eBay Guaranteed Delivery has rolled out on eBay.com with some 20 million or more products now offered with a money back promise if they don’t arrive on time.
Buyers can filter items by a guaranteed delivery date, including the next 1-2 days. Buyers’ items arrive by the delivery date, guaranteed or eBay will make it right. Buyers can choose from one of two options if the item arrives late:
- Keep the item and get a refund on the ship cost. Or, if shipping was free, the buyer can get a $5 voucher instead.
- Get a free return label for a full refund of item cost (item cost refund is always paid by the seller) and ship cost.
Why should you care about eBay Guaranteed Delivery?
You may well already met the criteria for eBay Guaranteed Delivery so it could cost you nothing. You should be aware that eBay are now displaying Guaranteed Delivery serach options and if a buyer chooses to see only items which will arrive promptly Guaranteed then your listings will be hidden from search if you’re not in the program.
The search options are promoted on both desktop and mobile and those sellers whose listings are included will naturally see a greater change of winning a sale when buyers are in a hurry. Even if your listing offers a lower price buyers simply won’t see it!
What are the options for eBay Guaranteed Delivery?
Sellers have two options for Guaranteed Delivery. With either option, your listings show up to buyers as guaranteed:
- Handling time option – Sellers guarantee same-day or one-day handling and use eBay labels. eBay determines and guarantees the delivery date.
- Door-to-door option – Sellers choose to take full control over their guaranteed delivery dates, based on their ability to deliver to various regions and their carriers’ service level by region.
eBay Guaranteed Delivery option features
Use the Handling Time Option |
Use the Door-to-Door Option |
|
---|---|---|
BUSINESS MODEL: | Best if you can guarantee same- or one-day handling time but do not wish to guarantee delivery dates | Best if you wish to guarantee your own delivery dates |
REQUIREMENTS: | Set same- or one-day handling time Offer returns Use eBay labels Upload tracking Sell eligible items with immediate payment State eligible carriers and services in listings Add postal code to listing location |
Use rate tables Associate listings to rate tables Use eligible carriers Upload tracking Offer returns Sell items with immediate payment Deliver on-time |
DELIVERY DATE: | eBay figures this out for you and guarantees the delivery date | You guarantee the date based on regional rate tables |
LATE ARRIVAL: | eBay covers the shipping cost refund or free return label if you meet handling time | You cover the shipping cost refund or return label |
9 Responses
Why punish good sellers with the refund restriction. I do not refund and my turn around time is one day. So why should I submit to descrimination and have my listings not show….. this is a slap to every HONEST SELLER. You always side with the buyer, take some time to evaluate the ones that have been around for years. My sales go up 7 days prior to my bill being due, then poof, they are flat again.
It will get abused as normal, and badly managed by eBay. Another attempt to do prime on the cheap…
They have totally run out of any of their own ideas.
Ebay can’t even handle the fact that sometimes couriers dont update the delivery details correctly… or at all. Then there is the farse where the customer is out and so it doesn’t get delivered that day… yep classed as late delivery… Now this? Oh yes, to go for a guaranteed delivery you have to pay extra, so you add this onto the item cost and ebay takes a slice of the extra too…. It all adds up for them!
No thankyou.
Do ebay not have a single person who can think of a new marketing plan.
The simple answer is NO.
When did we last read about ebay employing a new head of a department who had any experience in on-line selling.
In 13 years of being on ebay, Never as far as I can remember.
Tamebay themselves went and spoke to a new boss of ebay UK and he seemed to have some ideas going and speaking to sellers, to get some ideas.
I actually thought ebay may have done something right for a change.
What’s happened to him, nothing.
It’s also funny that in this same e mail from Tamebay there is the report that Royal Mail have yet again failed to reach their target of deliveries over the past 3 months.
Things look really good for guaranteed deliveries.
I was thinking this could actually be a great move by ebay, it’s about time they got more hands-on with regard to delivery, and took some responsibility for it.
if ebay think 99% of parcels show up on time, but in the real world they need to refund 7% of parcels for not arriving on time, it might be the wakeup call they need.
I also fear that’s not what’s happening, and the extra cost of an ebay label basically means the sellers are footing all the bills again.
Move with the times people! Consumers want this, so let’s offer it. Great idea, a filter/search by delivery date feature has been so badly needed for a long time. Hopefully it will come to the U.K. soon.
At stake here are shipping and return costs.
I assume that for what we sell here, even if it is late, the buyers will mostly still want to keep it rather than return. So we don’t need to worry much about return label cost. I just can’t see it happening often enough, though in other areas where the buyers are more fickle, eg. clothing, quite possibly it would.
That leaves the shipping. If a buyer pays an additional shipping cost for next day courier/tracked and it doesn’t arrive on time, they’ll be able to claim that shipping cost back. However, the price for shipping costs could be set to allow for a percentage of late claims and shipping refunds.
If they go for free delivery, which is usually 2nd class/48 and 2-3 days, that will mostly get there on time. If it doesn’t, ebay say in the video that ebay themselves will issue a coupon for future use. If that is the case, if ebay issue and cover that cost, no problem! But will they? And for how long?
The ‘free but late delivery, keeping it anyway’ option is probably going to be the most frequent claim and where this idea will potentially cause problems.
I can’t see ebay being happy in the long term issuing £s of vouchers for all the untracked large letter 2nd class purchases that go through them.
@James..
“a) your listings will be hidden from everyone who wants it quickly” – that’s the whole point surely. If a customer wants it tomorrow and a seller can’t get it there for tomorrow then their listing SHOULD be hidden from that customer. If the seller starts noticing a decline in sales because a lot of customers want it faster, then that seller needs to change their business model to meet the changing demand of customers.
“b) you need to pay out £5 every time the couriers fail through no fault of yours, or when your customer decides not to be home for delivery.” – The £5 / $5 dollar voucher is only if it’s set to free delivery. So, solution would be free standard delivery, then extra £ for expedited delivery. If the customer pays for next day delivery then they should rightly be refunded if it doesn’t arrive next day. In cases where the courier doesn’t deliver next day we are already refunding customers this charge – if they don’t receive what they paid for you can’t really expect them to pay. And then of course, how often does your courier arrive late? Surely it can’t be that much of an issue anyway?
I agree with all that it will SUCK if buyers return the item because it’s late, and we have to cover the return shipping costs (but this may be reclaimed with some couriers I suspect), but I think the number of cases of this will be small and you already get a small % of returns for this reason anyway. I ordered a Halloween costume, it arrived late, I returned it based on that, without this guarantee in place. I can’t see this new feature increasing returns.. in the majority of cases where an item arrives late I think people are still going to want the item., but will expect the extra £ they paid for express to be refunded, and rightly so.
Of course there will be the odd abuse of the system, and there will be the usual argument of courier says “attempted delivery no one home”, and customers says “not attempted, home all day” but again, that’s already something we’re dealing with.
I can only see this as a good thing.