How to postpone delivery of a product I sell
Hi, I sold some products a couple of days ago. I only noticed it now because unfortunately no notifications appeared on my phone.
The products should be shipped within a couple of days, however at the moment I am far from home and could only ship them on September 10th.
First of all, I have already contacted the buyers explaining the situation and apologizing, but now how do I say on Ebay that I want to postpone the shipment of the product they purchased from me?
18 comments
and_poz
OP1 year agoOk, thank everyone. I'll take the penalty and that's it. It's 4 orders so I don't think that I'll get in real trouble.
momtoabeautifuldaughter
·1 year ago4 orders out of how many listings?
and_poz
OP1 year agoIn total I'm selling 14 products.
mam98031
·1 year agoJust don't repeat this issue. It could be very harmful to the health of your selling account. Learn from this and move on.
pjcdn2005
·1 year agoSince you posting on a European site and not this site (ebay.com) the rules may be different than the information you've received here. You might want to check the site that you list on. There may be a discussion board there or information on the help pages.
dbfolks166mt
·1 year agoI am not sure how many orders you are talking about but about and others have already covered the potential implications of the late shipping and how to avoid it in the future. About the only way to avoid the penalties would be if you can get the buyer to agree to canceling the order and then repurchasing after 10 September. Canceling an order using buyer requested does not impact your metrics but you should NOT do this without buyer coordination.
As @mam98031 mentioned eBay applies pretty rigid metrics to international sellers and if we are talking about a lot of items all the dings could at the least put your seller rating below average at the worst it could get your account suspended.
momtoabeautifuldaughter
·1 year agoI recently extended our handling time to 2 or 3 business days because my spouse was going to be away for a few days and he normally knows where to find items on our shelves so I needed that extra time to find items and check with him on how to package them. I never needed those extra days but was good to have them.
johnrj1226
·1 year agoNothing can be done this time - you will take the hit for a late delivery.
But the next time you can put your items on "Time Away" or extend your handling time* or cancel listings and relist when you get back - always put my active listing in a Sell Similar mode first then cancel, then relist them when I returned - since I no longer sell on eBay you should check with others to determine if this is still feasible or eBay legal.
* often buyers don't like it and might result in neutral or negative FB
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/time-away?
and_poz
OP1 year agoI see. Some of the customers told me that it's not a problem and they are willing to wait.
Now, what do I do on Ebay? Do I simply wait for it to tell me that I already had to ship the item but I didn't? Ebay won't cancel it, right?
fbusoni
·1 year agoFrom @kensgiftshop above:
mam98031
·1 year agoI believe that. It may not be a problem for the buyer. But you have requirements to meet as a seller on Ebay. As a new seller if you don't know them, you need to learn them sooner rather than later. Otherwise your selling career here may be a short one.
iamalwaysright
·1 year agoEbay won't "cancel" them. Only the seller can. So if all of your buyers say it's fine and they'll wait, then just ship them asap when you return. You'll get dings on your performance stats for shipping them late, but it is what it is and just make it up on your future sales to raise that percentage back up to par.
I hope I don't have to say that the orders will likely only stay there for 90 days, because by then I hope you would have already shipped it long before that time comes.
mam98031
·1 year agoIt is likely you got the notifications and just overlooked them. But as others have said, you should never depend on that to tell you when you have a sale. You should always watch your orders. When you are selling stuff on Ebay, you can't disappear for a couple of days. You always need to be available to ship whatever you sell.
When you are going to be away for a few days, as you are now, you should have closed your listings FIRST or at the very least put your listings on Time Away.
Ebay is rather hard on international sellers so be very careful and aware of the requirements Ebay expects from you as a seller. Just learn from this experience and move forward. Now you know better than allowing this to happen again.
reallynicestamps
·1 year agoShip as soon as you can, and take the "spanking" that eBay gives you.
Your responsibility.
In future, if you must take time off, don't just put your listings as Time Away, but actually remove them from visibility.
Even with the notice buyers get from eBay that the seller will return (and theoretically ship) at a given future date, the buyer is annoyed and while eBay doesn't use Feedback to assess sellers, your buyer may.
fern*wood
·1 year agoYour shipping metrics will take a hit, but if you've worked it out with your buyers, there isn't much more to do at this point on those sales. If you plan on selling in the future or if you still have items listed, then I'd consider changing how you manage them.
momtoabeautifuldaughter
·1 year agoFor items already purchased it is too late to postpone shipping now.
You will need to cancel as out of stock and take the violations that come along with it or you need to ship the items late and take the violations that come along with it.
You need to check daily to see if you have sold any items or you need to make your handling time longer.
You should never rely on any notifications of a sale on eBay. Always check your seller hub for any sales or messages.
If you are unable to ship items, you have listed you need to either end them or put them on time away.
You would either need to ship the items you sold or cancel the sale as out of stock and take a defect for it.
Because if I was your buyer, I wouldn't want to wait around for you to came back to ship my items.
You could hold shipping, but you would get 2 defects for that. One defect for not having tracking uploaded and validated and one for late shipping.
eBay does not forgive late shipping.
kensgiftshop
·1 year agoYou don't, they expect you to ship within the handling time you chose.
Either ship late and take a ding or cancel the order as out of stock and take a ding.