eBay have changed their mind. At the time of their last announcment when the lowered the delivery estimate for 2nd class post from 3-5 days to 2-3 days, they said that they’d be leaving 1st class post alone. Now they’ve said that the first class delivery estimate of 1-2 days will be changed to 1 working day.
Royal Mail’s own delivery target is that a minimum of 93% of First Class mail will be delivered the next working day. That means 7% of your customers won’t get 1st class post a day early.
eBay realise that this may not be popular with some sellers but say that they have seen an uplift in orders from buyers when they tested this change and no increase in poor feedback or DSR ratings.
eBay will of course be keeping an eye on the change and if they see a difference in unhappy buyers they’ll doubtless jump on it. For sellers there’s no changes to make, especially if you’re a seller who doesn’t use 1st Class Royal Mail. For those that do cross your fingers, buckle up your belt and hope that Royal Mail’s service doesn’t dive and if your customers are in the 7% of late deliveries that they don’t ding your feedback.
20 Responses
This is a really bad idea, as I said before over promissing is not great in any type of retail.
They have also just destroyed anyone paying for next day service as why would they when the cheaper or free service will arrive next day, sadly customers don’t read the word estimate!!!!
Just had something take 10 days to be delivered by 1st class, not uncommon.
Can we please see the figures ebay are referring to? or is it another ‘of 192 interviewed, 93% agreed jobbie’ A forensic examination of Royal Mail research would probably get to a more realistic figure of 70-80% of first class mail delivered the next day, which our figures suggest, and of that only 60% of Recorded Signed-for actually gets a signature. We are currently requesting proof of signature for every Recorded Delivery that hangs at the accepted at po stage, nothing from Royal Mail yet, will keep you inforemed.
Oh dear, why can’t they just leave it alone. Their figures don’t tell them of the ear bashing sellers get when stuff doesn’t arrive within their daft new time scales.
What about nearer Christmas when delivery times go out of the window?
Setting unrealistic expectations is and always will be a stupid idea. Sure sales will go up, but it’s not the whole story. I’m getting tired of eBay.
I have my despatch time set at 1 working day. Which means that anything actually despatched on the day of payment is posted 1 day early and 93% of the time will arrive early.
I think that the real reason eBay have done this is to show clear water between the sellers who keep 1 working day as opposed to those who will go with the ‘same day’ despatch (albeit up to the cut-off time) option when it comes to .co.uk later this year.
ebay saw an uplift in buyers because this change affected the search algorithm. Nothing at all to do with buyers thinking they get things quicker. ebay should change the search algorithm and not the delivery time.
I thought eBay were trying to move towards a cleaner image? – improved top rated requirements, cleaner logo, fresh designs, better image requirements etc.
This seems like it will just add to customer distrust of their marketplace…
Their strategy seems inconsistent to me.
We used to talk about “Post Early for Christmas”. The reason? Very simple. We all knew that before Christmas it is always chaos and it is very sensible to leave an extra few days(a week or two).
But if ebay is confidently stating “Next Day” Why bother to Order Early. After all ebay must know better!!!
So Buyers will leave ordering to the last minute and will not receive their goods in time. So who will get the blame? Why all us Sellers who failed to deliver on time.
So let us all call for ebay to adjust all delivery times for November and December to give more realistic delivery times or agree that all DSR or Feedback negatives that quote Delivery Times will be ignored for November and December. Because otherwise I would suggest that we are all going to be in trouble.
Actually it’s about time eBay either put up or shut up.
They (eBay) could easily afford to both buy a delivery company and charge eBay users an appropriately low price for delivery.
All postal prices and delivery issues with sellers sorted – or perhaps not?
Would concur that ebay are experts at making life for its customers tougher. Like the coalition government they tinker for the sake of tinkering and don’t understand why the people reject them.
Not like at all!
(Sadly perhaps) eBay does not need to seek re-election!
Do eBay now have to change something every week? This though is about the stupidest change they’ve made in ages.
Why would anyone now pay for Express Delivery? ‘eBay said I’d have it today…. etc. etc. etc…..’ 🙁
This past weekend we made the decision that we’ll remove most of our stock from eBay by the end of the year. This just reinforces our decision. The whole thing is a joke. They have THE WORST buyers in the World. How they manage to find them all and get them to shop on their site I don’t know, but this is only going to get worse, especially with the new ‘open a dispute rather than communicate with the seller about problems’ route eBay force buyers down.
Good luck everyone. You’re going to need it.
It is high time that eBay educated their buyers about dispatch times and DSRs The dispatch time is the time it takes the seller to hand the parcel to the delivery service,not the time it takes the delivery service to deliver the parcel. If the seller hands the parcel to the delivery service on time, it is the duty of eBay to ensure that the buyer leaves the seller 5 stars, no ifs no buts. Perhaps eBay should enter this rating on receipt of a copy of the docket from the carrier.