There’s an eBay Item not received service metrics update coming in June. It’s basically designed so that if you’re not having great delivery experiences eBay will snitch on you to future customers in the form of automatically adding time to your buyer-facing delivery estimates. If your Item not received service metrics rating has not been evaluated as Very High then this won’t apply to you.
Does this solve the problem? Well often the reason a seller gets an item not received is because their parcel is still in transit. Sometimes, it’s because the item is genuinely lost in transit but that’s actually quite rare. Slow delivery is most often the culprit so it kind of makes sense that eBay add on time to set more realistic expectations based on past history with that seller.
What this won’t help with is when an item is left with a neighbour, at the delivery office, or someone in the household puts the package aside and the recipient doesn’t know where it is so claims it didn’t arrive. Tracking of course solves all of these issues so long as parcels are scanned, but in the real world for lots of items tracking simply isn’t economically viable.
What I’m loving with this update is that sellers from overseas who try to pretend their items are shipping from within the UK may well be hit hardest and have more realistic delivery expectations imposed on them if they have too many buy complaints.
What’s changing with eBay Item not received service metrics
- If your Item not received service metrics rating has been evaluated as Very High for two consecutive evaluations, time will be added to buyer-facing delivery estimates. For example: if you are rated Very High in your 20 June and 20 July evaluations, time will be automatically added to your buyer-facing delivery estimates from 20 July.
- When your Item not received service metric rating is no longer measured as Very High at the next evaluation period, time will be automatically removed from your buyer-facing delivery estimates. For example: if you are rated High in your 20 August evaluation, the additional time added previously will be automatically removed from your buyer-facing delivery estimates.
- This change applies to listings on eBay UK and in the postage categories you have been evaluated as Very High.
Why are eBay making this change?
- To better help all buyers receive the best possible service.
- To help reduce time-consuming and costly after-sale buyer requests.
- To continue to drive trust and possibly new and repeat customers for your business.
How will you know if you are affected by this change?
- This change will only impact a small proportion of sellers from which buyers are not receiving the best possible service.
- If on your evaluation you are rated High or Very High in the Item not received service metric, we will send you a notification email, and additionally you can find more details in your service metrics dashboard, located under the Performance tab in Seller Hub.
If you want to learn more about how to monitor your Service metrics eBay have a ton of helpful advice here.
10 Responses
So, say I’m one of those going to get hit…. What do I do? Well I shorten my delivery times to compensate of course!
Seriously eBay? Did no one think of that?
If eBay were serious about this and constant poor performers, then they would suspend those accounts. In the real world though, eBay puts profits over buyer happiness. Can’t go suspending these account as they will loose the fees!
Same story as the scammers etc, so long as eBay can keep pulling in the fees, make others pay for the issues.
Now it won’t affect me, but as an example of the flawed system, I had a buyer ask me where their item was the other day. I checked and 2 delivery attempts had been made. 2 cards left. Buyer swore blind no card had been left, and they had left a note on the door saying to leave it round the back. Well it was a £380 item, with signed for only status. So obviously they wouldn’t. I explained the situ and said I would get them to redeliver but someone must be in. When I went to do it, it showed as rearranged by buyer using code on the card that had been left!! That card that hadn’t been received!!!
Now I get a mark down by eBay as ‘late delivery’….. Classic
If tracking shows as dispatched it should protect the seller automatically. After all eBay states dispatched on time. It is the sellers dispatch that is being graded not the courier’s delivery time. Strange how eBay call it ‘dispatch on time’… But if it is delivered late they change the criterion to ‘delivered on time’.
…. But then again, that wouldn’t punish the seller would it? Can’t have that…
What happens if you are in the Highlands of Scotland and your customer is in Kent and they want next day delivery?.
Another stick to beat sellers with!!!.If you live in the south east of england great otherwise forget it!!!
ebay is going from bad to worse
This is detrimental to small rural businesses. If I sell bespoke items in The Highlands then it’s often pretty difficult to get timely courier collections. That’s not the sellers fault, or even really the couriers fault. It’s geographic logistics and common sense.
If your selling in the South East and London then not to worry- services are way more aligned to your delivery needs.
Do EBay know that small rural businesses actually exist outside of highly populated areas?
Clearly not.
Why do ebay beat about the bush
Just have an Amazon prime equivalent and be done
“When I went to do it, it showed as rearranged by buyer using code on the card that had been left!! That card that hadn’t been received!!!”
Sadly, and I mean no general disrespect or to cast negativity, but IMHO based on the almost 20 years of selling online I see more and more buyers taking little to no responsibility and the marketplaces encouraging this under the guise of “improved UX” but the reality is simply to keep buyers happy whilst extracting profit from the sellers who are ten a penny.
As a direct comparison we seldom have bad customer experience/complaints when face to face in our store yet online it is almost daily when there is an issue which 9/10 is not of our making.
By ebay changing their internal metrics it does not eliminate the problem although I agree and it is a good point, that in theory this will target sellers who are not being upfront about their location and transit times.
Wow sounds like a terrible idea and another step of us leaving this platform for good.
I’m sick of eBay “policies” that basically try to fack all the sellers with the same strict rule like we’re all bad sellers…
I ordered from official Suzuki shop the other day. For like 3-4 days I had no update of my order’s status… Why is that almost everyone needs everything next minute ? (I know I know…)
I’ve already been hit with this!
Unusually high INR in Feb has pushed me over. Looking at the metric report, two thirds shouldn’t be counted…
3 delivery attempts and buyer opens INR when it’s on its way back to me.
RM package returned with “unable to deliver – missing apartment number”. Address database and Google Maps confirms it is apartments but buyer opens INR when I ask for complete address.
Scammer places 2 orders a few days apart. A week after delivery opens 3 INR. I message with GPS and delivery photo and scammer immediately closes all 3 INR
and so on…
It’s debatable whether I should be penalised for any of the INR as all orders were dispatched on time using the stated courier. Am I at fault if a parcel is mis-routed and is a day or 2 late? Had a few delivered late in Jan when we had all that snow and a couple of the INR are from then.
eBay CS is no help. They tell me the only thing I can do is improve the service I give. I have a 0.07% transaction defect rate! Apparently I need to make sure I dispatch on time, send all items tracked (even when it’s just a small item for a couple of pounds) and communicate better with my buyers.
Also, I’ve only been evaluated as very high for one month and have been hit with the added time to delivery estimates. I was slap-bang in the middle of average for the previous evaluation.
My projected next evaluation is also very high as nearly all the INR are from Feb and the metric runs on a 3 month period 🙁
Your buyer has confirmed the payment. It’s time to pack up your item and post it off. Make sure you send it within -1 day, the dispatch option you selected in your listing.
You can’t make up the communication from ebay some days. How am I meant to pack and post a collection only item and dispatch it in – 1 day?