Simple delivery is awful

[jezzagold]

I list a few things on ebay occasionally, but this new simple delivery is just rubbish for sellers. It assumes that ebay actually know the size and weight of items And that everyone can easily get to Evri or other courier services easily. Why did they have to stop the seller from deciding how to post items? Put me right off bothering to use Ebay.

[meinblack2010]

After a few weeks of not putting anything on ebay because of "simple
delivery" I decided to list a item which I have sold in the past and I Know
costs £4.05 48 hour tracked royal mail..... They advised a delivery cost of
£3.38 but when list it changed to £2.58 or something.... Not happening
ebay.. Sorry

[department28]

Have you selected Royal Mail only? The lower price could be for Evri, if you haven't excluded them from your 'postage preferences'.

[sml192]

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@meinblack2010 wrote:
After a few weeks of not putting anything on ebay because of "simple
delivery" I decided to list a item which I have sold in the past and I Know
costs £4.05 48 hour tracked royal mail..... They advised a delivery cost of
£3.38 but when list it changed to £2.58 or something.... Not happening
ebay.. Sorry

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It's possible that the lower price that you saw was the amount excluding VAT (although that would be £2.82 not £2.58).  It does take a few minutes for the VAT to be applied when listing.

£4.05 is the 'over the counter' price for Royal Mail Tracked 48 and £3.38 is the price for the same service with Simple Delivery.  You won't need to pay any extra, just use the label supplied by eBay. 

[t0ms65]

Simple Delivery is everything but simple. Got to post something just over 2kg, it never asked me the weight of the parcel, it's not clear whether it will charge for the additional weight. Their FAQ says Post Offices have been instructed to accept the parcels, and that the sellers won't be charged more if they used the recommended package size. I have no idea whether I did or did not use the recommended package size.

Called Ebay support up, pretty useless:

 - option 1: cancel the order, re-list ... blah blah I have no appetite doing this, next option please

 - option 2: don't use the label, use your own courier, request a refund ... how is that simple?
 - option 3: the label is fine as long the post office accepts it, but when I question the weight limit I get no answer other than the post office will check the weight against the label when posting the package; but what if I use a parcel locker? 

I hate it. It's terrible customer service. The system doesn't work because it provides no flexibility and the information provided is not adequate. Maybe I can use the label without risking additional charges to me or to the buyer, but I don't know. Do I want to risk it? No, I do not. Do I want to cause the buyer additional hassle by cancelling and re-listing? No, I do not, and certainly do not want to do that on a regular basis. Would I like an integrated postage service, yes but it needs to work every time for every item and needs to provide the flexibility.

Hey, the poor sod at Ebay Corporate that's been given the job to read these comments, wake up an escalate, re-escalate, and escalate again until someone does something about this situation. 

[meinblack2010]

Yeah royal mail.. We send everything that way as post office is literally
around the corner 😂👍

[akemp1]

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@t0ms65 wrote:

Maybe I can use the label without risking additional charges to me or to the buyer, but I don't know.

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It would be better if ebay could persuade RM that it was OK to not print the potentially incorrect weight and size onto the SD Marketplace label as I'm sure both Ebay and RM know the what was purchased anyway in their central databases (for the later reconciliation of fees between themselves) and when wrong it only causes distress and confusion to the poor seller and/or post office worker. Or might lead the buyer to think the seller has deliberately underpaid, etc.

There's a special place in hell for those in ebay who sponsored the outstandingly bad SD. I can't think of anything I have ever seen implemented that's broken in so many both obvious and obscure ways. Where were the grown ups?

[edwardian-dreams]

Do a dummy listing for the same item, see what eBay recommends 

if it’s the same post price as your over 2kg parcel then I would safely say you can send it 

unless you’ve got one of those post offices that weigh and size parcels and reject if postage isn’t right but they’re not supposed to be doing that anymore  

[t0ms65]

yeah as a workaround, but too much hassle

[mdz12online]

Since giving up Ebay , there are far more choices than I first thought (selling platforms,) I was with Ebay for 23 years
and felt I was limited to just them how wrong I was thankfully , Ebay is a very distant passed

Sent from Outlook<>

[goodibags]

Maybe you can just select to 'sell similar', then just scroll down to see what Ebay's recommendation for postage is?

[dazzamatazz1]

I am trying to post a garden strimmer. 'Simple delivery' has made this a nightmare.

I cannot post the item using Royal Mail as it's oversize (120cm). I will never use Evri again as they're a nightmare.

Unless I buy postage using SD I cannot see the buyers address and phone number, so cannot ship until they reply.

The eBay experience is getting worse and worse. I'm starting to hate it. It's a monopoly with no meaningful competition.

[irt303]

I'm in a similar position to the one you were in.

Listing an item with 'Seller pays' postage and Evri de-selected. eBay is recommending Small Parcel up to 1kg. My item exceeds the max dimensions for Small Parcel by 2cm on one dimension (other two are within), but also weighs nearly 3kg.

I posted for advice - was it safe to go with eBay's recommendation or should I switch up to Medium Parcel which my item's size and weight is fully within? - and most members who replied said the package would be accepted with the recommended label as the item's size and weight are within the maximum limits for Royal Mail delivery, even if they exceed the limits for Small Parcel.

I spoke to the manager at my main PO about this earlier today. She echoed what those posters advised me (which is also stated on eBay's SD help page), but said that, if was her, she would select Medium Parcel.

I'm still yo-yo'ing back and forth between the two options, which is ludicrous, really, as the difference is only a few quid, and my item will be priced at at least £400. ["at at" - who do I think I am, General Veers?!]

I'm curious more than anything to know if things would go smoothly if I did go with eBay's recommended band, but it would be a potentially problematic test probably better left for a much cheaper item. Despite the reassurances from other members (and eBay itself), under the current circumstances I'm not particularly inclined to trust eBay to follow its own protocols.

Incidentally, the PO manager told me that Simple Delivery (she wasn't familiar with the name but did know about the 'Marketplace Seller' text on the labels) was, and continued to be, an absolute headache, and that the communication about it had been awful, although she was probably talking about the Horizon system comms (and possibly comms between The Post Office and Royal Mail). The confusion is understandable, as accepting what would, under 'normal' (non-SD) circumstances, be an underpaid label must be a completely foreign way of working for them.

[edwardian-dreams]

Or they could just add the LARGE parcel option under the sizes of LL small and medium and let you chose custom seeing as SD didn’t cover large or heavy parcels 

why is it stopping at medium it didn’t used to even after SD was introduced 

it might be to do with them wanting SD to cater for large parcels too with DHL now being brought on board SOON

but they have / had  nothing to lose by allowing custom for those parcels until they do so I don’t get it 

[dazzamatazz1]

I had to trawl through all the eBay FAQs and dreadful AI bot until I finally got the 'call me' option to speak to a human.

The CSR told me how to find the customer address without buying a label:

Go to: 'Get prepaid label'->click on the pencil icon on 'delivery details' to see the shipping address.

Then I asked her how to find the buyer's phone number. She said 'it's not needed'. I said 'it is, as every courier needs to know the phone number to send notifications'. I'm using Parcel2Go to pick a service. She replied that it was not possible to find the customer's phone number and I would have to send a message asking for it.

I'm not running a business, I just sell things I no longer need. I'm going to stop listing on eBay until this nonsense is resolved or some entrepreneur creates a company to compete with eBay. I just don't have the time for this hassle.

[dazzamatazz1]

Interesting. What platforms have your tried and which would you recommend?

Thanks in advance for any helpful information you may be able to provide.

[wgwillia]

You can thank eBay for messing up again a system that work well if it's not broken no need to fix it .

[department28]

'it might be to do with them wanting SD to cater for large parcels too with DHL now being brought on board SOON but they have / had  nothing to lose by allowing custom for those parcels until they do so I don’t get it.' 

Perhaps the thinking was if they let people happily carry on using Custom for large parcels, to then be forced to use SD for large parcels, would annoy everyone all over again...

When they finally roll out large parcels with Simple Delivery/DHL, they might even think we will be grateful.... 😂

[edwardian-dreams]

It’s all very UNPROFESSIONAL and very sad 

don’t bother second guessing   their reasons 

*bleep* may all be mad stressed etc not OUR problem 

they have screwed up big time and have not dealt with it 

the man at the helm needs sacking  or someone does 

[mssv-20]

I am now using Facebook marketplace and stop stop selling on eBay much easier cash in hand sold as seen and no issue once this items left your premises 

[wellingnorth]

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@irt303 wrote:

Listing an item with 'Seller pays' postage and Evri de-selected. eBay is recommending Small Parcel up to 1kg. My item exceeds the max dimensions for Small Parcel by 2cm on one dimension (other two are within), but also weighs nearly 3kg.

I posted for advice - was it safe to go with eBay's recommendation or should I switch up to Medium Parcel which my item's size and weight is fully within?

I meant to reply to your original thread about this. I had a lot of my listings switched over to simple delivery automatically more or less all of them at the small parcel rate. I've sent one medium parcel with a small parcel "Marketplace Seller" label and it went fine dropped off at the delivery office with no surcharges for me nor the buyer. 

However I know for a fact that if you get the label printed from a QR code at the Post Ofice then it shows the format on the label, so if the size format on your listing was a Large Letter they may check if it fits through the slot (whether they're supposed to or not). Similarly with a Simple Delivery label printed at home the staff in my Post Office have checked that it fits through the Large Letter slot. When I asked why they said that the size showed up on their screen when they scanned it despite it not being shown on the label (this was a few weeks ago)

So basically I think at this point if the parcel is accepted you should be fine, but depending on your Post Office you may have trouble getting them to accept it if it's above the size limit. Personally if I know it's the wrong size I'm just taking it to the delivery office which is not convenient but better that having to try multiple Post Office branches. 

It would also be really helpful if ebay would show on a completed order whether they had set the parcel size or whether you overrode their recommendation. I do wonder at this point if anyone is getting surcharged though as I haven't seen any reports of it on the forums.