US sellers are getting a little upset as eBay has just upped the delivery expectations for First Class and Priority Mail Express sent via USPS.
USPS say that Priority Mail Express is usually “Overnight scheduled delivery by 10:30 am” and First Class Mail is “Delivery in 1 to 3 business days”. eBay have said that they’ll be updating the estimated delivery date for seller on-time shipping performance for Priority Mail Express to one day and First Class Mail to three days – in line with USPS expectations.
The thing is previously the expectations set to buyers was two days and five days respectively. eBay have cut one or two days off the time it takes to delivery a parcel. In theory that’s fine as USPS will still deliver within the expected time frame (most of the time), but as in the UK sellers are worried that they’ll fall outside the on-time delivery metric, especially for parcels shipping from one coast to the other crossing five time zones.
Of course there is one way to ensure that your on-time delivery metric isn’t impacted and that is to get an acceptance scan for all the parcels you ship. For US eBay sellers this is easier than in the UK as every parcel does have a tracking number.
Here in the UK we are of course still waiting for Royal Mail to get to grips with their 2D bar codes and for eBay to figure out how to collect the scan information. Currently that doesn’t look like happening before 2017 so we’ll be waiting a little longer for robust tracking to support our on-time delivery metrics.
5 Responses
Am afraid Royal Mail are years behind with technology and have far to many legacy issues, and I think they need a change at the top.
They simply do not react quick enough. As far as ebay goes they can continue to do PRIME on the cheap it is just another nail in the coffin for them and traders simply move to Amazon. People need to get realistic about shipping times sometimes and costs.
Seems like a continuation of the obvious ploy to take away TRS status from more sellers in order to make more profit.
We’ve currently lost our TRS status on eBay due to Royal Mail not being able to deliver consistently within eBays expectations and their new rules – we dispatch things (mostly custom made) next day, every day. We’ve been a TRS for years until this point! eBay need to start being realistic and stop basing metrics on things that or mostly out of a sellers control. Either that or we’ll start charging everyone £8 postage and using Special delivery only.
The problem is eBay allow 4% Royal Mail say 6.7% will be late eBay are the problem and they know their percentage is wrong and long term unachievable its done this way so you will either lose your TRS as in your case or give up chasing Premium FVF discounts either way eBay pay less discounts
Its a game you cant win your best option is to run one month Premium Fast and Free and go for the discount the next month run 3 day dispatch to dilute the damage offering Premium Fast and Free causes and take your 10% every other month so its a 5% discount on fees and lots of hassle and hoops to jump
eBay upset its customers again now there is a surprise