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

[vinylscot]

eBay does deserve a lot of criticism for the way it has communicated and introduced recent changes. I agree with points a & b in your post.

However, eBay are NOT to blame for any Post Office branch's failure to carry out instructions which have been clearly communicated to them from their head office. Every day, there is a bulletin issued to ALL designated managers/postmasters, informing them of any current circumstances and/or changes. This is clearly viewable on the managers' monitors. It is the responsibility of the managers to read this daily, and convey any pertinent information to their staff. 

Details of the agreement between eBay, RM and PO HAVE been communicated via this method on more than one occasion, including a clarification on the weights issue. Managers have been instructed to accept any SD packages, irrespective of weight, unless the dimensions and/or weight are too large for the network to carry.

eBay can not be blamed for the actions of incompetent post office managers.

[megan1512]

eBay can not be blamed for the actions of incompetent post office managers.
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as ebay are providing the service should they not have ensured it actually worked ?

[vinylscot]

Whether or not you like or approve of SD (I don't - I have small private account too), it does work, if PO employees follow the instructions they have had from their Head Office.

eBay could remind RM/PO of the terms of their agreement, and promise action if this doesn't cease (I would imagine they have done this already), but there is nothing eBay can do about individual incompetent PO managers who fail to follow instructions.

I got the info in my earlier post from my local PO manageress. She admits it wasn't 100% crystal clear at first, but there have been no problems running it, once they realised the size/weight thing wasn't an issue. She has had a call from another PO, who obviously hadn't read the instructions, and it was she who told me some managers just didn't bother reading the communications. In previous instances, managers who failed to conform to instructions have been disciplined, but she has not heard of anything like that this time.

[fantailsforme]

Are not a lot of little local post offices independent now?  Do the managers/owners not have the right to refuse any packages that they earn just the odd pence for?

When I asked in my local post office for a sheet of 'Fragile' stickers, they told me that they do not give out the sheets anymore because they have to pay for them though they don't mind sticking the odd one on the individual package.  Its probably the same for labels that they do not print themselves.

[ett1954]

"Do the managers/owners not have the right to refuse any packages that they earn just the odd pence for?" - In a word no.  It is part of the agreement they signed with Royal Mail.

Yes, they can reject underpaid postage however in this case they are bound by the instructions given by Royal Mail to override this providing it meets the criteria to do so; i.e. it has the 'marketplace seller' printed on the label.

[emw-designs]

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@vinylscot wrote:

Whether or not you like or approve of SD (I don't - I have small private account too), it does work, if PO employees follow the instructions they have had from their Head Office.

eBay could remind RM/PO of the terms of their agreement, and promise action if this doesn't cease (I would imagine they have done this already), but there is nothing eBay can do about individual incompetent PO managers who fail to follow instructions.

I got the info in my earlier post from my local PO manageress. She admits it wasn't 100% crystal clear at first, but there have been no problems running it, once they realised the size/weight thing wasn't an issue. She has had a call from another PO, who obviously hadn't read the instructions, and it was she who told me some managers just didn't bother reading the communications. In previous instances, managers who failed to conform to instructions have been disciplined, but she has not heard of anything like that this time.

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If it's not crystal clear it's not surprising that PO managers aren't following this instruction. After the Horizon fiasco it's understandable that they might be wary of unclear instructions which appear to contradict everything else they have ever been told about accepting packages on behalf of Royal Mail.

[happyshopper1982]

I tend to boycott RM ever since one of their clerks refused to hand a package back after they printed a label without disclosing the cost (too busy chatting to her colleagues). I can't remember what the item was but it should have been half what they deemed it to be. There was a queue behind me so I couldn't be bothered arguing the toss and just left them an bad review on Google. Either way, even if I was to use them I can't see this system working. They're so pedantic with weights/measures, even having a conversation about it with them is effort I could do without.

With regards Evri, can anyone explain what happens if they're overweight? I sell the odd book with free P&P which is usually £2.94, yet the odd one does stray into 1kg+ so i take the hit (£4.06). Evri are very hot on overweight packages and from recollection the penalty is about £3.50 per overweight item, a charge which usually filters through about 2-3 weeks later. Like others, I only know the weight and dimensions of a package once it's been purchased and have absolutely no intention of doing it at the point of listing. Any orders that don't fit what I pack I'll have to cancel.

[vinylscot]

They do not have discretion to follow some instructions, but not others.

If something isn't "crystal clear" to them, there are proper channels to get any clarification which is needed.

If they're worried about Horizon, surely it would make infinitely more sense to check up on something they're not 100% sure of, rather than to just ignore it?

People are too keen to try and dump this on eBay. This aspect of SD is 100% NOT eBay's fault.

[emw-designs]

I'm just trying to see this from the point of view of a busy PO manager. I agree that they shouldn't just be ignoring instructions, but I'd imagine that if they see an instruction to accept packages without weighing them or with the wrong weight on, they might think there is an error in the instruction, because this goes against everything else they've been told about accepting RM packages.

I disagree that it's just up to them to get clarification. It must be clear to PO head office by now that there's a problem, and it's up to them to issue clear, unambiguous instructions to the post offices which can't be misinterpreted. Just as it's clear to ebay that there are numerous problems with 'simple' delivery and they should be giving clear information to their users about how this works, and answering our questions. 

It seems that the PO management is handling this as badly as ebay. Why is it beyond people running these huge businesses to give clear and unambiguous instructions and information about how their wonderful new systems work?

[missdollydaydream]

Let’s hear from eBay senior management

You mean AI?

[vinylscot]

Utter nonsense.

Every post office branch manager has received highly specific instructions on how this matter is to be treated. They have received further clarification on any elements which had caused confusion. 

There is no suggestion that individual post offices have not received sufficient instruction on what they should be doing. It is completely immaterial if that is different to what they have been doing before. They MUST follow the instructions they are now receiving. The vast majority of post offices are processing all of this with no problems at all. (These boards would be absolutely swamped if this was more widespread.)

It is only the post office branches run by incompetent managers who are having problems.

(I will agree that there is still potential for massive confusion between eBay and their buyers/sellers regarding SD, but stop blaming eBay for issues which are clearly not their fault. It's just childish.)

[*maetrix*]

Ebay are totally 100% to blame for the current fiasco.

Nobody else.

[14061994]

Whilst I agree that Ebay cannot be blamed for the lack of communication between the Post Office and Royal Mail, surely they do have a responsibility to sellers to make sure that it works. If SD had been trialled correctly and extensively before being forced on private sellers the fact that it is not fit for purpose in its present form would have been noticed and rectified?

[emw-designs]

The issue with the post offices not accepting parcels and sellers being unable to post their packages is ebay's fault. Without SD, there would be no problem. ebay could solve this right now by continuing to allow people to choose their own postage methods.

Obviously they're not to blame for internal issues within the post office. I never said they were.

"There is no suggestion that individual post offices have not received sufficient instruction on what they should be doing." 

That wasn't what I understood from your earlier post where you said it wasn't 'crystal clear'. I thought your local PO manager had had to seek clarification from the PO. Sorry if I misunderstood.

[*devils.advocate*]

Wouldn't it also be interesting to hear from Post Office Senior Management?

[vinylscot]

I'm ducking out of this thread, before I say something that'll get me booted. The people posting are solely interested in blaming eBay for something which is clearly not their fault. As I stated earlier, this is just childish behaviour.

[lucy_farmer]

'Wouldn't it also be interesting to hear from Post Office Senior Management?'

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I think the head of Royal Mail  (Emma Gilthorpe) has made a statement on this subject ( I believe it turned up in the *monster* thread).

It would be interesting to hear from the Head of the Post Office as well.

Even more interesting to hear from CEO Jamie thingy, but I'm not holding me breath.....

[emw-designs]

All this has happened because of ebay's introduction of simple delivery. How is it not their fault? Without simple delivery this problem would not exist.

I'm  not expecting an answer, but I don't think it's 'childish' to blame ebay for ebay's introduction of a system which is not fit for purpose.

I also blame PO management if there have been failures to communicate changes to their staff and the PO staff if they have ignored instructions.

But ultimately, the fault lies with ebay and their insistence on rolling out a poorly thought out delivery system before it has been properly trialled and tested.

[wellingnorth]

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@vinylscot wrote:

I got the info in my earlier post from my local PO manageress. She admits it wasn't 100% crystal clear at first, but there have been no problems running it, once they realised the size/weight thing wasn't an issue. She has had a call from another PO, who obviously hadn't read the instructions, and it was she who told me some managers just didn't bother reading the communications. In previous instances, managers who failed to conform to instructions have been disciplined, but she has not heard of anything like that this time.

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I don't know if you'll get a chance, but if you're able to speak to your manageress again I wondered if you might be able to ask her please how it would be best to explain this to a Post Office who are not up to speed with this? For example is there a dedicated process that's used in the Horizon system for a 'Marketplace Seller' parcel or something like that. Or even just an easy way of referring them to the communication about 'Simple Delivery' / 'Marketplace Seller' from the Post Office. That would be really handy information for anyone who does have a parcel refused.