05-04-2019 08:06 AM
The inevitable finally happened to me yesterday: I got shoved into the mandatory new Shipping label "experience" (which I suspect is what eBay labels everything that is likely to cause a major outcry when implemented). "Oh, great," I thought. "Time to teach a new generation of offshore programmers how to do American shipping procedures."
I do see several corrections to the form as compared to its initial release last year, and a lot of the details I was complaining about back then seem to have been addressed, such as adding the alternate Ship From ZIP functionality, and somewhat reducing the risks of choosing the wrong Shipping method for the item by putting a partial lid on the number of extraneous Shipping methods offered to the seller.
The biggest problems remaining have to do with the output of the new Shipping form as compared with the previous one.
When printing a domestic USPS label, the new form is printing it slightly undersized, so that the nominal 4"x6" format is now printing as about 3¾"x5½" instead. In addition, the first line of the address (usually the Addressee Name) is no longer folded to ALL CAPITALS as the older form would generate it.
The worse problems are in the emailed notification generated when the form is printed: a lot of the information you would keep for your Shipping record is simply missing. Comparing the old to new notifications makes the oversights glaringly obvious:
OLD NOTIFICATION EMAIL MESSAGE:
Subject: Shipping label created for [Listing title of sold item here] (1234567890)
Thanks for creating and printing your U.S. Postal Service shipping label for the item or items listed below.
Here's your tracking number and shipment details:
Tracking number: 94001xxxxxxxxxxxx17823
Shipping service: USPS First Class Package
Total label cost: $3.22
Shipped to: John Smith
123 Main St
Anytown, XX 12345
United States
Shipped from: Bob Jones
321 Oak St
Someplace, YY 54321
United States
[Listing title of sold item here]
Item # : 1234567890
Sale price: $65.00
End time: May-01-19 17:05:48 PDT
Buyer: [Buyer's ID here]
NEW NOTIFICATION EMAIL MESSAGE:
Subject: Your eBay label is ready
eBay
Your Shipping label. [Huh?]
Hi [Bob Jones]
Thank you for using eBay Shipping. You can access the label purchased by clicking on the "Reprint Label" button.
Service Summary
Total $3.49
USPS First Class Package $3.49
Payment Method [PayPal]
That's it. There is no further information provided for that shipment. No recipient, no address, no date of shipping, no item identifier, no nothing. It's really not much of a "Summary" at all; it barely shows anything specific to the sale.
There is a generic link back to the Manage Shipping Labels page, but (significantly) there is no direct link to the specific item transaction for which this label was generated, so once you get back to that page, you still don't know which item to look at. Furthermore, the Manage Shipping Labels page cannot display any record older than 90 days, so beyond that point, it's gone.
Also, in a somewhat bizarre detail, the Payment Method shown as "PayPal" in that email is provided as a hyperlink, but clicking on that does not lead to the buyer's purchase, or the label purchase, or anything similar. Instead, clicking on it will pop up a Send Money window (?) soliciting money to be sent to Feedback at eBay (??). I have no idea what this is supposed to achieve:
PayPal link from the "Service Summary" message
The new notification message does not deliver anything remotely useful, and the details missing from that will soon be gone completely if the seller does not manually copy the records out of eBay, something that we should not need to do.
eBay really needs to show the old notification message to the programmers responsible for the new one, and direct them to fill in the missing details.
05-04-2019 07:10 PM
Yes, I too do not like the new shipping page and wish to go back to what I was familiar with. I told eBay this:
"The new labels are making me open them in pdf format. okay, I can deal with that but my record of the transaction is not being shown as before on the bottom of the page under the actual shipping label. And yes, I have switched around modes to get it to show up, but it still is not and I am NOT happy about this and wish to have the option to go back to the classic label printing. Why did you people go and mess up a perfectly operating system that was in place and doing its job just fine??"
05-04-2019 10:57 PM
brian@ebay another deficiency in the new label flow.
05-08-2019 08:59 AM
@dtexley3 wrote:brian@ebay another deficiency in the new label flow.
Hi, brian@ebay, are there enough details in the Original Post above for them to work with?
This is a time-sensitive issue, because if the shipment details are no longer sent to the seller's email, they will be lost forever once they expire off the eBay website, unless the seller manually copies every transaction into his own offsite record, which is not really practical for high-volume sellers, nor should it be necessary.
05-08-2019 11:19 AM
@a_c_green wrote:
@dtexley3 wrote:
brian@ebay another deficiency in the new label flow.
Hi, brian@ebay, are there enough details in the Original Post above for them to work with?
This is a time-sensitive issue, because if the shipment details are no longer sent to the seller's email, they will be lost forever once they expire off the eBay website, unless the seller manually copies every transaction into his own offsite record, which is not really practical for high-volume sellers, nor should it be necessary.
Hi @a_c_green, sorry I didn't respond to this! I didn't get a notification for @dtexley3 tag. This is enough information and I've shared it with the shipping team. Thanks!
05-18-2019 06:17 PM
brian@ebay wrote:
@a_c_green wrote:
@dtexley3 wrote:brian@ebay another deficiency in the new label flow.
Hi, brian@ebay, are there enough details in the Original Post above for them to work with?
This is a time-sensitive issue, because if the shipment details are no longer sent to the seller's email, they will be lost forever once they expire off the eBay website, unless the seller manually copies every transaction into his own offsite record, which is not really practical for high-volume sellers, nor should it be necessary.
Hi @a_c_green, sorry I didn't respond to this! I didn't get a notification for @dtexley3 tag. This is enough information and I've shared it with the shipping team. Thanks!
Hi, brian@ebay, thank you for your response. We'll be coming up on the two-week mark for this problem next Wednesday, so can you please ask the shipping team to have a summary for you on where they're at with getting the missing data restored? This is an important fix, and we'll be discussing this during the Weekly Chat, so it would be great to have a current summary from them as a starting point. Thanks!
05-18-2019 08:52 PM
05-20-2019 03:38 PM
@a_c_green wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
@a_c_green wrote:
@dtexley3 wrote:
brian@ebay another deficiency in the new label flow.
Hi, brian@ebay, are there enough details in the Original Post above for them to work with?
This is a time-sensitive issue, because if the shipment details are no longer sent to the seller's email, they will be lost forever once they expire off the eBay website, unless the seller manually copies every transaction into his own offsite record, which is not really practical for high-volume sellers, nor should it be necessary.
Hi @a_c_green, sorry I didn't respond to this! I didn't get a notification for @dtexley3 tag. This is enough information and I've shared it with the shipping team. Thanks!
Hi, brian@ebay, thank you for your response. We'll be coming up on the two-week mark for this problem next Wednesday, so can you please ask the shipping team to have a summary for you on where they're at with getting the missing data restored? This is an important fix, and we'll be discussing this during the Weekly Chat, so it would be great to have a current summary from them as a starting point. Thanks!
Hi @a_c_green, I haven't received an update on this yet, though I can see if the shipping team has any new information to share. It's possible we won't have a different answer for the weekly chat, it just depends how soon we get more info.
05-20-2019 05:04 PM
brian@ebay wrote:
Hi @a_c_green, I haven't received an update on this yet, though I can see if the shipping team has any new information to share. It's possible we won't have a different answer for the weekly chat, it just depends how soon we get more info.
Expectations duly adjusted, thank you. Give them a day to fall off their chairs and start scrambling in response to your first message today, then ping them again tomorrow (Tuesday) with a reminder about getting a summary to you on the day after that (Wednesday). I did this sort of coordination between customers and support for a couple of decades Some folks just need continual nudging in order to eventually get results.
05-20-2019 05:55 PM
Wondering how the "adding the alternate Ship From ZIP" and using it as price calculation base has been addressed. Could not find a way to do that anywhere. It was so easy on the old form. It makes a huge price difference where I'm at in package cost on almost every package .
05-21-2019 01:17 AM
06-04-2019 10:52 AM
brian@ebay wrote:
Hi @a_c_green, I haven't received an update on this yet, though I can see if the shipping team has any new information to share. It's possible we won't have a different answer for the weekly chat, it just depends how soon we get more info.
Hi, brian@ebay! We're coming up on two weeks now since the last time this was raised in the Weekly Chat, so if you've heard nothing further from them yet, could you please ping them to get you an update ready for tomorrow? TIA...
06-04-2019 04:23 PM
@a_c_green wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
Hi @a_c_green, I haven't received an update on this yet, though I can see if the shipping team has any new information to share. It's possible we won't have a different answer for the weekly chat, it just depends how soon we get more info.Hi, brian@ebay! We're coming up on two weeks now since the last time this was raised in the Weekly Chat, so if you've heard nothing further from them yet, could you please ping them to get you an update ready for tomorrow? TIA...
Hi @a_c_green, no update yet, but I'll see what I can find.
06-11-2019 11:27 AM
@a_c_green wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
Hi @a_c_green, I haven't received an update on this yet, though I can see if the shipping team has any new information to share. It's possible we won't have a different answer for the weekly chat, it just depends how soon we get more info.Hi, brian@ebay! We're coming up on two weeks now since the last time this was raised in the Weekly Chat, so if you've heard nothing further from them yet, could you please ping them to get you an update ready for tomorrow? TIA...
Hi @a_c_green, the team let me know that adding more info to the confirmation email is on their radar for a future update. There isn't an ETA, but it is something that they are aware of. Thanks!
06-11-2019 01:46 PM
brian@ebay wrote:
Hi @a_c_green, the team let me know that adding more info to the confirmation email is on their radar for a future update. There isn't an ETA, but it is something that they are aware of. Thanks!
Thank you! Much appreciated. Will follow up again later in the month.