One thing eBay really expects of you as a seller is swift despatch. Having enough stock to hand, to meet buyer demand, and making sure that it’s out of the door sharpish to satisfy their urges: eBay likes that. And they will look dimly on you if a buyer thinks you have been sluggish or dimwitted in sending the items. And eBay is a merciless judge. The black mark will be applied to your record quickly and without the reasonable right of appeal.
So that makes it’s particularly ironic that this week’s offer of coupons to Shop owners good for eBay branded packaging from a partner has led to shortages and delays in fulfilment. You can read about the offer here.
But some eBay sellers will be waiting for the packaging until late next week because it looks like they have been overwhelmed by demand.
As the email sent to some buyers reads: “Due to unexpected popularity of the recent offer we have run, we have experienced an unexpected shortage in stock of some products. We are expecting the new stock to arrive shortly and will dispatch it as soon as it arrives. You will receive your full order by Wednesday 12th April 2017. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”
We assume affected sellers will apply their DSRs to the experience judiciously as any decent eBay buyer would.
22 Responses
Their feedback suggests they’ve had around 1,200 eBay Shop owners cash in a voucher so far this month and shipped their order… I wonder how many more are in the backlog?
They seem surprised that there would be a large uptake on free stuff. I didn’t even need packaging but I got some anyway as it was free and I might have a use for it in the future.
I have never expected more than a 2 star service from eBay. Would have been less hassle to give us £10 worth of listings.
We have no requirements for branded packaging or V.Expensive Bubble Wrap & purchased 2 x tape guns on Monday for which have not yet been despatched.
When you go to leave feedback, the “Delivered By” option is not present, so maybe they’re getting special treatment from eBay regarding feedback / DSR’s / Defects.
There has also been a lot of discussion of what happens if the buyer leaves bad feedback / open a case etc & the seller blocks them, as eBay only have one seller, that would make the entitled voucher worthless.
“We assume affected sellers will apply their DSRs to the experience judiciously as any decent eBay buyer would.”
For those buyers that bought over £10 worth, and thus got free postage, there is no option to mark the item as Late (there was no ETA either).
As for marking the DSRs , they now have no effect on a seller’s status, so even if everyone affected marked them 1* for despatch, it would make no difference to their ability to trade.
Yes, the lack of stars may put future buyers off, but as this account has only really been set up to service the voucher, and as we have no option but to buy from them if we wish to take advantage of the voucher, it will make little difference to them.
And, of course, they may decide to add anyone leaving low ratings/bad feedback to their BBL – so anyone blocked would be unable to use the voucher in the future.
*Too slow as usual!
The ability to leave the DSR’s may not be there but negative feedback will always be there. If the thousands of delayed customers all leave negative feedback the system will be in meltdown. The reason i feel negative is warranted more than just low DSR ratings is they have the item shown as available and then tell you it will be delayed due to stock issues. You as a small seller would get punished. So with all the money they are receiving from working with eBay they should be able to implement a perfect stock control system. Surely a voucher for anywhere on eBay would be better as eBay still get the 10% FVF and the site usage.
I thought this packaging was for eBay sellers? Why is there an eBay branded house / flat moving pack? Seems a bit bonkers?!
ebay branding
all boils down to ebays basic ethos
that they are doing you the favour
For lot’s of buyer’s who have bought more than one item from this company, they have dispatched one item in the order, so they can upload a tracking number within their handling time.
These buyers now have no way of opening an Item Not Received case for the items in the order that they have not received. They will automatically lose the case as the tracking number that the company have uploaded covers the whole order.
I’ve only received half my order so far and I’ve not even received an email to explain the delay with the other half of the order.
They haven’t replied to the message I sent them yesterday asking them when I can expect the rest of my order either, so I’m left completely in the dark.
Even the listings are ‘iffy’.
Padded bags have Jiffy in the title when they are patently not (the pictures of the backs show them to be Envosafe).
Listing (out of stock now):
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/182397688179?euid=0038d398c4a541909d1e1e25b6544458&bu=42983605398&cp=1&sojTags=bu=bu
So eBay’s partner is allowed keyword spamming and ‘passing off’ as well!
I think we might give these guys a bit of a break. They are sellers like us and dealing with all the stuff that we deal with, and also working with ebay.
They agreed to do the logistics for this offer and probably didn’t have good forecasts on what would sell and what wouldn’t — it’s the first run after all. How could they know whether to stock up on tape or boxes or tape guns? And it’s hardly their fault that ebay sent out the vouchers to everyone all at the same time — so of course there’s the mother of all peaks. Perhaps a bit of smoothing over a week or two wouldn’t really hurt the offer and would help logistics.
Is it over-priced? Yes — about double if you pay money for it — but no if it’s free vouchers. So that’s only misleading in that ebay claim that you are getting good money’s worth and people might see the items ranking in best match and take the purchase history to assume that it’s good value stuff. Good luck to the seller if they can make this work.
I’m saving my voucher up for after Easter. I’d expect they are a bit better set-up for next month and the month after. Let’s see how this works in June and revisit then, perhaps?
whats with this free voucher myth, you need to cough up nearly £70, before you are even considered for a voucher ,
ebays packaging partner agreed to do this for profit and gain ,
why do we owe them consideration? or sympathy
plus it must hurt other packaging co, to at least some extent
The suggestion on these pages to take the packaging (even if you don’t use it) and flog it, probably hasn’t helped.
I’m just sat here wondering what swiftpakbrandedsupplies will spend their own voucher on….. not like they can spend it with themselves ha ha
Should say we ordered well before all the “vouchers”, we were a couple of days, and we got 90% or the order one day and the rest the next it was Yodel and the boxes were all bashed up (courier issue and it was just D1s inside), not the seller.
We did use our voucher the only one we will get unless we upgrade to a featured shop again to buy some boxes and they have not showed as dispatched yet.
Our previous supplier has put his price right up also, so we are looking elsewhere now away from marketplaces.