Handling time being ignored?

[zamo-zuan]

Yesterday 7 of our orders showed up with the handling time being completely ignored and even though 1 day handling time, came up as 0.

Today it looks like it's worse and 40 of our orders are having the issue.

All of these below orders are items with 1 day handling time that were ordered yesterday... What's going on? 

[zamo-zuan]

Anyone else having this issue?

All of todays orders are having this problem. 1 day handling time, ordered on the 9th, and it says ship by the 9th.

I just spoke to eBay about it and I'm not too confident. After a 15 minute hold she had mentioned that "she confirmed that 1 day handling time is different from same day" and asked if I had checked in shipping settings to adjust my handling time... But I had mentioned the handling time is found on the listings directly and she had confirmed it as 1 day.

Not sure what else to do but the lates are piling up. 

Heres todays orders:

[heckofagame]

I would suggest stop talking to eBay and posting here and get to packing. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@heckofagame wrote:

I would suggest stop talking to eBay and posting here and get to packing. 

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We're already doing as best as we can to avoid defects, but this isn't right regardless as our shipping time shouldn't be ignored. There's no reason we should HAVE to try to rush to ship orders the same day when our handling time is not same day.

And what about all the orders that are going to come after 5pm when we are closed? All of those will be late because of this glitch.

[yuzuha]

I just checked the two sales I had yesterday and today and they're both coming up with the correct handling time (3 day handling means a shipping date of the 13th for the one from yesterday and the 14th for the one today).

It might be an issue with one-day handling time specifically?

[the_fancy_fox]

So do you have a handling time but usually ship same or next day? 

if so, when you do that ebay reserves the right to reset your handling time. 

[wastingtime101]

Hey @zamo-zuan. I don't know why this is happening and I'm not experiencing the same thing with my 1 day handling listings, but I can make a few suggestions to see if they help you deal with some of the fallout until the issue is sorted.

First suggestion:

Go to this page https://www.ebay.com/ship/cutoff and set cutoff times for same day handling to something really early like 5:00 am. While I fully understand you're using one day (not same day) handling, for whatever reason the system appears to be looking at a same day handling so maybe setting that cut off time will build in a cushion?

Pure theory of course, however it will not hurt anything. I have same day cutoff times set but I don't use same day handling. I did this because several years ago there was a glitch where same day handling was showing. The settings on this page will not impact any 1 day (or longer) handling time settings.

Second suggestion:

Is it safe to assume you use business policies? I'd experiment with one of the policies on impacted listings. First change the handling time on the policy from 1 day to 2 days. Save changes. Wait about 10 min then go back in and change it back to 1 day. Save changes.

Theory being a change of handling time might break free of whatever glitch is happening. Along these lines you can also create a new shipping policy with the same parameters as the old one, then using the bulk edit tool apply the new policy to your listings. After the biz policy page says 0 listings are tied to the old policy you can delete that policy entirely.

No idea if any of that will help, but in my opinion it's worth messing around to see if you can break free of this bug on your own.

[wastingtime101]

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@the_fancy_fox wrote:

So do you have a handling time but usually ship same or next day? 

if so, when you do that ebay reserves the right to reset your handling time. 

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I've never heard that - can you point me in a direction where I can read more about it? Possible you might be mixing that up with the estimated delivery date / historical shipping time unwritten rule?

eBay will use historical shipping data to calculate estimated delivery dates, making estimated dates shorter if you typically ship more quickly. But they won't change your actual handling time.

You can offer 3 day shipping and have listings that show estimated delivery dates based on 1 day shipping if that's when you typically ship. But your handling time is still 3 days so if you take the full 3 days to ship you won't be penalized for late shipping and the "ship by" date on the orders page will still reflect 3 biz days.

[the_fancy_fox]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@the_fancy_fox wrote:

So do you have a handling time but usually ship same or next day? 

if so, when you do that ebay reserves the right to reset your handling time. 

---

I've never heard that - can you point me in a direction where I can read more about it? Possible you might be mixing that up with the estimated delivery date / historical shipping time unwritten rule?

eBay will use historical shipping data to calculate estimated delivery dates, making estimated dates shorter if you typically ship more quickly. But they won't change your actual handling time.

You can offer 3 day shipping and have listings that show estimated delivery dates based on 1 day shipping if that's when you typically ship. But your handling time is still 3 days so if you take the full 3 days to ship you won't be penalized for late shipping and the "ship by" date on the orders page will still reflect 3 biz days.

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I’m looking for it…

it was if you had a handling time of three days yet always shipped within 1 day ebay would change your handling time to what you historically did. 

[the_fancy_fox]

Ok me bad…ebays not resetting your handling time, they revise the arrive by date the buyer sees. it’s an older post. 

post https://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-Chat-with-eBay-Staff/Community-Chat-Jan-16-from-1-00-pm-PT-Gene...

Here is the 2nd paragraph of message #71:

"While shipping early may offer you a benefit in one-off situations, the estimated delivery date does take into account historical shipping data and continued early shipments may simply result in a change to the estimate provided to your buyers. We look to your handling time and information provided by the courier, but will make adjustments if we find that items are arriving "late" or "early" consistently. I would say that this is a good practice to be in if you have any reason to be concerned with delays, if the buyer specifically called out needing it soon or for other unique situations."

I did find past posts that had the issue you outline. They were a glitch. 

[wastingtime101]

Thanks for checking on that.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

I haven't had a sale today to check, but I did want to remind you that today is SYSTEM UPDATE day.   Generally odd things like this that are suddenly broken, are due to the updates.  I realize it started yesterday, but could still be related.  

[partfinds]

I have barely any sales (40% down YTD) so can’t check. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

Hey @zamo-zuan. I don't know why this is happening and I'm not experiencing the same thing with my 1 day handling listings, but I can make a few suggestions to see if they help you deal with some of the fallout until the issue is sorted.

First suggestion:

Go to this page https://www.ebay.com/ship/cutoff and set cutoff times for same day handling to something really early like 5:00 am. While I fully understand you're using one day (not same day) handling, for whatever reason the system appears to be looking at a same day handling so maybe setting that cut off time will build in a cushion?

Pure theory of course, however it will not hurt anything. I have same day cutoff times set but I don't use same day handling. I did this because several years ago there was a glitch where same day handling was showing. The settings on this page will not impact any 1 day (or longer) handling time settings.

Second suggestion:

Is it safe to assume you use business policies? I'd experiment with one of the policies on impacted listings. First change the handling time on the policy from 1 day to 2 days. Save changes. Wait about 10 min then go back in and change it back to 1 day. Save changes.

Theory being a change of handling time might break free of whatever glitch is happening. Along these lines you can also create a new shipping policy with the same parameters as the old one, then using the bulk edit tool apply the new policy to your listings. After the biz policy page says 0 listings are tied to the old policy you can delete that policy entirely.

No idea if any of that will help, but in my opinion it's worth messing around to see if you can break free of this bug on your own.

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Thank you for the suggestions! In regards to the first, we gave that a try. For the second, we do not use business policies, because we had an issue with that in the past and eBay advised to disable it (at the time we got a VeRO from Europe because even though we had Europe blocked, something in the business policies was overwriting that and allowing GSP in Europe). 

This morning it seems to still be persisting, but the very most recent order is showing up normal time. I'm hoping that means it was fixed! But who knows at this point!

Shared the most recent screenshot (removing personal info ofc) and you can see the recent order with correct date while the orders minutes earlier were not.

[zamo-zuan]

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

I haven't had a sale today to check, but I did want to remind you that today is SYSTEM UPDATE day.   Generally odd things like this that are suddenly broken, are due to the updates.  I realize it started yesterday, but could still be related.  

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Yeah it seemed to happen middle of the night one of the nights this week. On Wednesday we noticed 7 coming up as late and the warehouse was like "We shipped everything why is it showing up at 7?" but then I saw it was ordered same day. Thursday it seemed to be about 50% of listings, and yesterday it seemed to be all of them.

So that means it started overnight Tuesday, which is traditionally a time they commonly do system updates.

I just hope this is addressed soon and doesn't ruin our statistics with a bunch of lates...