Trying to appeal late delivery defects due to known weather issues
I have been a top-rated seller since the program began.
The recent (Feb 23rd) snowstorm in the Northeast caused shipping delays beyond my control, and therefore delivery delays. According to Help, eBay recognizes weather delays and may automatically remove them.
Oddly, my seller dashboard shows no late shipment defects (despite being shipped late), so I can't apppeal these through the form on that page. However, it does show the resulting late delivery defects. These defects would rate me as "above standard."
I have entered all the information in the eBay form. When I submit, I get a message that says "We are not able to process your message now. Please contact eBay customer service."
The chatbot can't understand the issue and when I call, I get the automated runaround until the system tells me to "call back during business hours". Wha?
It was around 4:30 PM EST when I called - is this not normal business hours? If not, what is? Is the sytem down? I've never had this much trouble contacting them in nearly 30 years as a user.
kensgiftshop
·5 months agoIt wasn't beyond your control.
You knew it was coming and could have used Time Away and shut down a couple days before and got everything shipped before it hit.
lakefor94
·5 months agoI can't take a chance on losing TRS and the 10% FVF reduction due to not watching the weather and adjusting handling time or using Time Away.
Too stressful during and after the storm. Make it easy and take appropriate action before the storms hit.
supermegabot
OP5 months agoReally? I control the weather? Cool!
Seriously, I didn't know it was coming when I left town. On top of that, it's coastal New England. I've lived here for most of my life. Historically, more than half the time there's a warning of a storm (especially of this magnitude), it's fake hysteria to get residents to watch the news and clean out the grocery store. 90% of the time, the weather blows out to sea with minimal, if any, effects along the coast. It's usually the interior that gets whacked.
supermegabot
OP5 months agoFWIW, I spoke to an actual human (or a great AI Bot) today, who not only understood the situation, bumped it up the foodchain for review, explained how circumvent the chatbot system to get to a real human, and took notes on the failures of the eBay site to ingest the attempts to file the defect appeal online. If nothing else, I'm hoping the issues with site functionality are addressed. It's pretty crazy to have a chatbot sending links to a pagge that doesn't work...
lakefor94
·5 months agoSounds just about like what you wanted to hear.
supermegabot
OP5 months agoThanks, I did enter the ID, but nothing was returned. Maybe that's a good sign? The evaluation happens Friday the 20th, so I guess I'll see what happens then. In the meantime, it's more upsetting that a coherent and non- AI chatbot / non-phone tree eBay CS is still unreachable.
baantiques
·5 months agoGood luck.
We were down in Memphis for 10 days due to the ice storm. I mean, shut down. The post office was closed for the first week and even then they were so backed up things didn't move for another week after that. I had about 15 things that were late and I got dinged for every single one. Some of them I had to put in the drop box because the office wasn't open to scan them, and since there wasn't anyone there they didn't get scanned and so were marked as late. The few that I was able to get scanned toward the end then just sat there because they were so backed up that they ended up being delivered late. Buyers were very understanding but Ebay was not.
studiodeflores
·5 months agoI had to appeal a late shipping defect after the same storm. (First I waited until well after 72 hours to see if it was automatically removed, per ebay instructions.) I went to page https://www.ebay.com/sellerhelp/defect to enter the appeal. Is this the same form that you used? If it is, then there might just be a server issue that caused the error message that you got, and I would wait and try again tomorrow to see if the issue is cleared.
supermegabot
OP5 months agoYes, I have tried that page. Interestingly, the defects aren't showing at that link, but they ARE showing as Late Deliveries on my Seller Hub, dinging my Seller Rating. Makes no sense.
studiodeflores
·5 months agoIf I'm remembering correctly, I don't think the item with the defect showed up on that screen for me either. I had to "enter item ID" to retrieve it first? Not sure about this. Well, I hope you do get the defect removed one way or another!
jonathanbrightlight
·5 months agoThose are generally automatically removed around the time that the evaluation is done, and should not affect your seller rating. I wouldn’t worry about them until then.