When eBay.com first rolled out eBay Guaranteed Delivery in November last year, if you wanted to participate and use the handling time option when you had to use eBay labels. eBay have now waived this requirement enabling sellers to buy postages labels from whichever provider they like.
For many sellers being forced to use eBay labels was the sticking point to participating in the program. Anyone who has integrations with third party management software solutions will have done so because of the efficiencies and time savings that they bring. Going back to a semi-manual process to produce shipping labels for your eBay orders while have fully automated label purchase and printing for all the other marketplaces and venues you sell on simply didn’t make sense.
eBay in their announcement do make the point that buying labels through eBay automatically uploads tracking information for that transaction. However, most solutions that integrate with eBay to produce shipping labels also have the capability to make sales as despatched and add tracking numbers so this really shouldn’t be an issue you have to worry about.
The reason that you should want your items to be included in the eBay Guaranteed Delivery programme is because there are search filters for buyers who are looking for speedy delivery. If you’re items aren’t included then one click of a button by the buyer and your items will be completely wiped from search results giving zero chance that your item will be chosen. Similarly, if your items do qualify for eBay Guaranteed Delivery then a click will hide many of your competitors listings and you may win the sale even if your price is not the cheapest.
The big draw for buyers is that if a guaranteed item is delivered late, the buyer can request either to keep the item and get a refund on the ship cost or get a free return label for a full refund of item cost. So long as items are delivered on time then neither eBay nor sellers will ever have to shell out – the aim of the programme isn’t to ding sellers, it’s to entice buyers to be confident in purchasing knowing that their goods will arrive when expected.
3 Responses
Is this available in the UK, I do not see it in the search?
The down side to using Royal Mail is that when updating the tracking to eBay my Late Delivery rate went over 3%.
Same, I’m low down on my scores, they arrive when they’re not at home, so that means they have to phone post office to see where it is. They get their mail and then mark me down as slow posting, yet it’s them that cba going to post office to collect it.