So, after using Simple Delivery for a few months now, I have found there to be pros and cons.
Pros:
Certain postcodes would cause issues as Evri charge a hefty premium whereas Royal Mail don’t. No longer have to deal with this.
if a parcel gets lost or is late arriving, buyer deals with eBay and you don’t need to get involved,
presumably if a parcel gets damaged, the same is true. ( before simple delivery I put a claim in with Royal Mail, sent the claim in April, they asked for more evidence, then promptly closed the claim with no explanation, worst customer service experience).
Cancelling a sale, the refund goes through immediately, no claiming postage back and waiting 14 days.
The weight categories are a lot more generous. After 2kg , it jumps to 10 kg, so if you have a load of books for example, it’s easier to just put it over 2kg and not worry whether 5kg is going to be enough.
Cons:
If the label eBay sends you isn’t suitable, you have to cancel the sale. The buyer gets refunded but if the buyer doesn’t purchase again, you’ve lost the sale. Only alternative is to buy a new label at your expense and the buyer gets the refund on the unused label after 14 days. I feel it would be so much better if the seller could pay the excess, but I guess this is more to do with the carriers systems being unable to accommodate a change to a label.
if the buyer buys 2 items, eBay calculate a combined postage and sends you one label.
Had an instance today where I sold 2 porcelain dolls, one was much larger than the other. It was a real challenge to find a box I could put them both into, whilst protecting them both. I’d never have chosen to send them together, if I was the one organising the postage.
It’s not clear what size parcel the label will be generated for. This is particularly difficult on the listings where eBay have converted them to simple delivery. Before the new system I would guess the weight and size, knowing that once I’d added packaging, if it worked out more, then I’d just buy a bigger label and suck it up. You can’t tell what they’ve converted the listings to, unless you go to ‘amend listing’ on each one.
There have been teething problems and the lack of transparency has been the hardest thing to navigate, but on the whole, I think I am growing to embrace the change. I guess it all depends on what people are selling. I think I’m lucky as just sell stuff we are clearing out. (Clothes, toys etc). They tend to fall within the usual categories. Ie not large letter sizes or very low priced items that people seem to be struggling with.
I do have a printer and Evri and The Post Office are close by.
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