Amazon is offering free next day shipping with Prime. If you pay they’ll also delivery next day before 1pm. If you live in the right area for Prime Now they’ll deliver the same day or even within the hour. They’ll also with Amazon Fresh deliver your food the same day.
You might think it’s just Amazon being silly with fast delivery times, but other retailers are at it too. Next are legends with their order by midnight for delivery tomorrow and Argos are even better – buy anything today and you can pay them to delivery today. You can order late afternoon and Argos will deliver this evening.
eBay not very fast and free
That brings me to eBay where I’ve just made a purchase today. eBay are still in the 1990’s for deliveries and touting their “Fast and Free” offering. Fast and Free means for a purchase today I’ll be lucky to see it on their super dooper promoted listings before Wednesday at the earliest but more likely Thursday. That’s pretty pathetic compared with Amazon, Next, Argos and frankly just about every retailer out there.
Of course I’m being a bit harsh on eBay, many sellers offer expedited shipping, you just have to pay for it. The issue I have with eBay is that their promoted offering may be for free postage, but it’s certainly not fast in today’s terms.
eBay & Expedited Shipping
But now I really do have to be a bit blunt about eBay and much as I love them I’m finding it hard to cut them some slack. Have you ever tried to search eBay for items from sellers who can deliver tomorrow? If not don’t bother, it’s impossible.
The only way you can find items with same day despatch and expedited shipping is to search for a product and then click into each and every listing on the eBay search results page until you find a seller that offers a next day courier service.
I know that not every buyer needs everything they purchase to be delivered tomorrow. I also know what many sellers ship everything they sell on a next day service regardless if the buyer is in a hurry or not. There are however times when I really do want something urgently and eBay just doesn’t make it easy for me to find them.
eBay have all the information they need. They know if you offer a range of delivery options if any of them are 24 hour couriers. They know what your handling time is because they forced you to tell them. They know what your cut off time is because they forced you to tell them.
eBay know if I buy now (11.30am) and your cut off time is 2pm and you offer a 24 hour courier that your product will be with me tomorrow so why don’t they let me search for it?
I love Amazon Prime… once click and I only see things that will be delivered tomorrow. When will eBay make me love them in the same way and allow me to search for things that will be delivered tomorrow?
2 Responses
This is a major problem on ebay and why we never have customers paying for next day.
On a normal day on Amazon we have around 30 customers who pay for next day, we would be very lucky to have 1 ebay customer.
However on a normal day we have sales of around 70% on Amazon, 30% on ebay, we then have 70% of message on ebay and 30% on Amazon for delayed standard orders because ebay love to over estimate delivery times.
We got our TRS back a couple of months ago, then in one month our mark downs for not arrived on time went up 400%, we had done nothing different in dispatching. I called ebay and even they were surprised but nothing they could do so we lost TRS again!
ebay “fast & free” is nothing to do with delivery;
it’s shorthand for “pull a fast one, get it free”.