eBay have delayed the changes to their Premium Service delivery criteria by one month. The eBay Premium Service changes were due to be introduced on the 1st of June, but it will now be applicable from the 1st of July 2018.
The changes which were announced in the Spring Seller release were intended to prevent sellers from gaming the system to qualify for the eBay Premium Service Badge.
Currently sellers have to offer a free domestic delivery service and a next day paid option to qualify for eBay Premium Service and this will now remain the case until July. Some sellers are offering very long but free delivery options and extortionately priced next day options but are still qualifying for eBay Premium Service. They will get away with it for another month until they’re reined in.
At the same time it will get easier for good sellers to meet the requirements. The free shipping option has to have an expected delivery within three days but eBay have added new services which will now qualify. The requirement to offer a next day option is changing to a 2 day option, but eBay are capping the delivery charge to a reasonable £10 or under. Finally, for items that sell for £20 or more, tracking becomes a requirement and a valid tracking number must be uploaded to eBay at the point of despatch.
Main eBay Premium Service Changes from the 1st of July
| Current | From 1 July 2018 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seller Type | eBay Top-rated seller | eBay Top-rated seller | ||
| Returns | 30 days or better | 30 days or better | ||
| Shipping Option 1 | Free domestic delivery | Free domestic delivery within 3 working days | ||
| Shipping Option 2 | Paid for next day | Delivery within 2 working days for no more than £10 | ||
| Tracking | N/A | Listings have tracked delivery services and a valid tracking number is uploaded within the dispatch time for all items >£20 | ||
eBay Premium Service qualifying Royal Mail services
17 Responses
Find it unreasonable that using Royal Mail Tracked 48 will not qualify for the Premium badge (if using 1 day dispatch) as ebay classify this as a 2-3 day service.
However, using a courier 48 hour service will qualify for the badge,
Find it unreasonable that using Royal Mail Tracked 48 will not qualify for the Premium badge (if using 1 day dispatch) as ebay classify this as a 2-3 day service.
However, using a courier 48 hour service will qualify for the badge,
Far too complicated. I have no idea if we will qualify. There’s no tool on eBay to tell me one way or the other. The pain of changing our postage options is too high to do on speculation.
And while eBay may have put more postage options in there (when will DPD be a named service in eBay: it’s been the customer’s favourite for nearly five years), will Linnworks have duplicated them yet? Or our custom scripts to sort and filter mail? Too much meaningless shuffling.
Buyers love our postage options, including the free option, and speed of dispatch. If we don’t get a premium service badge then I guess we don’t get the badge. We still provide a premium service.
Royal Mail 24
Letter / Large Letter
(1 to 2 working days so we are still a NO on this, well from what I understand this has been changed. If not we will lose our Premium service as we send everything 24 large letter. Gets delivery confirmation . Rating this below 2nd class parcel is just DUMB.
As far as we understand this had been changed. Time there was CLARITY. We even had Rob Hattrells people on the phone to us about this saying it was being looked at.
We will drop all services to 48 hour Large letter, and am sure others will also, and should do.
It will ONLY play into Amazons hands.
Fairy complex. We had “premium service” for short period only…
We’re trying to get it back and can someone advise how do I get “tracking number” from RM for large letter, or first class small parcel? These must be signed for to have basic tracking. Obviously it’s easy to use DPD, DHL etc but that would mean price increase and being no longer “equal” with our competitors.
Might as well give up chasing the badge…
There’s no such thing as free postage, simples
Looking at the eBay page on this, it indicates that RM48 large letters should be eligible for the Premium Service badge – https://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/business/ebay-premium-service
It even indicates that 2nd class large letters under £20 in value are eligible.
Is there further guidance from eBay that contradicts this?
The chart is very poorly worded, but I believe it has been clarified before.
Forget about the large letters and items under £20 for now. Everything else, as long as you upload tracking and are using a suitable shipping service, will qualify. If you don’t already have an express courier option, just stick one on bulk edit, £10 for all items. Get a Royal Mail business account if you don’t have one, so you can use 24 and 48, which will make life much easier when it comes to adding tracking numbers. RM24 & RM48 are not just for big boys either, you can get them with relatively small posting volumes. And you’ll save money too!
Now, back to large letters and items under £20. They don’t have to have tracking. They will qualify for premium service without, business as usual. Think about it. Otherwise, ebay would be shifting millions of listings from premium service to not premium service. This would do the sellers no favours and ebay no favours! They just worded the chart really badly as they weren’t aware that Royal Mail now offers the same level of tracking on large letters as they do on parcels. Now that they do know this, they should re-word the chart and eventually, require tracking on all RM 24/48 delivery, regardless of value and size.
I just dug around the ebay seller centre to find the premium service changes update. Though it was generally about as clear as a steamy window with net curtains on a foggy night there was this nugget in the FAQs:
Q: Are Royal Mail 24 and 48 Large Letter & Parcel services eligible?
A: Yes, these services are eligible as Royal Mail provides a confirmation of delivery.
Surely that confirms it? Offer RM 24 or 48 as your economy service plus an express option for under £10 (though hardly anyone will use it) add the tracking details to orders regardless of the value or format (large letter or parcel) and all will be well.
No such thing as free postage in this real world and all the new criteria is only introduced by eBay so they can pander to the big boys such as Tesco and Argos while the small businesses get left behind. We should all be on eBays books for PAYE as it seems we are no longer business men and women working for ourselves we are working for a boss. EBAY. Many of our products are more than £20 but to compete with the big boys they have to go un-tracked just to be viable so the new rules will kill those sales as well now. Meaning a further drop in sales fro the already falling eBay sales.
Two friends have already thrown in the towel this year and moved to other sites withdrawing all their stuff from eBay. When will eBay wake up and smell their own bulls**t
so if you offer free next-day delivery, with no option to pay more for same-or-slower delivery, you provide inferior non-permium service?
The most significant change for us, is change to delivery requirements. Due to nature of our business (heavy bathroom goods) a good proportion of what we send is palletised.
We currently us Palletways and have secured excellent rates due to the volume we dispatch across all channels. This huge saving is then passed on to the customer.
eBay have confirmed that Palletways is not currently on the approved carrier list (https://www.aftership.com/couriers) and that there are no plans to add it.
What this means is, we will lose our ‘Premium Seller’ badge on most of our listings and we will not achieve our 10% FVF discount.
This will mean an increase in price to the customer to compensate for loss of discount, but also that our best match rankings will be compromised, ultimately resulting in less sales.
When I raised this with eBay they suggested that we moved our business to an approved carrier. The suggestion of moving to another carrier simply isn’t an option in the short term and with only our eBay volume being taken into consideration, will mean our rates will be much higher, again resulting in an increase cost to the customer. The other thing to mention is that eBay have capped next day delivery charge at £10, again this is simply impossible to achieve with palletised goods, the cost is much higher than this.
I understand that this is a big problem for a large number of sellers across many categories selling heavy goods.
I have been fighting to get Palletways added to the approved carrier list, so we can continue offering competitive prices, great service and achieving the discounts we deserve. This new structure really hasn’t been thought through and I do not seem to be getting any answers from eBay!
So it was delayed to give people more time. But how can they know?
It’s now 10 days away, and there’s still no way of telling which listings qualify and which do not. The tool available on the hub (presumably still set to the old criteria, not the new criteria) is not working and just shows a blank page for us, despite giving a number of items which don’t match criteria (presumably our freight items).
I assume the best strategy is simply to let everything fail and then decide whether there’s time to do the work afterwards. Is that really the way to do change?
Any ideas if we will have to upload the tracking info for click and collect orders also?
We sell large items such a baths. Despite being able to offer free next day delivery we are going to lose our Premium Service badge when this comes into effect.
We raised this with eBay a few months ago as there are no carriers who can deliver such large, bulky and heavy items quickly with valid tracking numbers.