Why not just allow ALL items under £20 to be free of Simple Delivery?

[foresterdon]

Utterly useless eBay hyping up a decision to allow items under £20 to be free of the irritating Simple Delivery when the fact is it only applies to a tiny handful of categories which no buyers visit anyway.

Just admit you got this wrong, Ms Williams, and set low priced items free of this nuisance.

[suelel1968]

Lipstick on a pig! 

[moonlight-rhapsody]

Only a few of my items would benefit, and in any case I'm not going to consider selling (or buying) until SD is made optional full stop. 

SD seems to be symptomatic of how weird ebay has got, like with the messages "your buyer has reached out (and we've intercepted it)" but then it seems the buyer hadn't reached out at all.   And don't get me started on weird search results.  For goodness sake, ebay, get some therapy and get normal again!

[edwardian-dreams]

You don’t need it for all items under 20£

you need it only for large letters package size in any category as the small parcel prices under SD are cheaper than Royal Mail 

[goodibags]

... unless you have postage stamps to use up? These are still worth far more when actually used for postage than anything else.

So while it's technically true that SD is currently cheaper (and untracked postage appears to be subsidising a  tracked service) it's neither necessary nor particularly sustainable in the longer term.

Besides, standard RM cover has been £20 for a few decades already. Making SD optional for ALL items where it is simply not required has to be the right way to go!

[edwardian-dreams]

Yup you’re right

never thought of that re stamps

[style_wise]

They actually are, generally speaking. There are still some Category exceptions. But as long as you price under £20, select Simple Delivery - Large Letter, then the Custom Delivery will toggle on. Here you can choose any options you want including those for items:

over 100g

larger than Large Letter

Hopefully eBay won't change this!

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"Just admit you got this wrong, Ms Williams, and set low priced items free of this nuisance."

To be fair, this SD policy is the CEO's baby, and I don't suppose the General Manager* of ebay UK had much say in it.  The UK is only saddled with it because HQ decided that we'd be the test bed.  And I'd wouldn't be surprised if the General Manager couldn't act with autonomy where changes to SD are concerned.  It's highly unlikely that the CEO is going to admit that he got it wrong, and it remains to be seen whether there will be any consequences for him as a result of this stupendous error of judgement.

*I know the General Manager is also Vice President, but that title doesn't have the same meaning in the UK as it does in the States.  There are numerous Vice Presidents at ebay, for different departments and regions.

[goodibags]

"Here you can choose any options you want including those for items:

over 100g

larger than Large Letter

Hopefully eBay won't change this!"

Or IF they do change them that the AI unleashed won't impose random changes on random items completely randomly, like it did before?

I'm keeping the number of items for sale below 20 just in case I end up having to amend them all. 😉

[foresterdon]

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@moonlight-rhapsody wrote:

To be fair, this SD policy is the CEO's baby, and I don't suppose the General Manager* of ebay UK had much say in it. 

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But someone is authorising the limited but frequent backing down amendments so they must be communicating and Ms Williams must be  passing on the CEO the bad news about the general discontent among UK private sellers.

All it would take is a few more steps towards freeing up postage on cheaper items in All categories then we might be able to put this behind us.

[sizzenergy]

or at very least allow ALL items under £5-00 to be free of Simple Delivery