Since Sunday, if you wanted your eBay listings to display the Premium Service badge and qualify for seller discounts you would have to be offering 30 day returns.
Previously the returns window on eBay was 14 days in line with EU directives on consumer rights. You can still stick with the shorter returns window and just accept that you won’t get seller discounts on your fees or have the Premium Service badge displayed to buyers.
There comes a time when you have to make a decision for your business, for instance do you offer free shipping, can you despatch quickly, do you offer a long returns period and a ton of other options. This is one that’s probably not a make or break however. Most returns take place relatively quickly and if a returns request hasn’t been made in a week or two then there’s generally a much lower chance it’ll be requested in week three or four.
One of the more interesting complaints about this new policy is that eBay are too restrictive. It’s currently not possible to offer a returns period longer than 60 days on eBay and some sellers want to give their buyers even more confidence in making a purchase and offer anything up to 365 days returns.
Have you amended your listings to reflect the new returns mandate from eBay? Will you be doing so?
14 Responses
Hi.. I changed mine at the weekend by pure fluke – didn’t realise this was a thing! However, I did so by going into selling manager and bulk editing. this threw up a huge problem which is causing a problem getting a result from eBay. out of the couple of hundred items I edited to go to the 30 days policy, 73 were suddenly charged at 29p each for.
I get free listings and I’m within my allowance, I only changed the rtns date, it only happend to about 15% of the items edited at the same time.. grrrr
Don’t know if this is just me or if this is an issue due to the amount of people editing at the moment. Also I don’t know why I’d be charged at 29p anyway as even if I paid for my listings the rate is 9p..?
Next stop 60 Days… Choo Choo !
Even if you do, you still won’t get the discount, unless you offer a free postage option, a next day delivery option and put a pineapple on your head and say you’re the man from Del Monte.
Presumably most will ignore this, so the next step will be to make it compulsory just for the privilege of listing on Feebay
A reminder that all this hoop jumping generates 10% FVF discount. Which is 1% of turnover. Ask yourself if ebay really values premium sellers? If you have to dance to ebays tune for 1% then the business plan should be questioned. Free yourself and run your business how you want. You will be better off in the long term.
you may as well offer 30 day returns because its matter less what the seller says ,the ebay/paypal buyer can return most anytime they want
This is best if your selling things people only use once in a while Camcorder for a wedding power tools to do a DIY job a free rental Satnav for a holiday or a fancy dress for a party the list is endless and now with a full 30 days of free hire offered its great news.
Its really good for buyers now eBay sellers can now offer a great free hire service for those one off jobs now Argos have closed the free hire loop hole in there return policy that was well known and exploited a few years ago ebay has offered to fill the gap in the free rental market
The added bonus of the eBay system is the buyer does not even need to lie face to face like the good old Argos days
Now the eBay seller will deliver the rental and pay to return it as well and the happily thank the buyer for their custom in feedback hoping to offer a free retail in the future what could possible go wrong ?
Why buy when you can hire for free ?
I haven’t. It’s a hoop too far as I sell higher value goods. If you’re doing a high volume of low value items maybe its easier to accept. 14 is more than enough. Like you say you have to make a decision for your business.
I might think differently if it wasn’t for managed returns and ebay interfering in transactions but the thought of having funds frozen 29 days after a sale because a buyer decides to open a case in the system. no thanks.
are now you offering?
jounalistic quality poor on tamebay is.
30 days doesn’t make a hoots bit of difference and I haven’t given a rats arse about being a top rated seller or scraping back FVF discounts since ebay changed the system a couple of years back.
It used to be something like 15-25% depending on your gross sales and all you had to do was be a decent powerseller.
With a ridiculous 6 month paypal case refund window a determined scammer will always have the upper hand.