eBay have today enabled Postage Labels on the site, but unfortunately the way it’s implemented has spoilt the workflow for many sellers.
The drop down, in My eBay, used to helpfully display the next natural action in the sales process. For example when you were waiting for a payment the top action would be “Mark as Payment Received”. In awaiting postage it would be “Mark as despatched”, and if you selected the “Awaiting Feedback” view it would be “Leave Feedback”.
eBay in their wisdom have decided that regardless which view you select the top and only link you can click without selecting the dropdown is “Print Postage Label”. Having to click on the drop down before selecting the natural action slows the sales work flow down – there appears no option to disable postage labels in eBay.
Whilst this might be great advertising for their new service for professional sellers it’s a real pain. Most sellers will already have postage arrangements either with their own ParcelForce or courier contract and often a PPI account with Royal Mail. They will not want to use eBay postage labels which incidentally offer no discount on Royal Mail prices (a PPI account gives significant postage savings).
In PayPal if you wish to remove the postage options you simply click on “Auction Tools > Postage Preferences” and uncheck all the options. Sellers need a similar facility to disable postage options in eBay.
Finally the help pages on eBay.co.uk refer to the US postal service and UPS. Not really a lot of help for sellers in the UK! 😉
4 Responses
Talking about PPI, those with PPI accounts who currently use royal mail paper dockets will need to start making moves to RM’s online docket creating software (Epro?) as the paper-based system is due to be retired early 2008.
RM has put the original deadline back [to the begining of 2008] to allow PPI account holders more time to convert and train staff.
WHY have they removed the “mark as dispatched” etc. stuff from the order details page? This is a complete pain in the arse X-(
Because they haven’t a clue how sellers use the site and didn’t ask what the impact on sellers normal workflow would be. It’s great to introduce new features, but NOT when it affects the useability of the site 🙁
eBay have put in a redirect on the postage page, the original showing USPS and UPS can be seen in Google’s Cache