eBay not recognizing "Delivered to Agent for Final Delivery" as delivered.

[wastingtime101]

In many places such as apartment buildings with concierge/doorman, townhouse complexes with a management office, freight forwarders, buildings with mailrooms, etc USPS will deliver to the building's mail "agent" and this has always registered a "delivered" status on the eBay orders page.

That is it used to until about 2-1/2 months ago. Now those orders are stuck as "shipped" as the system is not recognizing that packages were delivered. When you click the tracking pop-up it's stuck at "it's on its way to the buyer" and "was scheduled" for delivery on X date.

I've reported the issue multiple times, but I'm wondering if others here are seeing the same problem?

Hey devon@ebay - can you get the shipping and/or seller hub teams working on this? If you need order numbers or screenshots to reference I can send an e-mail.

[janet9988]

I sure hope sellers are being backed by ebays seller protection in all these cases.

I have not heard of any results. Just claims.

[jklfindings]

Result of my case was eBay business through Facebook closed case in my favor, since I had proof of signature.  It was appealed and reversed by regular customer service... because of lack of proof of signature...  Then was over turned in my favor by eBay business on Facebook since I still had the same exact proof.  It looks like both myself and the buyer got refunded, and thank god I actually had a signature page from USPS.  Otherwise who knows how it would have turned out, especially with the regular call center.  The "Delivered to Agent" part didn't seem to matter to the eBay for business side.  They just looked on the USPS site and it was enough for them.  If I could give advice, it would be to use the Facebook page.  Those guys are actually on top of everything.  Not like the call center script readers.

[wastingtime101]

I saw this issue begin the first week of October, but apparently that's not the case for every seller.

@gurlcat posted some screenshots from mid-November and her "delivered to agent" package that was successfully delivered to a reshipper does show a delivered status on eBay.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Weird-transshipper-situation-I-ve-never-seen-before/m-p/334957...

Hopefully Devon is still this because it's further proof that those of us not seeing a delivered status are experiencing a technical glitch.

[gurlcat]

Unless I counted wrong, 13 people just within this thread have faced or are facing an INR buyer claim for this, and I didn't count ones where the commenter just said "I'm having this issue too" but I think they are actually out-numbered by the buyer claim ones!  And just think what a micro-microcosm this thread likely is, in the grand scheme of things.  Think of all the sellers who don't use the Community boards or even know about it.   So what I'm wondering is, what percent of these INR claimants actually didn't get their packages (or can't see them still traveling via secondary courier tracking)?  I think it's safe to assume some if not most are taking advantage of a scam opportunity that (so far) ebay enables.  But what I'm really puzzled about is, how have they figured it out in such numbers, so fast?   My Kazakhstan buyer doesn't even appear to be very fluent in English, and couldn't be a fraction as fluent in USPS terminology as an American seller, so assuming he/she actually did get their package, where did they get the idea to try contacting me, claiming they didn't? 
Mind you, of course it is possible they really didn't get their package, and for that matter, maybe these other commenters' buyers didn't either.  So is it possible that the English-fluent/USPS-fluent freight forwarders are just keeping the items and telling their foreign customers the package has not been delivered to THEM?  That seems a lot more likely if you ask me, and if it is the case, that would be a major federal crime.  I wonder if any buyers are being specific with their claims/emails to sellers, like if they contacted their forwarders, and what they said.  

[fern*wood]

I currently have one showing delivered to agent for final delivery (Jan 13th).  Under the agent verbiage it shows delivered to APO/AE 09801.  No other delivery is shown and it still just shows shipped on ebay.

[crawlspacecollectibles604]

I’m experiencing the same thing:

Your item has been delivered to an agent for final delivery in SARASOTA, FL 34249 on January 12, 2023 at 3:50 pm.

when I googled the address, it’s for an international freight forwarder.

i’m guessing I’ll get a INR complaint any day now…. DAMNIT.

 

[803collectors]

I'm having the exact same issue with an order that got delivered to Miami.  My customer's page is showing they are in the USA but the phone number they provided has a Dominican Republic area code.  The tracking number is 9400108205497543053924.  I hope eBay fixes this soon since it seems like there are quite a few of us having these issues and it's priming all of us sellers to be scammed.  devon@ebay 

[1tuna]

this is a rather new development and it has me wondering

I ship all the time to FF`s

I can sense that some sellers will be canceling as problem with address

the address can be fine but I could easily have a problem with it if I cant get delivery confirmation for it.

I am sure the word will get out that its a new loophole and I would not want to be stuck losing an INR

I sure as heck dont feel like wasting three dollars for a signature because the USPS has a new tracking readout/phrase

[devon@ebay · Accepted solution]

Hi all! I wanted to share the latest update that I have heard back from our Policy team on this. They had the following to share:

“eBay policy has been updated to consider “Delivered to Agent for Final Delivery,” as delivered.”

Update:

Just wanted to come in to clarify that the actual tracking status will be changed to "Delivered" 

[lakefor94]

Good job devon@ebay !!!

[gurlcat]

That's great news and thanks so much for facilitating this.  However when they say "the policy" do they just mean how CSR's will handle INR cases if they come up, or are they resolving the ebay tracking software to notate 'Delivered' despite the USPS language about delivering to an agent for final delivery?   It seems that my 'Delivered' status was unusual, no idea why I got it when so many others obviously didn't.  But I believe my buyer might have filed an actual INR (rather than just try for a refund via email) if I didn't have that screenshot where Ebay declared the package as delivered.  And even if there's now a policy to close INR's in favor of sellers, with the status still just saying "Shipped" (which by the way is also what the buyer sees on their Purchases page), it would invite opportunistic buyers to at least try an INR, wasting sellers' and CSRs' time, and who knows how long it would take for all CSR's to understand the policy. Finally, some sellers' payments and service metrics could be affected.   

[pjcdn2005]

I'm just guessing but since ebay used to show 'delivered to agent for final delivery' as being delivered, I think that it it has been restored back to what it was before.   That means that it would show on the ebay screen as delivered so the seller would win when they entered the tracking number.

[gurlcat]

    Just to follow up on my pondering about whether INR-claiming buyers are lying versus freight forwarders keeping packages and pretending they didn't receive them, well at least in my one case I am now 99.9% sure my Kazakh buyer did receive his package and somehow heard about this 'new' way to scam.  For one thing the fact that he waited over 2 full months to contact me doesn't compute; no matter how long he might usually wait for a package to arrive from the U.S. it can't be THAT long.  But we also exchanged TWENTY-THREE messages last night, and it was pretty revealing. 
     
     The reason I was so willing to go back and forth was because 1. I felt I had the long end of the stick, considering I (unlike most sellers with this tracking scan) had ebay showing 'Delivered', not 'Shipped,' also 2. He had not filed an INR, so why not try as hard as possible to prevent that? and  3. I figured I might as well take the opportunity to see what information I could tease out of him, 'friendly detective'-style, by acting like I believed him and that I suspected his freight forwarder might have kept his package.  What ensued was pretty amusing.  --I would share it all but part of why it went 23 emails-long was because many of his replies were just 1-to-3-words, with 2 or 3 of these sent between my replies. Not sure how I would format the conversation for sharing here.  

    But here's some highlights: First he said he couldn't contact the forwarder. I asked why.  "I just can not."  At one point he showed me a screenshot of the USPS "agent for final delivery" code, despite how I had already made clear I knew "agent" meant the forwarder.  But he still seemed convinced that the code was like a magic refund coupon, lol.  I asked if the forwarder ever sent him tracking for the secondary shipping service.  He replied that they never received the package to ship.  I asked how he knew that.  And here I will quote him directly: "I contacted them, they said the parcel was not delivered."  But no, I didn't call him out about previously claiming he was not able to contact them.  Instead I did some googling on the address, turns out all kinds of freight forwarders have (or have had) offices/warehouses in this big commercial complex on Cornell St. in Wilmington.  I picked one, asked him if they ('Global Shopaholics') were his forwarder.   He said no, that his had a different suite number.  That's when I noticed his shipping address didn't even include a suite number.  But I didn't call him out on that either.  I asked who his forwarder was (and heck yes I was planning to contact them but didn't say so).  He replied "Shipper." I ship you not, LOL.  I said he really needed to contact them because they must have his package and were lying about never receiving it.  His final reply: "It's complicated."  
    
      No, it's not really.  But it's funny.  

[wastingtime101]

---

devon@ebay wrote:

Hi all! I wanted to share the latest update that I have heard back from our Policy team on this. They had the following to share:

“eBay policy has been updated to consider “Delivered to Agent for Final Delivery,” as delivered.”

---

This is really great news, thanks so much devon@ebay! I appreciate that you stuck with us on this.

Can you also confirm if tracking status on eBay is going to be fixed? I'm still seeing these items stuck on "in transit" - back in October I was seeing "delivered". You can reference my above screenshots if needed. Was the shipping team able to confirm this glitch is being worked on?

[wastingtime101]

---

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

I'm just guessing but since ebay used to show 'delivered to agent for final delivery' as being delivered, I think that it it has been restored back to what it was before.   That means that it would show on the ebay screen as delivered so the seller would win when they entered the tracking number.

---

I hope it's that simple.