Customizing our Shipping Schedule

[recycle_your_electronics]

We're a small business open Monday-Friday. Our listings are set to 1-day handling time to meet eBay's Guaranteed Delivery. Orders placed Friday-Sunday ship on Monday.

For the next couple of months our business will be closed on Mondays, so we will only be able to ship Tuesday-Friday. I've spoken to a few eBay reps and two of them told me I will need to set my handling time to 2-days to avoid late shipments, and that we will likely lose our Top Rated status as we will no longer meet the Guaranteed Delivery requirements, but we will not otherwise be negatively impacted by doing this.

This seems poorly designed, so I dug around in the settings and found the "Set same business day handling times" options under shipping settings. Here we can choose not only what time a buyer needs to place an order for it to ship same-day, but ALSO what days of the week we want to ship on. If I set all of my listings to same-day handling instead of 1-day, and uncheck Monday from the settings mentioned above (indicating we only ship same-day Tuesday-Friday), are we good to go? For example, would this now mean that orders placed on Sunday will only be required to ship Tuesday?

I spoke to a third rep and asked about this. She seemed to think it was the solution I was looking for, but I got the feeling she was not completely sure. Honestly it seems like no one knows. Hoping some sellers here have a little insight on this.

[slippinjimmy · Accepted solution]

You WILL NOT lose TRS status by changing to 2 day handling!!!!!!

My selling accounts are all TRS and they all have 5 day handling.

Bottom line, set your handling time to something you can actually meet, if not you will get a big pile of "shipped late" dings.

You won't get the TRS PLUS discount on fees if you can't ship in one day......that discount is for sellers who CAN ship in one day, if you can't then you don't deserve the discount.

Same goes for Guaranteed Delivery, if you can't meet the requirements then you don't (and shouldn't) qualify.

[shantynas]

Original post: sounds like you found a good solution. I need to check it out. Thank you for posting. I think you will only lose the Plus part of Top Rated. 

Honestly ebay doesnt give enough benefits to sellers to make chosing same day and free free free free free returns, shipping etc., services! and In my opinion no one can guarantee delivery unless you personally are handling it. That is one of the dumbest ebay moves. We digress.... happy 2021 everyone! 

[rebell45]

I didn't think that Guaranteed Delivery was a requirement for TRS status. Thanks @slippinjimmy !!

[recycle_your_electronics]

Oh wow, I missed the distinction between Top Rated and Top Rated Plus, and none of the reps corrected me on this.

I am not worried about the shipping discounts right now, so this is great. I'll just set handling time to 2-days until we go back to our regular schedule. Thank you so much!

[valueaddedresource]

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@recycle_your_electronics wrote:

Oh wow, I missed the distinction between Top Rated and Top Rated Plus, and none of the reps corrected me on this.

I am not worried about the shipping discounts right now, so this is great. I'll just set handling time to 2-days until we go back to our regular schedule. Thank you so much!

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@recycle_your_electronics  another idea for you -  if you use business policies, it makes it really easy to apply a particular policy to all listings and make quick changes in bulk.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/business-policies/business-policies?id=4212 

I have a business policy set up for shipping with 1 day handling time and have all listings assigned to it.  On the rare occasion where the company I work for is going to be closed on a day eBay doesn't consider a holiday, I'll just go in the day before and change that business policy to 2 days handling, which then updates all the listings. That ensures any orders that come in from that point will have that extra day of handling as a buffer so we don't get late shipping defects.

When we are ready to resume our normal 1 day handling, I just switch the business policy back.  This way we are only giving up the TRS+ discount for orders on those days where we can't reliably meet that 1 day handling requirement, but as soon as we are back to regular schedule, we can get that discount again.

If you do significant enough volume the rest of the week to make that TRS+ discount valuable to you, you could do something similar and flip your business policy to 2 day handling on Thursday, then back to 1 day on Monday to at least get some discount if you can reliably ship in 1 day Mon-Wed.

[nobody*s_perfect]

"I am not worried about the shipping discounts right now, so this is great. I'll just set handling time to 2-days until we go back to our regular schedule."

As long as you keep your TRS status, you'll get the extra 3% off of Priority Mail postage; that's based on TRS status, not TR-Plus.  The 10% FVF credit is tied to TR-Plus.