eBay Buyer Delivery Advice WORSENS

[clydeandrascal]

A little while ago I posted here about the inaccurate advice eBay was giving to sellers about expected delivery dates.  Far from improving, it has now become worse.   I offer a standard 2 day dispatch & use a 3-5 day courier service.  The original problem arose because the flawed algorithm used by eBay failed to exclude non-working days i.e. weekends & Bank Holidays, when most carriers do not work.   

Now, the situation has become absolutely ridiculous as dispatch times appear to have been excluded from eBay estimates.  A sale paid for to-day has been told by eBay that delivery is estimated from THREE DAYS time.    It is ludicrous to continue, by being blatantly misleading, to create opportunities for customer dissatisfaction & poor feedback for sellers.    If I was misrepresenting my services in this fashion I'm sure I'd be penalised for it.

[station13thirteen]

Yep, we're in the same boat. It's an absolute disgrace.

EBay should not be allowed to meddle with out postage policies and inflict their own optimistic estimated delivery dates on us.

They seem to enjoy meddling with things that gives us sellers a little more grief, and as you say this opens us up for poor feedback, irate INR messages and late delivery marks.

Thanks for this eBay... your tech guys are doing a great job!

[btr.style]

Yeah it totally disregards dispatch times which is huge problem. 

Had a few items that sold yesterday (Sunday) which supposedly will be delivered by tomorrow or weds. 

Some items that sold today are expected delivery tomorrow or weds. 

Our own delivery is set as 3-5 working days with 3 working days dispatch time so those estimates are garbage. 

[leon9503]

The whole thing is just broken, they seem to live in a fantasy where delivery services actually work and sellers miraculously get items posted from their time machines.

I also notice as a buyer that the Tracking System is a bigger joke than Rishi Sunak.

Luckily I have a brain and know EB doesn't work properly so I never leave neg FB for delivery issues as I know it's not the sellers fault and think most others do, so take a little comfort in that but for business sellers it must be a pain as some buyers will moan at anything, regardless if the system works or not.

[ear2fear]

I've noticed this as well. Someone messaged me 5 days after paying to ask where the item was and they said the delivery date keeps changing. I thought they seemed a bit keen. Then I noticed that buyers are being told that the item will be delivered within 3 days of them paying. I wonder if this could be why some sellers are seeing a decrease in positive feedback? 

[clydeandrascal]

I've taken to supplying a warning with my Feedback to the buyer - if they read it, at least they'll know the truth of the situation:

"Thank you for your purchase & prompt payment.

N.B. Delivery is estimated (see listing) at 5-7 working days (i.e. not weekends or Bank Holidays) - eBay post-sale advice does omit that detail."

[theelench]

Yep, ebay's still at it.

My first sale this year at 8pm yesterday (18th), same as always 2 day dispatch so ebay tells me to post by 20th.

Then tells the buyer to expect delivery 21 -23rd  by RM 2nd Class.

Do I care?  Not any more, I sell I send, my buyers are happy.  If ebay can't add 2+3 and get the right answer more fool them, they're just making ebay more of a joke than it already is.

[evilvonfluffy]

If eBay mark sellers down for late delivery and then apply higher fees to those sellers on the basis of the incorrect delivery dates surely this is an unfair and possibly illegal action. Meaning, if eBay knowingly leave the algorithm as it is knowing it is wrong to raise more fees this could somehow be flagged up as an unfair trading practice?

Not my concern as I do not sell and not for one minute am I saying this is a conscious ploy by eBay to extract more fees but it does strike me as odd that they fail to act on this. Would love to know how much extra revenue eBay get from higher fees imposed for bad delivery ratings.

[greatgiftshampshire]

had this issue yesturday customer purchased Friday was exspecting delivery Saturday / Sunday !! thats a next day dispatch using RM 48 ?? really ebay ? royal mail working Sunday ? and delivery within 48 hrs bit promissing I think , or just more false information .....

[station13thirteen]

Yep, eBay meddling madness.  They just can't leave anything alone.

Slowly destroying seller credibility and inflicting pain on us through no fault of our own. 

The fact that they've recently added another half a pecent to selling fees makes this intrusive, unwanted meddling even harder to swallow.

[theelench]

UPDATE.

Yes it has got worse since my last sale at the end of November.

I wrapped and boxed the item before breakfast and raced to the P.O in my PJs and slippers  Parcel accepted at 10:08, 19/3/24.

Get home and add the Reference Number.

The page updates to include Tracking AND ALSO updates the FDD "Shown to Buyer".

Which now is 20 - 21st March, instead of the 21 - 23rd (shown 3 hours before).

So ebay has reduced the "on time" delivery window by another day.  Their first calculation guess was just about possible (on a good day at RM).  The new one is impossible.

If ebay can't trip up a seller one way, they'll break your legs to make sure they get you another way 😠

[station13thirteen]

Out of curiosity, we've just had a look to see when customers have marked us down for late delivery.

All these 'late deliveries' are for economy RM 2nd class postage that doesn't arrive within eBay's 3 Day EDD  ...Aaaarghh!

However, and rather bizarrely, eBay seem to have stepped in and involved themselves by marking us down as late delivery on RM 48 tracked packages that were dispatched the day after the order was received... just because 'tracking' indicated late delivery... What!

So we get marked down for late delivery, not because the buyer was unhappy, in fact the buyer might be quite happy with the delivery date, but because eBay reckon 'tracking' indicated late delivery.  Something that is totally out of our control once the item is dispatched.  

We see that ebay have also stepped in and done this for some 2nd class large letters that do not have tracking anyway. It seems if the postie does not scan it when delivered (and in our experience they don't always do this on non-tracked large letters) eBay then use the postage label item number  as a tracking number and marks us down... even though the package may well have been delivered, and we have a happy customer.

You couldn't make this up.

Seriously, these techy clowns at eBay need to go and find another circus to play at.  We are so fed up with eBay's continual unthinking nonsense and constant meddling. 

[station13thirteen]

Oh, and I nearly forgot, eBay has the nerve to list these 'late' deliveries under the heading:

'Transactions that weren't dispatched on time'.

Never once have we NOT dispatched an item on time! 😠

[leon9503]

I've noticed, as a buyer, since they 'updated' the Tracking System, it's actually worse than before, I've had parcels delivered and the tracking says it's still in transit, one old one was 3 months ago LOL.

It told me one of my items was being delivered last Saturday,  I'm still waiting and now it says it's behind, hang on how does it know it was being delivered on Sat when it doesn't work and does that now put a mark on the seller as being late? If so, that in nonsense, it feels like the system runs in it's own way but has nothing to do with reality....

The Trueman Tracking System is in town....

Have they possibly linked part of it to some sort of incompetent 'AI', if so it's more proof it's not fit for purpose and all EB are doing is killing the platform sooner than expected.

I also know that some sellers get distracted by Real Life™ and can't always post when they might usually do, so for me as long as it arrives, eventually....then I'm good with the seller.

[ironz61]

deleted.....

[theelench]

If my memory serves me well, ever since its inception, years ago, it's always been labelled as " Late Dispatch".  It was introduced because, according to ebay, lazy or dis-organised sellers were giving the site a bad name by making buyers wait for their purchases to arrive by posting after their stated Dispatch Window.  (Although many thought it was ebay trying to compete with amazon deliveries, on the cheap, by pressurising sellers into dispatching quicker.

At the time there was a lot of discussion about the way it worked because it counted backwards from the EDD, so any delivery after that "proved" that it was dispatched late.

Ebay was probably rather miffed that so many sellers got around that by lengthening their Dispatch Window.

Ebay's reaction was what we've got now and perhaps it's why we're being given such inaccurate FDDs  --  somewhere in the 'calculation' it's still counting backwards?  

[the-nutwood-collection]

I've ordered a number of low-value items from eBay recently, and I'm astonished to find that they're arriving T24/48 - one came by carrier.

I know that OBA rates are lower than I pay on click and drop, but surely T24/48 is more costly than 2nd Class?

Are sellers being railroaded by eBay's ridiculous EDDs into sending fast-track to avoid late strikes and INRs?

I wish there was some way to mark my orders as 'not urgent' to save the seller frittering their margin away just to satisfy the eBay EDDs.  If it's urgent, I'll upgrade the postage to 1st or SD,  otherwise I don't care if it takes a week or ten days to arrive.

[outbounce_1290]

I'm afraid I have you all beat when it comes to ebay EDD's...

5 items posted RM 2nd class recorded today 19th March - accepted at the PO at 13.44pm

tracking uploaded at 17.47pm

who would like to guess what the date ebay have given my buyers???

yes, that's right ..ebay's EDD is TODAY 19th March..

words fail me...

[station13thirteen]

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@outbounce_1290 wrote:

words fail me...

---

I can think of a few words if you'd like to buy some... though I can't guarantee the EDD!

[theelench]

"Are sellers being railroaded......"

Of course they are!!!

One way or another everything ebay does is about taking more money from sellers.

This is no exception but it's a first in that ebay is now actively lying to buyers to add to the pressure on sellers. 

A bit Ironic when you think that speeding-up deliveries was supposed to be about buyer satisfaction.  Some sellers have, no doubt, been bullied into posting by (alleged) quicker delivery methods. 

But I think most have not, so all most buyers have got out of ebays tactics is confusion about when their purchase will really arrive, caught between ebay's lie telling them it will arrive impossibly quickly and sellers trying to get around that by lying to buyers by saying it will take them longer to dispatch than it actually does.

So rather than getting anything accurate, all they can do now is to take the two inaccurate extremes and hope that it might arrive somewhere in between.

Yet when buyers are sick to death of the useless search and the convoluted nonsense of trying to find anything with it, leaving ebay in need of every buyer it can get, ebay stupidly finds another way to make the site even more un-attractive than it already is.