15-07-2025 12:24 AM
This may sound confusing.
I recently asked about Simple Delivery and a third party app that I use called GarageSale which I thought was widely used by UK sellers - evidently not. Anyway, I have used it as a private seller for many years - maybe 20! About five years ago (maybe more) I was in the middle of creating a listing with it and its built in verification process came up with an error telling me that I had to create Business Policies for shipping and returns. I had absolutely no idea what it was talking about and could not find a way around it so had to spend hours searching online to figure out what I needed to do.
I created the 'Business Policies' that were necessary and went ahead with my listing after which, I never had any problems and listing actually got a lot quicker. That's how I have been selling on eBay since and Simple Delivery seemed to do away with Business Policies.
However, I was just prompted to look into this thread posted by moonlight-rhapsody to see if I could find and follow the links that they had seen but could not and thought that it might be something to do with being enrolled on Seller Hub (which looks a bit different to the image they posted) and noticed that on Seller Hub all the links to Business Policies are still there - as are my policies; e.g. free shipping for BiN and certain rates that I had set for auctions. I searched online for any information on whether Business Policies were still valid after the introduction of Simple Delivery and couldn't really find an answer. It's still possible to create a new shipping policy - which makes no sense. Indeed, the Business Policies page states:
From 7 April 2025, private sellers in the UK will no longer be able to access business policies on the eBay app. You can still create, view, and select business policies when you're listing an item on desktop or on the mobile browser of your device.
To be clear, I am a private seller, as far as I know, Business Policies are/were not just for business sellers - they were just thrust upon me as a private seller.
Does anybody have any thoughts?
15-07-2025 2:17 PM - edited 15-07-2025 2:21 PM
For information, I just uploaded a test listing using GarageSale and the default Shipping Policies I set for Buy it Now and the auction went through without flags. It now appears as intended (as far as shipping goes) with free shipping or £5 for 24 hour shipping - which was how my listings have appeared before I put a halt on selling due to Simple Delivery - if anybody looks at the listing and clicks on the Postage > See details link, that is what they see.
The only thing that has changed since my last listing is the way that the price has been bumped up to include the BPF which makes the price look awkward and as if it is an overseas sale converted into pounds. I know that this is a different topic but surely it would look better to have a nice round figure from which I pay the 'fee', whatever it is. Note to anybody who looks at the listing, I might try to tweak the price to show what I intended, i.e. £375.
15-07-2025 3:10 PM - edited 15-07-2025 3:17 PM
As far as I know all Business Policies are still valid but Simple Delivery overrides the postage policies set on items eligible for Simple Delivery. So the only newly created postage policies which wouldn't be overridden by Simple Delivery would be those applied to items that you could still use custom postage for.
I'm just going to investigate GarageSale ... that sounds interesting ... 😉
Rats! It's mac only =(
15-07-2025 3:52 PM
@gnosemalf wrote:
This may sound confusing.
I recently asked about Simple Delivery and a third party app that I use called GarageSale which I thought was widely used by UK sellers - evidently not. Anyway, I have used it as a private seller for many years - maybe 20! About five years ago (maybe more) I was in the middle of creating a listing with it and its built in verification process came up with an error telling me that I had to create Business Policies for shipping and returns. I had absolutely no idea what it was talking about and could not find a way around it so had to spend hours searching online to figure out what I needed to do.
I created the 'Business Policies' that were necessary and went ahead with my listing after which, I never had any problems and listing actually got a lot quicker. That's how I have been selling on eBay since and Simple Delivery seemed to do away with Business Policies.
However, I was just prompted to look into this thread posted by moonlight-rhapsody to see if I could find and follow the links that they had seen but could not and thought that it might be something to do with being enrolled on Seller Hub (which looks a bit different to the image they posted) and noticed that on Seller Hub all the links to Business Policies are still there - as are my policies; e.g. free shipping for BiN and certain rates that I had set for auctions. I searched online for any information on whether Business Policies were still valid after the introduction of Simple Delivery and couldn't really find an answer. It's still possible to create a new shipping policy - which makes no sense. Indeed, the Business Policies page states:
From 7 April 2025, private sellers in the UK will no longer be able to access business policies on the eBay app. You can still create, view, and select business policies when you're listing an item on desktop or on the mobile browser of your device.
To be clear, I am a private seller, as far as I know, Business Policies are/were not just for business sellers - they were just thrust upon me as a private seller.
Does anybody have any thoughts?
I use Business Policies for Postage etc as a Business Seller.
I also set up my Sister's Private Account for the Business Postage Policy (should be called 'Postage Policy' to avoid any confusion) which she continues to use for her items valued under £10 and are sent by the Royal Mail Letter & Large Letter.
At the moment she has listings with postage for a 100g letter for 0.87p 2nd RM and 100g Large Letter for £1.55 2nd RM. She also has included RM 1st Class. She offers combined postage which is okay as long as the letter does not go over the RM 100g Letter or Large Letter (the item/s weigh only a few grams).
For any of her items over £10 Simple Delivery override the Business Policy postage.
All her items have eBay Buyer's fees added to her listings, but as she is not paying Seller's fees now, (she has deducted this amount from the items price, so her item don't look too dear).
15-07-2025 3:55 PM
I'm just watching an episode of Yes Minister and have to say that your reply reminded me a little of Sir Humphrey Appleby; no offence!
I'll leave the listing to run and see what happens.
Whilst I have never compared them, I think that there are Windows eBay listing applications.
15-07-2025 4:36 PM
Haha!
That's great , I love Yes Minister 😃
I must have spent too long trying to get my head around eBay small print!
15-07-2025 4:50 PM
I understand it in theory but on the listing it still shows the two postage options which I added to my default shipping policy - how is that possible if eBay now controls the shipping?
15-07-2025 5:45 PM
I'm wondering if there is something about the GarageSale set up that does actually override Simple Delivery. Without a mac I can't test that further unfortunately. If that is actually true though I'll be buying up the cheapest mac I can find sharpish 😃
15-07-2025 6:59 PM
I've been using it for over 20 years and it used to save a lot of time and effort but when SD was introduced, it threw a spanner in the works. I contacted the developers who told me that they knew nothing about it - seemingly the UK are guinea pigs. They reached out to eBay UK for guidance and got no reply.
They had suggested uploading a listing to see if it was accepted, which I did but took it down straight away - the same one I just re-uploaded it today.
Anyway, I'll find out if anybody buys it.
16-07-2025 8:44 AM
@ile136yz wrote: All her items have eBay Buyer's fees added to her listings, but as she is not paying Seller's fees now, (she has deducted this amount from the items price, so her item don't look too dear).
I found this online calculator. It isn't very precise but with a little massaging of the input by observing the results in the box, I managed to get the right figure to price my listing at £374.99 (I was aiming for £375).
31-07-2025 3:40 PM
Hi,
The answer is that Ebay has not made 'Simple delivery' available for 3rd party's as they are trying to prevent business from using private accounts.
Zipsale has the same issue, They asked ebay to add Simple delivery and ebay quite literally told them no they will not be adding it to the ebay API. Which means no 3rd part applications can add it to use. The only option is to use business policies which when listing via the API should override the simple delivery options.
31-07-2025 3:54 PM - edited 31-07-2025 3:55 PM
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Sorry to bring up a 2 week old post here, but there's something really odd about your postage policy...
Your have 'free delivery in 2-3 days'
And. '£5.00 delivery in 2-3 days'
Eh? who's going to pay a fiver for the same speed of delivery? or am I missing something...?
(this also has a hint of Sir Jim Hacker about it...!)
31-07-2025 5:57 PM - edited 31-07-2025 5:58 PM
That's eBay's summary, unfortunately - I don't know how they worked that out. I made the screen grab the day I posted it, the 15th July, so if it was purchased on the 15th before midnight, I could have booked a collection on the 16th for delivery the next day, the 17th. A 48h delivery would have been the 18th. Suffice to say, I did not have any input into that wording.
The services I selected were Other 48h Courier and Other 24h Courier - it's just an option that I included to save anybody having to message me asking if I could send an item quicker and if somebody chose it, as only one person has (if I remember correctly, several years ago), I would send it by Royal Mail Tracked 24. However, on that occasion, it wasn't delivered for 48 hours and I voluntarily refunded the postage charge.
There are also international options which somebody in the UK wouldn't see but this listing was only made to test the compatibility of Simple Delivery with the shipping policies that I am used to. I don't expect to sell the item but I'm just waiting to see what happens next month (is it the 8th?). I anticipate that I will be taking it down and never using eBay to sell again despite having a pile of items that I want to sell.
By the way, I finished rewatching Yes Minister and Prime Minister yesterday. Apart from the sums of money and other potential anachronisms, it could have been written very recently.