"That is very worrying".
Isn't it just? How nice of eBay to keep us all on our toes, and woe betide us if we take our eyes off the ball for just a second (although, to stick with the analogy, it's more a case of 'Spot the ball' at the moment - maybe we could follow it if we knew where it was)!
Another thing sellers using SD need to be aware of - and, as far as I can tell, eBay have made little effort to publicize this - is that your choice of carrier within a specific listing (Evri only, Royal Mail only, or both) is applied globally (retroactively to existing live listings, and to future listings).
This caught me out recently (thank goodness I only had a few listings, and I noticed it - although only by chance). My existing listings were RM only (Evri de-selected), but I was making a new listing, and decided to allow Evri as well as RM - just for that one particular item. When it went live, I just happened to check one of my earlier listings, and saw that Evri was now also an option on that one, even though I had de-selected them at the time of creating the listing.
The above is a word of caution, not a sob story! If anyone deserves sympathy, it's those poor sellers who woke up one morning to find that the postage options on their listings - which sometimes ran into the hundreds - had been altered by eBay. They then had to painstakingly trawl through each listing one by one to try to sort out the mess.
"You hear of sellers listing with Royal Mail as their preferred option but when it comes to selling the item and getting a postage label eBay changes it to Evri for some reason?"
So far, I've only seen two or three posts where a seller has reported that happening, but yes, it does occur, and eBay have put it in their T&Cs that they reserve the right to do so. And, naturally, they also reserve the right to withhold the reason from sellers; in a recent Weekly Chat session I asked for a list of specific circumstances in which eBay would switch a label from the selected carrier to a label for a de-selected one, but of course, I drew a blank on that request!
eBay are getting quite, hmm, shall we say 'concerted', in their efforts to get more sellers to have Evri as an option in their listings. Just look at those new (from 1st September) hikes in label fees for RM medium parcels for sellers who have the temerity to de-select Evri. 'Exorbitant' is one way to describe them. 'Punitive' is another. I wouldn't be surprised, therefore, if this switching by eBay became a more common occurence over time (and it would mainly be switching from RM to Evri, not vice versa). It's becoming quite laughable how desperate eBay are for us to use Evri, like someone trying to fix their ugly, smelly, socially awkward* friend up with someone in a nightclub, and having to resort to force, compulsion and blackmail when they realize that mere persuasion is proving to be ineffective.
* No offence intended to anyone who considers themselves to be ugly, smelly or socially awkward. I possess two of those attributes myself (I shower daily, but sadly that doesn't make me any fairer to behold, nor does it bestow any great self-confidence upon me)!
I do worry about falling foul of this myself one day, as I actually state in my listings that the item will be sent via RM (be that custom postage or SD), which I feel is all the more important now that eBay don't make it obvious to anyone looking at the listing. I don't relish the prospect of having to explain everything to an understandably disgruntled buyer. Also, it's important to remember that receiving an item sent via a different carrier from the one stated in the listing (or that was paid for) is, in itself, sufficient grounds for a buyer to open a Not As Described case. One would like to think that such a case would automatically be closed in the seller's favour where it was eBay who had done the switch (better still, eBay would notify both seller and buyer in advance, and make it abundantly clear to the buyer that it was they, eBay, who had changed the carrier, and not the seller), but even so, it wouldn't be a pleasant experience for the buyer or the seller.
"Is this amateurish programming or a deliberate ploy to catch out unsuspecting sellers?"
I truly believe it's the former. I don't think eBay, for all its faults, is trying to trip sellers up in that way. That really would be testing the limits of sellers' tolerance, not to mention having potential legal ramifications if it could be somehow proved that it was completely intentional on eBay's part. I think it is just a case of sloppy programming (or the AI going rogue), which would be entirely consistent with other aspects of the platform. I don't blame you for having that paranoia and sense of doubt, though - it's something that I now quite often experience when 'eBaying'.
"now having a break until Not-So-Simple-Delivery glitches are resolved"
I'll leave it to other readers to mentally insert their own response to that!
"My PO used to be a 5 min walk away - until they closed it, turfed out the postmaster 2 years before his retirement and moved it into a convenience store further away that now requires a car journey."
Sorry to hear that - what a b*mm*r. My town used to have a large, 'official' Post Office - now it's just a few counters in the corner of a high street shop. And it's not even a 'proper' PO - the staff there (with the possible exception of the manager) are employees of the shop, not 'The Post Office'. After the lockdowns ended, they had months and months of problems - sudden / early closures, staff retention issues, and some simmering internal politics that was evident in the way the staff looked and behaved. I don't know if it was connected, but Amazon removed it from their list of collection points for quite a while, too. But I digress...
"It used to be so much easier!"
You're right there. More fun, too.
