Let’s hear from eBay senior management

[crn303]

What an absolute ridiculous amount of nonsense, eBay have created on the saga of printed labels for despatching of sold parcels and packages.  Don’t get me started by mentioning Large Letters please.

Post Office outlets refusing to accept underweight labelled items and they have not been informed anything about what eBay has told us, that they have to take all labelled items.

If the Postal Office staff were to take these parcels etc  the outlet would be handed a fine at the end of each day as their balancing up would not be correct.

As mentioned before in these community postings, eBay leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to communication …

a) their staff at the customer service offices give you conflicting answers or state they will forward details to tech support.

b) no definitive information regarding despatching of Royal Mail Letter and Large Letter being excluded from Special Delivery.
Why can’t a 250g Large Letter be excluded from Special Delivery ?

c) eBay say they have an agreement in place with Royal Mail / Post Office.  It would appear they probably assume that but Post Office Counters beggar different.

The eBay fiasco experienced of BPF, SD etc by sellers and buyers over the past 9/12 months should never of been allowed to happened.  
What does senior eBay personnel have to say about this.

Any other large organisation would have a shake of mid-management by now

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"Since they are all separate companies, any direct communication with individual Post Offices is solely down to Post Office management."

Yes, I agree there will be no direct communication but whilst I don't want to go round in circles on this, I'll just repeat "Post Office management - on behalf of Royal Mail - could survey all its members and report back" - to Royal Mail and onward to ebay.

[jonatjonatjonat]

11,000+ sites.

Consider trying to get a chat group of say 20 friends to all commit to going to a meal.

You want 11,000 sites to all respond before rolling out something.

Of course they could do it. It's just not practical.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"Of course they could do it."

Indeed.

"It's just not practical."

20 friends do not have the resources of the Post Office though.  Businesses have to communicate with their entire customer base all the time.  Ebay do it every time they roll out updated T&Cs, to millions of users, not just a paltry few thousand.  I find it implausible to think that the Post Office with all its resources, including now AI, could not devise a program to automatically send out a survey, automatically record responses, automatically send out reminders if necessary and automatically prepare a summary.  And if it took several weeks, well how badly did ebay want to get it right?  Heck, via Royal Mail and Post Office management, ebay could even have found a way of incentivising Post Offices to respond.  I'm a great believer in "where there's a will, there's a way", and the fact is that ebay left this to chance. 

Some Post Offices might have *thought* they understood it, and so didn't query it, only to discover that the reality in practice was different from what they thought.

[fantailsforme]

It seems that Royal Mail is just as communicative to its branches as eBay is to its sellers.

[lucy_farmer]

'Ebay do it every time they roll out updated T&Cs, to millions of users,....'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah but nobody reads those either! 😂  (except papso and valueaddedresource of course...)

But, yes, if it was my job (like a post office manager) I would...

[kath3735_wxmjn]

well lets face it, e bay have made a .. poor job of explaining the system to the sellers (and probably buyers) so why should any other facet of the whole operation be any clearer?

[jonatjonatjonat]

You are asking for 100% response rate from 11,000 sites. Within weeks? You really can't see that being impractical?
Especially for a Post Office management that saw no issues whatsoever with the Horizon system.

I won't go so far as saying your suggestion is ludicrous. But it is impractical.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

you must live in a sad world if you have to consider the cost/benefit for everything you do!   As a private seller the only figure you can use are the item and the postage, anything else is not relevant.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

that is being slightly ridiculous!  So should the PO have to get a survey/report done for every time they send out new instructions?   How much time and money would that cost them?  Should all companies etc have to do the same?   I had a full working life and i never knew any where that demanded a response to them when you got new instructions.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

One thing you omitted to mention in regard to 'Ebay do it every time they roll out updated T&Cs, to millions of users' is that they also do not expect any response, they tell you that you have accepted them unless you close your account.  

[moonlight-rhapsody]

I've come across lots of challenges in my working life, including seemingly insoluable problems, and I've never overcome them by being defeatist.  This should have been achievable, if all parties had wanted it.

[jonatjonatjonat]

There comes a point where optimism meets profit margins.

I know what would win in the scenario you've outlined. it isn't 100% written responses from every single Post Office in the country.

[bojangled]

Ok so as an ex counter clerk (for a short while) had experience of being briefed on new situations such as, updates, promotions, how tos, forthcoming stamp designs, Horizon issues, currency info, courier collection updates, passport delays, driving licence info, sometimes daily issues and the like.

It all depends on the particular outlet’s management style. My manager insisted you took time out to read it quietly, initial it to confirm and that was that.

I’ve got to say out of 6 of us I was the only eBay seller, an update like this would ‘make sense’ to me, however I don’t think it will be easily absorbed by every single clerk, if they have been consistently told not to accept underweighted parcels.

We regularly the rejected 1g large letter and were pulled up on it if it was accepted.

Every PO is different, that’s just my experience.

[papso22]

---

@fantailsforme wrote:

It seems that Royal Mail is just as communicative to its branches as eBay is to its sellers.

---

Royal Mail does not have 'branches' it has delivery and sorting offices.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"There comes a point where optimism meets profit margins.

I know what would win in the scenario you've outlined. it isn't 100% written responses from every single Post Office in the country."

It's not optimism, far from it.  Optimism is thinking that "everything will be alright on the night", which is what ebay seems to have done.  What I'm talking about is *making sure* it's alright on the night.

If the scenario that I've outlined was considered and dismissed because it was too costly, then that's a business decision and companies have to be aware of the consquences.  Because ebay didn't insist on ensuring that Post Offices had received and understood the instructions, the consequences are that some of ebay's customers have experienced problems at their local PO.  That may have been the choice ebay made, or maybe they didn't even bother to explore the scenario that I've outlined.

[the-layer-laboratory]

I personally consider it totally fair to blame ebay directly for any issue with the rollout of the new ‘simple delivery’ scheme.

As business (professional) sellers, we are regularly told by ebay that we are responsible for the performance of our courier of choice when they fail to deliver an order as estimated/scheduled.

Why shouldn’t ebay be held to the same standards?

[jonatjonatjonat]

Expecting every single post office in the country to write a response to a change of policy is optimistic.

To be honest, cost isn't the main issue, though it would be costly. The issue is you'll never get a 100% response. And how you you know that ebay didn't insist on receiving the instructions? From the limited info available, the post offices were advised. As far as understanding the instructions, the saying you can lead a horse to water comes to mind.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

I don't really want to go round in circles, I'm happy to agree to differ  🙂

[ett1954]

"Because ebay didn't insist on ensuring that Post Offices had received and understood the instructions, the consequences are that some of ebay's customers have experienced problems at their local PO. " - Post Offices don't work for eBay, and have no accountability to eBay; they work on behalf of Royal Mail and under their direction where postal services are concerned.

As mentioned previously there are more than 11,500 post office branches in the UK and around 200 close each year however the number of branches has increased by around 200 per year over the last couple of years.  This means that around 400 new branches are opening each year (approximately 8 new branches per week; or more than one per day).  In addition there must be dozens of new employees moving through the post office system every day.  Taking one point in time to carry out a survey will never be 100% accurate as a result.

It is the responsibility of the sub-postmasters/franchisees and branch managers to implement the directions of Royal Mail, that is what they have signed up to and what they are paid to do.  It is Royal Mail's responsibility to follow up and fix any issues - eBay doesn't come into this unless it is with Royal Mail with whom they have the agreement.

Just to add I am reliant on Royal Mail collection or using the post office's mobile post office system which calls twice a week to the nearest village to me which I have used for years.  Yesterday I spoke to the employee on the mobile van about simple delivery issues.  She mentioned that she had known about it for "some time", her manager had reiterated it at the beginning of last week and then at the end of last week she received communication from Royal Mail via the till roll/POP roll (presumably through Horizon) that some complaints had been received of parcels being rejected in some branches.  She showed me the message which re-iterated that parcels showing marketplace seller should be accepted due to an agreement Royal Mail had with eBay.  She also confirmed she had no issues with it nor was she aware that any of her colleagues on the vans or in the village branches.

Parcels being rejected are due to managers not managing effectively at the affected branches.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"

"Because ebay didn't insist on ensuring that Post Offices had received and understood the instructions, the consequences are that some of ebay's customers have experienced problems at their local PO. " - Post Offices don't work for eBay, and have no accountability to eBay; they work on behalf of Royal Mail and under their direction where postal services are concerned."

As I've said earlier in the thread, I didn't expect ebay to deal direct with Post Offices as obviously I am aware that Post Offices don't work for ebay.