Following on from eBay’s announcement that as early as September more sellers will be able to join eBay’s Click and Collect at Argos program, it’s time to make sure that your listings qualify.
By the end end of the year 65,000 eBay sellers will offer items for collection at Argos, rising to 80,000 in 2015.
If buyers want to use the service it makes sense to ensure your products qualify – it doesn’t cost you anything extra, plus eBay will promote the service on your listings and across the site. Buyers can also search for listings that offer Click & Collect.
What do you need to do to qualify for Click and Collect
- Offer FAST & FREE
- Use 1 of the 5 selected carriers
- Use 1 of the specified services
- Meet weight & dimension limits
The main thing you’re going to want to do is add free postage to as many of your listings as possible, and make sure that the delivery is within three working days to qualify for Fast and Free. Personally I don’t think three working days for delivery is particularly fast, but that’s eBay’s definition of quick service so it’s pretty easy to meet.
Fast and Free
Fast and Free gives you plenty of options depending on the service you use and how quickly your business is set up to despatch – for instance ship same day and specify second class post, ship next day with 1st class post or you can ship after two days and promise a 24 hour service.
Unbelievably you could only ship three days a week and with 24 hour couriers it would still be Fast! I don’t know too many sellers who can’t meet such generously slovenly service so the only real question is can you factor Free into your costs?
Qualifying Carriers and Services
Carrier |
Services |
| Royal Mail | Royal Mail 24, Royal Mail 1st Class, Royal Mail 1st ClassSigned For, Royal Mail Special Delivery™ 1.00pm, Royal Mail Special Delivery™ 9.00am, Royal Mail Tracked 24 |
| Parcelforce | Parcelforce 24, Parcelforce 48 |
| UPS | UPS Express |
| DPD | DPD Next Day, DPD Two Day |
| Yodel | Yodel 24, Yodel 48 |
We know a lot of sellers worry about items going missing if they’re not tracked and signed for. It’s a pretty safe bet that Argos stores Goods In departments are pretty slick so it’s one of the few occasions you might want to save a pound per delivery and not pay extra for a signature on delivery.
NB: If you’ve specified ‘Other 24 hour courier’ or ’48 hour courier’ you’ll need to change to one of the couriers and services in the table above to qualify for Click and Collect.
Size and Weight limitations
- Max Weight – 20kg
- Max Length – 120cm
- Max length of second longest side – 76cm
NB: If you sell items over these limits, make sure you’ve opted out these listings. Any items that are too large will be rejected at Argos and possibly disposed of! Easiest way to opt out is to edit your listing to not offer Click and Collect or to simply offer a non-qualifying courier service
How will you know when you get a Click and Collect order?
Most of the time you won’t, or more accurately unless you look for them you won’t notice them and why should you care anyway?
eBay will provide the shipping address and on the second line of the address there will be a 6-digit unique identifier code. eBay’s back end will do all the work so Click and Collect will work seamlessly with your chosen multi-channel software solution or any shipping integrations you already have in place. All you need to do is print the address/postage label and despatch as normal.
How can you opt in to Click and Collect?
eBay will let you know when Click & Collect is added to your listings. From then on just make sure you offer Fast and Free and meet the carrier/size/weight criteria above.
How can you opt OUT of Click and Collect?
Quite frankly you’d be mad to opt out, but if you do want to you can opt-out from Site Preferences in My eBay.
More likely you may want to opt out just for certain products for which the carrier/size/weight is an issue. You can edit individual listings to opt out on a listing by listing basis (Or just specify the courier as ‘Other 24 hour courier’ or ’48 hour courier’ or don’t offer free postage).
Returns
Non-collection
Items not collected after 7 days will be returned to you and eBay will expect you to refund the buyer – pretty similar to if a courier or Royal Mail parcel is returned to you.
We forgot to ask eBay if they’ll protect you from all negative feedback, low DSRs and defects if you get the parcel to Argos on time and the buyer simply doesn’t bother to collect it. We’re going to assume eBay will fully protect you under these circumstances and we’ll let you know if that’s not the case.
Buyer collects and wants to return
Buyers won’t be able to return items at an Argos store, they’ll need to return them in the normal manner according to your returns procedures as published in your terms and conditions and specified on your eBay listings.
Resources
eBay have published a ton of resources to help you understand Click and Collect and how you can get your listings to qualify.
eBay Click and Collect Video
We posted eBay’s Click and Collect Video on Tamebay yesterday.
eBay Click and Collect Landing Page
eBay have a new microsite with everything you need to know about Click and Collect at
Click and Collect details
In the Seller Center you’ll find full details on the .
Fast and Free
The eBay Seller Centre has everything you need to know about .
11 Responses
Quite frankly you’d be mad to opt out, but if you do want to you can opt-out from Site Preferences in My eBay’
OK I’m mad then. Why would sellers of small items that fit a letterbox and that are normally sent without the need for a signature not opt out?
I think that it’s (Click and Collect) great for T-shirts though. Actually most of the latest eBay initiatives seem great for T-shirts.
as much as i want to increase sales, i think we’re going to leave our listings as “other 48hr courier” for now, until we hear how it actually works.
saying “we’re going to assume eBay will (follow logic/common sense/ do the right thing)….” does not seem like a fair assumption these days.
sort of defeats the convenience purpose and ease of use idea ,when buyers can collect from argos yet cant use the same method to return
lots of potential for real fun
I dont see why Argos dont just dump ebay and open their own site to 3rd party sellers like Amazon did.
Its another desperate attempt to catch up with Amazon
I dont know why argos and debenhams feel the need to sell via ebay. They have their own sites. Its only good if its tapping into a vibrant customer market but ebay is in decline since the google downgrade. It sucks that small family owned businesses are being squeezed out by these high street department store sellers who dont even need to be on ebay , not to mention they get hundreds of negatives each month.
I used to work at Argos in my teens ‘It’s a pretty safe bet that Argos stores Goods In departments are pretty slick’ it bl*ody wasnt, it was a mess backstage.
As someone who currently is running this service in the promotional period (as ebay required it to run any deals this year) with UPS delivering to Argos, it has been relatively trouble free.
However we are not going to use UPS if it isn’t free and Royal Mail Tracked 48 isn’t apparently included even though ebay always estimates that is delivered with 3 days which it almost always is.
Any ideas why Royal Mail Tracked 48 or indeed Royal Mail 48 can’t be used? – we will have to opt out unless we can use this as obviously upgrading our Free delivery option to 24 would be expensive and not worth the extra cost for all customers when only 1% of parcels are using Click and Collect
is the cult of ebayism
it will work because we say it will,
all employees and affiliates must treat legitimate concerns as noise,
and you opt out you dont opt in
Hopefully by September eBay will include UPS, DPD & Yodel on the postage option selections, as they’re not available yet