eBay

autopiacarcare · ‎12-26-2019

We were closed on 12/24 and 12/25 for the holiday. To prepare for that, and make sure we didn't risk any late shipment strikes, on Monday morning I changed our handling time to 2 business days, so that all orders from that point forward would have a ship date of 12/26 at the earliest.

We use business policies and only have 1 policy set up for shipping that applies to all of our listings. All orders that came in after the change on Monday were showing the appropriate handling time applied, so I believed everything was set up correctly and we wouldn't have any late shipments.

Today I came in to find that 2 orders are listed as Shipping Overdue - Ship by Dec. 24 . All other orders from that time correctly show 12/26 as the ship by date. The time stamps on these 2 orders were 5:11 PM PST and 9:50 PM PST on 12/23. I had changed the business policy earlier that morning and both of those listings show in the revision history that "Shipping Terms" were revised at 7:50 AM PST on 12/23, so they should not have been required to ship on 12/24.

I called CS and they confirmed they could see the listings had a 2 business day handling time at the time of purchase and that should have made the ship date 12/26. They have noted our account and said if we see those counted against us as late shipments to call back and they will try to remove them.

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up to carefully check to make sure your handling times are being honored and you aren't getting unfair late shipment dings.

spreadlovelikefire · ‎12-26-2019

I just got off the phone with ebay who won't remove 12 defects for late shipment. They state that they were all delivered late. All first class, delivered within 4 days. Ebay says they are 1-3 days. So they won't remove them. Never mind the delay for the holidays. Never mind they were all delivered on day 4. Never mind no one complained. Never mind they were all shipped within 1 day. None of it matters. What matters is there impossible system. So if the system says it's wrong then it's wrong. I just started selling on another platform, maybe it will work and I can stop feeding the beast. It's really tough to wrap my mind around being a stellar seller when I'm being told by the ebay system that I need to do better but they make it impossible to do so.

buyselljack2016 · ‎12-26-2019

Will have to go have a look.

We have 3 day handling. eBay is giving us weeks to ship.

Showing on a purchase made today:

autopiacarcare · ‎12-27-2019

@buyselljack2016 wrote:
Will have to go have a look.

We have 3 day handling. eBay is giving us weeks to ship.

Showing on a purchase made today:

@buyselljack2016 - Wow, that is crazy. At first I thought maybe they were going for the old "under promise and over deliver" strategy there, but then I saw the estimated delivery date. How in the world do they expect it to be delivered by Jan. 3 if you don't even have to ship it until the 13th?!

Also kind of weird on the time as well. Usually it says 11:59 PM PST because you are supposed to have that whole day. I wonder if you shipped it on the 13th and the acceptance scan didn't happen until 9:30 PM PST, would they still count that one as late?

autopiacarcare · ‎12-27-2019

Now I'm wondering how to handle things for next week. We are working a half day on Tuesday the 31st, but UPS won't be picking up on that day, and then we are closed on the 1st.

My original plan was just to change our handling time settings again on Monday to give us plenty of time to ship everything once we are back on the 2nd but now I'm nervous about doing that. We don't want to prevent sales from coming in, so using vacation mode to hide/disable our listings is not an option we are willing to consider.

What should we do? @Anonymous brian@ebay

Anonymous · ‎12-27-2019

We were closed on 12/24 and 12/25 for the holiday. To prepare for that, and make sure we didn't risk any late shipment strikes, on Monday morning I changed our handling time to 2 business days, so that all orders from that point forward would have a ship date of 12/26 at the earliest.

We use business policies and only have 1 policy set up for shipping that applies to all of our listings. All orders that came in after the change on Monday were showing the appropriate handling time applied, so I believed everything was set up correctly and we wouldn't have any late shipments.

Today I came in to find that 2 orders are listed as Shipping Overdue - Ship by Dec. 24 . All other orders from that time correctly show 12/26 as the ship by date. The time stamps on these 2 orders were 5:11 PM PST and 9:50 PM PST on 12/23. I had changed the business policy earlier that morning and both of those listings show in the revision history that "Shipping Terms" were revised at 7:50 AM PST on 12/23, so they should not have been required to ship on 12/24.

I called CS and they confirmed they could see the listings had a 2 business day handling time at the time of purchase and that should have made the ship date 12/26. They have noted our account and said if we see those counted against us as late shipments to call back and they will try to remove them.

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up to carefully check to make sure your handling times are being honored and you aren't getting unfair late shipment dings.

Hi @autopiacarcare, the estimated delivery date provided to your buyer is calculated using various factors, such as the item location, the buyer location, the shipping service, and historical data. This is why you could sometimes see varying ship-by dates when reviewing your orders. That being said, you won't receive a late shipment defect if you ship out your item within the stated handling time in your listing, or the buyer reports the item was on time, or if the item arrives on time - only one of these three qualifications needs to be met. You can review more information here, and Customer Service will be happy to discuss any further account specific questions you may have.

As for recommendations on how to handle your shipments in the near future, you won't need to do anything different based on the information you have shared here. As long as you can ship out within your stated handling time or ensure on time delivery, no defects will be recorded. If you are concerned you may not be able to ship on time or that your shipments may not arrive on time, you can extend your handling time as you see fit.

autopiacarcare · ‎12-27-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi @autopiacarcare, the estimated delivery date provided to your buyer is calculated using various factors, such as the item location, the buyer location, the shipping service, and historical data. This is why you could sometimes see varying ship-by dates when reviewing your orders. That being said, you won't receive a late shipment defect if you ship out your item within the stated handling time in your listing, or the buyer reports the item was on time, or if the item arrives on time - only one of these three qualifications needs to be met. You can review more information here, and Customer Service will be happy to discuss any further account specific questions you may have.

As for recommendations on how to handle your shipments in the near future, you won't need to do anything different based on the information you have shared here. As long as you can ship out within your stated handling time or ensure on time delivery, no defects will be recorded. If you are concerned you may not be able to ship on time or that your shipments may not arrive on time, you can extend your handling time as you see fit.

Thanks @Anonymous - I was aware that the estimated delivery dates displayed to the buyer are calculated using a variety of factors, but have never seen anything about the ship by date shown to sellers being calculated with a variety of factors.

As far as I know, the ship by date has always been calculated by the handling time on the listing at time of purchase with the cut off being at 11:59 PM Pacific Time on how ever many business days you have set past the date payment is received.

I confirmed this per this section of the eBay Seller Center

Handling time is measured in business days—weekends and holidays don't count.

The handling-time clock begins when you receive payment from your buyer and ends when your carrier scans the package.

Each day ends at 11:59:59pm. In the case of 1-day handling, if an item is purchased on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday Pacific Time, it needs to have an acceptance scan by Monday at 11:59:59pm PT.

If that has changed, can you point me to the policy page which gives specifics on how the ship by date is calculated using various factors?

fern*wood · ‎12-27-2019

I've never had my ship-by dates vary depending on ebay's estimate of how fast I ship.

autopiacarcare · ‎12-27-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi @autopiacarcare, the estimated delivery date provided to your buyer is calculated using various factors, such as the item location, the buyer location, the shipping service, and historical data. This is why you could sometimes see varying ship-by dates when reviewing your orders. That being said, you won't receive a late shipment defect if you ship out your item within the stated handling time in your listing, or the buyer reports the item was on time, or if the item arrives on time - only one of these three qualifications needs to be met. You can review more information here, and Customer Service will be happy to discuss any further account specific questions you may have.

@Anonymous - Also, just to avoid confusion on the terminology, I am not currently seeing these two orders as "late shipments", but I am seeing them being counted against us in the "tracking uploaded on time and validated" metric. Our percentage in that metric has also dropped accordingly.

So while we may not get a "late shipment" ding due to what you explained above, this issue may still have an negative impact on other metrics which are used to determine Top Rated Seller status, which is not fair because we did in fact have tracking uploaded and validated within the 2 business day handling time that CS verified was on the listings at time of purchase.

This is where my concern about next week comes from. If it happens again, that could be more of a negative impact on that metric and depending on how many it happens to, it could jeopardize our TRS status.

autopiacarcare · ‎12-27-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
If you are concerned you may not be able to ship on time or that your shipments may not arrive on time, you can extend your handling time as you see fit.

@Anonymous - That's kind of the whole point of this thread. I did extend our handling time as I saw fit in order to make sure we could ship on time. That doesn't do any good if eBay randomly decides to ignore the extended handling time on a few orders and insist they should have shipped in 1 business day even though that was not the handling time set on the listing at time of purchase, as verified by CS.

Given this issue and the one that @buyselljack2016 reported in this thread, it seems to me there may be a deeper issue going on with handling times/ship by dates that should be escalated to the proper department.

Anonymous · ‎12-27-2019

trinton@ebay wrote:
If you are concerned you may not be able to ship on time or that your shipments may not arrive on time, you can extend your handling time as you see fit.

trinton@ebay - That's kind of the whole point of this thread. I did extend our handling time as I saw fit in order to make sure we could ship on time. That doesn't do any good if eBay randomly decides to ignore the extended handling time on a few orders and insist they should have shipped in 1 business day even though that was not the handling time set on the listing at time of purchase, as verified by CS.

Given this issue and the one that @buyselljack2016 reported in this thread, it seems to me there may be a deeper issue going on with handling times/ship by dates that should be escalated to the proper department.

Hi @autopiacarcare, sorry for any confusion - you asked what you should do with future shipments and I clarified that you should do what you normally do or make adjustments if you are not able to ship as normal. If there is an underlying technical issue, you would be protected. As I mentioned in my previous response, you will not receive a defect if your item arrives on time or you ship within your stated handling time. The notice to ship can vary depending on the various factors I listed, but you are protected from a defect if you meet the qualifications I referenced. If a defect is recorded in error, it can be appealed by contacting Customer Service.

fern*wood · ‎12-27-2019

I still don't think the ship-by date should reflect anything other than our handling time. Is this a new change, because I haven't seen mind doing that?

buyselljack2016 · ‎12-27-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:
@buyselljack2016 wrote:
Will have to go have a look.

We have 3 day handling. eBay is giving us weeks to ship.

Showing on a purchase made today:

@buyselljack2016 - Wow, that is crazy. At first I thought maybe they were going for the old "under promise and over deliver" strategy there, but then I saw the estimated delivery date. How in the world do they expect it to be delivered by Jan. 3 if you don't even have to ship it until the 13th?!

Also kind of weird on the time as well. Usually it says 11:59 PM PST because you are supposed to have that whole day. I wonder if you shipped it on the 13th and the acceptance scan didn't happen until 9:30 PM PST, would they still count that one as late?

The 8:59 PM PST is something that started at the same time that the rather odd "ship by" dates started showing up. The "ship by" date is just so outrageous that it really isn't a problem. The 8:59PST is based on the time zone difference, and would be 11:59 my time. That PST also started showing up in the "time" that the purchase was made. I now have to make that mental 3 hour adjustment when determining if it has been long enough to pack/ship, or wait for that "golden hour" "request to cancel".

Anonymous · ‎12-27-2019

I still don't think the ship-by date should reflect anything other than our handling time. Is this a new change, because I haven't seen mind doing that?

Hi @fern*wood and @autopiacarcare, happy to clear up any confusion - there has been no change, but the details described here could only be explained by either a technical issue (which has been reported to Customer Service for investigation and addressed here), or factors related to the estimated delivery date. A seller is still protected if they ship within their stated handling time or if the item arrives on time.

As for the tracking uploaded on time and validated metric, as long as we can see the item was shipped within your stated handling time and the tracking number receives a scan at any point during transit to the buyer, you will be in compliance with this metric. Sometimes a transaction will show up as not meeting this metric at first, and then later updates will remove this from the list of transactions that are not meeting this metric. Though this specific metric cannot be appealed, automatic protections will be applied for any widespread technical issues and any impact to your Top Rated Seller status can be manually adjusted if needed.

fern*wood · ‎12-27-2019

"This is why you could sometimes see varying ship-by dates when reviewing your orders. "

The above sentence in your first reply is what confused me. I feel I understand what it takes to meet the metrics otherwise, but that sounds different.

autopiacarcare · ‎12-27-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
I still don't think the ship-by date should reflect anything other than our handling time. Is this a new change, because I haven't seen mind doing that?
Hi @fern*wood and @autopiacarcare, happy to clear up any confusion - there has been no change, but the details described here could only be explained by either a technical issue (which has been reported to Customer Service for investigation and addressed here), or factors related to the estimated delivery date. A seller is still protected if they ship within their stated handling time or if the item arrives on time.

Thanks @Anonymous but that doesn't really clear up the confusion. As far as I have ever experienced before this, and consistent with the eBay Seller Center page I quoted above, the only factor used in determining ship by date has been the handling time stated on the listing at time of purchase.

The policy clearly states we must have an acceptance scan by 11:59:59 PST on the last business day of that handling time and every order I can remember dealing with on eBay through multiple years and across multiple large business accounts has shown a ship by date consistent with that policy, except the two orders which are the subject of my original post.

Your previous answer and this answer - "the details described here could only be explained by either a technical issue (which has been reported to Customer Service for investigation and addressed here), or factors related to the estimated delivery date. " (emphasis mine) - indicate there are other factors that eBay may use to calculate the ship by date besides just the seller's handling time.

If that is true, that would constitute a major change, in which case I would like to see where that change was documented/announced to sellers and if it wasn't documented and announced, why not?

And if the ship by date is or can be determined by more than just the seller's handling time, why even have the option to extend the handling time or advise sellers that is the proper way to make sure they don't have late shipments when they are not going to be able to ship in their usual time frame? That's pretty bad advice if there is even the remote possibility that those settings will not be honored because eBay takes other factors into consideration.