How to stop ebay giving away my personal information with Simple Delivery

[green_apple_55]

The Royal Mail online postage site allows sellers to choose not to display their home address on the delivery label when sending out items to buyers. Now that we have to use Simple Delivery, the Simple Delivery Royal Mail labels appear to show seller addresses as standard. Does anyone know how to turn this off like you can when purchasing postage directly from Royal Mail online? I don't feel it's right for ebay to be publishing this information on labels, and it seems very unnecessary now that ebay are responsible for items once they have entered the Royal Mail system.

[department28]

Good point. I don't think anyone else has mentioned this yet. I'd be surprised if there was an option to change anything on a Simple Delivery label - but hopefully someone will know if it is possible to do this, or not...

[wintersdawn1]

Would this possibly contravene any privacy legislation?

[sml192]

It is pretty common practice to include a return address in case the item can't be delivered for some reason but try editing the 'Return address' in your account settings to see if that works:

https://accountsettings.ebay.co.uk/uas/addresses

[green_apple_55]

There is probably a T+C somewhere that seller's agree to that allow them to do this, not sure though as it's been tricky to find much information about this in any of the Simple Delivery help pages or FAQs. It's not about sharing the information with Royal Mail, which is something they could obviously do electronically if necessary, it's about publishing it on the label. The option to not display the seller's address on the label is something ebay could add quite easily if it's not already possible given that Royal Mail offer that exact option via their website, and would certainly eliminate one of the concerns about Simple Delivery.

[akemp1]

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@sml192 wrote:

It is pretty common practice to include a return address in case the item can't be delivered for some reason

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Green_apple_55 makes a good point - if ebay have collected/validated the buyers address and are forcing them to use their stupid delivery service then why can't the return address be an ebay location as frankly delivery is no longer the seller's problem once they've posted it.

[green_apple_55]

Thank you. I think a return address is still required by ebay though so that they can give a buyer a return label in the event of a successful SNAD claim by a buyer, so I wouldn't want to edit that.

[green_apple_55]

I asked in yesterday's weekly community chat and received the below response, so hopefully the option to not display the seller address on delivery label might become available soon:

"Hi @green_apple_55 

I absolutely understand your concerns with this. It's not something I've seen before, so I don't know if it's possible with how the system is set up at the moment. I'll pass the above over to the SD team to review and hopefully it will be something that can be rolled out in a future update. 

Thanks,

Dave"

[f3verdog]

Seems to be a fairly serious breach of mishandling our data under GDPR to give our private details that not consented to give

[wintersdawn1]

When I buy postage direct from the Royal Mail website (which may be for not much longer due to Simple Delivery), every time they ask if I want my address to show on the postage label with a tick box:

[wintersdawn1]

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"Hi @green_apple_55 

I absolutely understand your concerns with this. It's not something I've seen before, so I don't know if it's possible with how the system is set up at the moment. I'll pass the above over to the SD team to review and hopefully it will be something that can be rolled out in a future update. 

Thanks,

Dave"

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This reply reads as total b/s to me, every word of it.

[akemp1]

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@f3verdog wrote:

Seems to be a fairly serious breach of mishandling our data under GDPR to give our private details that not consented to give

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Yeah there really is no reason to give the buyer the sellers address unless they raise a case and the seller accepts a return.

Delivery is seriously ebays problem under SD they are being slopey shoulders putting the sellers address there as it gives the problem back to the seller to presumably pay for a reattempt with their own money.

[abrahamtoast]

Yes, eBay's SD labels do include your address, for return purposes.

However, they don't include your name.

I find it hard to understand any realistic privacy concerns. I can get a note of every address in the country using RM's post code checker, so an address on its own, with no other info isn't really going to help me.

I can concoct some pretty outlandish scenarios, but none which are remotely likely.

[akemp1]

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@abrahamtoast wrote:

Yes, eBay's SD labels do include your address, for return purposes.

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But why would the seller want the item back if ebay fails to deliver?

That's now ebay's problem with the buyer as under SD the seller is not contracted for that element of the purchase. Ebay are not taking ownership of the matter and trying to unreasonably give back to the seller when the seller has no obligations for final delivery or to resend etc. 

The undelivered item should go back to some ebay location that can work with the buyer and repost at ebay's cost or whatever maybe the buyer should pay ebay again if they gave ebay a bad address. None of the seller's business to get involved anymore in the process of a problematic delivery.

Undelivered SD items should never go back to seller, not their problem anymore.

Ebay want heads they win, tails the seller loses.

The seller would only get involved if the item was INAD etc when the case would generate a new return label if the seller requested the item returned.

[sml192]

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@akemp1 wrote:

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@abrahamtoast wrote:

Yes, eBay's SD labels do include your address, for return purposes.

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But why would the seller want the item back if ebay fails to deliver?

That's now ebay's problem with the buyer as under SD the seller is not contracted for that element of the purchase. Ebay are not taking ownership of the matter and trying to unreasonaly give back to the seller when the seller has no obligations for delivery or to resend etc. 

The undelivered item should go back to some ebay location that can work with the buyer and repost at ebay's cost or whatever maybe the buyer should pay again if they gave ebay a bad address. None of the seller's business to know what happens.

Undelivered SD items should never go back to seller, not their problem anymore.

Ebay want heads they win, tails the seller loses.

The seller would only get involved if the item was INAD etc when the case would generate a new return label if the seller requested the item returned.

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Under the terms for Simple Delivery eBay is only responsible for items lost or damaged in transit, not items that are undelivered for any other reason. 

If delivery is attempted but unsuccessful then the buyer isn't covered under eBay's Money Back Guarantee but they would still be covered if they were to file a payment dispute with PayPal or their card issuer. 

[f3verdog]

I get of course that you dont think they're realistic privacy concerns, however its not up to ebay to decide whats realistic or not, its your own data and some peoples circumstances may differ.  Some people do not want to provide their addresses, they could for example rather issue a refund and write off the sale.  Or say for arguements sake if someone has lots of very high value items as well as a few very low value items, they're offering your data to the buyers that could potentially get targeted once know the address.

Of course I agree that GDPR itself is generally a bit of a joke, but if theres no way to prevent your address on these labels its a very real abuse of it, unless its explicitly mentioned in the terms that people agree to (and NOT just automatically implied for when those existing listings automatically change to SD).

I've not sold anything using SD myself yet, I've cancelled most of my listings.  Most of existing listings are under £10 and/or 100g, but theres no way I can see to modify the weight details on the listing, so I'll be waiting until this comes into force, then cancel the rest, and manually relist making sure they are showing the appropriate correct weights which make them exempt from this SD nonsense.

I have a couple of higher value items (where upgraded over xmas) where I'll have to try it, but thats it, once rid of my stuff I'm personally done with ebay and these shady practices

[akemp1]

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@sml192 wrote:

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Under the terms for Simple Delivery eBay is only responsible for items lost or damaged in transit, not items that are undelivered for any other reason. 

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You've got to question if that's in any way fair terms given the seller has had no involvement in collecting and validating the buyer's address and is not involved in the contract for delivery.

If a buyer filed a chargeback for non delivery I would very much hope ebay wouldn't pursue the seller if the tracking shows it entered their carrier's network. The item should be returned to ebay to do whatever with, the seller doesn't want it back.

[abrahamtoast]

In theory you're right.

But eBay's hasn't announced that they are opening a huge warehouse to store (even temporarily) all those undelivered items, so, in practice, they will be returned to the sender.

The alternative is that they are all diverted to RM's undelivered items depot in Belfast, to be destroyed or re-sold. At least returning them to the sender gives a chance for the situation to be rescued. (Remember SD is for private sellers only - any particular seller should very rarely come across such a situation, as they won't be sending huge numbers of packages.)

I do think it's just another manufactured problem, to allow the usual suspects to have a go at eBay.

[wintersdawn1]

Under Simple Delivery as the buyer is buying the postage from ebay the responsibility should be the same as when the buyer bought the postage from the seller?

[akemp1]

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@wintersdawn1 wrote:

Under Simple Delivery as the buyer is buying the postage from ebay the responsibility should be the same as when the buyer bought the postage from the seller?

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Yes so (regardless of any unfair terms ebay might try and rely upon) ebay should be responsible for resolving failed delivery with the buyer and nothing to do with the seller anymore who certainly should not be sent it back for undelivery.

Especially as it was ebay that would have collected and had the opportunity to validate the buyers address.