Discriminated against for not having a printer or smartphone ?

[burlingtonsw1]

This is outrageous ! 'Simple delivery' discriminates ?

[kath3735_wxmjn]

I have a printer but will still not be using e bay!  No smart phone though.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

actually i would have thought that the ASDA demographic was the other way, are more likely to have a smart phone.   I do not shop at ASDA and i do not have one.  Tesco, Sainsburys and Morrisons all still have physical  cards although Morrisons did not originally until they found too many customers were complaining.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

Yes, it is fine everyone saying how cheap printers are but cheap is not always reliable and the inks cost a fortune!

[aphystykqa]

I have a printer, yes. I even have inks as well, and indeed they are Never cheap, as the modern-era idea over the last decades was to bring Printers down in price so basically they are almost sold at manufacture price, so they highly inflated the Printer Ink prices instead, as obviously a printer without ink is completely useless lol.

However, to compare the Extra work-load forced upon me with this so-called Simple Delivery system - compared to the Normal system of simply taking the parcel to the Post Office counter and leaving the professionally paid staff to do the work. Believe you me, all I can say is No Thankyou to Simple Delivery - which should be changed to Difficult Delivery instead, which does exactly what it says on the label.

You see, firstly I have to find something to print on, and an A4 piece of paper is not going to do the job. I have to have special sticky labels to place into my printer, and then of-course it needs to be put in properly, as will the printer print it exactly on this label where it needs to go ?? - until I give this a try, then maybe it won't do. I may need to make several attempts and waste a few labels trying, so it's lined up correctly.

But even if I achieve all of this extra work. The fact is, that it's a chore which I really shouldn't have to bother with once I've parceled up the item to the buyer. I have to keep up with this stupid ritual of bringing out a printer each and every time I have to post an item to a buyer, when it was so much easier to simply write the address on the parcel by hand with a felt tip pen, and then just take it to the Post Office. The whole idea is flawed with problems, and that's before we may end up with grief from the Post Office staff over the weight and size of the item I am sending - which Ebay Simple Delivery (operated by (AI) Artificial Intelligence takes a wild guess at it's weight, which is more likely to be wrong rather than right - from what people have said in this message-board community forum. So, then I could end up having to start again, or find another post office that shall be more likely to accept Simple Delivery's guessed weight.

I can simply go on and on and on at the reasons I despise this change, and I know even before it becomes mandatory, that there is going to be more and more unhappy people being created by Ebay over this matter. Basically, Ebay just wants Private Sellers to just go away from Ebay, and sell elsewhere. It's Business Sellers who they value the most.

[footballprogrammesforsale]

You can buy a decent thermal printer for around £80, no ink needed!

[fantailsforme]

£80 for a business seller like you might be affordable but for most private sellers it is not.  It could take quite a few months to make that amount of money and I certainly would not be paying that just so that I can print out  eBay labels when an ordinary label and pen did the same job.

That £80 is nearly double my monthly electricity bill.

[thetrackz]

£80 is a lot to a lot of people.

Especially when before you could simply write the address with a pen.

All to go along with ebays latest grift.

[welshjoskin]

Why on earth should I or anyone else fork out 80 quid for a printer in order to be able to sell something that's no longer needed? I might have to sell 10 or more items to cover the cost of that printer - at a heck of a lot of inconvenience and messing about. Might as well not bother, save my £80 and just put the items in the charity shop or skip!  No way am I buying a printer I neither want nor need to kowtow to ebay's asinine attitude and unsurpassable stupidity when a notepad and bic biro will do exactly the same job for free. 

[jon18uk]

Take the QR  code to the Post Office, they scan it and print the label.

I would never "system of simply taking the parcel to the Post Office counter and leaving the professionally paid staff to do the work" as they will sell you a more expensive service than you need. Best postage rates have been direct from Royal Mail for at least four years.

[valleyrc1]

They expect you to have internet access, too. Where does it end!?

[aphystykqa]

---

@jon18uk wrote:

Take the QR  code to the Post Office, they scan it and print the label.

I would never "system of simply taking the parcel to the Post Office counter and leaving the professionally paid staff to do the work" as they will sell you a more expensive service than you need. Best postage rates have been direct from Royal Mail for at least four years.

---

Thankyou. So a simple printout of the QR Code on a sheet of A4 or A5 sized sheet of paper would suffice 

I always offer 'Free Postage' to UK buyers when advertising my items for sale, so simply incorporate the costs within my starting / buy-it-now prices.

I'd have to work out how that all works as well, and what insurance value The Royal Mail offers. Royal Mail Special Delivery normally insures parcels up to the value of £2,500 - but Special Delivery has been cancelled out (all thanks to Not-So-Simple Delivery), so what does the alternative Royal Mail Tracked service offer ?

It's just crazy that what was once so so simple, with just simply posting a parcel at the Post Office and letting them do all the work, has now gone down the Complicated Route.

[crn303]

Agree with your posting.

[crn303]

Agree 100% with your posting.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

that assumes you have a phone that allows QR code!

[kath3735_wxmjn]

That assumes you have a printer though!   Some people do not have a printer or a smart phone!   I have a printer but my phone is an old brick which i am very happy with.  What happens if my printer goes down??

[superchallenge]

Any chance you could just click the "Helpful" button if you agree with someone? You've posted multiple times in multiple topics today just to say "I agree" and it causes everyone to get notifications.

[a45heaven]

it's just that the platform was designed so many decades ago, pre app age and subsequent app sites like Vinted and Depop, and keeps having bits added to it, removed and tweaked, and it must be incredibly hard work for the software team trying to keep up, but the mistake is in trying to be like the app sites. 

I can not comment on the developers abilities or if just bad luck with the constant problems, glitches etc which are everyday occurrences on the platform, but if as you say its such a battle to keep the hulk afloat, then why embark on changes until whats already there is functional.

I can't recall any changes in the past few years which improved life for the sellers or indeed buyers, for ebay yes financially and control factors which they enjoy.

[aphystykqa]

---

@kath3735_wxmjn wrote:

That assumes you have a printer though!   Some people do not have a printer or a smart phone!   I have a printer but my phone is an old brick which i am very happy with.  What happens if my printer goes down??

---

I have a Brick to, and have 'Never' moved to the Smart-Phone world, and nor would I ever want to. The name which is generally used for phones with Buttons and no Internet Access are called Dumb-Phones lol. Whoever invented that name was Assuming that anyone who owns/uses them, must be a Dumb and stupid person (hence the title used). Actually, the demand for these kind of phones is growing, and more and more phone companies are making new models to deal with this demand. 

But, I don't use one because I am dumb. I have owned several laptop computers since the year 2002 and am very capable with it. But I just like pressing 'Buttons' and like a very large 17.3" screen. Not some teeny-tiny screen on some hand held device such as a smart phone and typing on some screen and wiping my finger marks off every few minutes lol. But (sadly) The Smart-Phone world has taken over, and so has the QR code phenomena grown exponentially. It's truly sickening to see it take over as it has, just like when walking into fast-food companies McDonalds, KFC and Burger King which are pretty much all about FORCING us to deal with a touch-screen device to take our orders, and counter service is vanishing before our very eyes, as the Human is replaced by The Machine, and most 'Staff' haven't got the time nor care to deal with anyone with disabilities who find difficulties with their Mandatory System to simply order food.

Ebay has gone the same way, with limiting that face to face service from a Post Office and the tradional Human dealing with your parcels, but now it's just barely-a-word as it's quick 'QR-Code-Scan', then Print a Label, and off you go on your way out of the post office. In fact, a time will one day arrive where Post Offices shall have Humans removed to be replaced by a Machine to deal with services like what Ebay has forced upon us Private Sellers

But yes, a lot don't have Printers, and they too can suddenly go wrong (for whatever the reason may be) - and then you are stuck in a rut, because Ebay hasn't the brains to find any alternative. Nor do they care. And as for Disabled people. Well. It's 'Obvious' what they think of them. This has deep Anti-Disabled-People written all over it, and that is something which (thankfully) the Post Offices always take care of.

I have Brains though, and I would have kept the 'Optional' Simple Delivery service, and simply applied a small fee to sellers, if they wished to use the 'Standard' Ebay variety of services - which they've offered for 30 years (since Ebay's creation) - and another option, is to give an alternative option of a QR code, with a simple series of Numbers, Letters and maybe Symbols. For example :- AK689H%LY825634U64? - which a seller can simply write down on a piece of paper, and take that to the Post Office with their parcel - and then a Post Office staff member can key that unique number pertaining to a particular QR Code and type it into their computer, and that would intern create the Same action as a QR Code would. So that way, no Smart Phone/Tablet or Printer needed to perform that function. That would be very Disabled-Friendly as well

[vinylscot]

I think the quote at the beginning of your post is most likely pretty accurate.

I worked for around fifteen years for a major IT Plc. This company was one of the first to have its own in-house fully integrated online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System. It was miles ahead of everyone else.

However, instead of periodically releasing a new version, management decided that changes had to be made NOW, so little tweaks were constantly made for even the most minor reasons, simply on the whim of management.

Before the system was a decade old, it was completely unworkable. So many tweaks had been made to almost every aspect of the system, often without any thought to the effect on other components, that it eventually ground to a halt.

I think this is where eBay is now, in severe danger of breaking everything to the extent that it just no longer functions. They need to pause all the changes, and get everything working as it should behind the scenes, before implementing any further wacky ideas. Their failure to do this has led to the mess we see now.

[tom-sales-london]

You don't need a printer or smartphone anyway for Evri.

Evri labels can be printed by manually typing a code into the printer device (at an Evri Parcelshop) or the staff into their terminal (at a Post Office)

Royal Mail require the QR though.

To be clear I don't like Simple Delivery either but there are ways round.