Royal Mail 2nd Class post now officially 3-4 day service, Will eBay update estimate?

[camerapartsuk]

From today (28th July) Royal Mail will no longer aim for a 2-3 day delivery for their 2nd class items.

From the Gov.uk website, this is now confirmed as 3-4 day delivery (which is still a miracle considering most arrive 7-10 days)...

https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/using-notify/delivery-times

RM delivery estimatesSo will eBay now update the postage estimates from 2-3 days for 2nd class to 3-4 days?

Will they also add an aditional day if you buy say on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday to include an additional day as 2nd class is no longer being delivered on a Saturday?

I use 2nd class post for my free delivery option and get a fair amount of INR cases as eBay put the time on as 2-3 days.

They 'punished me' by adding an extra day onto my delivery times, but I actually welcomed that. I also put a dispatch time of 2 days, even if I dispatch it the same day, I might mark it as sent the next day to give me an extra days delivery time before a customer complains.

It would be great if someone at eBay would actually respond and get this actioned on. I'm not about to start using tracked services for my free delivery until I have worked my way through about a grands worth of postage stamps.

[kat@ebay]

Hi @camerapartsuk ,

Thank you for your post.

Right now there is no immediate change. However eBay are currently liasing with the Royal Mail on their plan for rolling out this change across their delivery offices. Edd’s will be reviewed internally and once there is an further update details will be shared with both buyers and sellers.

Thank you,

Kat

[custom-giftsuk]

Also just to mess with things, that is letters only.  Large Letters 2nd class are being treated differently (maybe) also RM24/48 are different again especially in light of the new zonal delivery areas.

[sml192]

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@camerapartsuk wrote:

From today (28th July) Royal Mail will no longer aim for a 2-3 day delivery for their 2nd class items.

From the Gov.uk website, this is now confirmed as 3-4 day delivery (which is still a miracle considering most arrive 7-10 days)...

https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/using-notify/delivery-times

RM delivery estimates 

That is not an official announcement.  It is just the estimated delivery times for letters sent using the Gov.uk Notify service.  Ofcom still expects Royal Mail to deliver 95% of 2nd class letters within 3 working days of collection. 

[camerapartsuk]

Most of my 2nd class send have now had INR cases as customers are being told they will arrive 2-3 days, despite the average wait 7-10 days. Most are packages with only a few letter size, it is a shame to hear you aren't doing anything immediately.

It's looking like I will either have to increase my prices to cover 1st class and price myself out of competition or take a profit hit and do it with no increase, when all it needs is eBay to read the room and see 2nd class is unfortunately failing to hit the targets and add a couple more days (at least) to their estimates or encourage buyers to contact the seller BEFORE opening an INR case, as people are too quick to resort to the resolution centre nowadays.

Please see this Royal Mail Page: https://www.royalmail.com/receiving/the-future-of-letter-deliveries

and take note of this diagram showing when you'd expect to get a 2nd class delivery. If you post on a Wednesday, it is aimed to be with you on Monday, 5 days/4 Working Days later.

Thursday > Tuesday (5 days/4 Working Days)

Friday > Wednesday (5 days/4 Working Days)

Saturday > Thursday (5 days/4 Working Days)

So when you do change your EDT's, please take that into consideration.

[sml192]

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@camerapartsuk wrote:

Please see this Royal Mail Page: https://www.royalmail.com/receiving/the-future-of-letter-deliveries

and take note of this diagram showing when you'd expect to get a 2nd class delivery. If you post on a Wednesday, it is aimed to be with you on Monday, 5 days/4 Working Days later.

Thursday > Tuesday (5 days/4 Working Days)

Friday > Wednesday (5 days/4 Working Days)

Saturday > Thursday (5 days/4 Working Days)

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If you post an item on Wednesday and it's due to be delivered by Monday then by my calculations that is 3 working days not 4.  Same for all the other examples. 

[custom-giftsuk]

Technically, according to RM if you post an item 2nd class on Monday and your delivery "window" that week is Wednesday, it could, in theory, arrive on Wednesday. BUT if you repeated this the next week, because the "window" shifts - it could arrive Thursday. 

[custom-giftsuk]

Also, as an aside, RM would need to let eBay know the delivery "window" for every postcode on a rotating basis and eBay would need to generate that EDD based on the delivery window and the postal option as well. So each day would be a variable set of EDD that would constantly change based on the sellers postcode, the buyers postcode, the dispatch time and any holiday, local or national and maybe the phase of the moon as it rises through Capricorn. 

1 - it's never gonna happen and 2 - if it does, it'll be a huge pile of steaming ..... post because of the variability of the entire system that RM have just unleashed. 

Also bear in mind that out postie now delivers 1st, 2nd, letter and large letter every second day in one big bundle irrespective of what class or delivery day it is and has been doing this for several weeks. Its only guaranteed deliveries that come every day. 

[camerapartsuk]

Hence my request to add a couple of extra days on 2nd class EDT's to cover the in between days.

I have started to print "I identify as a package, please deliver me on time" on my letters in a hope they would bypass the bundling issue that a lot of households are having in recent time, another reason I am getting INR cases beyond 5 days due to eBay's early estimates.

I think it has worked a few times.

I'm currently raising my prices and adding 1st class as the free delivery and hope it doesn't crush my sales even more on top of excluding Europe/NI which has also resulted in my rest of the world sales also crashing.

[texture-ties]

Is it possible for ebay to use this data for estimates so customers are informed how long each will take?