eBay

itsjustasprain · ‎11-14-2017

Ive got a problem in my selling account with a well-intentioned buyer who seems to be getting me into a late-shipping ding. Not sure what to do about it.

I am in the US and buyer is in Canada. He won bidding on a $40 item tonight and paid immediately including shipping. But then he asked me to not ship until he bids on two more accessory parts compatible with it that end in auctions on Wednesday and Thursday. That does make sense because his total shipping would be a lot less that way - they are small and might not even push the package into the next pound.

Problem is that because he has already paid for the first thing Ebay is telling me that i have to ship by midnight tomorrow - i have 1 day handling. He probably IS going to win the other two auctions as they are not hot products although both already have other bids. I really do not want to end the auctions early for him although he is lead bidder in one of them right now.

I think the best thing is to do as asked and wait until Thursday night even though I will get a late-shipping ding. Is that right? Is there any way to get it waived? The buyer put his request for late shipping in a note with his Paypal payment so I think that should be visible to Ebay. If there is a better way to handle this Im all ears. Thanks.

itsjustasprain · ‎11-15-2017

trinton@ebay wrote:
Hi everyone, happy to confirm that a late shipping defect can be removed when it was related to a buyer's request. I do want to add that our on-time shipping metric works a little differently and while we cannot adjust what is considered on time, a buyer can mark the item as on time and we can also manually adjust a seller's Top Rated Status if a late shipment was recorded due to a buyer's request, and this caused a seller to loose their Top Rated Status. Either way, we are here to support and protect our sellers when they are working to create great experiences for their customers!

Hi - thank you @Anonymous for that. I went to sleep last night with about 5 replies showing and then when I woke up there was a WHOLE lot more replies and the numbers kept on going through the morning when i could not post a response at that time but finally i have a lunchbreak here.

The buyers message where he asks for a delay in shipping is acutally a note that came in with his Paypal payment - it is not actually an Ebay message. But i replied to him in an Ebay message that i would hold off on his shipment for now. I also asked him to hold off on paying anything more until his last auction bidding was done on Thursday and then he could request a combined invoice. I will work out the combined shipping cost and just deduct the amount he already paid last night. I then got a thank you back from him in an Ebay message.

So i dont know if Cstomer service can 'see' notes from a buyer that come with a Paypal payment but i know they can look at Ebay messages so i hope that will be enough. I dont have any dings on my account right now so one late should not lose me my TRS status. Trintons wording says that the status can be manually adjusted if i was to lose it due to the late ding - but reading between the lines if i am understanding this right it sounds like the late ding itself can NOT be removed. Do they age off in a year? I havent got one before so i kind of hate to start now but whatever.

Im just going to plow ahead with this for now and check to see what my dashboard looks like after the package has arrived in Canada. If i have to call CS then i have to call CS. Thank you all!

margincut · ‎11-15-2017

Well Trinton phrased it optimistically, he also confirmed what all us naysayers have been saying. A late shimpment ding is still a ding to your metrics, regardless what buyer messages.

Sure you can appeal TRS, and if your pre-arranged late ship evolves into a defect somehow (notice you said ding, Trinton said defect) , you can appeal that too. But the ding is still going to be there.

Anonymous · ‎11-17-2017

@margincut wrote:

Well Trinton phrased it optimistically, he also confirmed what all us naysayers have been saying. A late shimpment ding is still a ding to your metrics, regardless what buyer messages.

Sure you can appeal TRS, and if your pre-arranged late ship evolves into a defect somehow (notice you said ding, Trinton said defect) , you can appeal that too. But the ding is still going to be there.

Hi @margincut, I want to clarify that we have two shipping metrics; one is the late shipment defect, which can be removed outright if a buyer asked for delayed shipment and the transaction somehow was recorded as a defect. The other is our tracking uploaded on time and validated by a carrier metric, which we would also offer protection for if it led to the loss of Top Rated status. Since the second metric is not a defect, we aren't able to remove it, but are able to not consider it when determining Top Rated status. Additionally, we only ask that 95% of your transactions or more meet this expectation for Top Rated status, giving you a 5% buffer for situations like this. Again, if meeting a buyer's request causes a negative impact, we would make sure it was resolved for you.