Will any kind of strike/defect occur with orders 'shipped' but no tracking scans... ever?
There are a couple of threads about this in the Shipping forum (mods please don't move this one over there; I'm asking about Seller account status).
A lot of sellers who shipped on Monday (10/20) are not getting any in-house tracking updates, despite USPS showing them as normal on their site. (Pssst, check your Monday ship-outs in case you didn't know about this).
All 5 of the items I shipped are affected, and one of them was even delivered already today. Devin was notified and responded that he would notify eBay. But as of now we don't know if the real tracking will ever show up here.
I'm not scared of my buyers, but my question is does any kind of automated thing happen to a seller's account for an alleged "non-accepted, non-delivered" package, as long as the buyer doesn't file an INR?
And couldn't it cause other problems? Like say for instance a buyer wants to return their item; they wouldn't have any option to through eBay, since according to eBay they never received it, right?
richard1rst
·10 months agoWell, for starters you run he risk of losing your TRS status if you have it, along with the loss of the FVF discount that goes with it.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoPssst. Read the replies to the thread. 😉
relicpeddler
·10 months agoI got an 18 items hit for no scans on Monday I called eBay and they fixed it no problem.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoHey the tracking is synced now! This was without me making any contact, so they must have figured out a way to fix it for everybody effected.
My Seller Performance still shows the 5 strikes, but hopefully that's the next step.
jonathanbrightlight
·10 months ago@gurlcatthat’s good news! Does it also show the scans from when they were accepted by the USPS within your handling time? If so, that should be what triggers the strikes to be removed, I’d think.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoOh yeah they are SYNCED-synced. In fact they went overboard; lots of the scans are doubled for some reason. 🤣
jonathanbrightlight
·10 months ago@gurlcat Good, I’m looking forward to hearing if the defects disappear on their own, and how quickly.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoWell how's this? Actually I found out a few hours ago but was occupied by a wee buyer crisis.
Pretty amazing they got this done over the WEEKEND!
Whoa I just realized my final couple of late shipments must have fallen off. I don't think I've ever had a fully spotless record before. They should send me a gift card or something! ðŸ˜
jonathanbrightlight
·10 months ago@gurlcat I'm impressed! That's awesome to see!
dhbookds
·10 months agoGood, I’m looking forward to hearing if the defects disappear on their own, and how quickly.
mine is gone.......
collector-finds-store
·10 months agoI see many focusing on Top Rated seller status (in this and other threads on this issue), and while I agree this is NOT a major concern, the real issue is the negative impact on search visibility for those hit with a high number of late shipment defects all at once. Regardless of what some here will argue, eBay's algorithm takes factors into account in real time, shipping metrics included, and a sudden burst of late shipments will reduce eBay's trust in your store before the next Top Rated seller evaluation occurs. This nuance seems to be lost on many.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoWhere do you see this stated though?
collector-finds-store
·10 months agoWhere do I see what stated? If you are referring to how eBay's algorithm works regarding listing visibility, it is not stated anywhere by eBay beyond broad best practices. No platform that utilize a competitive ranking algorithm provides explicit descriptions of how they work as that would defeat their purpose.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoYou claimed: "eBay's algorithm takes factors into account in real time, shipping metrics included, and a sudden burst of late shipments will reduce eBay's trust in your store before the next Top Rated seller evaluation occurs."
That is a very specific statement, made very confidently. So I'm just asking where that confidence comes from.
I hope you could offer an answer better than "common sense" or whatever, because so often what one person considers common sense, others consider illogical. I could say eBay's search result algorithms are much more heavily weighted on listing-specific criteria, not whole-account. And I believe that is actually true, but I would never claim that it absolutely IS true.
kabilab
·10 months agoThis thread answers what occurred with the 3 items I shipped on 10/20. They still show without a scan, 2 have even been delivered and my uploaded score dropped almost 3.45 points.
orangegroveroad
·10 months agoI had this happen to 5 listings in a row. I did reach out to a rep that said that it will hopefully update, it hasn't but to reach out if it shows up on the late shipment tracking report and they will remove it and it will not cause a defect on your account. Don't despair, but it is a headache having to go back and review the listings that fall into this category.
albertabrightalberta
·10 months agoI'm going to disagree with most of the speculation.
Just because movement isn't shown on ebay's order page doesn't mean they're going to count against sellers. The hyperlinks of the tracking numbers DO go to USPS and do show scans, movement and once delivered will show delivery.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoHopefully you're right.
For the record, buyers are seeing the same lack of scans (unless they continue onto the USPS site). -This was verified by a buyer/seller in another thread who bought something that got shipped on Monday.
And then there's a seller who just posted (within the past hour) that they already have "defects for no carrier scans". But I don't believe that, lol. Not this soon.
EDIT: Well apparently I laughed too soon. They ARE showing up already! What the ?!
They're just gonna have to wipe Monday off the record or they're going to be swamped with sellers freaking out. This is ridiculous.
fern*wood
·10 months agoThat's really messed up. I can't believe those are already being shown on your dashboard. For that metric, since it shows you uploaded the tracking ontime, all you need to meet it is to have a scan anywhere along the way. They didn't give you much time for those to show up. It's like they are sure even the delivery scan won't show.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoThey were all either delivered yesterday or out for delivery today. But as you see in the example I posted in the OP^, even Delivered ones still show as nothing but a label purchase on eBay.
jonathanbrightlight
·10 months ago@gurlcat
The defects for "Uploaded on time but no carrier scan" are ones I have seen adjust after the fact once tracking updated in previous instances (ours seems to be constantly in flux), so I'm still hopeful. You're correct that there may be a lot of freaked out sellers, but I don't expect many if any to be impacted by actually losing their Top Rated Seller states in the end. It could be a rough period while everything is adjusting though. (Disclaimer: I'm stating this based on personal experience and the threads I've seen on these boards, not any direct knowledge of the systems eBay and the USPS use.)
gurlcat
OP10 months agoI'm a bit concerned that Devon hasn't replied to my tag (early this morning) asking for an update. So am I remembering wrong or did they program in automated defect removals for instances of mass cases of late delivery due to extreme weather? I know 'no carrier scan' is not the same thing as late delivery, but if anything I would think this is actually more simple, just turn off defects for items whose labels were purchased on Monday! Would that wrongfully 'forgive' a few sellers who actually waited til Tuesday to hand their packages over? Sure but so what?
Is it more important to punish a minority for a one-time procrastination than to not wrongfully punish a majority who did exactly what eBay wants us to: ship on-time and buy our labels through eBay? If they're just going to handle the defect removals piecemeal, it's going to be a massive amount of employee work, while less-experienced sellers who don't know what to do get unjustly punished. That would be absurd!
@wastingtime101 What are your thoughts on this situation?
wastingtime101
·10 months agoStuff like this takes time to resolve and because there are third parties involved (PitneyBowes, USPS), and that means it can take longer than if it was an issue solely on eBay's end. Then look at the fact it's not just getting the tracking data to populate, but seller performance ratings and every other factor have to be managed - there are going to be several different eBay teams involved to sort all of this and you're not likely to see it resolved over the weekend.
It's not an overnight fix. I have seen eBay fix many shipping issues like this in the past. It takes time to sort it out but in the end it always gets done and sellers are protected. Shipping is one of the best teams at eBay when it comes to resolving issues.
Seller performance evaluations are not until November 20th so whatever current late shipment or tracking uploaded/validated metrics are affected on the dashboard, those are just projections for the next eval and not set in stone. Nobody's seller level will be rated for more than 3 weeks. Plenty of time for this to be resolved.
At this stage it's a waste of everybody's time to worry about this or contact customer service. Waste of sellers' time and efforts, waste of CS resources.
Relax, go about your normal selling, and ramp for a killer holiday sales season. Follow updates on this as eBay provides them to stay informed. eBay provided an update today saying sellers will be protected:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Shipping/eBay-Tracking-Status-Updates/m-p/35324165#M514856
The top of the OP says this thread belongs on the Selling forum, but obviously eBay sees it as a Shipping issue which is why their update (which addresses seller performance rating protections) is pinned to the top of the Shipping forum.
I'm sure those seller performance ratings will be adjusted automatically with no need for sellers to take any action before the next eval on Nov 20th. The only reason I could fathom contacting CS about this in the meantime is if a buyer files an INR before eBay and the third parties involved get all the tracking updates populated. I'm sure if an INR is filed on one of these Oct 20 shipments that has confirmed delivery with USPS, eBay will protect the seller, but it may require contacting CS to make sure they're aware it's part of the Oct 20 tracking issue. I doubt many sellers will run into that situation.
gurlcat
OP10 months ago@wastingtime101 This is why you really should be paid by eBay. No vague reassurances, no answering questions that weren't asked, but a thorough and appropriate response that checks all the boxes on what we need to know. THANK YOU.
I figured I didn't need to contact an agent yet, let alone worry, if for no other reason than the delay until defects are actioned in seller performance. I was mostly concerned about all the sellers who wouldn't know what to do, how unfair the strikes would be for all who'd have no idea what to do about them. Now if I see any new posts pop up about this, I'll link them to your answer.
The ironic thing about this thing is, the better weekend you had, the worse your account "looks" now. 🤣 I practically danced my 5 packages to the mailbox Monday, after getting only 1 or 2 sales each of the past few weekends.
gurlcat
OP10 months ago@wastingtime101 Hey speaking of Pitney Bowes, what do you make of this? These are my 5 'ghosts' as seen on my USPS' Informed Delivery. I'm surprised I noticed this, but one of them doesn't say P.B. It was a 3-ounce vinyl envelope just like the rest, paid for in a bulk label purchase with the rest. The only difference I can think of about it was it was it had a FF address.
robbie31415
·10 months agoClearly you are an eBay "mentor" who doesn't know how the system operates.
And you are wrong unless ebay back syncs or makes an exception for that day.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Shipping/eBay-Tracking-not-updating-causing-incorrect-performance-metrics/td-p/34363728
robbie31415
·10 months agoOr people could spend time actually reading the policy pages.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoI highly doubt there is a page that addresses this problem. Feel free to prove that wrong.
robbie31415
·10 months agoNo need to waste my time since last time I linked you to policy pages you couldn't understand it. Needed Kyle to say you are wrong then went silent. 🙃
But I'm sure you can find out what happens if a scan never registers.
All account hits are documented.
Really the only question is if ebay will intervene.
Since there are many hit by this issue there is good probability.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoWait what? Why are you being like this? I have no idea what 'last time' you are talking about, but I definitely did not tag you on this thread so why act like I wrote it to bother you in particular?
Why not just make a reply to every post, telling every OP to read the policy pages, since that's where ebay is crystal clear on everything?
Jeez there are some grumps on the forum tonight.
Unavailable member
·10 months agoYou could reach out to the eBay reps on social media and ask your question. Instead of wondering and all of us speculating.
christworks
·10 months agoI thought one of the main points of this forum is to communicate with other sellers who may know.
Or, is this forum only for complaining? 🙄
jonathanbrightlight
·10 months agoTo my knowledge, it can only potentially cause sellers to lose their Top Rated Seller status, and drop to Above Standard, though it can never cause you to go to Below Standard. So it’s not a devastating loss, but it would obviously be best if that didn’t happen.
A couple things should help, though. If the item is still delivered on time, the fact that a carrier scan was not recorded in eBay’s system within the seller’s handling time won’t matter, it doesn’t actually count as a late shipment. EDIT: I did mix up two things here, it will not count in your "Late Shipment Rate", but will count towards "Tracking uploaded on time and validated", sorry if that confused anyone. I’ve also historically seen that once the tracking does update, eBay should recognize that you did in fact get a scan within your handling time. I see that intermittently when there are not widespread issues, just a package where the scan didn’t update. eBay has also put out notices that things like weather events wouldn’t affect seller status in the past, for specific events, so if they understand that a significant number of sellers were affected but it was out of their control, hopefully they’ll do something similar.
Plus, sellers who are about to lose Top Rated Seller status are often given a grace period, based on the posts we’ve seen here with sellers reporting exactly that, so even if it comes to that, most probably will never lose that status.
gurlcat
OP10 months agoI've put all 5 in my Informed Delivery in case eBay tries to fix it and just makes it worse (like totally lose the tracking numbers). I've had late's removed before, I just hope I don't have to ask for so many all at once, ha.
jonathanbrightlight
·10 months agoSounds like a good plan. In fact, there have been cases before where signing up for text or email alerts on the USPS website seemed to trigger the system that updated eBay's tracking, so I wonder if adding them to Informed Delivery would do the same thing. Seems like it could, it should be using the same back-end systems. I'm keeping an eye on this because I'm curious how it will all work out!
Unavailable member
·10 months agoWell my guess is if eBay doesn’t detect any tracking information it be my assumption that eBay would think you didn’t ship and give you a defect. But I can pretty much bet you can get any defects removed because USPS is showing tracking history within your handling time.
I shipped out 6 packages on Monday they all show tracking information. My guess is you and the other sellers are on the same server that went wonky on Monday. Or could it be because I printed all my labels Sunday?