It does affect small sellers and small business, but ebay do not care, it is designed to mislead and penalise. There are several posts about this subject on here but from my own personal experience the whole situation is very annoying to say the least.
The business that I work for on ebay recently lost their Top Rated status over LDR's. All the defects came from the black Friday weekend last year, yet the account is still being 'penalised' for these late dispatches. All the affected orders were sent tracked, all collected by RM on the same day, as the account offers same day dispatch, so you cant any quicker than that, and the local RM delivery office actually provide a twice daily collection for that time of year so some even left quicker than normal.
The automatic removal did remove some of these, but the vast majority remained which was raised with Concierge, but after weeks of calls they flatly refused to remove them. We were told there were no issues with delays for that period, we couldn't offer acceptable proof of dispatching on time so they wouldn't be removed, their advice was to use another carrier! When we advised ebay that some had already correctly been removed we were told they these had actually been removed incorrectly, and the rate should be higher. Yet the defects that remained had exactly the same circumstances, dispatched on the same day, same tracking upload date, the same acceptance scan date, and every single order was eventually delivered.
The whole EDD is farce, but is working as designed, designed to penalise and encourage failure.
For example, cut-off time for same day dispatch, the EDD doesn't change after this time it only changes after midnight, the same EDD is shown to buyers before and after cut-off times. Better still, if you order on Saturday you will get the item on Tuesday even though the service is Tracked 48 and the business only dispatches Monday to Friday. It also doesnt matter is select Tracked 48 or upgrade to Tracked 24 they will still arrive on the same day. Yet having raised these issues with hundreds of emails and phone calls to customer service as well as Pro-Traders and providing examples with screenshots etc. these issues still remain years later. It was even raised face to face with the shipping team at an open event in 2023 who promised it would be looked into and will follow up, well its Feb 2025 and we are still waiting. (yes they were chased up, again dozens and dozens of times).
Another issue is why does the ebay system say you have dispatched an order when you've simply bought a label, or why does it encourage the buyer to track an order that has no tracking eg RM48 LL? Or as the OP put, 'why cant Proof of Postage be accepted as proof of fulfilment of the sellers timely obligation', they have handed the parcel/letter over to PO counter with a receipt of doing so, which means this is now completely out of their hands, they simply have no control, yet if something goes wrong they are penalised.
The real question is who is at fault? The bad seller who dispatches on time with proof of doing so, on the same day as they have told ebay they will dispatch, or ebay's system? Well for us the situation only happens at that peak time of year, and has done since they bought in the whole EDD and LDR's. So it doesn't take a genius to work out its their system, a system that 'takes into account past performance, carrier performance and peak volumes'. Yet who is penalised and who has to answer the barrage of 'where is my item, YOU told me it will be here by now' messages?
So what do you do? It was explained that unless the defects were removed the business would be left with no choice but to scale down or close the account. Their final response was that the defects will remain and they will be sorry to lose the account. This is a 18+ year, 50K+ 99.9% feedback account, that has paid £10'000's in fees over the years and with 0% other defects apart from the LDR's. We wasn't asking for a reduction in fees or free gifts, coupons etc, just to simply remove something that shouldn't even be there in the first place.
Although the account hasn't closed (yet) it has dropped a shop level, and the number of listings vastly reduced with the inventory being moved to other areas of the business. But I apricate that not every seller has the ability to do that, but ebay have lost some fees, so like many have said "you need to have your eggs in many baskets."
