eBay are continuing to differentiate the C2C selling experience from Business Selling and having already addressed fees and buyer protections. eBay are now are about to make it faster, easier, and more secure for C2C sellers to ship items with eBay Simple Delivery. Business sellers will still have full control, being able to select their carrier of choice and manage their own delivery options.
Starting from 15 April, eBay Simple Delivery will be the only delivery method available for private sellers when listing most items. There’ll be a few exceptions, such as low-priced, bulky items, and local pick-up, which aren’t eligible for Simple Delivery.
What is Simple Delivery?
Simple Delivery is eBay’s all-in-one delivery solution, designed to cut out all of the effort and save you money. It’s also the fastest way to get paid on eBay. Plus, buyers will benefit from savings and enjoy the peace of mind that tracking offers. Here’s how it works:
- When listing, eBay will recommend the size and weight of your item. Just confirm and we’ll do the rest.
- Once your item sells, you’ll receive both a printer-less QR code and a prepaid printable label, so you can choose what’s easiest.
- Drop off your item at the nearest carrier location, or schedule a home collection and you’re done!
You’ll still be able to choose the carriers (from a choice of Evri and Royal Mail) by going to Postage Preferences in your account settings. eBay recommend enabling all carriers for the most competitive postage rates.
Benefits of Simple Delivery
Simple Delivery offers a faster and easier experience:
- Fastest way to get payments: Get your funds 2 days after delivery confirmation when using our prepaid labels.
- Save 20% off postage costs*: Get competitive rates to offer standard and express delivery with Royal Mail and Evri.
- Full protection: Enjoy peace of mind with eBay’s full coverage for items lost or damaged in transit, where we handle claims with buyers so you don’t have to.
- Free postage option: Choose if you want your buyer to pay for the label, or offer free postage and cover the cost.
- Prepaid and tracked labels: Labels come with automatic tracking so buyers always know where their items are.
- Flexible labels: Use a QR code for quick printing at drop-off locations, or easily print your own label at home.
- Positive feedback: From late April, you’ll automatically receive positive feedback for tracked transactions delivered on time, where no feedback has been left within 7 days and no issues are reported, so you get the recognition you deserve. Learn more
- Simple Delivery will apply to new eligible listings by private sellers in the UK from the 15th of April
- From the 7th of April eBay will apply Simple Delivery to any existing listings that are eligible.
- If you selected buyer-paid postage, this will stay the same when your listings are updated.
- If you’re covering the costs, they’ll be deducted from your sales.
Which carriers are available for eBay Simple Delivery?
With Simple Delivery, sellers can ship their items via Royal Mail or Evri with convenient drop-off locations across the UK.
- For parcels sent with Royal Mail, sellers can find a Post Office within one mile for 97% of the population and within three miles for 99% of the population. They can also schedule home pick up.
- For parcels sent with EVRi, sellers can find a parcel shop within two miles for 93% of the population
When are sellers paid for their items?
Simple Delivery offers prepaid and tracked labels with automatic tracking so sellers get paid as soon as possible and buyers always know where their items are. Payment is made within two days after eBay receive confirmation from the tracked shipping service that the delivery was successful.
Can you offer upgraded Express Delivery options?
When your buyer completes the checkout process, you’ll be charged for a postage label for a standard delivery service, and the cost will be deducted from your funds. If your buyer selects an express delivery service instead, they’ll pay the full delivery cost, and you won’t be charged.
When eBay is migrating existing listings, what does that look like?
As an example, if something is selling for £15 and delivery with Yodel, if that is still listed when it migrates the item will remain listed and eBay will select the best Simple Delivery options based on package weight, dimensions, and carrier preferences, unless the seller has opted out of a carrier in their account setting.
Is at home pick up Royal Mail only?
Yes, at this time Royal Mail is the only available option for at-home pickup.
*Comparing the average Simple Delivery and non Simple Delivery Buyer postage label cost savings data on eBay from Oct 2024 to March 2025.
3 Responses
Bad decision. eBay shipping is more expensive than alternative tracked delivery services. This will increase the cost of selling on eBay. Might be a deal-breaker for my selling on eBay.
this is a bad move, royal mail is the most expensive and still a quite slow shipping method and evri is the slowest, (,on average items take 10 to 14 days & their tacking doesn.’t change for days ),
personally I have found that DPD seem to be the best, (never had anything take more than 4 days to arrive)
I don’t know where you got those ideas from, but they’re not right.
Royal Mail: One of the many complaints about Simple Delivery is it excludes a standard letter and large letter option, which Royal Mail are the cheapest option for. When it gets to bigger parcel size items they may be a bit more expensive, but not by that much, and the price will be the same regardless of whereabouts in the UK you are sending the parcel. All other carriers will have surcharges for certain remote postcodes, making Royal Mail the cheapest parcel option in those cases.
Evri: They can be slow, but 10 to 14 days is not average. Amazon buyers use either them or Royal Mail for returns and I typically see the Evri managed returns arriving back in the warehouse here 2-3 days after they’ve been accepted by Evri. If you’re seeing 10 to 14 days as normal delivery speed by them, then something else is the matter.
DPD: Popular and efficient, but any of the bigger parcel carriers (Parcelforce, DHL, Fedex etc) offer the same delivery services and they are all much the same as each other. As long as the seller is dispatching when they say they are, and you’re not adding non-working days into the timescale, next working day or the day after should be typical.
I think Simple Delivery is another bad idea from ebay for multiple reasons, but by using just Royal Mail and Evri, they have probably covered most situations, and buyers should be getting delivery in 2-3 days.