Tracking number showing created in the past
Summary: codeandkoi is experiencing an issue where eBay's tracking events show the "Tracking number provided" timestamp as being 8 hours before the label purchase, which seems to be affecting delivery time estimates. They use Royal Mail and noticed this discrepancy occurs on multiple orders. cheekychippy210 suggested checking dispatch settings, but codeandkoi clarified that these are correctly set to 2 days. They are puzzled by the timing mismatch as the label was printed at the correct time.
I primarily use Royal Mail for postage so I don't know if this is a new issue or only related to RM only but when I purchase a label, the "Sender dispatching item" eBay event is recorded when I purchased the label, but the "Tracking number provided" eBay event is exactly 8 hours before I purchased the label. I wonder if this is causing some issues with orders recently saying "Arrives today" and "Delivery is taking longer than expected" as if things are behind by 1 day. Has anyone else had this issue? This is not just on one order, this is happening on a lot of orders.
From the eBay Tracking page:
From Royal Mail tracking:
sml192
·1 month agoThe 'Tracking number provided' entry appears to just be something internal to eBay. It seems to be the same for all carriers, not just Royal Mail, and doesn't appear on the actual carrier tracking so I don't think it has any bearing on the delivery of the item.
I believe the tracking numbers are allocated to eBay in advance, in batches, by the carrier so the 'Tracking number provided' is just something applied by the eBay system when the label is generated. The reason for the 8 hour difference on the time stamp is most likely due to different parts of the eBay system operating in different time zones.
cheekychippy210
·1 month agodespatch settings, might be something to do with that?
11.37pm, is that something to do with label printing?
codeandkoi
OP1 month agoThanks, I had a check on dispatch settings but for every listing it's 2 days dispatch even though I normally post within 1 day. I often find that on RM Tracked 48, eBay estimate 1-2 days rather than 2-3 depending on the time of day.
The label would have been printed shortly after I purchased it on Wednesday at 7:36am so that should have been the same time the tracking code was provided. It's just odd that eBay say the tracking code was provided 8 hours earlier on the Tuesday at 11:37pm.