Simple Delivery could be about to be pushed on eBay US sellers

[gnosemalf]

I just found this article which seems to indicate that unless there is some heavy duty resistance, eBay are going to force Simple Delivery onto their US sellers. If so, we can probably kiss any hope of it being rolled back goodbye.

https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-tests-us-sentiment-simple-delivery-managed-shipping/

[valueaddedresource]

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@edwardian-dreams wrote:

Sellers don’t have issues ebay does therefore they created seller issues with their sd 

🥸

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@edwardian-dreams nonetheless they are issues which sellers face, which still makes sense within the context of my post.

The key is to figure out where/how to present seller-impacting issues in ways that capture shareholder and stakeholder interest and I can say from personal experience if this is done well, it can be quite effective at moving the needle on the corporate dial.

[edwardian-dreams]

All Greek to me 

but thank you anyway 

one day I might catch up 

at the moment it seems eBay are creating issues to attract investment which doesn’t sound right anyway I’m probably wrong 

[suelel1968]

Hi Value @valueaddedresource  I had some help, but is this what you mean? What next? 

“Protect Seller Autonomy, Preserve eBay’s Competitive Edge”

To eBay Leadership and Stakeholders,

As eBay explores the expansion of its “Simple Delivery” program, we urge you to consider the long-term implications for seller autonomy, platform diversity, and brand trust.

• Seller Impact = Platform Health: eBay’s strength lies in its vibrant, diverse seller base. Mandating shipping programs without flexibility risks alienating experienced sellers who drive repeat business and customer satisfaction.

• Investor Risk: Forced compliance may lead to seller attrition, reduced inventory variety, and negative press—undermining the very metrics investors care about: growth, retention, and reputation.

• Stakeholder Opportunity: A collaborative shipping model—one that empowers sellers while streamlining logistics—could enhance operational efficiency without sacrificing seller goodwill.

• We believe in eBay’s potential to lead with innovation and integrity. But innovation must be inclusive. Let’s ensure that seller voices are not just heard, but valued as strategic assets.

  Respectfully,

  Concerned Sellers United

[valueaddedresource]

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@suelel1968 wrote:

Hi Value @valueaddedresource  I had some help, but is this what you mean? What next? 

“Protect Seller Autonomy, Preserve eBay’s Competitive Edge”

To eBay Leadership and Stakeholders,

As eBay explores the expansion of its “Simple Delivery” program, we urge you to consider the long-term implications for seller autonomy, platform diversity, and brand trust.

• Seller Impact = Platform Health: eBay’s strength lies in its vibrant, diverse seller base. Mandating shipping programs without flexibility risks alienating experienced sellers who drive repeat business and customer satisfaction.

• Investor Risk: Forced compliance may lead to seller attrition, reduced inventory variety, and negative press—undermining the very metrics investors care about: growth, retention, and reputation.

• Stakeholder Opportunity: A collaborative shipping model—one that empowers sellers while streamlining logistics—could enhance operational efficiency without sacrificing seller goodwill.

• We believe in eBay’s potential to lead with innovation and integrity. But innovation must be inclusive. Let’s ensure that seller voices are not just heard, but valued as strategic assets.

  Respectfully,

  Concerned Sellers United

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@suelel1968 that's a great start but generally speaking to be most effective you need to try to see things from the shareholder and/or corporate executive perspective (I know, I know that's not a place a lot of people like to go 😂).

Prompting your favorite LLM to act like the shareholder or exec in question and having a conversation with it on this topic might provide some interesting insight into how someone like that might think about the subject....or it could just provide some hilarious entertainment. 😂

The idea is to try to speak their language - let's be real, they don't really care about individual sellers and/or how these changes might affect them, they care about the bottom line.

So to effectively advocate for things to change, you have to find a way to talk about the issue in terms that they do care about, preferably with as much detail and specificity as possible (ie. it's one thing to say a lot of sellers might leave, it's another thing to be able to point to something concrete like x number of sellers have signed a petition saying they will close their stores on y date or something like that).

Detail and specificity can also help when trying to get the attention of media - business and financial journalists are much more likely to publish stories where there is some kind of real data involved vs just vague anecdotes and even if you don't have access to a wide set of data, personal stories/anecdotes about how a specific change is impacting a specific seller or group of sellers can still sometimes be impactful, especially if those sellers are willing to provide on the record quotes.

[goodibags]

Ultimately, as you say, the shareholders only care about the bottom line and corporate execs can manipulate what they see to ensure that any failure can still be presented as a 'success'. Even bad media storylines can be repackaged as 'fake' or apparent vendetta campaigns. This is Trumpworld.

The main weapon Ebay users have is to vote with their feet, as many (not me) have done, while being highly vocal about the reasons. I've cancelled a lot of low value items and with SD in place won't be listing more, so my sales will be way down on last year. But now Ebay have new suppliers to negotiate down and new 'revenue generators', the basic day to day selling stuff is probably less important to them. Any drop in sales can always be compensated for by hikes in charges elsewhere. 

Besides that, there are always new markets to open up? There are still places where the user base hasn't been scared off to other selling platforms? 

[j.p.greenwood]

Perhaps you need to think outside the box?

As well as numbers, stories etc.........all the common and terribly boring arguments and data points that as you've touched on, editors and others may or may not find worthy......and while social media has value and it's place, things that would actually grab an editor's attention could be much more interesting.

Everyone hates being embarrassed, as it's not intellectual it's visceral, some of the stuff E-Bay did, according to the wikipedia link, would certainly provide an interesting model for ideas, but as I said, a 'proper' campaign would cost money, as it would need to be sustained and with an ongoing campaign of activities from day one, every success would need to immediately be followed up with another equally newsworthy success.

Whatever is done needs to have an impact that the 'curated' facts cannot refute, so that means playing on a field of your choosing, not theirs.

[xenavsbuffy1]

I don't think it was ever going to be a case of "Oopps Sooorrrryyy" I think the best you will get is SD being adapted and modified rather than eliminated then it will be moved onto the Business section and Worldwide in the meantime....SD is here to stay unfortunately

[gnosemalf]

I know it has very little to do with the topic I started but this thought isn't really worthy of its own thread.

I have been struggling to put my finger on how Simple Delivery makes me feel and last night, it came to me, not exactly as a feeling with a name - more a relatable feeling with which to make a comparison... perhaps.

As an occasional but evolved musician, filmmaker, photographer and all round tinkerer, it reminds me of the depressed feeling I get from Automatic settings buttons and how I hate how operating systems on devices grey out settings in certain modes because the device 'thinks' it knows better than me what I want to do.

I probably have the latest video from right to repair (and right to own) champion Louis Rossmann to thank for indirectly wiggling the tooth that crystallised the thought. He launched a consumer rights wiki which although US based is not exclusive to US rights. I hope that something about Simple Delivery upsets one of the wiki's contributors.

[guymafo]

Well I look forward to shed flips and the auction professor’s take on it.

GM

[goodibags]

Yes, SD feels both grinding and inevitable - do it OUR way or you won't do it at all! Ebay's constant nudging is not exactly subtle. Features or info you've come to rely on are removed on a whim, while terms/conditions seem to change with the prevailing winds. Even worse when there are charges to bear for following and apparent 'fines' for failing to do so.

Ebay will 'grow your business', so tough luck if you had no intention of starting one. We've been used to being autonomous and doing things how we want to, sensibly and at our own pace but no more! Ebay must have its supplier profit centres and we're just one of many.

I'm stubborn so will continue to use Ebay if just to see where the ship is headed. I'll strive to be a Top Seller, even if it's on 2 sales a year, for as long as it remains usable if not entirely user friendly. And while there are obsolete stamps to sell!

[valueaddedresource]

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@j.p.greenwood wrote:

Perhaps you need to think outside the box?

As well as numbers, stories etc.........all the common and terribly boring arguments and data points that as you've touched on, editors and others may or may not find worthy......and while social media has value and it's place, things that would actually grab an editor's attention could be much more interesting.

Everyone hates being embarrassed, as it's not intellectual it's visceral, some of the stuff E-Bay did, according to the wikipedia link, would certainly provide an interesting model for ideas, but as I said, a 'proper' campaign would cost money, as it would need to be sustained and with an ongoing campaign of activities from day one, every success would need to immediately be followed up with another equally newsworthy success.

Whatever is done needs to have an impact that the 'curated' facts cannot refute, so that means playing on a field of your choosing, not theirs.

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@j.p.greenwood  respectfully, the box I'm playing in has had documented, verifiable, and not insignificant results - I'm very happy with it as a strategy and would certainly recommend it over engaging in unethical and/or illegal behavior, which is what you seem to be implying by saying that what eBay security personnel did in the cyberstalking scandal should be any sort of model.

Again, I've been doing what I suggested above in a sustainable, easily self funded way for 4 years on a playing field of my choosing, not theirs, and while it certainly isn't a magic cure to instantly remake eBay into what sellers might want it to be, I can state with 100% confidence that it has moved the needle much more than simply posting in eBay's community forums would have.

On your point about embarrassment being visceral - there are many ways someone (or in this case some corporation) can be embarassed, and sometimes bringing true but embarrassing things to light in a way that gets the attention of the people whose opinions they actually care about can be far more effective than sending boxes of adult materials to someone's neighbors in their name or any of the other crazy stuff on that wikipedia page.

Also, if you look deeper into the cyberstalking story beyond just wikipedia, you'll find that the reason eBay did what they did was they were desperate to unmask an anonymous source & Twitter commenter who "vexed" the executives mightily by doing exactly what I've suggested here...in fact, I may or may not have learned a few tricks of the trade from exactly that source and one would be hard pressed to say they did not have an impact. 😉

[j.p.greenwood]

I think you've misread my point.

What E-Bay did previously was far too far in its intent and activities and as you've rightly pointed out, was illegal.

However, some of the individual activities, as a way of generating news copy that editors might then think worthy of stories are perfectly valid strategies.

As I said, I don't believe this is winnable if you stick to an playing field where you'll be massively outgunned with resources, so need to think outside the box.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"However, some of the individual activities, as a way of generating news copy that editors might then think worthy of stories are perfectly valid strategies."

I can't think of anything in that campaign that would be worthy of emulating.  What they did wasn't just illegal, it was abhorrent.

[valueaddedresource]

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@j.p.greenwood wrote:

I think you've misread my point.

What E-Bay did previously was far too far in its intent and activities and as you've rightly pointed out, was illegal.

However, some of the individual activities, as a way of generating news copy that editors might then think worthy of stories are perfectly valid strategies.

As I said, I don't believe this is winnable if you stick to an playing field where you'll be massively outgunned with resources, so need to think outside the box.

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@j.p.greenwood  what you are suggesting, even if it doesn't cross the line into illegal activity, is far more likely to make you the more interesting story to editors than eBay...which seems to me like it wouldn't accomplish much if the goal is to try to effect corporate change.

I spend a decent amount of time personally engaging with journalists, editors, financial analysts, investors and other stakeholders and have absolutely no doubt that in that scenario, the headlines would frame the story as some unhinged seller who pulled some stunt for attention and it might be good for a chuckle but easily dismissed.

[kyanyama]

Oh, I certainly hope so!😇

[cabletie555]

And don't forget who the competition is:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13044182

Facebook Marketplace is being pushed in YouTube videos it seems, could someone like that be influencing those in charge of eBay to deliberately spoil it?

[ett1954]

@valueaddedresource , I suspect the vast majority of contributors on the UK boards are unaware of your background and history from their comments, and I understand why you cannot be more specific, as I cannot be for reasons you and I know.  Some need to look beyond the 'bubble' of eBay forums.

Keep up the good work.