eBay have announced that the one millionth item was bought through their Click & Collect programme during the Christmas trading period.
Having set a target to get 65,000 sellers offering Click & Collect by Christmas, they have exceeded all expectations. Over 140,000 sellers are now enrolled in Click & Collect at Argos and some 30 million items are available for collection from just under 700 Argos stores.
eBay tell us that feedback from customers ranks their service as amongst the best Click & Collect experience on the high street and Tanya Lawler VP eBay Marketplaces, said: “We’ve heard a lot about the Click & Collect Christmas but it’s always been about the big guys dominating Britain’s high streets. eBay is democratising Click & Collect, unlocking the high street for thousands of small businesses up and down the country that can now offer their customers the convenience of collecting in-store”.
Tanya raises an interesting point, too often we berate eBay for pandering to the Outlet sellers and ignoring small businesses. Most of the Outlets have their own Click & Collect programs so this is one service they’re offering which really does benefit the smaller retailer the most – how else could the likes of you and I offer a Click and Collect service… and best of all it’s totally free for both sellers and buyers alike!
Alice Cross-Watson, Marketing Director of , a family business selling specialist car spares for Volkswagens, said: “Customers really appreciate another convenient choice that fits in with their busy lives. We began using eBay Click & Collect in September 2014 to great success. So far we’ve had hundreds of orders being collected from Argos, and its showing no signs of slowing down“.
Are you offering Click & Collect on your listings? If not why not? Whether or not you’d personally like to collect your eBay purchases at Argos shouldn’t stop you offering Click & Collect, the only reason for not opting in is if your items are out of the size/weight limits or if you can’t use one of the approved couriers. Other than that it makes sense to offer the service and give your customers the option of home delivery or collection next time they pass their local Argos store.
15 Responses
its not painless and hoops need to be jumped thru
for a start you need to offer fast and free with all the hidden problems that can create
We do offer it and we send almost every day to an Argos store somewhere in the UK. So far absolutely no issues with how well it seems to work.
were in the fortunate position that we dont need to use click and collect or offer fast and free to sell
We send quite a few items daily to Argos stores using Click and Collect, and cant fault it. Occasionally it seems to take an extra day for them to process, over a standard home delivery, but not a single complaint from our customers.
I do wonder though, if eBay will start charging sellers for this service in the future. It must be costing them something.
Chris, you ask why people are not offering C&C, well we are unable to.
we have been asking eBay for this option by email, and telephone and they say that the program is being rolled out over the next few months. they have been telling us that since Novemebr and it is frustrating and irritating that our competitors can offer this service and we cant, In fact, we have four eBay accounts and the only one where we cannot offer C&C is our main seling account.
at the beginning after the trial (With UPS) we found we were getting contacted by a customer about 3-5 times a week complaining the order was not at Argos and they knew nothing of the order. It looked like they are now making customers more aware of the delivery times and have not had any contact as such for the last 1-2 months.
Looks like its getting better and we can start to see more customers using it.
Personally I wouldn’t use this service but I have a warehouse which can take deliveries all day long
Take that with a pinch of salt.
Has nobody had the problem of customers ringing/emailing asking for collection numbers? Having to explain it is ebay/argos that send them and we can not is quite frustrating. We have also had a parcel go missing at an Argos store, eBay covered it and refunded us. At least it is doing better than GSP for us…
I would love to use the Click & Collect option but still cannot as my listings accept best offers. If anyone from eBay is reading this, can you please, please, please fix the problem!
I am a great believer of not incorporating postage costs into the item cost and then offer FREE P+P, because in reality, nothing is free. Free P+P does not reward those customers who buy more than one item and as a business it makes it harder for us to keep a tab of our postage bills and thereon to our profits. Click and collect should be available for all sellers with good standing whether their listings offer free P+P or not
I think there is a lot of spin here, that overeggs this option. I have offered Click + Collect since the beginning of December. Maybe it is just the market I sell in, but take up averages about 2% of sales only. It is very low. This is abysmal compared with the kind of take up John Lewis report.
Add to that the seller has no visibility and can’t give the buyer any information. We are entirely reliant on Argos handling.
Add in the returns issue. I have had 3 items returned to me because the item has not been collected. This loses me my outward postage cost although ebay do return the items FOC. My view is that since this is a special routing for the customer and they don’t collect ebay should deduct from them the nominal price of a first class stamp so they don’t get a full refund.
Always remember that operators will tell you how good something is because they want to build their business on it. It is really marketing rather than objective analysis. The only persuasive arguments are those that are based on the actual numbers.
Peter T – every point you make is good and I agree in principal – except that if it is holding you back in search results and sales sometimes it is better to go with what we don’t agree with. I have had to, and wouldn’t go back to charging separately. search results improve dramatically over time.
Unfortunately this is probably ebay’s next big seller stick to further reduce TRS discount giveaway. The spin suggests this. What if Argos decide to withdraw from the arrangement? CEO’s and CEO ideas change over time and this is as true for Argos as any company.
We use it every day and haven’t had a single problem.
One item never collected, which was apparently sent back to us from Argos but never arrived.
Interesting to see Volksbits (the company mentioned in the article) still have text and the like in their eBay pictures……
I just want to add to my previous comment that 1 million is just a number. So what. On its own it is meaningless. It could be such a small proportion it has no significance. We don’t know. What does it mean? What percentage of shipments is it? What has been the take up? What is the trend on take up? Has it plateaued or is it rising significantly? What is the future expectation?