Royal Mail have added delivery confirmation to 1st and 2nd class small and medium parcels when you pay with online postage. Even better, if you buy and print postage on eBay, they will automatically add the Delivery Confirmation for you.
Delivery Confirmation is not a fully tracked service and you will only receive confirmation of delivery. It is not available for large letters, nor for items posted to Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. You also won’t get the confirmation if you don’t purchase your postage online.
It’s also worth noting that there is no signature collected, you’ll need to use Royal Mail Signed For if you want the recipient to sign for your parcel, or if you wish a fully tracked service then Special Delivery may better suit your needs.
Using Royal Mail’s Delivery Confirmation service means that you will be able to check online, when your item has been delivered or delivery has been attempted, at no extra cost. eBay will use that information as proof of delivery if a buyer reports they haven’t received an item.
Whilst eBay say that they’ll use the delivery confirmation if a buyer says the item wasn’t delivered, we also suspect that the delivery confirmation will be used to measure your On-Time deliveries.
If you have a business account with Royal Mail, you’re probably using their Tracked 24 & 48 services. 1st and 2nd Class with delivery confirmation for small and medium parcels is likely to be more suited for those paying for postage on an ad hoc basis.
23 Responses
Are you sure “eBay will use that information as proof of delivery if a buyer reports they haven’t received an item”?
Amazon won’t accept RM Tracked 24/48 tracking to defend an A-Z claim despite being fully tracked because it says on tracking “Delivered to your address or a neighbour”. According to Amazon the words ‘or neighbour’ means it is not proof of delivery.
What about using the Royal Mail Despatch Manager. Can the Delivery Confirmatin be found or retrieved from there as yet?
No eBay will not allow this as proof of delivery. Tried and tested and they don’t. Signed for is a waste of money, as they don’t always get signed for by the customer. Over the past 2 months, almost 60% of our items sent signed for have never been signed nor the barcode scanned. We are now looking at 24/48 tracked. ( but not cheap )
I’m not sure what is going on with Royal mail, but the service as been nothing like it use to be. So many late deliveries, and much more missing items than normal.
The 21 digit barcode number can be found on the label itself above the square 2D barcode, or you’ll be able to find it in DMO in the archive shipments section. You can use the filters in the archived shipments to filter down and find the item you’re inquiring about, and the shipment numbers should be a clickable link, this will pop up another screen with further details, and the barcode number you need is under “Unique Item ID”
You can not track this number as yet on the Royal mail website, and you will need to call Royal mail business centre on 08457 950 950 and they will provide any confirmation.
Hi, Chris.
We had one just this week, Royal mail confirmed it as delivered, but eBay still made us resent and suggested using a proper tracked service. or to refund the buyer. So we sent another one signed for. This is the second time eBay have done this to us with the confirmation service.
So I really would not rely on the confirmation service by Royal mail. ( well not just yet anyway )
Delivery is always a concern but the bigger concern are the buyers taking advantage, claiming items as undelivered even when tracked, and when checking feedbacks it looks like some do it regularly, so the current eBay system is open to easy exploitation and sellers being scammed.
Even when you notify eBay of potential buyer fraudulent claims nothing happens, eBay have very little interest (it seems) in helping or listening to genuine seller concerns, which is costing small businesses a growing loss percentage each year.
Moan over!
Do you know if this service is also available for Royal Mail postage purchased through PayPal? I have my shop on Ebay but purchase my postage through PayPal and not through Ebay. When I purchase postage through PayPal, PayPal is linked to Ebay, so buyers / Ebay still automatically get notified their item has been dispatched etc.
The reason I purchase my postage through PayPal and not through Ebay, is that the buyer receives two e-mail notifications (from both PayPal and Ebay) to inform them that their order has been dispatched. It is then more difficult for them to say “I never had a notification to say it was dispatched”.
Yes I reported two scam buyers of books recently. tracking means nothing on Ebay. I reported customers to Ebay concierge who were very polite and state would pass on but not sure if anything happens. 40% of feedback to sellers were about refunds, problems or issues solved. Customer just requested Item not received, refund required, if not will leave negative feedback. To be honest I would rather have negative feedback than submit to such scum. The customers have not pursued as I said how seriously I take fraud.
“says here that ebay user x0x-scumbag4lyf-x0x has placed 1,000 orders and issued 999 item-not-received cases, yet is still active on the site. Don’t think it’ll help us off this island though….”
https://thepropstop.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/livediecap0845.jpg
If the data was used properly and shared, just think what could be achieved.
People can change IDs and hide on the internet, but things still need to go to a physical address. If it gets flagged that an address is repeatedly reporting parcels not received, that could very easily be checked. Cross reference bodycams and delivery confirmations and you rule out the postman thieving it, leaving the only possibility, that someone at that address is a thief.
All ebay/Amazon and Royal Mail have to do is share the data. If they can’t manage the above, then share it with sellers, something like this:
“No 1 crimespree road has opened 15 ebay INRs in the past 12 months, out of a total of 50 ebay purchases. 12 of these INRs had Royal Mail delivery confirmation showing it as delivered.”
We sellers can then decide what to do. Cancel the order and block the buyer 🙂
I don’t think any of the above would actually happen, as it would make sense and that appears to go against the thinking of those at the top of those businesses.
Just spoke to Click and Drop and PPF Packets are covered by confirmation but PK0 (large letters) aren’t
It is progress but not much good to us anyway, as we send nearly anything with RMG Large letter, we do not use them for even low value parcels. However these marketplaces now need to step up the game, when clear evidence is being presented with delivery and they still do not take action to prevent mail fraud action needs to be taken against them they have done nothing to discourage the practice but have encouraged it. PLUS RMG need to be seen to taking clear action against address’s that claim not received when they are saying they are not. The claims process at RMG is criminal the way they treat small biz.
Large letter will just be around the corner also we hope. INR is mainly a eBay issue but other sites have the issue also we even got one on Game the week.
eBay could make everyone’s life’s easier years ago by making customers put in correct address’s but have FAILED drastically at this (pretty shocking this is still). Anything of value we will get in signed within the Uk anyway and charge accordingly. It has been a long time coming (2017 now) just to get this far. RMG and the likes of eBay really could work together to root out theft but for some reason just seem to not want to.
We had a case recently where a buyer claimed he had not received his parcel … mens underpants … tracking showed he had received it in the ebay estimated tiem and he had signed for it. Ebay closed the case in our favour. Customer then opened paypal case item notreceived. I added the details of the ebay case we won to the paypal case. Customer then added a comment .. yer i did receive em but theyre not as decribed.
Result.. Paypal refunded him. Never asked him how the pants were not as described. Never asked him to return them. If you dont win a case with ebay just go to paypal. We sent the parcel tracked. Tracking showed delivered yet we still lost the case.