We mistakenly marked 5 cancellations as "out of stock" item: we became BELOW STANDARDS Is it fair?

[micda_2970]

Due to hospital surgery conditions, I was striving to save my eBay transactions from hospital bed. My wife was struggling preparing deliveries and posting items and more...

I had to cancel 4 or 5 transactions due to various issues with customers I could not answer, so being honest I prefered cancelling and refunding immediately their money. By mistake, I marked the reason as "Item Out of Stock" in my eBay system. THEN , what happened next?

My Rating became "BELOW STANDARDS" !!

How to correct a mistake and explain to the Robotic System of eBay??

I pay huge FEES and lost all marketing and promotionals tools!!!

It is death programmed ! 

Any ideas to share with me please?

Thank you

[wastingtime101]

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@micda_2970 wrote:

Yes you are correct. we are in the middle East and we suspect now USPS. because the items left our country and reached New york Jamaica center and then nothing after given ...by USPS.

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That doesn't mean it's a USPS issue. There could be an issue with the packages getting through customs.

If every single package isn't tracked past Jamaica, NY then that means you did not use a service that offers tracking once it leaves your country. Packages that are untracked are impossible to determine what happened - lost? buyer lying? etc.

Do your packages have tracking all the way to the buyer's address @micda_2970 or does it always stop when packages hit customs in NY?

[simba6]

That is the least of your worries.  You could be suspended from selling for life over this.  That must be reviewed by a person as it takes about 30 days.  Then you can receive the "dear John" letter with the bad news.

If the buyer has paid, you ship or else.  Those are the rules.

[chapeau-noir]

Are your packages being detained at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, (CBP) there at the Jamaica international sorting center?  If so, they can hang onto them for quite a while and they tend to disappear from the system, only to reappear when they get put back into the regular mail stream.

[luckythewinner]

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@micda_2970 wrote:

You wont believe me! In fact, some orders to US are being lost, damaged or disappear due to USPS way of handling but do not admit it. To cut my risk short, I am now diminishing te cost of my shipments!!

Although US is one third of my market !

if you have any better suggestions, please share...

Thanks a lot. Appreciate your ideas and proposals. very useful indeed.

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So in other words, your listing allows buyers to purchase items that you are not prepared to  ship.

IMHO that is "Out of Stock" and the defects are justified.

[micda_2970]

Not all packages are lost at USPS NEW YORK CENTER! Some reach destination without problems. We observe a rate of 4-5 % in 2022 with the packages sent to US. Im talking about small scale figures here.

But this rate is frustrating because we use to ship above 200 US$ values in one package. So if it fails to deliver it is a big loss.

We do not have Insurance under local country Postal Union services UNLESS we buy EXPRESS deliveries which price is prohibitive to our customers. To give you an example the same item we ship from LEBANON to US will cost 7 times LESS the postage fees compared with GULF Countries Middle East.

So we have competitors due to postage cost higher than in some other countries.

[micda_2970]

All our packages have tracking reference number!

[micda_2970]

Agree with you over the consequences. At same time, eBay should continue developing new methods to help sellers too. A system should not be fatalist. There should be margin for improvement. Like for e.g. if we shipped an item and provided a valid reference tracking number, then we should be refunded for our loss, because we paid Customer. It should work in both ways.

[m60driver]

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@micda_2970 wrote:

Due to hospital surgery conditions, I was striving to save my eBay transactions from hospital bed. My wife was struggling preparing deliveries and posting items and more...

It is death programmed ! 

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First, you should have had an emergency plan to cancel all listings if you were to have an emergency such as sending you to the hospital.  If you knew you were going to the hospital without going direct to the ER then you should have canceled all sales at that time.  It is your responsibility to have someone take care of sold items.  Your wife should not have been struggling to complete orders and certainly should not have been listings new items.  Death may very well be programmed into our genes but Ebay has no say in the matter.  The mistakes were of your own making.

[reallynicestamps]

All our packages have tracking reference number!

Be very careful about that.

Registered Mail is a long time method of tracking mail, going back before there were postage stamps.

But "registered" , at least here in Canada, is only tracked to the border/dock/ airport.

So if I send a valuable package to Quebec, it is tracked to Quebec and the buyer's doorstep.

If I send the same package to Brooklyn NY, it is only tracked to the US border.

If I send the package to you is Qatar, it is tracked only to Montreal (or at best Gander NL) and after that becomes ordinary first class mail.

That's why overseas I have to use at minimum Canada's Tracked Packed service , which is more expensive than Registered Mail.

Note that Canada, the USA, and Qatar all belong to the Universal Postal Union which arranges to have mail sent from one country to another for delivery.

Sorry to use a third postal system in there, I'm not familiar enough with a USPS to make any comment.

But Jamaica NY is a black hole where no time passes.

[micda_2970]

You focused on a specific circumstances. the problem has nothing to do with being in hospital.

It has to do with logistics, security of postal packages, insurances, eBay fexibility system, ...

the hospital is just an aggravating factor, call it like that.

[micda_2970]

We do not believe so. They are not retained. USPS do not update frequently the tracking status. My testimony is shared based on many persons who experienced it abroad (outside US). We do not understand why eBay Guarantee is serving mainly customers? It should seve equally BUYERS. there is nothing wrong here in what we discuss. thank you. 

[the_fancy_fox]

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@micda_2970 wrote:

Agree with you over the consequences. At same time, eBay should continue developing new methods to help sellers too. A system should not be fatalist. There should be margin for improvement. Like for e.g. if we shipped an item and provided a valid reference tracking number, then we should be refunded for our loss, because we paid Customer. It should work in both ways.

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Ah no. That’s what insurance is for. If the package is lost a mail can be filed for a lost package. 

[fab_finds4u]

If you cancel with the reason the buyer requests to cancel or there's a problem with their address you don't  get a defect. Any other reasons that you cancel after you're  paid earns a defect. Defects can result in a higher selling fee penalty and can earn you below average selling status.  The only way to fix it fast is to sell more with no defects. And do it quickly. For example 4 defects out of 20 sales is 20%  but 4 defects out of 40 sales is 10% with defects. 4 defects out of 80 sales is 5% with defects. It's a numbers game.

[the_fancy_fox]

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@micda_2970 wrote:

You focused on a specific circumstances. the problem has nothing to do with being in hospital.

It has to do with logistics, security of postal packages, insurances, eBay fexibility system, ...

the hospital is just an aggravating factor, call it like that.

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If your going in the hospital but your listings on vacation hold. Always have a back up person and instructions how to do this should an emergency arise. 

Logistics, have an inventory system so you know what you have and where it is. 

Security of postal packages, that’s what insurance is for. Insurance protects you the seller not the buyer. 

eBay’s flexibility is that if you fall below standard and in time you can get it back up. If  a seller has too many issues ebay may deem that seller has too many issues and close the account. 

Im no ebay cheerleader and there are lots of things I really dislike that ebay does but the rules they have set down are pretty clear when it comes to the expectations they have for sellers.