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.

[pra29]

So true.  I gave up trying to sell a vintage (new) umbrella as buyers/eBay kept selecting Royal Mail and PO refused to take it as too large.  Sold instead on Vinted.

[lucy_farmer]

'I add a message Royal Mail only but the sellers ignore it and chose an option that I cant perform. 

Or people pick the wrong delivery size and price as its the cheapest for them. '

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Buyers aren't given a lot of choice here pwyl; they're not doing it on purpose!

They're given the options of 'Standard' or 'Express' .

(Obviously 'standard' being the cheaper one)

They're not told which courier will be delivering those or anything to do with sizes.....

[knightinarmour]

You can select RM only under SD and deselect Evri. Then you buyers will have to let you use RM. 

they don’t select size - you do that at launch. Also the price is set by SD based on weight. You select that at launch. There are some differences between prices of Evri and RM.  The only option buyers have is normal or “express”. Out of the 20 of so SD sales I’ve never has someone pick “express”. 

[arthursleepuk2]

I have a buyer who has purchased 3 items on 1 invoice and has clicked various things on checkout and now 1 item gets posted and he collects in person the other 2! Now the whole sale is in Limbo. I have had to chuck it at ebay to sort it as the collection in person funds are tied up until the seller gives me the collection code... if they ever will...

The simple made complicated. 😃

[vinylscot]

At some point, they're going to need to return some degree of control over postal policies to sellers.

I know my account is a business account, so isn't affected (yet!) - I'm only using my products as an example.

An average 12" vinyl Record, in its sleeve, weighs somewhere around 220-280g, and its packaging weighs about another 120g. So I would enter a weight of 400g in my listing.

By their nature, these products do attract multi-item sales, and experienced buyers know now that they can almost always order seven albums for the same shipping cost as one, because there is only one lot of packaging. (7 x 250 - 1750, plus 120 for packaging = comfortably under 2kg small parcel rate)

Under SD, (and if their intended method of combined shipping stays the same) eBay simply adds the total weights including packaging together, and adds a little extra to the cost each time for doing so, even if the actual postage price to me would not change. Once they get to five or six LPs, they would start treating the item as a medium parcel, and overcharge accordingly, although it will still be a small package in weight and dimensions. Experienced buyers will not put up with this.

There needs to be another check point where sellers can intervene in such anomalies.

[arthursleepuk2]

That is exactly what has just happened, I think. It's added up to 4kg and the buyer is understandably having none of it so has put some items as collection in person which means now I can post all on one label but my funds won't be released until they give me the collection code. When do they give me that? Before or after delivery? Either way, the protection has gone for one of the party and we're back to... you know... trusting people again.

If the buyer's response was quick, I'd not be bothered to do it like this but it's slow and last minute which makes me feel that I'm going to loose potentially half the sale value whilst I fight to obtain a collection code from the buyer via messaging. I've just had to pass this situation to Ebay customer service to deal with, unfortunately as a 'report buyer'. I don't know what else to do.

[lucy_farmer]

'.......is understandably having none of it so has put some items as collection in person which means now I can post all on one label but my funds won't be released until they give me the collection code. When do they give me that? Before or after delivery?.......'

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1. Best result is: you have an honest buyer who *can* be bothered to give you the collection code and should pass it to you as soon as their single parcel has been delivered. Then all your money will be released in 2 days.

2. Next best result is: you have an honest buyer but they forget/can't be bothered to pass you the collection codes once they've received their parcel. In this case your 2 'collection' sales get the money released 14 days later.

3. Worst result is: you have a dishonest buyer who claims non-delivery on the 2 'collection' items (as they don't have tracking numbers) and gets the refund.

Case 3 is nasty, but the majority of buyers are nice, honest people! (you'd have to be pretty unlucky to get a right a-hole who actually knows how the rules work re; combining S.D postage/tracking numbers)

[pra29]

And when you contact eBay you just get a Bangalore script reader who is useless and does not understand the problem.
Sent from my iPhone

[travelin-lite]

eBay has implemented Simple Delivery without any consideration for all the unique differences every item that people send out can create, whether that is 1 item or multiple items bought by the same buyer, before Simple Delivery this was easy to deal with, you could account for & knew what the exact cost was of an item you were sending out,and if there was a problem,you could easily refund the Buyer, but all i see now, is Sellers on these Forums everyday posting comments on different problems they are having with Simple Delivery, and to me, it looks like they are being left to deal with Headaches they don't need to sort these problems out, and i really think,stop putting yourself through this, as long as people keep putting up with the Simple Delivery system then it is going to stay.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"but all i see now, is Sellers on these Forums everyday posting comments on different problems they are having with Simple Delivery,"

I've been watching SD unfold over the last 2 months (remember when it was going to start rolling out on 7th April and mandatory for all private seller by the 15th?).   I thought it sounded like a hassle from the start, but the more I've read about the problems, the more glad I am that I've never thought it was worth getting involved with it.  Up until Simple Delivery, selling on ebay was simple - how ironic.  Now it's a pig's ear and a dog's breakfast of a system, and nothing I've read over the last couple of months has convinced me otherwise.

[travelin-lite]

Exactly, whoever is in charge at eBay,has been running the site into ruin for the past few years 

[gandalf_hawkshead]

June 5th and the 12 items I currently have listed are all still on custom postage. 

I would list more but I’m wary of postage options being changed by eBay without my knowledge and if I need to go in and adjust their AI estimates I don’t want to have to go through dozens and dozens of them. 

One particular worry I have is that some of my listed items are deluxe edition CD box sets, which are quite big and heavy, and that eBay’s AI might misidentify them as the standard CD editions. 

I know I can specify size/weight to get the correct (one hopes) postage option once SD is enforced on me but my biggest worry is that a change will take place and somebody will buy one before I have the chance to change things. 

I just can’t understand why (as @vinylscot asked in yesterday’s community chat) no one at eBay can give a clear date for when SD will be mandatory site wide. 

[travelin-lite]

Completely understand, I used to sell some CD's, and once you get over 2 CD's together,it takes you up into a different Postage Price Bracket(which I could always account for),and the same with Deluxe or Box Set Edition's of CDs, eBay would always say they were "Standard CDs", but they never were, because most of the time, I would have to wrap them well to make sure they wouldn't get damaged in transit, and this would always take them up into the next Postage Bracket, i could account for this, and eBay would say they were a certain price, but they weren't,so i would get around this by offering Free Postage and factoring the postage cost into the price,so that is why I don't list items anymore, because I think Simple Delivery is unworkable for me, unless I just chuck stuff into an envelope and send it out to people without a care for the item to be packaged well,causing the item to probably end up damaged, and also now, eBay's AI will claim a certain CD or DVD is a certain Postage cost,and it isn't, so I'm not prepared to deal with the actual problems this will bring,and is bringing to Sellers.

[lucy_farmer]

'I just can’t understand why (as @vinylscot asked in yesterday’s community chat) no one at eBay can give a clear date for when SD will be mandatory site wide. '

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I think it's because nobody knows!

It's such a mess and still doesn't work properly. It's going to need a whole load more 'tweaking' , fixes and changes until it's actually useable in every case, and nobody knows how long that's going to take.....

I hoping against hope that they give it up as mandatory and make it optional. Then sack the twit who's idea it was....  but it's starting to appear that some business-people would rather be 'right',  than own up to a mistake.

[travelin-lite]

Yes, it seems ridiculous, if they just returned it to being optional,it would work well for everyone, Im sure there will be people who have always used it, and will use it,and it works for them, but it just doesn't work for others, and it seems ridiculous to alienate a massive percentage of eBays Sellers

[vinylscot]

That's the impression I got from Marco's deeply inadequate responses.

It's so obvious that this question would be asked, that they MUST have asked those in the know. It can only be that those who should know, don't.

It's probably gone too far for them to back down and make it voluntary, but the constant tweaking, which continually seems to occur with no foresight at all, suggests that it will always remain unworkable apart from for some (not all) genuinely "simple" transactions.

They perhaps need to increase the range of reasons sellers can give for not using SD, as they really don't appear to have considered even some of the most common possibilities. (And I can't see how they can do that without massively inconveniencing buyers.)

[sunflowers4me59]

I relisted a book on arthritis (small, like a cd in case), will post for custom postage £1.55, AI wants it posted simple delivery £3.34!! I think it thought "book", it must be big and heavy.

[akemp1]

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@lucy_farmer wrote:

but it's starting to appear that some business-people would rather be 'right',  than own up to a mistake.

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I doubt they care if they are 'right' they probably just desperately need the postage revenue and associated profit margin to meet their short term financial targets (for their bonus, to keep their jobs, etc) so they are trying to straddle keeping the rollout going while concurrently fixing things to try and make it fit for purpose while also trying not to make too many concessions that would have a profit implication eg making Large Letter rates reasonable again.

But it's a mess so nothing should be mandatory for any user or categories until SD works properly.

At most SD should be 'opt-in' for cutting edge users who want to pilot their semi-broken technology.

[arthursleepuk2]

Update: The buyer handed over the collection code. For the time being, all my listings will have to be the same type/ option of postage which will be an issue with bigger stuff but Ebay says that if it exceeds the label,  hand that over the counter anyway! lolz.

[lamulady2]

I am at a loss to understand all this enormously complicated exchange.
Since the extra TAX was added I have had very few orders, down by around 60% on average. All my newer entries have my rider that I am reimbursing this "TAX" to my customers if the price that I ask is met,  though one clever chap ordered an older item & sent an offer with the tax removed from the price I was quite happy with that.!!! I am actually "ending" a few of my offers each day & adding the offer re the reimbursement & then relisting, but at over 1,000 it is going to take some time  As regards this SD, on 2-3 orders the price was correct so I bought the labels from the screen.  2 others were not....so I just ignored the "buy label" & went direct through Royal Mail...(at prices below £10 a few pence make it more acceptable especially as their "TAX" works out at slightly more than 10%) & added the tracking #. If the post was for a parcel & my item was thin I just added most of the excess postage charged to the reimbursement I seem to have had no comeback or "charging" for their suggested post being extracted. I am very inadequate at checking invoices but the 2 that I did were OK.  I hope that this comment is not too long as I rarely open up the 30 or so mails each day....just no stamina or time for them. apologies.