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.

[anasazirose]

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@rising-sun-photography wrote:

I just lost two Item Not Received cases because of this issue. A buyer placed two orders that were sent to a freight forwarder in Florida. I confirmed that the location was a freight forwarder through a Google search. Both packages show successfully delivered through USPS as Delivered to Agent for Final Delivery to the correct zip code the buyer provided. The eBay system never marked the shipment as "Delivered" even though the "Delivered to Agent for Final Delivery" showed in the tracking information. The buyer opened Item Not Received cases for both orders and eBay just closed both cases in their favor this morning. The reason they found in the buyers favor was because they didn't receive valid proof of delivery.  Each order was only around $35 so it was well below the requirement for signature confirmation. I have appealed both cases and I am waiting to see what the outcome is. 

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Maybe whomever at ebay decided in the buyer's favor needs to see this post, or talk to devon.

[anasazirose]

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@banknotes_1 wrote:

Now ebay started doing the opposite: they marque shipments as DElIVERED even if they were rendered to the final delivery agent and have no been delivered yet. That will keep me from buying on ebay for as much as possible.

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If you hired a FF to receive your package and then to forward it to you, the seller's responsibility is completed once the item is received by the company you hired.  If you do not receive your item, you should contact the company you hired to accept the responsibility of receiving and forwarding the package. 

[anasazirose]

here is mine

This is the FF it was sent to

[gurlcat]

@wastingtime101  Had a pretty frustrating discussion with a blue on the Ebay For Business Facebook group tonight (this was in a thread about EIS and in the hilariously chaotic tradition of EFB threads, where they post a cheerful topic and everybody replies with disgruntled fury, often about other topics, this time I did the same) . 
    I'm just really getting tired of the "good news" that ebay will find in the seller's favor when scammers try to INR with this tracking thing .....if we go through annoying extra hoops to get that finding.  And never mind that it's an irritating time suck that will undoubtedly need doing increasingly more often as more scam buyers give it a try ....I also really doubt we (and they, Ebay) could get a real idea how many sellers are actually being affected by this but DON'T appeal or escalate or whatever the term is, because they're relatively new or just think this is yet another way Ebay "enables scammers", so they don't even try to appeal, and just leave Ebay because they're sick of this kind of thing.  I don't know the numbers but I would suspect that a very small percent of Ebay sellers participate in this Community, or EFB, or any other groups, and are instead just alone and frustrated.  

[valueaddedresource]

@gurlcat  oh my....gotta love the very confident tone of "it comes through the API from USPS so there's nothing we can do" flipped to "well I'm not really tech savvy sooo.....never mind" 

I've put in my time in the CS trenches and have a lot of empathy for people doing that work but come on now, if you don't really know something, don't just wing it and make it up as you go along. 🙄

[wastingtime101]

Thanks for sharing @gurlcat. FYI this has been ongoing since the first week of October (in a few days that makes 7 months) - not November.

That CS rep is informed that policy covers the seller and is ready and willing to help anybody she speaks with that's encountering the issue. I assume most of her teammates are on the same page. I've worked with that rep on social before and she's always been great.

That CS rep is admittedly not tech-savvy, so her comment that this problem can't be fixed is a bit of an uninformed reply. While it's accurate USPS coding can't be changed by eBay, what eBay can do is fix their own coding and the way their system translates data coming through the API.

That CS rep was not correct in saying it's a new USPS scan. The scan has been around for many years (documented upthread with USPS links) and eBay used to read it as delivered on the order page delivery status and tracking pop up (also documented upthread with screenshots I posted). Something broke that first week of October.

If USPS changed something about the way they code delivered to agent then eBay needs to update their code to recognize that change. If USPS changed nothing (no way for us to know either way) then eBay needs to fix whatever change was made in their own code that broke things.

You (gurlcat) had a 'delivered to agent' package that did show delivered in the middle of this (Nov? Dec?). So obviously this eBay programming issue is not affecting every single seller/order. 

This can be fixed. It's a question of when that will happen. Devon told us eBay is working on it and I have no reason to doubt that. It appears to not be a high priority for eBay. And I'd assume with all the recent eBay layoffs plus the focus on EIS, resources are probably tighter these days which doesn't help.

Complaints are probably down since (a) we're past the high-volume holiday season and (b) fewer scammers are taking advantage since it's now harder for them to win these cases - sellers have policy backup if they escalate. I can understand why it might not be high priority for eBay, but the longevity of this - seven months - I think that priority status should be bumped. 😁

In all fairness, through this discussion and Devon's assistance we did effect change to get the delivery status clearly spelled out in eBay's internal policy pages so fewer sellers are losing their appeals. That's a big win, even if the issue is not yet fixed. I don't want to settle for that, though. I want the status fixed. Delivered to agent has been around for years and I never had an issue with eBay showing "delivered" before that first week in October.

It's my hope that many people facing INR claims found this discussion, found solutions through our posts here, took action, and those scammers did not walk away with refunds. I hope that number of sellers outweighs the number of scammers that found this discussion and took advantage. There's always a down side to bringing a problem to light. Gotta hope this is gonna be fixed.

Until this is fixed there will still be sellers (and buyers with returns as demonstrated upthread) that get caught in this. It's a big time and resource (and money) suck for everyone to have to contact CS, sometimes multiple times, to get it sorted. And every refund that comes from eBay's pocket on appeal and every minute of CS resources spent on this is one more hit to sellers because that stuff all translates to more fees in the long run.

Can we aim for a resolution before Summer hits, eBay? Or are you too focused on the EIS changes rolling out through July 1 and the USPS price and service changes rolling out July 9?

[gurlcat]

Thank you. I knew it was either October or November and decided to whine on the conservative side, lol.  I've dealt with Paige several times as well, and she's usually been pretty helpful.  This time, when her second reply sounded like Ebay really wasn't even trying to fix this (because they couldn't), I knew it was one of two things: that she was the first CSR giving us frank honesty about it, or, that she isn't actually technically savvy enough to make such a statement, yes as she pointed out @valueaddedresource .  Oy. But that's why I kept hounding like that, to figure out which of those things it was. 

The reason it left me so frustrated was, I think her mix of reactions is likely a blend of not being technically savvy enough to understand exactly why this is so hard to fix, but gathering from inside conversations that it is really hard, in fact hard enough that they're giving up on it for the foreseeable future.  Like you say, it must be at the bottom of their priorities for now.  

[lakefor94]

If ebay can program the system to identify a "attempted delivery" as a delivered shipment they can **bleep** sure program the system to identify "delivered to agent for final delivery" as a delivered shipment as well.

The fact that this malfunction still persists defies logic. 

[gurlcat]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe when you see "attempted delivery" that's within the box showing the exact tracking scans in USPS's own words, whereas Ebay's progress bar would still just be showing "shipped".   That bar (and the presence or absence of the green checkmark) are how the software recognizes whether our packages made it to the addresses on their labels, in other words we did what we were supposed to.  

What's happening with this 'agent' thing is a bit different.  It's USPS giving us affirmation that we did what we were supposed to, and so did they, but Ebay ISN'T recognizing it, and never will because there is no more tracking after it has reached the "agent."  

[beauty4id]

I also lost an INR case today for "Delivered to Agent for Final Delivery".

I need  devon@ebay help to appeal the case.

Please help

Thank you

[wastingtime101]

Devon doesn't dive into specific account issues like that @beauty4id. You'll have to contact customer service to appeal.

Phone and chat options here:

https://www.ebay.com/help/contact_us?id=4002&st=10

Or send a DM to eBay on facebook or twitter.

[wastingtime101]

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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.”

Update:

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

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I forgot to follow up on this, but I noticed in June the shipping status issue was fixed and packages 'delivered to agent' finally show 'delivered' in Seller Hub like they did back in September before this all began. Thank you again devon@ebay and all the sellers that provided support to get this escalated.

[kh-stanley1]

Hi everyone,

This thread has been closed at the request of the OP.

Thank you for understanding.