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.

[roberpalme_236]

Ebay are running out of people to fleece, that's why they've brought in Simple Delivery.

It would be interesting to see how much of a cut ebay are on from Evri and Royal Mail.

[akemp1]

Yeah SD is utter tosh and their stupidity is a thing of wonder.

[jezzagold]

All I want to do is list an item, choose how much I want to pay for delivery and with who, then the buyer can simply decide if they want the item or not - Simple! 

[department28]

The very unpopular Buyer Protection Fee has caused enough trouble for private sellers recently, so it seems very poor timing & judgement from eBay, to be adding mandatory Simple Delivery into an already unsettled, unhappy environment...

Creaming off a nice profit from our postage money is one thing, but couldn't they have found an easier way to do this, without introducing a system that completely overturns the traditional postage arrangements that everyone is familiar & happy with? 

Many sellers will have no choice but to give up altogether - those who don't have/don't want printers & smartphones, those who want to use stamps, those with location/drop off issues etc, etc, etc... 

The complete disregard for how this is affecting people reflects very badly on eBay.

[vinylscot]

Although the OP is posting from an incorrect understanding of SD, his post does demonstrate what is possibly the biggest flaw in this SD fiasco.

eBay's communication has been absolutely hopeless.

Anyone coming new to this may quite understandably come to the same conclusion as the original poster; to me, it makes sense. However, this is one of the few things about SD which is actually simple, although eBay have needlessly complicated it by failing to communicate it properly to users.

It really should not be beyond eBay's capabilities to put together a no-nonsense practical guide to SD, in words of one syllable if possible. Some of the most experienced posters on these boards have been utterly confused by the lack of direction and information over the last couple of months - so what chance does a more casual user have?

Dripping out bits and pieces over a number of weeks shows a lack of foresight and planning on eBay's part, and it is understandable that users are losing faith in them. This should have been ready, and properly communicated weeks before the launch. We shouldn't have had to wait until launch day (or later) to find out what's really happening.

[lucy_farmer]

'Dripping out bits and pieces over a number of weeks shows a lack of foresight and planning on eBay's part,'

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Exactly.

They could be described as 'firefighting' i.e. putting out different 'flare-ups' every time a new problem is spotted or found, by putting in a new rule or method to deal with it. (once they've decided what it should be...)

They should have had the whole kit and kaboodle ready to launch, BEFORE LAUNCHING, *with* an all encompasing guide.

AND with an easy to read script for CS to follow, so they don't just make up any old carp when they get a question they don't understand.....

Whether SD ends up working or not is yet to be discovered.

Whether ebay have made a right dog's dinner of implementing the whole thing, is now a blindingly obvious *yes*.

[the-nutwood-collection]

Creaming off a nice profit from our postage money is one thing, but couldn't they have found an easier way to do this ...

Yes, they could have found an easier way - seller fees for private sellers - just like it used to be in the olden days before eBay started to offer regular promos for 100% or 80% off fees, then wall-to-wall sell for free.

When I sold as a private seller, I paid FVF fees and optionally, I could pay for more images or gallery pop-ups.  I didn't have a problem with this, I understood that I would have to pay for access to eBay's footfall.  Nothing in this life is free.  

All eBay had to do was re-introduce FVF for private sellers - but they didn't.  They could have offered the option of simple delivery for those sellers that preferred buyer fees and no-hassle QR code labels - but they didn't.

IMO, a massive own goal for eBay.

[tegeus-cromis]

Yep, it's abysmal. You wouldn't imagine you could f up something as basic as providing postage, but Ebay have managed it. I wanted my packages collecting but I never got the option to specify that and they were marked as Drop Off with no option to edit. Fortunately you can change them to Collect on the RM site but it's just more hassle. As for how Ebay discovers the dimensions and weight of my packages, God only knows. It has no clue what item I'm selling when I'm actually entering the data for the listing, but suddenly when I go to postage it claims to know its exact height, width, depth and weight. I'm thankful I only sell a few items a year on this toilet of a site.

[wazmeister1806]

Yep I got charged £2.70 to post a trading card that sold for £9 an 87p stamp is all I needed this is  a terrible 2 steps backwards service 

[lucy_farmer]

'yep I got charged £2.70 to post a trading card that sold for £9 an 87p stamp is all I needed...'

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That should have been exempt from Stupid Delivery :

Items that are under 100gms, fit in a normal envelope and sell for under a tenner, should be able to be posted however you like 😊

Next time you list similar, look for 'custom postage'/'advanced options' etc.  (it might take a bit of finding and ebay may keep trying to push you to S.D. but have patience, you should find it!)

[comicscotty477]

I decided to try out SD and was quite apprehensive about it.

I have to say that I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to use.

I just use the QR code that gets emailed to me and it really is no problem. I've been using a similar process with Amazon and other companies for years if I need to return items.

I set my postage preferences to exclude Evri. I'll keep it that way for the foreseeable future as I've had poor experience with them in the past. 

I'm only selling LPs at the moment, so getting the correct postage price from the SD AI system is no problem.

I don't know how I'd get on if I was selling various size/weight items but so far my experience with SD is a positive one.

[edwardian-dreams]

If the shipping is transparent in all ways and the costs “normal” then I guess it’s no different to before..I post small parcels and it will not change things for me in the main 

however I don’t like their enforcement of sending something tracked when it becomes a lot more expensive 

not everyone’s paranoid about dishonest buyers and they are few and far between 

Also
ok let’s say you sell a postcard /knitting pattern/comic/ etc it’s under £10 and under 100g

why does it have to fit in an envelope

what is it about large letters that transforms that item into a bigger risk

people who buy these items don’t expect to pay the higher postage costs 

because they have said large letters MUST go tracked 

[whitequeen99]

Since starting to use simple delivery, I now have to print off labels (more cost) rather than just writing address on envelope,  wasting paper as label only to prints on a small part of an A4 sheet, and then some items have to go via Royal Mail, Some via Evri etc, so I have to go to different places to post things now! Still, as Ebay are making money, they seem to have not considered the sellers who are making them money!