Ebay Sellers Delivery dates:

[jcut6405]

I recently had a purchase, where the seller had a estimated  delivery date which was not met, when I enquired I was informed they were away, and the Ebay ad had been flagged.

I looked at the Ad and yes there was a small print note high on the left hand corner of the ad, whilst the estimated delivery date was clearly evident in bold large print. below the item for sale

As a result I cancelled the order as instead of having to wait 7 days to receive it would have been 30 days.

This was an annoying waste of my time.

Why does Ebay allow absent sellers to list and item for sale with an Estimated delivery date prominently shown, when the seller has no intention of meeting this delivery time.

Why is a seller even allowed to list on Ebay at a time when they are away and cannot despatch the goods as advertised on the Ebay site.

I believe Ebay needs to have a look at this practice, if they wish to retain their buyers.

[brerrabbit585]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

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@springyzone wrote:

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For untracked items, I can't see many alternatives except a delivery date range. 

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My point was that can be provided without creating a "due date".

You mentioned earlier that a lot of sellers would be pretty lax in posting out items in years gone buy, and attributed the improvement of things to eBay's ETAs - is it not possible that, since correlation doesn't always mean causation, that it can also be attributed to the fact that there are fewer casual sellers here now and more experienced and / or business-oriented sellers, who understand the importance of shipping quickly?

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I don't think it's the due date that caused sellers to pull up their socks.  I know what springy's talking about because I experienced the same, but over the years things gradually improved until people were as prompt as they are now.  I think most were pretty prompt long before the delivery dates were brought in and I'd say it was because along the way there were many other things introduced and each one of them helped to pull slow posting sellers into line. 

Removing the ability for sellers to leave retaliatory negative feedback (so that a seller's feedback more accurately reflected their behaviour) would have helped a lot because more negs would have reduced sales.  Introducing DSRs (in either late 2007 or early 2008) would have made a lot of difference as those sellers with really low stars for postage time would have got less sales.  Then there was the defects system.  I'm not sure that we've always been able to put the tracking number in so when that feature was introduced it would have helped to some extent too.  

[digital*ghost]

I understand what springy is saying as well, though late postage was never much of my ebay experience, and in the early days (if you can call 2008 the early days), I experienced it a couple of times out of several hundred purchases (and this was before parcels had tracking), it's happened more recently (last year, just the once), but maybe I was just lucky. 

What I'm suggesting is that ebay has evolved considerably, and rapidly in the last few years, and site changes (the big ones, fee hikes, MBG policies) and so on, took out a lot of casual sellers, while the micro-managing on the smaller details are petty annoyances most people can contend with or ignore in the main, even if they would love to see a different approach to it (like me :D) . 

Just in my own experience, just as bad buyers don't care about getting negatives, lax sellers never cared about DSRs and the like, they cared about eBay's "highway robbery fees" and such.  

[brerrabbit585]

I think things had already improved a lot by 2008, though there still wasn't as much pressure then to post straight away as what there is now.  I'd been registered for four years before that, mainly as a buyer but I did a few selling stints when they offered us free listings.

I actually feel less pressure to post straight away now than what I did two years ago, thanks to being able to put a handling time of 3 days in.  I usually post the same or next day but occasionally I might wait an extra day if I have only one thing to post and I really can't be bothered walking to the PO.  My buyers are generally pretty patient people and I'm still posting within 2 days.  I rarely get someone asking when I posted or "where is it", though I do get the odd idiot in other areas.  The type of buyer you get depends to a big extent on the type of products you sell and I do feel sorry for a lot of sellers.

I agree that site changes have taken out a lot of the casual sellers but in my experience most of them gave better service than a lot of the sellers with shops (I don't mean the huge sellers).  I bought something a year or so back from someone who's a major player in my category and they were slower to post than most, despite having same day postage advertised, and three out of four items weren't the size they said in the listing.

I don't think a lot of lax sellers can see that they're lax and that's why they appear not to care about DSRs etc.  Everything is always someone else's fault.  I see a lot in the forums where sellers could do a lot to prevent problems but they just can't see it, and they won't accept constructive criticism.

[porcelain_dolls_by_me]

Given Ebay indicates the estimated delivery date by combining the sellers listing processing time and the AusPost delivery times, presented with this information a buyer may well opt for a seller with the earlier delivery date. 

So it is a double edged sword for sellers.  Do you incorporate into your listing a 3-5day handling time just to give you some protection in delays by AusPost, or do you opt for same day processing in order to attract buyers looking for early delivery?

For our part the majority of our listings incorporate same day processing and posting for all orders received by 5:30pm AEDT- our local street box is cleared at 7:00pm.

Experience has shown that if an item is not received withing the (say) 7 day delivery time indicated by Ebay then the item has been missorted and will not arrived for several weeks.  As such, extending the processing/posting time is of little consequence.

[springyzone]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

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@springyzone wrote:

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For untracked items, I can't see many alternatives except a delivery date range. 

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My point was that can be provided without creating a "due date".

You mentioned earlier that a lot of sellers would be pretty lax in posting out items in years gone buy, and attributed the improvement of things to eBay's ETAs - is it not possible that, since correlation doesn't always mean causation, that it can also be attributed to the fact that there are fewer casual sellers here now and more experienced and / or business-oriented sellers, who understand the importance of shipping quickly?

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I've been on ebay since-must be around the 2000-2002 mark, something like that although my ebay account from then I can no longer access to check. Back in those early years you're right, there were a lot more casual sellers & now the balance has shifted a lot to small business sellers.

Definitely that would be one factor in the faster postage times (compared to eg 2002-2007 range).

But I also believe accountability & the tightening of ebay rules & procedures over that time has also had a huge part to play in the change.

Let's say ebay did as you are suggesting & simply listed an estimated delivery time range on ads without calling it a due date.

(maybe on untracked items, as I don't believe you need a due date on tracked items).

How exactly would there be accountability? Ebay has to have some easily understood/easily applied system for buyers & sellers.

So let's say ebay followed your business model and an untracked item was listed as, for example, estimated delivery within 1-2 weeks, with no due date range mentioned.

When exactly could a buyer open an item not received claim?

If you say-after 2 weeks, then that effectively is giving a cut off date for delivery, which seems to be the main bone of contention with sellers because they keep saying they are not responsible for Aust post etc etc (not that Aust post are necessarily the only couriers they could choose).

[brerrabbit585]

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@porcelain_dolls_by_me wrote:

Given Ebay indicates the estimated delivery date by combining the sellers listing processing time and the AusPost delivery times, presented with this information a buyer may well opt for a seller with the earlier delivery date. 

So it is a double edged sword for sellers.  Do you incorporate into your listing a 3-5day handling time just to give you some protection in delays by AusPost, or do you opt for same day processing in order to attract buyers looking for early delivery?

For our part the majority of our listings incorporate same day processing and posting for all orders received by 5:30pm AEDT- our local street box is cleared at 7:00pm.

Experience has shown that if an item is not received withing the (say) 7 day delivery time indicated by Ebay then the item has been missorted and will not arrived for several weeks.  As such, extending the processing/posting time is of little consequence.

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The key is to have unique items so that buyers want YOUR item and can't opt for the same thing that'll arrive faster from other sellers.  Before satchels, people bought from their own state or adjoining ones to reduce postage if they could, and in the same way, people can still choose to buy from a closer seller to get quicker delivery.

@ springy...  some good points there re untracked letters.  I think some sellers would prefer to go back to when there was no such thing as claiming for items not received, but if that happened a lot of buyers would walk away because a lot of sellers wouldn't post things, same as in the past.

[digital*ghost]

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@springyzone wrote:

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So let's say ebay followed your business model and an untracked item was listed as, for example, estimated delivery within 1-2 weeks, with no due date range mentioned.

When exactly could a buyer open an item not received claim?

If you say-after 2 weeks, then that effectively is giving a cut off date for delivery, which seems to be the main bone of contention with sellers because they keep saying they are not responsible for Aust post etc etc (not that Aust post are necessarily the only couriers they could choose).

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Accessibility to the MBG process and what is displayed in a listing don't have to be inextricably linked. I use PayPal to pay for items all over the world, I can open a dispute at any time, and I am provided with a good sense of when things are likely to arrive (even when untracked), and I have little angst when things take a little bit longer. (I can start to feel a bit worried depending on where it's coming from, eg a domestic purchase I would start to feel a little concern 7+ business days after an item was shipped, but not make any contact until at least the two week mark, I import from Canada regularly, as well, and I only start to worry if it's been more than 5 weeks, and wouldn't contact for at least 6). 

I sold for quite a few years before the MBG was introduced, with no ETAs on listings, but the ability for buyers to open PayPal claims pretty much immediately. I had exactly 0 claims opened in PayPal for INR during that time, and overall have had two opened in all my time of selling - one INAD from a confirmed scammer, and one INR from someone who bought on another site, asked to cancel and then opened their dispute within a few hours of purchase because I wasn't awake to respond to them immediately. Meanwhile, I know many sellers have had MBG requests opened the second the buyer had access to them with statements like "this was due yesterday". 

[springyzone]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

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@springyzone wrote:

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Accessibility to the MBG process and what is displayed in a listing don't have to be inextricably linked. I use PayPal to pay for items all over the world, I can open a dispute at any time, and I am provided with a good sense of when things are likely to arrive (even when untracked), and I have little angst when things take a little bit longer. (I can start to feel a bit worried depending on where it's coming from, eg a domestic purchase I would start to feel a little concern 7+ business days after an item was shipped, but not make any contact until at least the two week mark, I import from Canada regularly, as well, and I only start to worry if it's been more than 5 weeks, and wouldn't contact for at least 6). 

I sold for quite a few years before the MBG was introduced, with no ETAs on listings, but the ability for buyers to open PayPal claims pretty much immediately. I had exactly 0 claims opened in PayPal for INR during that time, and overall have had two opened in all my time of selling - one INAD from a confirmed scammer, and one INR from someone who bought on another site, asked to cancel and then opened their dispute within a few hours of purchase because I wasn't awake to respond to them immediately. Meanwhile, I know many sellers have had MBG requests opened the second the buyer had access to them with statements like "this was due yesterday". 

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I only take the estimated arrival dates on ebay as a guide too & don't panic if something is a few days over, but as mainly a buyer, have to say I do like to have that indication of when i can expect items & I'd guess most other buyers like to have a clear idea too.

I would also say a lot of ebay buyers will look within the ebay site to deal with problems, before they would contact paypal.

So if there were no ETAs on listings, are you saying you would like buyers to have the ability to open eg an item not received case anytime on ebay after a purchase?

At the moment, if I have it right, they have to wait till after the ETA to open a case with ebay but can open one anytime with paypal.

The trouble I see with it is if there is no delivery date range on an ad, you're going to get some buyers who jump in and open a case 48 hours after purchase because they haven't a clue, whereas at least the present ETAs can hold them off a bit longer.

[digital*ghost]

I think the most succinct way I can convey what I'm trying to say is that the same timeframe can be used to convey a reasonable time for delivery, but there's 2 different ways to go about it, eg:

A) Please wait at least 5 days

B) Don't wait any longer than 5 days

eBay uses option 'B', I'd prefer option 'A'. 

The other 'E' site uses an in-house dispute resolution process, provides ETAs (without using specific dates, but similarly based on seller's handling time and average delivery time between two locations), and sets a minimum timeframe before a case can be opened based on that ETA. The end result is basically option 'A'. 

[davewil1964]

I only take the estimated arrival dates on ebay as a guide too & don't panic if something is a few days over,

As do I. Plus I would never buy anything time-sensitive online if I could help it.

But members like thee and me are unlikely to be a significant proportion of buyers. And there is enough anecdotal evidence that the 'average', low feedback buyer stuggles to understand the site, much less that an estimated delivery date is not promulgated by the seller. Witness the OP.