Ebays EDD'S

[lincolnshiremarine]

Good morning

As everyone knows,  I have been going on about ebays estimated delivery dates for a while now.  I know many sellers including myself, have reported this issue to customer services, and the ebay weekly community chat team with no success.

All the items we send out are on the standard free, three working day delivery service via ebay packlink.  However, before printing off the buyers postage label the dates given to the buyers are correct, as soon as we print the label off, ebay tell the buyer it is arriving the next day, which is not correct.  

I went to the Leicester ebay roadshow and took a file full of evidence to show anyone that would listen to me at ebay.  I was very lucky, and managed to speak to the Chief Commercial Officer of ebay and showed them the evidence, and I left the file with them.  They have promised to look into this.

I explained that many sellers are in the same sitatuion as us, and I also included the times I had reported it to the weekly chat team, only to be told it was working and no issues.  I told them all they had to do was look at past weekly chat and this forum to see it is not an isolated incident.

I also mentioned the wrong parcels sizes on the Yodel packlink against Yodels own website.

I really hope that ebays resolves this for us all.

Best wishes

[m25jet]

The chances of eBay successfully resolving this problem permanently are about as high as the chances of somebody getting blood from a stone.  However, there are some things that you can do in order to combat this problem:

1.  When setting up your listings set your despatch dates so that it gives you a few extra days to play with.  For example, if you always despatch items within one to two working days, set the listings up to state that you despatch items within three to four working days.  This should help to act as a bit of a buffer in the event that the item ends up being delayed in transit, as you're not working to such a tight deadline if you allow yourself a couple of extra days for delivery that you more than likely wouldn't need in most cases.

2.  With regards to the matter of postage labels, cut out the middle man and buy your postage labels direct from the courier that you are using.  That way eBay cannot mark the item up as having been despatched if you are not using their own label printing service.  Once you have posted the item out enter the tracking number manually against the corresponding item in your Sold Items section, then it will show the buyer a more realistic estimated date of delivery.  If you implement this option in conjunction with the first one then it should help to reduce the risk that the buyer will end up getting the impression that the item failed to arrive before the estimated delivery date that eBay gave him/her when you uploaded the tracking number.  If you set your listings up in such a way that it prevents eBay from providing the buyer with an over-optimistic estimated date of delivery then it would also help to reduce the risk of the buyer opening an Item Not Received case against you, which could potentially happen if the buyer ended up under the impression that he/she would have the item within the next day or two due to eBay's exaggerating with regards to how soon he/she could expect to receive the item.

[lincolnshiremarine]

Good afternoon,

Thank you for your reply and advice.

We have looking at using a couier direct, but there are issues regarding the amount of parcels that they require to be sent daily in order to open a business account with them. 

With regards to changing the dispatch time. As a business seller, we would be penalised as the eBay policy is to offer dispatch within a certain time period. Extending the dispatch dates, does not actually alter the date that the eBay EDD's generate. As soon as the label is purchased, the EDD date is generated. Many sellers have tried this with no success.

Best wishes