Cancellations

[pb10000000]

Interesting idea, particularly having regard to distance selling regs. What hacks me off big time however is the number of sellers who immediately hit the despatch button but then don't actually despatch for a long period of time afterwards! Not good, not clever and not fair! What does cancellation policy have to say about that?

[roger_roger_over_and_nowt]

When a seller buys postage through Ebay the "dispatched" notification is sent to the buyer immediately which is 1 reason seller's get defects for late delivery and possible bad feedback.

As you say,seller may not actually dispatch the item until later.

[cke786]

Also, if you enter the tracking/parcel number into the +Add Tracking option, it automatically notifies the buyer that it has been dispatched as well.

[rjwilmsi]

To me the cancellation policy change (buyers have a "cancel" button until item is marked as dispatched) is just common sense - if a buyer has changed their mind then let them cancel if at all possible. In my view any seller who refuses that cancellation when they could allow it is just guaranteeing a return from the buyer (I do accept that for some items a seller may start a customisation process prior to dispatch so not all sellers can readily cancel an undispatched order).

Instantly marking as dispatched: there are a couple of things going on. One is that eBay considers postage purchased to be the same as dispatched - generally OK but simplistic: I could have purchased a label last Saturday early afternoon for Royal Mail but would not have been able to take to a post office until Tuesday AM given Bank Holiday - buyers with common sense will know this, idiot buyers seem to think items are delivered by flying fairies at the speed of light so get confused. Second point, much wider than eBay, is that when you give underpaid/overworked/competing humans metrics to be measured by they are incentivized to cheat - sellers will mark items as dispatched a day early then blame the post, couriers will mark items as delivered then only deliver later, the guy who installed our fiber internet felt compelled to beg me to fill in the survey and whether there was any reason I wouldn't give full marks...

[pb10000000]

Yes but doesn't really address the issue of an item being marked as despatched but it is not actually posted or passed to the courier company for a long period of time after it is marked as despatched. I have a case where it is now 2 weeks and still the item is not appearing on the tracking as being in the hands of the delivery co. Not a great look for any other buyers who are or might become aware of this

[dch2112011]

You are quite right it wants tweaking -  but most API links from carrier to ebay give really accurate information - most when looking at the carrier tracking shows not as dispatched but 'awaiting parcel' then 'parcel received ' (or similar)

The ebay 'dispatched'  message wants updating to add another layer  -  'address label purchased' - then dispatched to carrier  or something similar.

The problem is that the system was designed  for sellers to mark orders as dispatched - over time with the integration of carriers and ebay labels - the easiest option was to use API's which once the label was paid for or printed it automatically marks as dispatched.

The carriers had the same problem but have now changed their tracking because of the reasons you state to show much more factual and informative timed events unfortunately ebay have not as yet updated their system to show the same or similar information instead they rely on a link to the carriers tracking to do this for them.

ebay needs to update their system - their have been some changes over the last few years but still a little work to do.