eBay Standard Envelope Price Increase Taking Effect Early?

[valueaddedresource]

eBay announced on 8/26 they would be raising prices for Standard Envelope by $0.02.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/eBay-standard-envelope-price-update/ba-p/32215678

According to the announcement, it's supposed to be effective 8/29 but I'm seeing reports on social media that some sellers are already being charged the higher rates.

Anyone else experiencing this?

[lloydsteventaylor]

When I print it says cost 53 but the label says 51. What's up?

[wastingtime101]

Did those social media reports say whether the ship date they selected for the label was today or Monday? Anything with a ship date of Monday will reflect the higher rate. This is not necessarily a glitch - it could be users not paying attention to the ship date.

[valueaddedresource]

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@lloydsteventaylor wrote:

When I print it says cost 53 but the label says 51. What's up?

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@lloydsteventaylor  - that's exactly what I'm hearing other sellers say too.

There are two concerns here - one is sellers being charged more than they thought they would be, but like you said the label says $0.51, so some sellers are also concerned their buyer might end up with "postage due" on delivery.

tyler@ebay  - can you help with this, please? 

[valueaddedresource]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

Did those social media reports say whether the ship date they selected for the label was today or Monday? Anything with a ship date of Monday will reflect the higher rate. This is not necessarily a glitch - it could be users not paying attention to the ship date.

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@wastingtime101  good point - I'll ask them, thanks!

I think the thing that's confusing people is that they are being charged the higher rate, but the postage printed on the label says the lower rate.  Hopefully that won't cause any issues if they ship on Monday.

[wastingtime101]

That cost shown on the label is obviously a glitch. The amount charged may or may not be. We'd have to get more info relating to the ship date to make that determination.

Tomorrow is the official date of postage rate changes. I'd ask those same sellers what the label shows tomorrow - does it still show 51 cents on new labels or not.

[katzrul15]

When I dropped off parcels this AM for scans, the folks all ahead of me were buying up forever stamps.

(It seemed to take "forever" as I waited patiently while they perused the 42 choices and went back and fort on which ones seemed prettier.......sigh)

So I too bought some forever stamps today.  lol  (not even certain how much it raises tomorrow)

[wastingtime101]

Forever stamps are going up from 55 to 58 I think. I ordered a bunch online and paid the $1.85 shipping. Seven fam members and the GF all had me tack on to my order, so split we paid 23 cents each shipping. Well worth it. Plus, online you get more design choices than in the post office. I have 3 cousins getting married this Fall and they all had me order stamps for their thank yous. Some other fam had me order stamps for their Christmas cards. It was a hefty order. Nice cash back on my CC. 😁

[valueaddedresource]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

Did those social media reports say whether the ship date they selected for the label was today or Monday? Anything with a ship date of Monday will reflect the higher rate. This is not necessarily a glitch - it could be users not paying attention to the ship date.

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@wastingtime101  - two people on Twitter so far have said the shipping date on the label was for today.

[wastingtime101]

Ah ha. Then that's two problems, @valueaddedresource . You (or others experiencing this) should tag in someone from eBay to find out if they will refund today's overages and if they will extend protections and/or refund label costs for sellers that may have rejected packages or extra charges because of the misprint on the labels.

[valueaddedresource]

I'm also seeing some people on Facebook saying they started being charged the higher rate yesterday, but not clear yet if they had shipping date set for yesterday or Monday.

[wastingtime101]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

I'm also seeing some people on Facebook saying they started being charged the higher rate yesterday, but not clear yet if they had shipping date set for yesterday or Monday.

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Or more likely, for today. It appears this is all going on starting with labels purchased today (Saturday).

[valueaddedresource]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

Ah ha. Then that's two problems, @valueaddedresource . You (or others experiencing this) should tag in someone from eBay to find out if they will refund today's overages and if they will extend protections and/or refund label costs for sellers that may have rejected packages or extra charges because of the misprint on the labels.

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@wastingtime101  cs has been telling affected sellers since many items purchased last night/today would be shipping Monday, the price was "pushed forward".

If that's what's happening, it should only be happening if the shipping date was selected as Monday but anything actually shipped today should not be charged the higher rate.

Not to mention if they decided to change the effective date - an update on the announcement would seem to be appropriate at the very least.

[wastingtime101]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:
cs has been telling affected sellers since many items purchased last night/today would be shipping Monday, the price was "pushed forward".

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Can you help me find my eyes? They just rolled out of my head and across the floor.

[wastingtime101]

I've been thinking about this for a little while and these are my issues with it:

I understand that ESD a different process than a typical package which, if shipped Monday when postage is paid at the Saturday rate, can be caught by the USPS APV system. I understand that because there's no method to charge sellers the difference for ESD envelopes like they can with packages that eBay may want to implement the increase a day early to avoid issues with envelopes shipped Monday. BUT ...

If eBay wants to do that then they need to announce that they're making the change starting Saturday. That should have been done from the get-go. They need to make sure the labels reflect the cost paid, not the old cost. The way this was handled is so sloppy and it erodes buyer trust in the marketplace. Big fail on eBay's part in multiple ways.

That doesn't even factor in the lack of trust and respect that sellers will know that when there's a price change they need to reflect an accurate ship date on the label. If that's the big concern, why not add a temporary pop-up on Friday and Saturday saying that the price change is happening so an accurate ship date is essential? If the bigger concern is that sellers know what they're doing and too many would have abused the system, then my above paragraph states my opinions on what eBay should have done.