Simple delivery is rubbish

[lindapoacher]

I have spent the morning trying to post an item I have sold.  I have no printer and am unable to use the new eBay app on my phone as the phone is to old!  So I cycled to the local village post office to be told that they are not accepting eBay parcels.  I have an iPad where I can use the eBay app and pressed button for a QR code it came up with Evri code QR.  I scrolled down hoping to see Royal Mail QR code but to no avail.  I then took a photo of the QR code on my phone.  Not being able to pop to the local post office I then had to get in my car drive 3 miles look for a parking space, pay for a parking ticket and walk to a mini market to post the parcel with Evri when I had listed Royal Mail.  This Simple Delivery is anything but simple!  It discriminates against people living in rural areas, those with no printers and is not helping to keep local post offices in business.  PLESE DO A U TURN - IT ISNT FIT FOR PURPOSE!!!!  I was quite happy wrapping and addressing my parcels and paying postage to my local post office.

[Anonymous]

It is an utter s++t show.

[michauk_xsyi8rq]

100% agree-called Simple but far from-E-Bay board meetings must offer a bottle of bubbly to whoever can come up with the most stupid, complicated and seller-hurting idea!!  I can only assume that E-Bay will refund me for my diesel to the P.O or parcelshop, bubble wrap etc.  Sack the current board and put Mr. Bean in charge-he could not do any worse!!

[lardzeppo]

Could not agree more. A complete shower of *bleep* at the top of eBay. Maybe it’s a deliberate plan to get rid of the small sellers. If so it will work. I’m out when my 300 listings for this month are used up before next Tuesday 

[brainuk]

Just a quick question in case I am being stupid. I have been away for a few days and put my "Going Away" option on and expected all hell to break loose when I came back.

I use a PC and I always sell my items with Free Postage. I have just listed a few items, and the Search Advanced Options is still there for me to pick RM Tracked 48. Does anyone actually know if that is going to disappear in 3 days time?

[chairry]

ebay want to control all aspects of the sale, but are rubbish at doing it. So we end up having to offer a worse and worse service to anyone who buys

we soon loose the ability to send how we want to and will be restricted to fewer options that ebay decide to let us use 

just let us ship the way we want to ebay!!!

[underpinned]

In Simple Delivery you don't list with Royal Mail or Evri. You just list. Maybe you misread when you thought you listed with Royal Mail?

When you sold the item, the label print page + the email should be quite clear it was for Evri, not Royal Mail?

You can opt out of certain couriers. So if you don't like Evri, you can turn them off and keep Royal Mail in My eBay > Account > Postage preferences, or direct link at https://www.ebay.co.uk/ship/prf  However, it will only take affect going forward. Granted this page could probably be easier to get to / know about.

 

If it's impossible for you use Evri for this order, then you might need to contact customer services?

 

[hot**chile]

Great info, but does not really work for me

Happy to use EVRI so cheaper bulky items like books but wouldnt trust them with anything over £20

We need the ability to make courier selection at the item level

[underpinned]

Happy to use EVRI so cheaper bulky items like books but wouldnt trust them with anything over £20

---

As far as I know, with Simple Delivery, since it's tracked - you're fully covered as a seller (and also as a buyer). If the item gets lost or damaged, seller still gets paid full amount, buyer gets refunded, buyer can't leave negative review.

In those cases it's eBay and Evri that lose out, so it's in their interest to get it right - I'm sure eBay will be able to go to Evri with a report of how many items get lost/damaged, and highlight that to them. 

[namelesspromotions]

In only a matter of weeks, ebay has morphed from a reliable, handy source of income into a convoluted, dictatorial sh*t show. I have several items listed for £3.95 + £1.95 P&P (Royal Mail 2nd class). The "Buyer Protection Fee" meant that I had to REDUCE the sale price to £3.11 for the buyer to see, and pay £3.95. Now "Simple" Delivery means I have to RAISE the sale price to HIGHER THAN IT WAS BEFORE to accommodate the £2.70 postage fee that ebay have arbitrarily enforced.

What else is there to say? 

[lardzeppo]

Give eBay a wide berth. Until they abandon dictatorship there will be a constant drain of sellers. Like many I know what works postage wise. Who to use being central. The clown who decided simple delivery was a good idea has simply no understanding of the variables involved. I have not listed since this madness became mandatory and will remain away until common sense returns.
Sent from my iPad

[benjaminryan86]

Very similar situation for me. Got stung by it this morning (also great that it doesn't actually tell you how much the label will be until after you bought it) and after trying to fix the listing - which wasn't possible at all - I decided to just pull the leftover stock from ebay completely. 

That's the second change they've made this year after bringing in buyer protection! On small value items (selling price £3.98, postage included) I already had to absorb the £0.84 buyer protection fee to keep selling because when it came into action, sales dropped from 2-5 each week to nothing for about a month (until I figured out what had happened). Rising the selling price? Impossible when others are still selling it for the same price... What can I say but dear ebay, if you don't want the small sellers to do business on here just say so.

@namelesspromotions: Will yours still be competitive based on price point once you raise the postage?

As for myself, I'm happy to go elsewhere now. Just had enough with ebay's unpredictable and really rubbish changes. Might be trickier to set up on other platforms but at least the margins are better for the same item and the communication is more honest. 

[thepillenwerfer]

On a £3.98 postage included item the old Seller Fees would have been 79p so you are only 5p worse off if you've reduced your price by 84p.  OK it's still a loss but hardly significant.

Good luck selling elsewhere, and I'm not being sarcastic as it's a sensible decision if e-Bay is no longer suitable for you. 

[namelesspromotions]

Well as yet I haven't amended all the listings as it just feels like a losing battle at this point, they've sucked the life out of it. Even having updated a good amount of them my sales have dropped off a cliff. I was also making 2 or 3 sales per week but now it's barely that per month. I revised a few watched items to absorb both the BPF and the SD into the sale price, which totals 59p more than prior to both policy changes, which is still just about competitive next to the top sellers, but more expensive than I'd like, and LESS profitable than it was previously..

As far as I can gather, becoming a business seller would eliminate these issues but my having little to no sales thanks solely to ebay, they're gonna have a long wait if they expect me to give them 20 quid a month just to return to 2 or 3 sales per week.

But hey, AT LEAST IT'S NOW FREE TO SELL ON EBAY AND WE CAN DO THE THINGS WE LOVE AND KEEP ALL THE CASH!!!

[namelesspromotions]

Well I've since decided to just suck it up and charge £5.99 including postage, so while I'm only charging 4p more than I was before, I'd be making £2.07 less, and that's WITHOUT promotion, on something I sold for £5.99... 

The prices are competitive with business sellers, but they make a good 25% more than me for virtually the same item. Even prior to the changes my sales didn't justify a business account, I don't have enough stock to have any significant/regular turnover so now my sales are pretty much zero thanks to ebay itself it is not taking more from me than it already is. 

[brainuk]

Remember though that a business seller pays about 11.9% final selling fees plus he has to pay about £92 a month for a featured shop or £32.00 for a basic shop.

[namelesspromotions]

We all had to pay the 12% selling fee prior to any of the changes and everyone was happy. 

Sellers with featured shops are demonstrably in a position to afford £92 or £32 p/m, and that doesn't apply to sellers making 2 or 3 sales per week for a bit of extra pocket money. Hence business and private sellers.

You have a 5 figure rating, and that's great, but you're in a different boat. 

[brainuk]

It might sound, in the first place, like I'm in a different boat. I was conned and lied to by eBay when I enquired about becoming a business seller. If I decided to pay the £27.00+VAT each month I would have a basic shop. THEN...... I still have all the Final Selling fees to pay and THEN...... because I have over 2000 items on eBay, I would have to pay another £216.00 EVERY month to relist all those items that are beyond my 250 freebies. OK, so my buyers don't have to pay the Buyer Protection waste of time but it still isn't funny.