eBay

scottlmusic · ‎08-26-2017

OK, just a brief summary, I had a non-paying bidder followed by a flake sending me emails (in hard to read english) trying to low ball the price. I block this buyer, relist as a BIN with IPR and it finally sold and is paid for. Now here's the kicker, after all the previous weirdness, get this, it's being shipped to Houston, Texas, yup right where the storm is right now where they are predicting 24 inches of rain over the next several days

So I hope the guy is safe and has no damage to his home and belonings but I guess this will be a delayed shipment. Course not being able to ship within three days having recently started selling with this account will screw up my rating on ebay, affect how fast the money will be released, (provided the buyer will be able to go through with the sale) and it looks like it affects seller protection through PayPal.

All I can say is it's been interesting so far. Think I might take a break in ebay selling for a short while after this one.

partial*eclipse · ‎09-01-2017

eBay uses two different time-related evaluation measures:

(1) For TRS status, you merely have to upload tracking within your stated handling time

(2) The newer "On time shipping" evaluation measure is based on carrier scans. If you don't get an acceptance scan within your stated handling time, then you can still met this requirement if your package gets a deliverey scan within the estimated delivery dates. This is the requirement that is at stake here, which depends on eBay acknowledging the validity of your shipping delay.

kattinsanity · ‎09-01-2017

I looked at the UPS website and I didn't see anything about advising people to NOT ship. It says that delivery is affected IN SOME AREAS but nothing advising people to not ship anything. New Orleans was hit with heavy train from the hurricane as well but the package I shipped there on 8/30 is in New Orleans today according to tracking.

I've been dealing with a family emergency for the last month and had to take down over 100 listings. I had 2 packages I took to MN. with me & mailed from there BUT didn't get the tracking uploaded AND VALIDATED until the next day. My tracking upload & shipping dropped to 97.??% because I was a day late in downloading the tracking even though the items were shipped on time. Ebay doesn't excuse anything.

coolections · ‎09-01-2017

No they do not excuse family emergencies. If that was the case everyone would say it was a family emergency. They DO excuse hurricanes as long as a package delivery was in the effected area.

scottlmusic · ‎09-01-2017

@kattinsanity wrote:
I looked at the UPS website and I didn't see anything about advising people to NOT ship. It says that delivery is affected IN SOME AREAS but nothing advising people to not ship anything. New Orleans was hit with heavy train from the hurricane as well but the package I shipped there on 8/30 is in New Orleans today according to tracking.

I've been dealing with a family emergency for the last month and had to take down over 100 listings. I had 2 packages I took to MN. with me & mailed from there BUT didn't get the tracking uploaded AND VALIDATED until the next day. My tracking upload & shipping dropped to 97.??% because I was a day late in downloading the tracking even though the items were shipped on time. Ebay doesn't excuse anything.

I checked,my destination zip is still affected. and it also states as I mentioned to please confirm with your receiver whether their locations are impated by the flooding before shipping to them

https://www.ups.com/us/en/service-alerts.page?id=alert1

a_c_green · ‎09-01-2017

scottlmusic wrote:
Actually, you are wrong. I just checked. On my paypal account it gives the day i purchased and printed the label followed by: Sent by UPS Status: Shipped

So, there you go.

Yes, it goes to "Shipped" status when you buy the shipping label. The next step is for it to be validated within your promised shipping time, which is done by looking for any on-line scan by the carrier: Acceptance, any In Transit scan, or even a Delivered scan. At least one such carrier scan must occur within your promised shipping time for the shipment to be validated as sent on time.

Beyond that point, I think (and here I'm hoping someone can confirm this for me) that even if you blow the on-line validation deadline, your record is still okay if the package is delivered on or before the latest estimated delivery date. (It's when you get beyond that date that the buyer can file an Item Not Received dispute.)

I take it that the buyer has still not been heard from at all? Does he have a phone number?

kattinsanity · ‎09-01-2017

What did your receiver (buyer) say? Is he safe to ship to? I saw USPS was delivering in Houston 2 days ago. Have you tried to call the buyer since the one time he didn't answer the phone? Maybe you should try again. It's now been 6 days since the sale.

kattinsanity · ‎09-01-2017

I just checked the UPS site and UPS & Fed Ex started flying into Houstons airport Thursday afternoon and in the last 24 hours UPS has resumed operations for over 150 zip codes. I shipped one to New Orleans Wednesday and it was delivered to the buyer today.

scottlmusic · ‎09-01-2017

@kattinsanity wrote:
What did your receiver (buyer) say? Is he safe to ship to? I saw USPS was delivering in Houston 2 days ago. Have you tried to call the buyer since the one time he didn't answer the phone? Maybe you should try again. It's now been 6 days since the sale.

As of this moment UPS is not shipping to the buyers address and no idea when they will be I had messaged him at least four times with no response. I called and left voice mail twice with no response.

kattinsanity · ‎09-01-2017

Well, if he has telephone & electricity he can't be in that bad of an area.

scottlmusic · ‎09-01-2017

Lo and behold. Guess what? He finally answered the phone. He said hello. And I answered hello and he said you 've got the wrong number and promptly hung up. hahahaha I then try to call him back and he won't answer so I leave yet another voice mail which he does not respond to. I call again a while later and a female answers who had no idea what I was talking about and I couldn't understand her. She is Asian and most of what she said sounded like Asian. She then gives the phone to the guy. This time I have enough time to expain what the call is about. He still did't get it, Asia accent also, plus his phone echoed. It was terribly hard to understand him and communicate with him. He wanted to know if I was the shipping company after I had explained who I was and what it was about. He wanted to know which keyboard from ebay. He was really hard to understand so after he talked and I picked up every 4th word I would then repeat what I thought he said. Turns out he is ok and not flooded at this address. He seemed fine knowing the shippment was held for our benifit and knows the UPS is not delivering at this time and don't know when they will resume. I realy wanted to find out why I hadn't heard from him, whether he evacuated, if there was a language barrier and he didn't understand my emails and voice mail but quite frankly I just decided to let it go at that so as to not confuse him if he couldn't understand what I was saying and why.

Even though after 30+ years in the music retail business knowing it's best to ship with the shortest time period to arrive at the customer, I am strongly considering shipping it today after the truck leaves, which means it wouldn't get picked up at the UPS store until Tuesday because of the weekend and Monday being a holiday. I would suppose they would store it in a nearby location so as to not cram things into a nearby Houston warehouse which would make it a safer storing situation and really I do have it insured for the full value of the instrument of $599. At this point UPS told me they have no idea when deliveries will resume because even though the buyer is not flooded the surrounding area is and no deliveries are being made. I have a few hours to consider this but at this point I am strongly considering shipping it even though as i stated it goes against' 30+ years of buying selling, shippin and receiving in the music retail industry.

scottlmusic · ‎09-01-2017

After a little consideration I decided to ship it so it goes out with the truck today, mainly because I just said screw it. I was done with this nonsense. In all my years of experience this was one of the toughest and weirdest transactions I have ever had. Including the previous non-paying bidder and people messaging me to lower the price for them and include shipping, etc, etc. If this were my old business I would not have shipped until UPS said they were shipping in the area for the reasons given earlier and I would not have wanted anyone to ship to me for the same reason.

As it is it is a weekend and no deliveries on Monday as it is a holiday. This should buy a little time and hopefully allow the waters to recede enough to allow it to be delivered next week. If we're lucky.

I do want to thank everybody for their input. How ever this works out ( I hope the buyer isn't a scammer) I should be covered even in the worst case scenario. I see ebay has a lot more stupid rules and regulation compared to when I was shipping items worldwide a dozen years ago until I just quit. But I guess that's what happens when you are involved with a large corporation.

So lets' see what happens now.

scottlmusic · ‎09-01-2017

@kattinsanity wrote:
I looked at the UPS website and I didn't see anything about advising people to NOT ship. It says that delivery is affected IN SOME AREAS but nothing advising people to not ship anything. New Orleans was hit with heavy train from the hurricane as well but the package I shipped there on 8/30 is in New Orleans today according to tracking.

I've been dealing with a family emergency for the last month and had to take down over 100 listings. I had 2 packages I took to MN. with me & mailed from there BUT didn't get the tracking uploaded AND VALIDATED until the next day. My tracking upload & shipping dropped to 97.??% because I was a day late in downloading the tracking even though the items were shipped on time. Ebay doesn't excuse anything.

From what I learned in my experience is that I think if you can provide some sort of documentation depending on the situation such as a doctors excuse if it was medical or something along those lines I believe if you present it to the appeals dept they will take care of it for you. Also any related emails or anything you can think of to prove that you really did have an emergency. Good luck.

kattinsanity · ‎09-01-2017

My emergency for a month was that my 94 year old mom fell and lay there on the floor for 14 hours until she was found. She spent 4 days in the hospital & then went to the nursing home for the rest of her life. I had to go back & forth between WI. & MN. getting her apartment cleaned out and stuff gotten rid of. My little brother drove up from TX. for a week & we worked together for 1 week--then I was on my own again. My sister who lives 2 miles from me said "I can't take off work" (she worked in a motel laundry~~whooopppeee) and my other little brother in TN. who is a hypochondriac said "I'm too ill to travel".

After having 2 late tracking uploads I just cancelled all my 100+ listings. I KNOW ebay doesn't excuse you for that so I'm not even asking. I had heart surgery back in 2012 and to keep on track I was at the post office mailing the day after I got out of the hospital--it was NOT a reason to be late in shipping & I knew it.

That is one reason I'm sure ebay isn't going to excuse your late shipping on your item. You could have shipped it within your stated handling time and it would have been delivered when UPS resumed shipping to that area. You chose to not ship it AND you admit you received different answers from different ebay reps. You'll just have to wait and see what your dashboard reveals after you do eventually ship it and ebay picks up on the fact it was shipped later than your stated handling time.

You will learn that ebay reps have ALL kinds of answers and they actually have no say so in whether you were right or wrong in delaying shipping. It's a totally different department away from ebay customer service that makes that determination. Ebay cs reps tell you what you want to hear to get you off the phone--they actaully have no authority in a case like yours. That is determined by someone else.

scottlmusic · ‎09-01-2017

@kattinsanity

I think you missed my last few posts. I shipped the item. Details above.

There is no way I will have a defect when UPS stated that they are not and still not shipping to my buyers zip and to not deliver until contacting the customer that there is no flooding. I have this in a screenshot so there is no question. All this info is in my record with a # with everything stated. If you don't try to get a defect excused it won't happen.

kattinsanity · ‎09-02-2017

I don't have any defects--what I have is a 97.??% rating for tracking downloaded on time & validated. My items were shipped on time but I didn't have access to a computer to download the tracking numbers until I got back home the next day. A 94 year old blind woman doesn't have a computer & I didn't know anyone in the city. I don't compromise my account by using other peoples or public computers.

Since the item has been shipped, does your seller dashboard tell you anything concerning the late shipping yet?