ebay Estimated Delivery Times

[the-artificers-forge]

Hello again, another whinge/ complaint...

Still looking at the Top Seller requirements and statistics as to why I haven't achieved it globally, it appears 4 customers in the last 6 months have marked me down for exceeding estimated dispatch times... however, I have not missed a deadline, not once, and drilling into this, it appears the reason is because of late DELIVERY, not DISPATCH...

Once again, I cannot help but feel this is a ridiculous criteria to base anything on as the estimated delivery times (ie from point of dispatch to point of item arrival with the customer) are completely outside of the sellers control and I do not know where they get their stats from but this would be better if controlled by the seller who actually has the experience of real delivery times and can set realistic expectations. I ship all over the World and even sending something to one State in the USA can have a drastically different delivery time than another State. 

For example:

Order placed by customer on 22/10/19 - customer is located in New Caledonia (had to Google this - it is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! - French Polynesia)

Dispatch By Date: 05/11/19

Actual Dispatch Date: 04/11/19 (close but still inside dispatch by timeframe)

Ebay Estimated Delivery Date: 16/11/19 - Yes that is just 11 days after the Dispatch By date. 11 days for the Royal Mail, using International Standard delivery method, to get a parcel to the other side of the planet..... it is just. not. going. to. happen. 

Customer then doesn't get parcel on expected date (it took about 28 days or so in the end) and thus is disappointed and marks my feedback down. Through no fault of my own.

Anyone else have this issue? Anyone know how to manually set these times or at least complain to get the mark downs removed?

Many thanks,

Jim