Royal mail tracking not updated in ebay

[subminman]

I posted 4 Royal Mail tracked 48 parcels on Monday, Ebay shows no tracking activity on the sold items but if I check on the Royal Mail "Track your item" page all show that they are in transit showing up to date details.  Has the link between Royal Mail Tracking and Ebay failed? 

[battery_cell_uk]

We have exactly same - spent 25 mins on phone customer services who didn’t really understand problem and tried blaming RM or the format carrier entered as . 

surely such a major tech issue affecting so many sellers, should be communicated to all their customer service staff so they can advise it’s a known problem being looked into . This would save so much time for sellers and their own staff hours . 
Even better it would be great if eBay can put know tech issues on the Announcements section on seller hub ( probably don’t want to admit their system faults ) 

[manyjamjar]

WOW. So if the issue persist, come next month some sellers might still get thier payment available after 14 days after they purchased the label via "Simple Delivery" and dispatched in time ??

[dfernand101]

I always post via Royal Mail and I am aware of the different postal states Royal Mail UK goes through and the update times where the state is reflected / updated on the Ebay UK site when you view an order posted via Royal Mail tracked, two days ago everything was working you dropped a Royal Mail tracked item at the drop off shop which was destined to the UK or international and around 20 minutes to 1 hour later the item was shown on Ebay as 'Posted' etc.

Unfortunately over the last couple of days the system is broken whereby at first two days ago only 1 out of 3 Ebay orders sent via Royal Mail tracked would update on the Ebay side and now today 16th January 2025 after posting 4 today and looking at previous days - only one is showing as 'Posted' on Ebay.

Many on the Royal Mail Carrier website that have either been marked as 'delivered' or 'en-route' (at the postal hub etc) are not showing as 'posted' on Ebay.

Something has changed in the last few days to break the Royal Mail tracking to Ebay and this is unacceptable given that on the 4th February 2025, Ebay will retain funds from sales for up to 2 weeks if Ebay cannot see that the state of the order as being 'Delivered'.

Anyone else know if this is an error on Ebay's side, Royal Mail's side ? something has changed, I am 100% sure of this, does anyone know of a fix for this e.g. post the item via Royal Mail UK and then wait a couple of hours and THEN update ebay with the tracking number ? I tend to update the tracking code as soon as I print the label and then drop the Royal Mail tracked item off at the parcel shop 1-2 hours later.

[tool-buyer]

Hi, I have just tried to update a tracking number on Ebay; it was delivered next-day by Royal Mail, and the dispatch was 13-01-2024, however after updating the tracking number just now  (using the same number again), ebay has now put dispatch date as today. I refreshed the page, and the tracking number has been removed.

So, updating the tracking number does not help. If it did, it would push your dispatch date way off, resulting in punishment from ebay for late dispatch.

[the-nutwood-collection]

For around a week, maybe longer, Royal Mail tracking has only worked intermittently - so this may be the problem.

My website is set up to send the tracking URL on the despatch notification, but I can't get the URL.  I enter the tracking number and, most of the time, nothing happens.  No whirly wheel on the tab, just nothing.  I have to send the link to RM tracking and the tracking number instead on the notification - but I doubt that my buyer will have any more luck than I do.

It's a real pain.  I want buyers to check the tracking, not message me and ask where it is.

[matchbox_4_everyone]

Searched the forum to see if others had same issue. Just to add same here, l always use tracked 48, upload the tracking for the buyer and to be  able to see items delivered. So yesterday I get  feedback received for items delivered  from Monday but showing not delivered on ebay tracking but of course when checked on Royal mail shows as delivered. Items posted Friday do show as delivered. I did not post Saturday so can not verify if only from Monday. This better be solved by the 4th Feb! 

[dfernand101]

Thanks so re-entering the tracking code later on does not work - that's useful to know. Maybe trying my idea of posting first, waiting 2 hours and then entering the code for a first time on Ebay will work.  we don't know how ebay scrapes the Royal Mail data from Royal Mail e.g. is it sent in batches or (god forbid) does it have  periodic attempts  at screen scraping the Royal Mail web tracking pages !! (not likely).

[dfernand101]

thank you very helpful to know.

[cammyleenic]

My tracking is behind by 4 days. It says delivered on Royal Mail's tracker however eBay is claiming its not arrived yet. Please, it would be nice if eBay staff jumped in the chain and gave us an update. 

[subminman]

As the original poster  I can announce that one of my 4 delivered parcels has now fully updated its tracking on Ebay, it was delivered to County Antrim which I guess only proves the luck of the Irish (Northern).... 

The other 3 still haven't updated. 

[dfernand101]

Given that royal mail tracking has been updating correctly on ebay for months and suddenly over the last 3 days it has been quite sporadic on the ebay side I decided to conduct an experiment:

1) today 17th jan 2025 I packaged up 3 ebay orders well under 2 hours and created labels for all of them them i.e. 2 x Royal Mail 48 tracked for UK ones and one internationally tracked Royal Mail for the one to Spain. At this point, I did NOT update Ebay UK with the tracking code on any of the orders.

2) Immediately  after I had packed and labeled them, I walked to the post office drop off shop which is 5 minutes away and handed them over.

3)  After I left the post office I walked back home which is 5 minutes and immediately checked all 3 Royal Mail tracking codes on the Royal Mail website and all 3 were marked as 'Accepted at Parcelshop', which is great, that was a really fast update; even the Correos website in Spain which also uses the same Royal Mail tracking knew that the parcel was incoming. 

4) Given that I knew that Royal Mail had acknowledged that I had dropped all 3 parcels with them, I then went to Ebay to update the tracking code for each of the 3 orders. I did so and there was no true update on the Ebay side which reflected the true state of the Royal Mail parcels, i.e. it was stuck on 'Tracking number provided', which means that a tracking code has been inputted but no acknowledgement that it has been deposited at the post office.

5) I waited for over 2 hours and then as if by magic all of the 3 ebay orders had the mailing status changed to 'Accepted at Parcelshop'  which is great.

So what can we 'maybe' conclude from this ? well possibly ebay have fixed the problem OR maybe now it's in order for ebay mail tracking to work you should not enter the Royal Mail tracking code into ebay until a) you have posted the tracked item  and b) that tracked item is showing as 'Accepted at parcelshop' on the Royal Mail website.  I suspect that someone has changed something so that sometimes ebay only polls the Royal Mail website once or after a short time has expired from the first point you enter the Royal Mail tracking code onto the ebay order, so if you type in the tracking code onto your ebay order and you're not due to go to the post office in the next 3 hours then ebay polls Royal Mail and if it cannot find a 'Accepted at parcelshop' state or state beyond that then it gives up and gets stuck on 'Tracking number provided' even if the item has been delivered.  It's an ebay to Royal Mail polling issue whereby it checks the status of the delivery, it's not Royal Mail's responsibility to notify ebay that they have a parcel, how would Royal Mail UK even know it's an ebay parcel !

That's my theory or possible fix for this.

[jasberfloob]

I also have the same problem. Buyers are asking where the stuff is because the tracking isn't updating however it's already in the postal system. I've got 20+ parcels which I know are delivered that still show as "dispatched" as it hasn't updated.

I'm concerned if this isn't fixed on the 4th February how I will get my money if it doesn't think anything is delivered even though it has been!

[tool-buyer]

I spoke to ebay Concierge. It appears to be a broader site problem, with more and more sellers reporting the issue, and they are working with the Royal Mail.

If you have not already contacted ebay with the ticket number "EWATCHOP-140406" please do so, live chat or call them.

This is the other discussion:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/Original-tracking-data-wiped-out-amp-not-updat...

[pre-lovedpickers]

I currently have items which have been delivered, (per Royal Mail with photographic evidence), still showing as in transit 2 days later when I look at the ebay tracking details. That is bad enough but due to this, all of my other listings have been removed from 'delivery in 2-3 days' search results and the green '2-3 days delivery' marker has also been removed from my item pages, even though I was shipping Tracked 24 with 1 day handling. Due to this, i've gone back to offering Tracked 48, as I was always making a loss on delivery and seems no benefit to making more of a loss than I need to with no benefit.

[twin--turbo]

why not post on trusted reviews.. Make Rm listen the fact your having pain. 

[pre-lovedpickers]

As others have indicated, this seems to be an issue with the ebay link to the RM tracking system, rather than a problem with RM. Ebay seem to be relying on an information pipeline that isn't working - I can get accurate tracking from the RM app.

[twin--turbo]

Calll your RM custtomer relationws manager and get it resolved? 

So many haapy to slate Evri , but when RM and Ebay can't fix an issue they are happy to give RM a pat on the back for being unable to intergrate..

[netay_75]

Seller insists purchased item has been sent on 15th Jan but I’ve tried to track the parcel on RM website, it shows “Tracking information is not available for this service”. eBay also did not show anything, only with the status of “tracking number provided”.

any ideas? It has been 3 days since the seller “shipped” my purchased item. 

[twin--turbo]

It's been sent on an untracked service. The number you have is just a consignment number not a tracking numeber, it's useless.

[netay_75]

No wonder! I’ve been checking the “consignment number” for days…Then what should I do now? Can I still get the tracking number instead of the consignment number?