That's good advise, but it's not much of a difference. We've dropped of packages and always get hard copy reciepts for every order for 20 years. Lately, tracking will initially show "USPS is in Possession of the package" and then nothing for days and days. Buyer's especially new or not very active completely freak out after just a day or two. It's killing us because they dont understand the request feature at all. We've had to refund way too many order because regardless of shipping option once the buyer opens a request, the window to either prove they got it or refund is so small it's impossible in most cases to wait. Just about all buyers are choosing economy shipping option because ebay sets the "estimated arrival date" and that's all they see. If we dont give a refund and the package is still in the transit time window, ebay does not care and will automatically give the buyer a refund, they keep the item when it arrives and we (sellers) get brutalized by the "closed without resolution" metric.
Those are real killers on just about everything. The other metrics are really not that big of a deal in terms of meeting the requirments.
Also, in the "seller metrics" comparison to other similar sellers area, it sky rockets over whomever your compared to, eventhough the overall total % is near perfect, at least for us.
I've gotten really tired of giving away free stuff so, I've started contacting the buyers to explain the situation and that the carriers wont even try a track and trace if it's still within the estimated time transit time. Which recently has completely gone off the rails due to in our case, the South Texas severe weather issues have not only forced all carriers to cut way back on staff, people have just stopped going to work in all areas.
All businesses that used to be 24 hours or late night places, just close down, no patrons, no staff...it's insane and that is not even considered by ebay or other venues. I had luck with 1 buyer who had no idea what was happening and once I explained it, showed them how to cancel the request, they did. Others simply either know they will get free product or are so skeptical of the "past" issues that they dont even respond.
So, reciepts help but not that much. We've even had buyer's contact us with a question on an item when the tracking shows it hasn't even been delivered yet.
