eBay

totoro470 · ‎12-19-2018

What's with these new "Buyer X is expecting to receive this order by ____" in the new print label page? It seems like these estimations are horribly unrealistic. I got one sale Tuesday the 18th at 11:30 pm and it says "Buyer expecing the receive the item by Friday, December 21." With my 1 day business handling this means I should have until Thursday to ship the item, right? Which essentially means my buyer is expecting 1 day delivery.

I normally don't pay attention to these estimates as they seem like they're counting days that are outside business hours but today I received several messages from a rather irate buyer, saying that I hadn't shipped the item out yet (on wednesday) and that ebay told her the item would arrive on the Friday. tell me if I'm wrong here, if she buys the item at 11:30 pm, I have until 11:30 pm the next day to print the label and ship the item, right? If that time is outside post office hours then I ship the following morning. The problem here seems as though ebay is counting the day of purchase as a shipping day- even if the business hours are over. This is what I've assumed my entire time selling on ebay and it seems to measure up to my 99.82% tracking scanned/uploaded in time and .7% late shipment rate. So, am I doing something wrong, if not, why is ebay giving buyers unrealistic estimates?

castlemagicmemories · ‎12-20-2018

A note to ebay: Don`t present fidged numbers to customers for greed sake, they will appreciate the truth better.

Underpromise, overdeliver. Delight the customer when it gets there sooner than expected.

totoro470 · ‎12-20-2018

@remote_controls_and_more wrote:
With 1 day handling you have to ship by the next business day. Doesnt matter if they bought it on Tuesdsy at 12:01am or 11:59pm you ship by the next business day Wednesday.

The cutoff time you can set only applies to same day shipping.

If this was true, why would I still have:

Tracking uploaded on time and validated 99.82% 548 of 549 transactions (past 3 months)

I've been selling on ebay for 7 years and have always managed to have over 99% value on tracking validated in time for 1 business day handling. I never pack anything sold after 7pm eastern time and I drop the packages off first thing the next morning- if they bought before 7pm. I often do have sales after 7pm but I don't ship the next morning. If they buy an item at 8 pm Tuesday, I ship it on Thursday morning. My "validated" numbers don't reflect that I'm doing anything wrong and I've maintained TRS+ for years. I'm not trying to argue but you can see why it's a bit confusing.

fern*wood · ‎12-20-2018

You are doing okay on that metric since you are uploading the tracking within your handling time most of the time and getting a validation scan--which can be anywhere along the way.

If it sells on Tuesday and you ship on Thursday although you are meeting the upload tracking metric by printing your label on Wednesday, you are not meeting the second metric of late shipment rate. Sometimes you can squeak by if it still arrives by the estimated arrival date or your buyer bails you out by giving feedback that it arrived on time. If you mailed on Wednesday, with proof of an acceptance scan, you would not have to rely on the other ways to get by. That's why your percentages are not 100%.

totoro470 · ‎12-20-2018

@fern*wood wrote:
You are doing okay on that metric since you are uploading the tracking within your handling time most of the time and getting a validation scan--which can be anywhere along the way.

So really what that metric says is that 1 business day handling requires an upload of tracking information within ~24 hours -that validation doesn't need to be within that same time limit. I guess what you're saying is that the only real dispute comes from whether the package is actually on time or not and that buyers have mostly been saying they're receiving the items on time, even if it's a day late. The risk is really with whether the buyer complains or says the item didn't arrive in time.

-It just seems absurd that anything sold after certain hours are still counted as being purchased that day. If I call a normal business outside of business hours to pay a bill, they won't receive it until the next day and the bill may be late. In ebay's case, I would consider the post office the standard for "business hours" when it concerns business days. I read that since ebay is based on pacific time that this means I will have to ship anything sold up until 3am the next day, which seems more like 0 day handling to me.

Anyways thanks for the clarification. I'm not sure I agree with the policy but it seems like ebay is okay with what I'm doing -as long as the buyer's are okay with it.