Simple delivery glitch

[caruk_iderdxs]

Went to print off a label for a small parcel. It is not a small parcel label but standard delivery which is not the same. It cost large letter tracked amount and not small parcel tracked. I have been on the phone for thirty minutes trying to convince a call handler with an impenetrable accent that it is wrong, she is insistent that it is okay to just go post. After putting me on hold she has now put the phone down.

This is disgraceful customer service utterly disgraceful. I am so sick of ebay - not as if I'm getting many sales.

[thepillenwerfer]

If e-Bay don't want certain types of Seller there'd be more efficient and cheaper ways of getting rid.  If they only want Business Sellers they could scrap Private accounts.  If they don't want Private Sellers who only sell small low-value items on which e-Bay make very little they could raise the minimum BIN price and introduce a minimum opening bid for auctions.

My opinion (which is worth no more or less than anybody else's) is that there are certain low value Sellers that e-Bay would be indifferent to loosing so aren't going to tailor systems to suit them, especially not at the expense of more profitable Sellers.

As for Simple Delivery being a "Rip off," how exactly?  If I now send a 2kg Small Parcel the Buyer pays £3.38 rather than £3.45.  If it's a 2-10kg Medium it's £6.65 rather than £6.80.  They also often estimate Medium Parcels as Small ones making them even cheaper to send.  As well as the lower prices most things are covered up to £750 rather than £150 with RM direct.  If they wanted to rip people off they'd be charging more than Royal Mail and using the extra cover as an excuse and levying big surcharges for under-paid items.

[suelel1968]

@thepillenwerfer hi, but you know the answer to the question you raised. Making buyers pay £2.94 postage for a silk scarf  which could be sent for 87p with £20 insurance is ripping people off. Countless other examples are available. 

[thepillenwerfer]

Simple Delivery doesn't use standard Second Class though.  It WOULD be a rip off if e-Bay charged £2.94 and only gave you a label costing 87p.  It may be flawed and incomplete but that doesn't constitute a "Rip off" as you are getting the service you pay for, even though it isn't needed or wanted.

In that example Royal Mail's £20 compensation would probably be adequate but getting it out of them is, at best, humbug which Simple Delivery spares you and at worst you wouldn't actually get it.  To have a hope you'd have to take the item to a Post Office to get a Proof of Posting or pay RM 30p to collect it whereas collections under Simple Delivery are free and no trip to the PO needed.

Personally such items have been added to my list of things I can't sell on e-Bay — along with those banned (or made difficult/expensive) by Law or by e-Bay's policies even though selling them would be perfectly legal.  It still leaves plenty I can sell, many of which will get a more worth-while price.

[goodibags]

If you don't like 'Simple Rip Off' and generally don't mind paying 3 times too much for something (not just a gratuitous postal 'upgrade' for a letter) then how about 'Simple Turn Off'?

As in buyers actively being turned off buying by the ridiculous charges.

Yes, I know. These items should NOT be on Ebay any more. Except for some, which completely arbitrarily should be.

None of which explains why Ebay is being so cagey and unhelpful when it comes to promoting the supposed benefits of its wonderful new managed postal service?

[suelel1968]

Hi, @thepillenwerfer I always take to PO and have never not been compensated for loss. Happy to buy labels thru SD so ebay get a cut, but it has to be an appropriate fee for the item weight and size. Its all been said so many times.... Lets just wait for the next announcememt in September.

[thepillenwerfer]

I don't know how e-Bay are being "cagey and unhelpful" about Simple Delivery when they have pages of information on it.  They sent me an e-mail when it was introduced giving a brief outline and links to further information.  Maybe they weren't sent to everybody or it fell foul of a junk filter.

[thepillenwerfer]

I'm happy that you've had a more positive experience with Royal Mail compensation than I have.  I've tried three times.

The first occasion was years ago when I returned an e-Bay purchase that wasn't as described.  At that time the Buyer had to pay the return postage and RM lost it, or so the Seller claimed — I was inexperienced enough at the time to have sent it un-tracked.  Royal Mail compensated me for the cost of the item but not the postage I'd paid to receive it in the first place or that to return it.

The second was a book I sold on Amazon.  They paid out in full for that and some weeks later the book itself returned to me.

The third time I got eight First Class stamps, which granted had a higher face-value than the sum I'd lost but were next-to-useless to me.  Yes, they can be used in part payment on parcels and the difference paid at a Post Office but that's inconvenient — a trip to my PO taking at least half-an-hour, a lot more if they are busy, and how unpleasant that trip is depends on the weather — and Post Office prices are higher than on-line.  I actually sold them to a friend who does use them at a discount.

Of course making a claim with Royal Mail is infinitely easier than with Evri, who exclude most items from compensation anyway.

Simple Delivery is like anything else: there are Winners and Losers.  I rarely sell anything smaller than a Small Parcel — even if the item itself is small I pack it well enough to stand abuse — or that I'd be happy to risk sending un-tracked due to the experience detailed above.  Taking the earlier scarf example it may be under 5mm thick when folded flat in a plastic bag but there's a risk it will move in transit and "grow" by the time it's checked.  There's contradictory information about what happens in that case as I've heard that if a Post Office has accepted it as a normal letter (or whatever) they are liable for the under-payment but have also heard on here of recipients being surcharged on things that were sent from POs.

[goodibags]

See page 1 of this discussion. There's no need for Ebay to hide behind pages of published info. They could be more up front with their sellers in actually displaying it!