. This item was unseen in Tracking. It eventually got a scan in FLORIDA at 11:30 pm on SUNDAY(!), with Delivery scan of 10 am monday morning.
It would be reasonable that ebay allow for uncontrollable weaknesses in the USPS process, and find that although 1st Tracking scan was 4 non-business days later, AND they could view I had messaged buyer friday am expressing my concern, w reassurance it was on its way, even if no visible sign in Tracking History yet, that this item not be considered late.
Especially since it was 2 days early of ebays stated Expected Delivery.
The Support rep clearly had never been to the United States, as rep would have rudimentary familiarity with our Mail, Holidays, and the Geography of the US. I couldn't relate to him it was inconceivable for that item Scan be true timestamp for entry into mail system being 5 states away, on a day no package is officially received by handlers, without having paid insane fees for Special Pickup or my driving a marathon road trip just to get item close to buyer. And delivered next morning, in that far away zip code.
I could not have the item removed from being counted as Late Delivery.
Other lesser complex incidents I foolishly considered worthy of contacting ebay to exclude from poor data crunching methods were ones with similar Scanning failures by Carriers/Handlers, yet buyer feedback included specific comments about being very happy with delivery being days earlier than expected. These extremely atypical incidents were reason enough for me to decide Top Rated Seller and its nominal perk of 10% discount on FV fees were not worth the hours of futile debate on phone to Support.
It seems reasonable that they fine tune these standards for TRS.
Use specific language &criteria.
Eliminate criteria that is not applied to tallies on Dashboard (buyer says item delivered in time).
Improve methods to measure & evaluate a sellers history. Less overlap in the indicators used for how seller is on excellent service. The Late Shipment report includes references to date delivery. Stick to what the standard aims to represent. Shipping and Handling time gets measured through a carriers Tracking. If Actual delivery date data is involved, it should be as educational demonstration of what can happen when items don't get shipped as a seller has stated in the listing. Show Seller on report, for any item that fell outside of the 1 day Handing time frame to have it scanned as it enters carriers system the results of that shortcoming.
Provide details that make it clear what eventual delivery date was for the items that were classified as Late shipments.
3 columns.
1.) Tracking Shows Late Shipment time
2.) Delivery Date was after stated Expected delivery Date
3.) Delivery Date still within limits
Also, throw in randomized transactions that were scanned within Handling window, and the resulting outcome for Date of Delivery.
If a seller could see the impact in a comparative format, it would mean a great deal.
Until USPS creates a process that lets my items receive an Entry scan as I physically place through the post office package drop box, these data should be entitled to review and possible eliminate from being called Late.
If I can do self- checkout at a retail store, or do self checkout at a Public Library, the USPS is due to get onboard with Mailers having ability to scan packages into the system. It would be win-win for sure!
