@digital*ghostwrote:
wrote:
This is pretty much the sort of thing ebay is going to have to, and is trying to clamp down on I think. If a seller can't (normally) post within a week to 10 days, they shouldn't be on ebay.
Except that the buyer sees the handling time or ETA (which is obviously extended due to the longer handling time) and then chooses whether to buy or not - why care if the sellers are on eBay when it's 100% buyer choice whether that wait is acceptable? If a seller sells just as much internationally as they do domestically, it makes sense to give themselves an extra week or two breathing space in light of eBay's ETA and MBG, too.
I think you may also be forgetting that would eliminate things like pre-orders, tailored wedding dresses, made to order stuff, or custom design / made items (these can have up to 6 weeks handling time on other sites - some people are really just happy to wait for what they want, there's no need to take options away from them because others are not ๐ ).
I did say-normally.
So I am not eliminating things like wedding frocks or custom made items. People would expect to wait a little longer for these.
But even then, I've had a fair bit of experience with custom made items. I had a daughter's place cards for her wedding printed in England. I had custom made stickers and such made for 2 other weddings, I've had pens, business cards, you name it, made.
All of those things came very quickly. Anything that can be printed will usually be off the presses in a couple of days, not a couple of weeks. My place cards from UK arrived in just over a week, from memory.
Wedding dresses are probably not the ideal thing to buy via ebay. I know in shops the wait can be several weeks & that is for one reason-the shops don't have the dresses, they import them, usually from USA for bridal, China for bridesmaids.
My experience with a lot of custom made items such as Xmas decorations, photobook albums etc on other sites is they are quick off the mark. I uploaded a 130 page album on 28 Feb and it arrived from Malaysia last week.
Fair enough, a custom made item-maybe a frock or wooden item, might take longer.
But I would question why normal, everyday items would need a handling time of any more than 10 days. I think the delays are often because the seller hasn't got the item in his little hot hands. He is dealing with a third party and lots can go wrong-the supplier may be out of stock, problems in production line, problems in the time it gets to the seller.
Unless i miss my mark, I'd day this is the type of sale that ebay will eventually try to stamp out by tightening handling & delivery times. I know you mentioned a buyer sees the ETA so they don't have to go with it if not happy, but realistically, that isn't how it works, is it. Customers might have to accept it but we know from these boards that a lot of them don't like it. And ebay probably realise that.
There's going to be less & less wiggle room for sellers, that's my prediction.
