It’s time to start shipping your items faster. There are still many sellers on eBay who ship with a “Next Day” delivery services but still ruin it with a long handling time.
On eBay.com from this week eBay will begin displaying handling times of longer than three days as exceptions in the Sell Your Item flow. In September this year they’ll start to display longer handling times on the View Item Page to highlight to buyers that this particular seller won’t be dispatching your item for several days.
We’re well aware on Tamebay that many sellers simply can’t dispatch items within three days. This especially applies to sellers who manufacture customised items to order. If you’re engraving items, printing party invitations, tailoring clothing to fit, printing pop-up banners for businesses and a whole host of other items it’s quite possible the products won’t be completed within three days. There are also products which are more difficult to deliver, e.g. those that require a two man delivery – Sellers use longer handling times as these deliveries need to be scheduled, often with prior arrangement with the buyer.
Casual sellers who only ship on Saturdays when they queue up at the Post Office will also be impacted. The best advice for these sellers will be to display shorter handing times and manage their eBay activity with auctions to ensure items finish towards the end of the week.
The real impact will be for those sellers who simply stick up a long handling time so that they can ship as and when they get time. This practice will have to stop and sellers will need to start shipping several times a week to avoid their long handling time being displayed.
Of course in reality what will happen is many sellers will choose to display shorter handling times and trust to luck that their Detailed Seller Ratings hold up. At Tamebay we’ve long held the belief that the faster you ship the better and to be honest if most sellers can’t ship within three days of selling an item there’s something wrong with the way they’re doing business.
9 Responses
Wonder if this will be rolled out on eBay UK? This is a good advantage for eBay sellers whose competitors are selling cheaper but are shipping from overseas hence take longer than 3 days to deliver.
it matters not a jot
lets be honest ebay could say and write what they like, buyers only read these things after buying, if there is a problem
Lace, it says handling times – that’s the time between payment being received, and the time in which the seller ships. Seller’s don’t have control over the shipping times for the most part, and besides, eBay already display an estimated delivery time on the item description.
I have a 30km round trip to my post office, but manage to go twice a week, so can just manage a 3 working day handling limit.
If I was buying bespoke and saw the message from eBay, it wouldn’t bother me. That information is already on the item description, and buyers should already be aware of it. If I was a manufacturer of bespoke items, I would be quite grateful in fact, that eBay was making the handling time more obvious.
I read your latest point on ebay despatch time. Especially the point where it says:-
‘to be honest if most sellers can’t ship within three days of selling an item there’s something wrong with the way they’re doing business’
HOWEVER – have you taken notice of ebays buyer rules? Because payment by buyers in NOT enforced in star ratings (it should be!) if you sell a lot of items you are immediately penalised by this problem!
So every week I list on Tuesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays. And on Fridays I accquire items to sell.
Therefore I can only send on Wednesdays. Now you WOULD think (as my auctions end Sundays!) that 3 days is VERY MUCH enough time for buyers to pay!
And yet – only 40% pay within 24 hours, another 40% pay within 3 days, and there is another CONSISTENT 20% that take between 4 & 7 days to pay.
So why should I be penalised – if I CLEARLY STATE that I send Wednesdays, a buyer cant be bothered to pay until Thursdays and then has to wait until next Wednesday (4 working days) for despatch????
WHEN WILL EBAY GRADE BUYERS ON PAYMENT TIMES, PARTIAL REFUND REQUESTS, AND ENFORCE 3 DAY PAYMENT TIMES?
For if sellers have to despatch within 3 days (fine!) then surely buyers should be made to pay within 3 days?
IF YOU SELL A HIGH VOLUME AS A SELLER – YOU NEED TO RELY ON PAYMENT TIMES. AND YOU CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO RUN DOWN THE POST OFFICE TO ACCOMMODATE SLOW PAYERS.
So in short – I think it ISNT just ‘the way sellers do business’ – it is certainly more the way buyers do business!
And why oh why arent buyers rated on payment times?
Your thoughts?
Not really on this subject but couldn’t find anything more appropriate. I was looking at a few items this morning and decided to enlarge the photo on the listing. Pressed enlarge..Nothing happened…Tried again and again…Finally something happened. A large white “Block” appeared with the photograph in it but the photograph was exactly the same size as it was in the listing.
So I tried a couple of other listings. Exactly the same.
Has ebay withdrawn the ability to enlarge the photo’s on Listings? If it has I think that it is a mistake. Over the years I have enlarged and examined many such photographs and I suspect that many Buyers have as well.
So unless there is a major technical reason why this has been withdrawn can I call upon ebay to reinstate the ability to enlarge photographs.