NO LONGER SELLING DUE TO SIMPLE DELIVERY

[rugbyguy1960]

AS OF 15TH APRIL MY DAYS AS A PRIVATE EBAY SELLER WILL STOP AFTER 19 YEARS.

I AM FED UP OF THE GREED OF EBAY AND I HOPE OTHER EBAY SELLERS DECIDE TO NO LONGER LET THE EBAY CONTROL FREAKS HAVE THIS MUCH CONTROL OVER PRIVATE SELLERS.

[gjalp]

Depends on the young person really. My eldest (20s) buys on ebay but mostly car parts although will browse for things that they are generally interested in. Middly prefers the other place that starts with e and ends in y as they like to search out unique hand crafted items. Youngest wants whatever asap so goes to the prime place although has bought pc upgrades on ebay. 

[gmij1961]

Its accumulative so its the  constant rate revenue per day  against how many days in sits in the  Ebay account before they pass it on  that builds up their interest payment  and what they earn interest on  is average  amount over a year .   So  before delayed payment the seller could remove their payment  with 24 hours if they wanted , that wait is now more like 5 days,  delivery time + 2 days   . So with delayed payments Ebay will on average have 5 days of sellers money to accrue interest  and that is will sellers that  withdraw there money as soon as it available 

I have used 4% as a figure based on what I have earnt from my savings ,  investments etc .  It could be less but also be more 

[mintsource3000]

Yes but to get 4p for 1 pound is more like 365 days,  

[inpoughkeepsie]

I reported in a previous post that I had around £500 sat in my pending funds. I purchased 3 die cast trucks for £165, that purchase was taken from my bank account and not out of my pending funds. Also, when checking my payments etc, I have never actually managed to reduce my pending balance to zero for over 10 weeks. Hence, I have now stopped buying until the pending balance is significantly reduced. Absolutely ridiculous the way this company is treating folk and THEIR money.

[gmij1961]

Its constant £1  per day rate   that builds up a constant  surplus  that Ebay will earn a return on . 

Before free to sell  I was probably paying an average of  5% charges as most weeks I sold when I had an 80% discount . So if you assume a 4% earning rate on money sitting in Ebays bank then delayed payment is significant step in replacing that lost revenue . If  you then add  average 10% return on BPF fees then Ebay are now earning significantly more than they were before . 

SD then adds an additional % on postage and compared to the good old days for every £1 ebay earned in fees the courier  £2 its another  significant return  and a 4% return on that could represent the equivalent of 8% in selling fees . 

However none of these "innovations" come for free so there is significant investment to re-coup and you could say April 15th was when all the new revenues streams are eventually in place .

The problem is if the dip in sales is more than Ebay have anticipated  and there is no real increase in revenue to pay off the investment .

[theelench]

I'm going back many years so this might not be relevant any more.  I used to work at the Greater London Council (abolished in 1985?) in a departmental finance dept.  Every day, before mid-day, we had to phone the 'central' Finance Office and give them our total of cheques received in payment for goods or services.

Those figures were aggregated with those of other departments and the total was lent out on something called the "Overnight Money Market".  If it was profitable for the GLC to do that for what was probably a few tens of thousands of pounds a day, how much more profitable would it be today if ebay is doing something similar with a few million ?

[akemp1]

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@theelench wrote:

Those figures were aggregated with those of other departments and the total was lent out on something called the "Overnight Money Market".  If it was profitable for the GLC to do that for what was probably a few tens of thousands of pounds a day, how much more profitable would it be today if ebay is doing something similar with a few million ?

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It's still possible to invest in a money market fund (via a S&S ISA etc) and get a rate of return roughly equivalent to the best buy cash ISAs without the hassle of keep transferring accounts between banks to keep on top of the best rates. 

https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investing-explained/what-are-money-market-funds

Before knowing this I was wasting time shopping around for the best savings rates.

I still have a little in real cash for any immediate instant access needs.

[shiqxion-gg]

Who's idea was "Simple Delivery"

Accidentally left it on for an item, and go to post it and the buyer apparently chose letter so it's the wrong size

Has to cancel order as couldn't refund their label and buy another one that is the right size 

Another reason to stop using eBay after my listings end 

[lucy_farmer]

'.....and the buyer apparently chose letter so it's the wrong size'

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The buyer can't choose the size of the postage needed; they only get to choose the speed,  'Standard' or 'express'.......

The size appears to be chosen by ebay's AI sytem. How intelligent that  is is debatable....!

But if you use the S.D. label on a wrongly sized/weight parcal, the post office are supposed to accept it anyway.  (ebay and RM/Evri will apparently straighten it all up between themselves later!)

[akemp1]

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@shiqxion-gg wrote:

Accidentally left it on for an item, and go to post it and the buyer apparently chose letter so it's the wrong size

Has to cancel order as couldn't refund their label and buy another one that is the right size 

It's ebay not the buyer who guess the size and provided the label has Marketplace Seller then Post Offices have been instructed to accept the item even if it's completely wrong not that everyone in a Post Office seems to have read (or agree with) the information they were sent about this.

There seems to be a process where ebay and RM settle up for any differences in actual postage between themselves.

I'm not in favour of SD just explaining how it's supposed to be work.

[gmij1961]

When I started on Ebay , I use to pay my fees on a something like a manual monthly basis, before they stopped me from listing 🙂  ,  how things of changed.

Perhaps you can't begrudge Ebay for making the most of the money they process  and that is  a lot easier when you set up a new platform but move  a platform 30 year old with out  due diligence at every step  you run a risk of ending up where they are now .

There should have been a massive charm offensive to manage customer resistance .  I was wary of delayed payments and the implementation of SD was a final straw and a change they really should have delayed by at least another 3 months and just refine SD in the background  as an option .   

If you are going to impose SD in this way , then had to work properly and didn't and still doesn't  . The AI dimension and weight guessing application will never work properly  and it was so easy to allow and educate user to fill dimension  boxes in correctly .  Get the dimensions right then you work against existing pricings and not just create  prices that compensate for random sizes etc .   I suspect ,  Those fields are just hidden with RM Medium parcels size set as default  when using SD .  It by no means is not the only bug bear with SD but if they got it right , SD would not be so bad. 

[ruby*ryan]

I have just had my first SD sale. I was surprised because the charge to the buyer was 2.94, and the label was Evri. I have left both RM and Evri options on, and this buyer is in a remote area, so I assumed eBay would put this label as RM to save themselves some money (possibly!). Had I sent this item myself, the charge to the buyer would have been over £5 via Evri, so the buyer saved a bit, and the postage cost possibly made my item look more inviting than other sellers charging the full rate.
Another plus was that I would only have had cover up to £20 buying my own label, whereas with SD it's (allegedly!) covered for the full amount, £40 in this case.
The only negative about it was that the second the buyer paid the item was marked as 'dispatched', which seems a bit premature, it would be better if it remained unsent until at least the seller has printed off the label.

[ruby*ryan]

"The only negative about it was that the second the buyer paid the item was marked as 'dispatched', which seems a bit premature, it would be better if it remained unsent until at least the seller has printed off the label."

... or maybe it marked as dispatched as soon as I printed off the label?

I have just had another SD sale, and this time it is sat in 'awaiting despatch', so I won't click the label until Tuesday, when I can send it, and see if that stays.
The only difference between the 2 is the first one was Evri, this one should be RM as it was LL size.

[closetothedee]

The whole problem with this ridiculous system is that those who designed it have never provided any clear instructions as to how it should work. Perhaps if they had we wouldn’t have ended up in the situation we are in now where people are constantly second guessing and suggesting ways to bypass it.
I spent my whole working life in an organisation that was constantly changing. The changes threw up lots of problems and management were often criticised, but issues were always acknowledged, and advice as to how resolve them quickly provided.
There surely has to be a reason why eBay doesn’t feel it necessary to do the same.




Sent from my iPhone

[gmij1961]

I come from a similar background and I would guess the whole change is being managed and performed by an outsourced , management consultant  expensive project team  . I don't  think Ebay would have the resources to under take such a project of their own back  and as a result struggle to control the project 

[akemp1]

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@closetothedee wrote:
There surely has to be a reason why eBay doesn’t feel it necessary to do the same.

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I do wonder what Ebay HQ are thinking about this situation. The lack of communication is very unusual and combined with the uncertainty of when this horrible beast is going to be fully deployed indicates that they may understand that things are not going very well in practice for people.

Around 80% of my purchases have moved from ebay to another place and I am probably not alone. Multi platform resellers are reporting that ebay volumes have declined to parity or lower volumes than other places.

If ebay don't do something to stem the decline quickly they will end up like one of those empty shopping centers with lots of closed shops which were unable to get enough sales to cover the fixed costs to stay open.

They seem to be in a death spiral and that's before SD is mandatory for everyone. Even if they do somehow improve their proposition it might not be enough to attract back people who have fully switched and are now happy at another place.

[nosy_45]

InPost   £1.99 flat rate  for secure no phaff  delivery  small items.  the best value.

[lucy_farmer]

'I do wonder what Ebay HQ are thinking about this situation. The lack of communication is very unusual and combined with the uncertainty of when this horrible beast is going to be fully deployed indicates that they may understand that things are not going very well in practice for people.'

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I do think they now have an idea it's not working as well as they wanted it to, and I think they knew there was always a chance that it might go t**s up.

If they have no intention of changing things, rolling things back or making things easier, why are they *only* using 'guinea pigs', like the UK?

If their  intention was just to force *all* ebay (private selling) users into this mess, why didn't they do it globally?

Why did they need a 'test bed'?

So I'm hoping there'll be *some* improvments made, somehwere......🤞

[the_book_seekers]

It may be the UK is a test bed and ebay does want a wider roll out to .com. Better not to test it on their number one market. If I were a private seller in the States I might be bracing myself for this to cross the pond at some point. 

[akemp1]

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@lucy_farmer wrote:

If their  intention was just to force *all* ebay (private selling) users into this mess, why didn't they do it globally?

Why did they need a 'test bed'?

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Most companies test things with a pilot group before wider deployment that's not unusual and given ebay probably has common code 'under the hood' then they might have had to update their global platform to support the buyer tax and stupid delivery even if it's just us in the UK that see it and get tortured with it.