Seems to be a problem with Pirate Ship and tracking numbers

[knifeaholic]

I have exclusively used Pirate Ship to print shipping labels for my eBay sales for several years now.

Generally it has worked flawlessly. It instantly puts the tracking number in the eBay sales record for the item.

However, I was looking at my eBay Seller Level page and was shocked to see that I had six sold items in the past 90 days where eBay said that tracking had not been uploaded at all for any of the six sold items.

I looked the items up in the Pirate Ship shipping history, and the tracking number for each item is clearly shown there.

However, in looking at the eBay sales record for each item, the tracking number is not shown there.

Pirate Ship evidently goofed in transferring the tracking for each of these six items.

If you are a Pirate Ship user, have you ever had this happen?

I'm also issuing this as a caution about using Pirate Ship.  Those defects can add up fast.

[ebooksdiva]

I use Pirateship occasionally for eBay sales. I always copied and pasted tracking to the orders.

[dbfolks166mt]

     I used Pirate Ship exclusively and have never had an issue but I also double check my orders to make sure the tracking upload. It is difficult to say in your situation whether the interface issue was on the Pirate Ship side or on the eBay side. Given eBay's propensity for glitches my first inclination would be, well take a guess at that one. 😁

[luckythewinner]

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@knifeaholic wrote:

I'm also issuing this as a caution about using Pirate Ship.  Those defects can add up fast.

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For those who come along and read this afterward,  I will point out that a lack of a tracking number is not a transaction defect and does not count toward your defect rate. But it does affect your on time shipping rate and seller protection. 

[wastingtime101 · Accepted solution]

When using any third party shipper you may encounter times when tracking does not auto-populate to eBay due to an issue with the API @knifeaholic . I've experienced this with many different third party shippers and eBay, including pirate.

My suggestion is to check about an hour after generating your shipping labels to make sure tracking numbers populated to eBay. If any tracking is missing, do a manual copy/paste.

[knifeaholic]

Thanks, I will have to do that from now on.

[knifeaholic]

After reading your post, I thought about this a bit.

My habit is, whenever I use Pirate Ship to do my labels for the day, when I'm done with PS I go back to eBay to the "Orders Awaiting Shipment" page.  So I do at least check that after shipping with PS, and I check it frequently anyway.

What is scary is - even though evidently the tracking numbers did not get transmitted to the eBay listings, eBay did not show the listings as "Awaiting Shipment".  Makes it harder to catch and even more of a puzzle.

One would think that any listing without a tracking number would remain in eBay's  "Orders Awaiting Shipment" page until a tracking number was manually filled in - but that is not the case.

[robbie31415]

Yeah it happens and hard to catch when changed to shipped.

End of day I do a review to verify all acceptance scans reflect. This also let's me know if an order is marked shipped with no tracking.

I don't believe this is a pirateship issue. Happens on other providers using eBays API.

Sometimes it's a tracking number issue because eBay has the tracking number tied to a different order as sometimes the tracking gets recycled faster than eBay clearing it from the system.

There are ways to fix that issue too.

[monica-sells]

It has happened to me. I routinely check after shipping to make sure the tracking uploaded/posted properly.....

(I check under "Paid & Shipped")

The listing was there, but no tracking was visible. I tried to upload the tracking and it created an error, telling me the number was 'already used'

i did note in an ebay chat with CS.....customer received item OK

They said they would remove it...never did...

[robbie31415]

If it's a USPS tracking there is an easy workaround to still upload the tracking regardless if it's still in eBays system tied to another order.

They don't typically remove things like that manually so you gotta use the correct methods to avoid it.