Why are ebay selling Large Letter mailing labels for items too large for this service?

[moanasaurus2]

Why are ebay selling Large Letter mailing labels for items that are too large to pass Royal Mail's letter template test?

To say that I am dissatisfied with the experience of buying Royal Mail postage through ebay is an understatement.

on 31/1/24, I bought a Tracked24 postage label from ebay.  The transaction was with ebay not Royal Mail and the label states that it was "prepared and printed by ebay".

Royal Mail would not deliver it. There was no information why until yesterday, the 6th, when they announced that the seller, me, had not paid enough postage on the item. They then made the buyer pay another £3.50 postage and are delivering the item on February 9th.

Why is this being managed like this?

Royal Mail's Tracked48 service is £3.29 and I paid ebay £3.30, so why is he being charged an extra £3.50 for something that royal mail has made no attempt to deliver and why is he being made to wait another two days for an item that is already a week late?

The answer is because the label ebay prepared and printed says that the item is a "Large Letter" when it is not, its a "Small Parcel".

Semantics? Well no. Royal Mail have a template for letters and any envelope that is too large to go through it is classed as a small parcel, even though the price charged is the same for both kinds of envelope. 

Given that ebay must have sold millions of 12inch vinyl LP's since they started doing this, they must know about this. I have looked on various forums such as Reddit and there are many people who have had this experience.

No one ever explains. Royal Mail do not explain about their letterbox template, so people on forums conclude its a scanning issue. It is in a way, but the issue is not with the bar code, its with those two small words above it on the label "Large Letter". 

ebay have told me they have zero responsibility for the labels, but I think they one hundred per cent responsible. The payment is made through them. They give themselves credit for the labels on the labels and, as I say, they must produce thousands of these labels every week, so must know by now that a 12inch vinyl record in a mailer is too large to go as a letter, it has to go as a small parcel.

This may seem trivial but the reality of this small but crucial inaccuracy is that I have had an extremely upset buyer on my hands all week. Our relationship has descended into unpleasantness and now he has had to pay twice to get his item.

On top of this ebay are holding my payment for this. I have done over 1,000 transactions on ebay as a seller, but as these were some time ago and I have only just re-activated my seller account, they are treating me as a new seller and are holding my funds until the item is delivered. Then they have issued the wrong label, so it won't be delivered. On top of that, they have deducted their substantial fees from the funds during the process.

The person on the helpline yesterday informed me that mailing labels are not ebay's responsibiliy. Well given all of the above, I think it IS ebay's responsibility and I wonder if they will ever do something about it. 

[kempseykate]

When you buy a RM label via ebay you have the option to put in the measurements and weight - if you put in the correct measurements, this would have come up a Small Parcel, not a Large Letter.

Presumably you only paid for a Large Letter - did that not ring alarm bells that something was wrong?

[kempseykate]

You either click one of the six size options and then use the drop down for the weight, or (the way I always do it) click the link to put in the actual dimensions and weight.

The labels are just done automatically by the size/weight you have chosen - ebay/RM don't actually check what you have sold and work out the size weight for you, as they would have no way of knowing what that would be.

[moanasaurus2]

No it didn't I looked at the weight, which was correct and I was blinded by ebay's claims to offer discounted delievry rates, I assumed this was one of them, silly me. 

[moanasaurus2]

When ebay generate the label their robot has the option to put in the correct measurements from the information in the listing, why is it not set up to do that? I am trying to sell a few old records I have collected, I did not realise I now need a degree in computer science in ordwer to do this. I note from various forums I have been on that there is a considerable number of orther sellers who have had the same experience and feel the same way.

[papso22]

You can also manually select the right label when you go to buy the postage, you don't need to put the size and weight in, but the ebay default is the smallest size, so you have to watch out for that.  

You need to work out how to package your item, what the postage then needs to be, and list accordingly.  Then when it sells you know what postage to buy. 

Most sellers think that the less ebay gets involved in their sales processes the better, and buying postage through ebay can be one of the things they avoid.  If something goes wrong you have to deal with the notoriously difficult Packlink. 

[kempseykate]

You don't need a degree in computer science, you just need to make sure you put in the correct weight and dimensions.

You say you paid £3.30 - that is for a Tracked 24 Large Letter. The £3.29 is for a Small Parcel Tracked 48.

I do think it was a bit mean of RM not to deliver it as tracked 48 (basically 2nd class), given that they knew you had paid the correct amount for Tracked48 SP. But RM are very money grabbing and will take extra any way they can 😞

[moanasaurus2]

As I said, I entered the details in the listing so why did it not generate the correct label? I have sent out thousands of records in my life, I used to run a mail order company and I have sold many many 12inch records, this is the only one where I have not used Royal Mail direcrt and the only time this has happened. 

The consequence is the item has not been delivered and consequently you have held my funds. Its ot a great experience from my end or the buyer's. 

[kempseykate]

I haven't held anyone's funds 😞 If you put in the correct size & weight the correct label would have been generated.

The measurements on the listing are not taken into account when buying a label.  It's down to the seller to make sure the measurements are correct, before they pay for/print the label.

I'm of the same view as an earlier poster - the less involvement ebay have with anything between me and my buyers/sellers, the better.  And if ebay have had any involvement, check the end result is correct at least 3 times!

[moanasaurus2]

I have sold more than 4,000 records on various platforms since I started, so I know how to do the postage thanks. This was the first (and only) time I bought the postage label via ebay and it went horrible wrong, took over a week to be delivered, the buyer was charged twice for the postage which I have had to re-imburse, I asked ebay why this was and they washed  their hands of the matter, nothing to do with them. I then asked royal mail and they told me that ebay decide the default settings for the mailing label. all in all, awful. I have since made several other sales and sent them with labels I bought by my usual method, they all arrived safely on time and within budget, so I will be sticking to that in furutre. thanks