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.

[retroman303]

Thanks for asking about that at a business seller's event, and for reporting back. I'm glad that whoever you spoke to gave you a proper response (well, sort of - it was a bit vague and non-committal, but certainly frank).

Could you please clarify what the 5% refers to? As this was a business seller event, did they mean that only 5% of business seller orders include items combined (from separate orders)? Since combined postage is currently practically impossible to achieve for private sellers (I'm not including eBay's very clumsy mechanism of going into the next size/weight band), the figure for combined postage on private sales must be nearer to 1% at present! Or did they indeed mean 5% of private seller orders? I'm sure that, before SD, combined orders for private sellers would have been significantly higher than 5%, but maybe I'm plain wrong, and combined orders pre-SD were not as common as I'd assumed they were.

The claim that they are working on it, but without even an estimate of when it might be functional, leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, it's heartening to hear that they appear to be taking the issue seriously (as they should have from the start), but on the other hand they can be glacial when it comes to fixing and introducing certain things. I read about an issue on the boards yesterday (can't remember what it was, sorry) that eBay stated they would fix about two years ago, yet it has still not been addressed. IIRC, it was not as complicated a matter as combining postage, either (complicated with Simple Delivery, that is - it was a cinch to combine items and charge accordingly before SD).

My other concern would be the amount of potential disruption, chaos and confusion caused by trying to integrate combined shipping into the SD programme; I know it's pessimistic of me, but I can't see that being a smooth and seamless process. This year has been quite the anus horribilis for private sellers (and has probably given eBay some major headaches, too), and we desperately need to feel that things are back on the up, rather than having to endure yet more problems.

Still, it was a far more encouraging reply than "eBay has no plans for the forseeable future to facilitate combined shipping on private sales."

As far as I'm concerned, the return of the ability to combine items (under some system that actually works properly, and does not overcharge the buyer/seller) can't happen a second too soon. Its absence is a major impediment to sales.

Also interesting was that staff member's candid agreement with your (fair) assessment of how the SD rollout was handled. That must have been very off the record, I can't imagine any eBay employee officially stating that the company had screwed up - not if they valued their job!

[pegr-834437]

I went back and asked if I could post/say the things we spoke about and she said yes, so whilst it was frank they kind of accept they have made mistakes. I also spoke to Eve Williams and again didn't hold back (whats the point) about the private accounts that are clearly businesses and the terrible reporting system which isnt fit for purpose, also about the use of the word hustle instead of calling it what it is a business. 

With regards to the 5%, I'm not sure if it was for private or businesses but it was prior to SD, again not sure if it was for orders purchased all together in your basket or if they are counting 3 different items purchased and then shipped together. I should have asked for clarification but I was kind of thinking I'm getting a chance to put across issues I don't want to be too bogged down.

The main thing I tried to get across to eBay was that the communication was pretty shocking. The problem they have is they are in a bubble, nobody there will run a business on eBay so business sellers issues are not brought up enough, and anyone who sells unwanted clothing if they have an issue they have the best customer service you can ask for. If they need a shipping issue solved they can go to the head of shipping or billing or whatever so they never see real customer problems, they dont have to battle the chat bot to get somebody in Albania who reads a script and tells you whatever they want. 

I think the no solid deadline is fair tbh, if they said to me o it'll be sorted by 21st of December and then comes the 22nd and its not sorted they have thrown the team under the bus, at least with this sellers know its actually being worked on. Its better than a week ago when eBay thought no communication was a great policy at least imho. The issue comes with how to stop people scamming from it, I thought of an easy way in 5 minutes, just buy 3 items from a friend say you only received the cheapest and you can then claim 2 have gone missing. Things like that will need to be solved but how to solve them is the difficult part I guess.

With regards to the last point, Eve Williams said they have done some wrong things, Sholto at Edinburgh said they have messed up too, I don't think anyone within eBay thinks they do everything correctly and certainly arent afraid to admit to mistakes. It just comes down to communication, these events are a rare chance to speak to people and if you explain an issue they accept its an issue and try and fix it, for the next 6/12 months nobody will have a face to face discussion with them so everything just boils over.

Bit of a long reply and slightly off subject and I do sound like a bit of a cheerleader for eBay in some aspects but I do honestly think they are trying to do best for business and customers (business and private sellers) its just bloody difficult.

[retroman303]

I concur (sadly). The most desirable options are also the least likely (yes, probably completely unlikely).

As you say, the degree of flexibility required to facilitate combined shipping is incompatible with the deliberate constraints of SD - the latter would need to be overhauled to the point where it was a very, very different thing to the SD that we currently know and love.

I think eBay has truly painted itself into a corner on this one, and I anticipate that their 'solution' will be to never get around to allowing combined shipping for private sellers, despite the open day person's claim that eBay is on the case. I'd love to be completely and utterly wrong, obviously.

[pegr-834437]

The only way I can see it happening is if they honour 1 case and then basically be like anything after this you are on your own. This was mentioned by the Trust manager in a talk about buyers/sellers breaking policy where currently you arent told until stage 3 when you are either limited or kicked off, it will now be this is your first warning for breaking policy X, then you've broken another policy do it again and you are banned and then the obvious ban next time. If a buyer claims 2 or 3 times they've only received half their orders they get benefit of the doubt same with sellers but if it becomes  habit you dont get refunded and get banned.

[mechman61]

Sellers get no support whatsoever. I've been battling for a month after a dishonest buyer claimed he ordered something different to my listing,
I,m saying to ebay, you tell me what the listing was for, none of them has the honesty to say my listing was correct, a buyer could say they ordered a pink elephant and ebay would believe them. zero support for sellers

[yoursimplesolution]

I am using eBay both for buying and selling but it's never been this odd before, most of my products are letter and large letter but now you can't even choose your own postage, it is ridiculous.  I am not sure who is passing these new changes on eBay but one thing is certain that they lose both buyers and sellers. 

[cobwebcottage]

You're on the wrong account. SD is for private sellers.

Business seller policy | eBay

[mechman61]

BLAH BLAH BLAH, not compulsory, I sold 4 items last month would you have a high street shop, paying all those rates and expenses, then open one day a month to sell 4 items. i think not.
Are you an ebay employee, why dont you find someone at ebay with at least half a braincell, to provide me with customer service and seller protection because they are non existent , ebay discriminates against sellers, FACT..

[cobwebcottage]

Did that touch a nerve? - as I wasn't replying to you.

You carry on if you are selling your own unwanted items. After all, all of your listings have a declaration that consumer protection law does not apply.

Sales quantities is irrelevant.

[mechman61]

It seemed like a direct reply to me, I accept returns if not as described or someone makes an honest mistake, no problem,
A buyer can say what the hell they like and ebays unfit for purpose robots are programmed to agree with them, then if you do get a human response they will not accept undeniable evidence if the buyer has made false claims.

[retroman303]

[Sorry, typed this yesterday, but forgot to post it!]

I'm the very last person who could legitimately have an issue with a long post or a poster going off on tangents! I really appreciate the extra detail you've provided.

I'm still surprised by the candour displayed by the people you spoke to (well done for being able to bend Eve Williams' ear). While I'm sure they were somewhat measured in their concessions, that's still a very different 'face' of eBay to the one we're used to seeing (dictatorial, tight-lipped, unyielding, etc.). How did Eve react to some of the issues you told her about? Did she seem to be genuinely shocked at how out of hand things have got? I like to think that you gave her some serious food for thought, and that there might be a few 'little chats in the office' as a result. It's very hard to imagine a General Manager knowing/finding out that all this stuff is happening on their watch, and being fine with it all.

I agree that eBay don't do anywhere near enough to make a clear distinction between business and private sellers. I'm the latter, but I recently had a great big banner in Seller Hub saying "Grow your business" (or something like that - it used the word "business", anyway).

I'm glad you were able to put across a number of issues. Knowing me, I'd have gone into such granular detail that I wouldn't have even completed my first point by the time she had to be somewhere else!

I do, however, vehemently disagree that "anyone who sells unwanted clothing if they have an issue they have the best customer service you can ask for." Maybe I've misunderstood you, as your subsequent use of "they" appears to be referring to Eve or other eBay personnel (although I doubt Eve is trying to flog her last season's apparel). And I am assuming that, despite specifically mentioning sellers of unwanted clothing, you mean private sellers generally. I can only repeat what I've posted before: as a private seller, nine out of ten times I've, ahem 'reached out' to CS, the level of support in all areas - grasp of the English language, friendliness, knowledge, accuracy of information, willingness to 'own' an issue through to its resolution (or to ensure that the matter is passed on to someone with greater knowledge or authority) - has been shockingly poor (well, it becomes less shocking after a while, you come to expect it). I shan't repeat examples of my CS woes - I posted at length about them elsewhere - but I will reiterate my amazement that agents can get away with cutting you off on the phone (or prematurely ending a live chat) when it's all supposedly monitored.

When I mentioned "an estimate", I certainly didn't expect a specific day! Just a year would be good, maybe which quarter in that year. But I can understand Bay's reluctance to given even that rough an idea.

Yep, that scam is, in theory, so easy to carry out with SD, but it's hard to see how eBay will be able to deal with it in any way other than reactively (taking action once it has identified a pattern).

I came away from your post a little more heartened. It's encouraging to hear that eBay people with clout acknowledge that mistakes have been made, now let's hope that this all translates into some significant improvements.

[pegr-834437]

Eve was shocked, she took notes and I genuinely don't believe they have a clue about half the issues. They know the private accounts who are business issue and they know SD wasnt taken well but they dont know why its such a big issue or how big the issue it. 

When I was talking about people selling unwanted clothes having access to the best CS I mean the eBay staff who use the site, most are 25-35 at these events so they will sell on eBay, if they have issues they dont call customer services like me and you they email Mike head of shipping or James the head of payments, again thats why they don't know the issues we face daily on here.

I have to say most of these events the staff are pretty open, its pointless them trying to play dumb or trying to convince me there isnt an issue when I can pull up the problem on my phone and they'd look silly. I will repeat myself till I'm blue in the face the big issue is they are not told of the many issues unless its at events like these as the communication within eBay is shocking. 

[retroman303]

"Eve was shocked..."

Then it looks like certain systems and/or people within eBay UK are preventing her from getting wind of these things. It's crazy that the first she heard of some of these issues was from a seller at an Open Day. She must surely have felt some professional embarrassment and anger as well as the shock. Maybe she ought to not merely rely on sytems/other people to tell her the 'word on the street', and take a look on these boards once in a while. She'd soon get a general feel of how things are in the 'ecosystem'.

"When I was talking about..."

Yeah, I thought I must have got the wrong end of the stick there! Thanks for clarifying.

"I have to say..."

Like I said, crazy! It's easy for me to say, not being the General Manager of eBay UK, but if I were her, I think the first thing I'd do would be to set in motion an overhaul of their internal communications systems. I'd also be having a hard think about the people I relied on to pass relevant information up to me. And there'd also certainly be a few heads rolling.

[jonatjonatjonat]

Have you spotted the little ‘in response to’ that appears on posts?

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"Eve was shocked, she took notes and I genuinely don't believe they have a clue about half the issues. They know the private accounts who are business issue and they know SD wasnt taken well but they dont know why its such a big issue or how big the issue it."

There is absolutely NO excuse for not knowing the issues.   I've worked in some big firms, and the bosses made a habit of walking the shop floor (or equivalent) to take the pulse on what was going on.  At ebay, the bosses don't even have to leave their ivory-tower desks, all they have to do is look into this forum from time to time.   Apart from keeping their own finger on the pulse of the forum, they should have people dedicated to collating and reporting on the specific issues that people have, and how commonplace those issues are.  It's absolutely basic, and shocking if that hasn't been done.  It brings to mind the boss of the Post Office saying that she didn't know what was wrong with the computer system. There's just no excuse.

Do they even take any notice of the issues that are raised in the Community Chat?  I'd say not the slightest.  This week's Community Chat didn't even run to 2 pages.  Have people stopped raising issues because they know there's no point because nothing will get done and you'll just get fobbed off?  That's no reflection on the Community Team because I recognise that their hands are tied, but it's very rare to see useful responses.  Heck, people who have the temerity to pursue an issue even get told that they'll be ignored in future.

I'd be in with the first to return to both selling and buying if ebay took notice of just how much hassle SD is for some people, acknowledged that they'd got it wrong and made it optional.  It wouldn't be the first time that a major organisation had had to backtrack, and it's the only way to stop the rot and get some corporate respect back.  If Eve Williams and the rest of her team were genuinely shocked at what they heard, then let's see what - if anything - they do about it.  I'm not holding my breath, but I'd be the first to applaud them if they did.

[retroman303]

How can she have so little idea of what's going on?

I find the whole thing bizarre, uttlerly bizarre.

[pegr-834437]

I mean this in the nicest way to people who use the board but its a toxic pit half the time, its just constant slagging off a system half the people don't understand or have failed to read/learn the latest update/change. Again that is down to eBays poor coms but coming on here wouldn't solve the issue. Coming on to answer questions on the weekly chat would, again something the people I spoke to said yeah I agree with you on that but you know that question has been asked 100 times already and we get the same response.

SD is here to stay, it needs some slight changes, combination postage needs to be solved but again how to solve that and not leave yourself open to mass fraud is difficult. Its really not that bad but people have their minds set that its terrible and the worst creation eBay could have done. The same people would probably complain if they got it back to custom postage but had to pay a selling fee, some just arent happy.

I mentioned numerous times how bad coms are, thats eBays biggest issue to me at least right now, if they got the PR good about SD then there'd be very little anger towards it, sadly they failed at the first hurdle and the wild fire spread, if you go back to an early page in that massive thread half the stuff is bonkers.

[gjalp]

I’m ok with SD on higher priced, one off items. Its rare I need to combine those. I do think the under £20 exception should be extended to all categories regardless of package size. The lower priced items are more likely to be combined too so that would solve a lot of the combined postage issues IMHO. 

Ebay really does need to sort out their CS. We need people with good understanding of the English language and the ability to solve issues rather than read off a script.

[dougbat20]

Well to be honest with you I always used to list items only when there was an 80% off FVF promo (who remembers those?) and back then, even with the seemingly mandatory promoted listings (I only ever use 2%, the minimum) it was better to list things compared to now.

eBay can say "oh it's free to sell", but it's clearly not, as in order to stay price relevant, you need to essentially eat the BPF (essentially making it a seller fee) and set the price based on what the buyer will pay (thankfully there is an option to just type what the buyer pays and it then shows what you will get).

Simple Delivery should be made optional. Simple as that.

It's a good idea having eBay deal with it - until you get a buyer who gets a damaged item and opens a case for item not as described rather than item damaged in transit (the latter, eBay should cover under their delivery procedure). 

It's a good idea having eBay estimate the weights and dimensions - until they over-estimate and charge the buyer more (or the seller more if free postage), oh, and the prices are hardly any different compared to going straight to RM/Evri despite eBay probably having a huge deal with said couriers that means eBay only pay about £1.50 per parcel irrespective of weight etc etc.

And it would be very nice being able to actually choose your own courier...what if Royal Mail is more expensive compared to what service you want to use? What if you don't want to use Evri - and still get an Evri label forced on you? What if your parcel is over 61x46x46cm and don't want to spend all day waiting in for DHL to collect from you? What if you'd rather use InPost, not need to worry about weights, and know that anything up to 15kg is covered by the same price band, where the price just depends on the parcel's size?

Someone really hasn't thought this through !!

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"I mentioned numerous times how bad coms are, thats eBays biggest issue to me at least right now, if they got the PR good about SD then there'd be very little anger towards it"

I'm afraid that if the ebay team have been left with the notion that all they have to do is sort out the PR/communications, then they have been seriously misinformed.