eBay have today announced a raft of emergency UK seller protections covering the Christmas period. These are designed to protect sellers from the double challenge of the pandemic and recent international travel disruptions.
Postage and delivery
With logistic routes between the UK and Europe severely disrupted, eBay have extended delivery estimates for listings to account for any potential delays to international delivery. They are actively monitoring the situation and will make any changes as required. You can stay up to date on delivery related information by visiting the eBay COVID-19 news page on the Seller Centre.
UK Seller Protections
- Your Late Delivery rate will be automatically adjusted. We’ll automatically remove Late Delivery counts and any related Negative or Neutral feedback received for:
- Domestic transactions between 14 December to 31 December 2020
- Cross Border transactions between 7 December to 31 December 2020
- Your item not received count (INR) in Service Metrics and any related Negative or Neutral feedback will be automatically removed if you uploaded valid tracking before the delivery was scanned for:
- Domestic transactions between 14 December to 31 December 2020
- Cross Border transactions between 7 December to 31 December 2020
“We understand that things are difficult at the moment for many of us and with interruptions of services at some borders you may need to unexpectedly cancel an order. We want to reassure you that if you have to cancel a cross border transaction, we’ll remove those defects from your seller performance evaluation.”
– eBay
eBay will be processing Defect removals and any related Negative or Neutral feedback as quickly as possible but that there may be a short period of time when this information appears in your account before being removed.
Please note, even though eBay may protect individual service metrics from affecting your standard rating, if your delivery performance drops below an acceptable level or if eBay observe unusual activity on accounts, we may have to restrict account privileges while they investigate.
19 Responses
Our late delivery started from 4th December with many parcels posted on 8th December that were delivered late. In fact most of them, so we would not be covered for all the late deliveries based on the above dates
Pretty useless as normal from eBay…late to react as normal and when they do it means nothing.
The late delivery started long before this. Royal Mail have not been scanning things.
It is eBay that cause half the issues because like Royal Mail they will not admit there were problems and mislead customers with delivery times.
I know one seller who want to take Royal mail to court over not scanning his parcels.
Does this help sellers sending low value items by standard 1st and 2nd class post. This is nothing new has been going on for months and I get messages saying ebay or Amazon have said it will arrive by’x’date.
Unfortunatley while the concierge support are superb, the offshore support do not seem to have read the above as they refuse to remove feedback that falls into the criteria, not a surprise though as the offshore support are terrible.
Ebay still do not know what the difference is between Dispatched Late and Delivered Late, so the fact that they don’t acknowledge there are any logistics issues occurring in the world is of no surprise.
How they do not understand that setting unrealistic delivery expectations for buyers is ultimately destroying ebays precious “user experience” beggars belief. Let alone the stupid volume of work it causes or sellers, having to respond to the raft of moronic enquiries as to “where is my order, its Tuesday, I ordered it Saturday”
How about changing the criteria of being able to open an INR case as well during this crisis? ordered something a week ago? 2nd class? Sorry you cant open a case for another fortnight because of the current crisis… fgive the Royal Mail a chance to deal with the most unprecedented volume of mail in its history…muppets
Matt, I totally agree with every word. I have had to shut my shop because of the unrealistic promises – I just cannot be doing with all the complaints, inr cases and refunds.
Result? I lose, eBay loses and Royal Mail loses. What a shower of poop!
So the last one covered up to November 21st, this one covers from December 14th.
Does eBay somehow thing the period in-between these dates were all fine with regards to deliveries?
Typical ebay… Too little too late. Need I say more?
I feel all rosy and warm inside……. ebay potentially* protecting our DSR from……… ebay. How magnanimous.
Honestly you couldn’t make it up. Royal Mail struggling due to Covid and excess parcel load, an unprecedented situation.
*potentially- if you haven’t got concierge then you haven’t got a hope.
Got legal documents come thru dated 18th November 1st class arrived 17th December. More messages of “STILL” (love that) not got my… from 20th November onwards than you can shake a stick at.
Royal Mail have been in trouble for all this period. 90% of our outbound post is 2nd class large letter. and naturally has been hammered for late delivery.
Our street did not receive any mail for a week with Basildon office in the papers as failing under the pressure. Royal Mail Stock prices dropped because of losing a grip on deliveries.
And now Ebay have noticed that there is a problem with delivery that is out of our hands! err too little too late as always.
Royal Mail not faultless but brilliant considering the huge pressure and circumstances. Ebay completely lost the plot.
I am a little mix fan ido like the new album delex virson love from Colin y. Oungman
We had about 30 from the weekend 5th decemberish that took 2weeks to get delivered. But apparently there was no problems then.
RM seems to keep stum with their delivery rates and eBay juggle the dates so it looks like nothing is wrong.
Luckily most people have been fine when we have told the to wait because of the problems RM are facing.
Absolute rubbish. We have 1000’s of emails from customers reporting late delivery from Black Friday onwards. Just a few from after 14th Dec. We also have plenty of evidence from good honest customers who say there item just arrived (2,3,4 weeks later). ebay were giving them 2-3 day delivery dates for Black Friday. They expect us to change our handling time, but all orders were dispatched all year on time. No delays in handling at our end. Something needs to be done because this is utterly irresponsible. I’m going to suspend my ebay fee payment and royal mail account payment until someone at management from both companies contacts me.
All other large online retailers we deal with have been great. These 2 seem to be working together to milk the British small business owner.
When you look at it …This was announced now…..Just in time so they don’t have to put anything on their site that will hurt the business. IE if they had said this 2/3 weeks ago on the site that items may take 2 to 3 weeks to be delivered, Amazon would have got most of the business…
In my mind, this doesn’t go far enough. I would say the trouble started 3 to 4 weeks back but they seem to be saying 2 weeks is the “helping sellers out” period…… Totally not in touch with how things are looking in the real world.
I’ve just got off ebay chat and would really like to post it here. I was polite but abrupt and to the point. The adviser was ignorant and basically said this is ebay’s policy, they make the decisions, goodbye.
Simon, i understand why they couldn’t do it earlier, that’s big business for you, but they can do it now, and should. Late delivery defect and negative feedback for any late deliveries needs to be removed from Black Friday onwards. This will hurt small businesses immensely.
Someone needs to be held accountable for this. ebay or/and Royal Mail.
To all sellers out there on ebay who face the same issue. Lets get something going here and get this info out there. Its time to step up.
I’ve not received the above notification. We’ve had RM delivery issues since March as I’m sure most sellers have, while some defects claiming late dispatch, which is it not it is late delivered, are removed I’ve had some neg and neutral feedback that has not been removed. This feedback stated late delivery and none contacted me about it before.
I understand it is the sellers responsibility to ensure it is delivered on time but this does not take into account issues that the delivery network suffer whether it be through poor management all the way to pandemic (or any or all of it).
If eBay really wanted to help sellers, they would hold any neutral or negative feedback until the buyer has tried to resolve an issue first and be more considerate about delivery responsibilities putting more weight on the delivery networks as culpable. Sellers should send out in a timely manner and using an appropriate service but they cannot personally deliver across the UK or globally door to door.
I’ve just had the most ridiculous email ever sent by a professional company. Who is responsible in ebay management for such appalling handling of this matter?
This company is a joke. I can’t partner with a company like this. Useless set of C**ts.
Your question about late shipment or defect removal
Hello xxxx. Thanks for contacting us about the late shipment rating you received for the following transaction:
xxxx
We’ve reviewed your request to remove the late shipment rating related to this transaction.
We cannot remove it in this instance, as it is an indicator of a less than positive buying experience. We understand you may feel that you did everything to take care of your buyer.
Please note that this decision is final and cannot be changed or escalated.
Here’s how to avoid issues like this in the future:
– Make sure you ship within your stated handling time and ensure that your item will arrive by the estimated delivery date.
– Always upload your tracking to eBay as soon as possible, and definitely before the estimated delivery date. When possible, we’ll use this to automatically give you credit for shipping on time. Uploading tracking also gives your buyer confidence about when their item will arrive.
– Communicate with your buyer so they know when the item was shipped and what to expect.
We appreciate your understanding and wish you the best on eBay in the future.
Thanks,
eBay
I mean, come on “Make sure you ship within your stated handling time and ensure that your item will arrive by the estimated delivery date.”
Is this ebay politely trying to pass the buck to Royal Mail for their failure to assist. I’ve never know a company with a much contempt for the people (sellers) them keep them in business.
– We do ship within the stated handling time
– It’s quite impossible to make sure that all items arrive within ebay’s estimated delivery times because they are not realistic given the postage method selected.
Example: Customer orders on 27th Nov, Black Friday, 2nd class free post, £1.99 item, after our 2pm cut off time. ebay gives estimated delivery date as Tuesday 1st Dec. 2nd Dec customer asks where there item is. We asked politely to allow extra time as stated on our listing. Leaves neg feedback, late defect, and opens case for refund. ebay refund after a few days because asks ebay to step in. No chance to respond as early morning.
Okay, if it was posted Monday during the busiest time of the year, why would ebay give them a 1st Dec delivery date? If its 2nd class it isn’t getting there next day. Then ebay close the case in their favour. When reported to ebay, got the same silly customer service responses denouncing all responsibility. Abhorrent customers service.
On others we have had cases that were escalated, but we managed to refund them before ebay stepped in. Those actually counted towards in our case closed without seller resolution section. Not been removed.
The last one is best. Package posted 1st class recorded. Posted Monday 21st Dec. Signed for on 23nd Dec. Late delivery defect! – The best part is, on ebay tracking information it shows item dispatched 23rd Dec 2pm, but item received and signed for 23rd Dec 1pm. How’s that? Do Royal Mail have a DeLorean?
Everyone complaining, just put your price up 15p and send it 1st Class for a short period, its not difficult. We left our items at 2nd Class, but upped the price and send them all first class. Over this period of uncertainty, your not going to get a massive sales drop as EVERYONE is ordering online, we are doing more than enough volume with very little customer service.
You all need to remember, 2nd class is the poor man service of Royal Mail. For most Mail centres, they have something known as an out house. 1st Class is processed at your local centre, so moves very quickly, 2nd class goes to the out house, where its full of temp staff and mis-sorts are huge and during high volumes, mail stacking takes place.
You all need to loose the mentality during this time that you need to be cheapest to sell and you will see the rewards of quick delivery as the eBay metrics will push you up.