Earlier in the year we reported that eBay would be exempting some Royal Mail tracked services from its sometimes rather punitive new Seller Standards. Tamebay wrote about it here. It was a moratorium with an indefinite time period attached.
The Royal Mail services that eBay exempted at that time were:
– Royal Mail 1st Class Signed For
– Royal Mail 2nd Class Signed For
– Royal Mail Special Delivery
– Royal Mail T24
– Royal Mail T48
As per that announcement, the exemption was supposed to last until May 20th. Now they’ve sent an update. You’ll find a screengrab below. It comes from a seller who received the email today.
As the eBay email says: “We let you know on 18 February that we’re protecting your account until 20 May from some late deliveries. This protection applies when you use Royal Mail Tracked/Royal Mail Signed For services, due to the fact that we currently receive complete tracking information for these services.”
But which date is correct? Is it the 31st of July or 31st August? Both dates are stated in the email. Do you know which? We don’t. In any case, it’s good the deadline has been extended.
Edited to add: We’ve had confirmation that it is indeed the 31st August
11 Responses
I spoke to my local postie the other day.
She knocked on the door and had a couple of signed for items. She apologised that she had to go back to pen and paper as the machine had locked up once again.
She said that the normal machine was locking up when scanning the 2d bar codes.
I laughed and said when will they be getting the finger type ones ??
She laughed and raised her eyebrows and said “Who Knows”.
Firstly, if everyone were to start using the 2d barcodes then the postie is NOT going to have time scanning every single one of them.
Secondly, how are they supposed to know that they need to be scanned apart from looking at every single packet and envelope.
All this tracking is great in theory but it’s the front line postie that has to try and make it work and WILL get the blame when something is not scanned.
Have Royal Mail produced any results for their 2d barcode tracking??
Has anyone told eBay signed for services are delivered the same way as normal mail so if they can exempt signed for they should just exempt all regular post as its the same thing.
Ebay need to go back to feedback as a way to rate its sellers but they wont for one reason the sellers who would fail would be the big box shifters and outlets who have dozens of negatives a day and offer no customer support.
EBay know the big boys can send everything tracked they know they will have set contracts with couriers so tracking costs them a lot less than the small and private sellers.
eBay have changed the system to protect the big boys and hold back the smaller sellers the result is resentment from the small sellers who are also the very buyers eBay treasure so much and now they are looking at other venues to buy and sell on its another in a long line of home goals by eBay’s incompetent management.
Jeff Bezos must be laughing his head off at every change eBay make knowing the effect will be an increase in Amazon turnover and not ebays.