We do hear a lot of complaints from Tamebay readers regarding eBay’s over optimistic estimated delivery dates. Currently they can affect your Despatch Time eBay Detailed Seller Rating, but next year they’ll also impact your rating under eBay’s new On-Time delivery metric.
The normal complaint is that eBay estimate Royal Mail 1st Class will arrive the day after posting. That’s not unreasonable as in Royal Mail’s latest Quality of Service report they delivered 93% of First Class mail the next working day. That does still leave 7% of First Class mail not delivered the next day, although personally I suspect parcels are more likely to be delivered on time than letters. 7% of low star DSRs are still enough to ruin your business though.
What really doesn’t help however, is when eBay decide that a working day for Royal Mail is a Sunday. A Tamebay reader sent us a screen shot of one of his eBay “Order Despatched” emails saying that the item is due to arrive today. We’ll be waiting for an update with bated breath, but it’s pretty safe to say that there’ll be no Royal Mail Postie trudging up to some one’s door at any point today.
Is this a one off glitch, or are eBay routinely sending out emails with Sunday delivery dates for couriers and Royal Mail? We know very few carriers deliver on Sundays and certainly it’s not usual for Royal Mail to deliver seven days per week.
14 Responses
I had a similar issue with Amazon Germany (amazon.de) this week, sold an item on there at 7pm on Friday 25th September and Amazon gave expected despatch date for Sunday 27th September.
I’ve noticed that it has been saying the estimated delivery date is Sunday, when printing 1st Class postage labels on ebay for the last few weeks. I have also noticed on the label system that it doesn’t seem to take into consideration same day despatch cut off times, as I’ve had orders made at 11pm and the postage label system says the estimated delivery date is the next day! Thankfully this error doesn’t show on listings, but I have noticed when I’ve been leaving other people feedback it has been asking me if the Royal Mail parcel has arrived by Sunday.
Also since Friday night the homepage’s interests feed has changed slightly and has led to it not showing the full photos of products on the feed, making everyone’s photos look rubbish.
Had a buyer a few weeks back that ordered on a Sunday evening with 2nd class post, went into Argos to collect it Tuesday morning and it wasn’t there. Had a go at me for item being missing.
It had been sent Monday.
Buyer expectations not helped by ebay telling buyer it was due Tuesday.
May have arrived that day, just not scanned into their system at that time .
Buyer demanded a refund of course.
If you read the Royal Mail clarification on the web site, it states that they AIM to deliver 93% of 1st class and 1st class signed for by the next day, but that this service in NOT guaranteed!!
I wonder about this problem. I quote 2 days Handling Time and then 2nd Class postage. However most of the time I post the same day or is after 4pm (the time of the last collection from the Sub Post Office I use) the next day. I rarely get other than Feedback mentioning how quickly I delivered the goods.
I wonder if those most affected by this problem quote same day dispatch. Obviously this is difficult if the order comes in on a Sunday but ebay’s computers are unable to differentiate between a Sunday and any other day of the week. Perhaps the situation could be alleviated by changing from same day dispatch to perhaps a handling time of 1 day?
Not sure you can use the words ‘eBay’ and ‘think’ in the same sentence…. 😉
Yes I have noticed this expected Sunday delivery on several items in eBay during dispatch recently.
Amazon do now deliver on a Sunday from my experience.
I send free a lot of the time which means 2nd class mail – I have noticed that Items that are paid for after 6 p m today will be deemed able to arrive by Wednesday I think I have also weekend anomalies so YES eBay should be told that last post is often about 5 pm and 12 p m Saturday (in the last place we lived it was earlier than that even) Mind you Royal Mail need to up their game -I can book UPS by midday for a same day pick up for considerably less than Royal Mail when I have large items Like Chris T I say 2 days handling/2nd class and normally clock up feedback for fast postage
Personally I don’t use eBay’s postage labels, I either use stamps or Royal Mail online postage (which they appear to have fixed now, btw!). And then mark them as dispatched as soon as I have posted them. That way, eBay don’t ‘think’ (using the term advisedly) that I have posted the item as soon as the postage is paid for.
It seems a bit perverse of ebay to ask buyers what they think of your postal charges when they take 10% of postage and package charge and paypal take a further 3.5%, leaving the poor old seller needing to charge less than cost to avoid negative/low star rating for this service.
Last year, sold an item on Christmas Eve. I thanked the person for their purchase and assured them this would be sent as soon after Christmas as was possible. They opened a case against me because….their item was not delivered Christmas Day??? naturally I lost the case being a seller as the buyer apparantly is always right so in turn, I just cancelled the order and as soon after Christmas I could manage it, phoned Ebay to tell them that court proceedings would follow for their ridiculous behaviour unless they removed neg feedback and loss of sales because of a suspension, it was settled out of court, feedback removed. I just wonder though, is there anything? going on in the heads of the unseen people in supposed control of Ebay?
This news just in…
1) Bought an item on eBay
2) Just received notification of dispatch using Hermes
3) The email says “Estimated delivery : Sun. 4 Oct. – Tue. 6 Oct.”
4) The order details (when I click through from the email) say “Estimated delivery Monday, 5. Oct. 2015 – Wednesday, 7. Oct. 2015”
Do the clock go back 24 hours this weekend or something?
Mark.T