eBay Standard Envelop - HELP

[northernlightsenterprises]

While I love this new service and it will help boost my sales, I can tell you the first 9 days of using it has been hell.

1. Don't expect anyone at USPS (Post Office of Customer Service) to have any idea what you're talking about when you call or speak with them about this new shipping method. The bar code on the package is not hand scanned, but rather done on their sorting machines. If you ask any post office customer service rep they will tell you it's a non-trackable shipment.

2. Label location? Does anyone have a good photo/screen shot/video example of where to position these labels on the envelope? The 40 packages I've sent using a 4" x 6" envelope I just put the label on the center, but I'm learning that the 7 bar code lines near the actual postage is what get scanned by so those lines need to be within a 1/4" of the top of the envelope. Is this true? More guidance from eBay would be awesome in this regard.

3. Seeing as my labels might be put in the wrong location on the envelope that might be causing my tracking problem. My listings started offering this service on Monday Feb 1st and even the 5 packages I sent out on Monday Feb 1st have still not been scanned, they just show the label was printed on my end, so I've had about 20 eBay messages now from my customers asking if I've even shipped them there items.  I've now sent 45 packages in total and have had 0 of them show any tracking information or showing being delivered. Quick side note I take a caliper to every envelope to make sure I am under the 1/4" thickness and I am. I have not had one of the envelopes be returned as of yet.

4. What do I do? I have 40 shipments out there somewhere, customers reaching out thinking I am not shipping there items, I have not received any of the envelopes back for being non-compliant.

I feel my main issues is label location, but overall I want to pull my hair out right now. Like are all these shipments just deemed lost? One of the orders from Feb 1st was going 27 miles from me, and that customer reached out last night asking about his shipment as he's not received it.

Any guidance/help would certainly be appreciate by a eBay team member familiar with this service. Because just as a side note the 5 eBay reps I've talked with over the phone about this new service has zero clue on how to help me or knows little to nothing about the service. 

Thank you

Blake

[no_zero369]

um, ah.... the "problem" is that you are looking for the answer in the wrong place.  eBay has ZERO clue about most things and the placement of an address on a letter is something they definitely have no idea about.

No this would be a USPS issue.  Here, you can drill down into the nitty gritty on the USPS requirements.  Yeah, I know, PhD level stuff, so to find the "right" answer, let's go to the source and take the time to read/study. 😎

https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/202.htm

https://pe.usps.com/text/qsg300/q602.htm

But I suspect most want a quick pic and hope that is good enough....

[mattfm77]

It took me over an hour but I was able to finally get it to print directly to the 4 x 6 envelope. I had to adjust the print settings and figure out the best way to feed the envelope. Once I did that, it looked the way a normal address should instead of being all scrunched together like it was in the print preview. You don’t actually get charged for the postage until it’s actually scanned, so you can print one a few times as you’re experimenting.  Mine were mostly showing tacking activity with 48 hours.

[tdrake]

Here is a photo of my very 1st "test" piece after arrival at destination.    As you can see, I printed label on half sheet, which is how I've been shipping these days, and overlapped it around to the back.  Since then I've been trimming the label but address and everything has been placed located in the exact same spot as this.   This is a #10 envelope with 1 card in "penny" sleeve,  with a thin cardboard backing almost the size of envelope and another a little bigger than card.  No problems so far, but I've not sent all that many.

[northernlightsenterprises]

Not sure if this was sarcasm or you just being a jerk either way I appreciate the reply and information.

thank you 

[no_zero369]

oh no, I'm just an @zzH*le.   Jeez.

[northernlightsenterprises]

Thanks for the reply, this is what mine have looked like.

[wooperwares]

I don't have answers, just confirmation this is a mess to put it mildly.

I have customers reporting delivered but they don't have it. The number of customers reporting this inclines me to believe they are truthful.

Good luck talking to support, that isn't happening.

[northernlightsenterprises]

Thank you for the reply, I've spoken with 5 people as of now and they told me to wait until 14 days have passed since the shipment date before I call back to file a claim to try to get them to cover the $20.00 shipping insurance/coverage. 

The amount of time we've spent replying to our customers trying to get them to understand is exhausting....

Like even if something was mis-labeled by me or my staff it still has our return address on it, and it's now been 9 days since sending the first wave of shipments via this new method and I have had  0 shipments returned and still not 1 of now 56 shipments scanned in. 

[northernlightsenterprises]

And again one of these shipments was going 27 miles from our location and the customer just confirmed still no package. 

[wooperwares]

I suppose it is a good time to understand the claim process for this, seems like it won't be a stranger. I hate eBay so much, I wish one solid competitor swooped in, gone in a second without hesitation.

[northernlightsenterprises]

Agreed!

Just frustrating, like another commenter mentioned it's not 100% on eBay but USPS also. If two companies come together to form a partnership on a new service you think they would properly train there staff to be able to answer these questions we have especially when they probably will have hundreds of thousands of packages/envelopes utilizing this service per day. 

I've honestly spent about 5 more hours on the phone with USPS vs. eBay trying to get someone to help me to no avail. Everyone just tells me that it's not a trackable package, and when I mention these so called scanners they have at their sorting facilities they have 0 clue. 

Like in eBay's press release I saw 0 information regarding on this system works. Most of us small business owners have invested in label printers and by default on all my 4 x 6 bubble mailers I put a 3" x 5" label on center and have been for years, so if an envelope is different as far as location goes to make sure these scanning machines find the 7 line barcode then they need to inform us of that. 

[tdrake]

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@northernlightsenterprises wrote:

Thanks for the reply, this is what mine have looked like.

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Could there be a problem with the highspeed machine scanner reading the coding thru the tape?

[northernlightsenterprises]

hope so, I am going to adjust moving forward by moving the label up so it's almost flush with the topside of the envelope, and also not put any tape over the bar codes. Fingers crossed lol.

[shipscript]

Thanks to all who posted their labels and postal specs to help me put together this summary.

Based on the posts, it appears that many may need to adjust the print size of the label to meet the dimensional requirements or may need to cut the label for placement.

The FIM (Facing Identification Mark) stripes at the top must be 5/8" high and at, or within 1/8" of, top edge. It must be 2" from right edge of envelope.

https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/images/202_12.jpg

OCR clear zones

The top of the address should be no more than 2-3/4" from bottom of letter. The address must be at least 5/8" above bottom edge. USPS may add a barcode in that lower 5/8"clear zone, so it cant be slick or taped.

Below is a clearer rendering of how the label may need to be resized and cut.

Shipping - eBay First Class Letter

As I mentioned elsewhere, if I can bend my letter smoothly part way around my coffee cup, then it will be able to bend around the corners in the high speed letter sorting machine.

If the letter won't bend that way, it won't go through the sorting machine and may not get scanned, or it may jam the sorting machine.