How are people offering 3 day Guarenteed Delivery??

[retrogamestoreau]

3 Day Guarenteed delivery is completely unfair to sellers. No one can guarentee a delivery time when Australia Post (a company that received over 1 million complaints last year) has a monopoly on the Australian Postal service. It's even worse if you live in rural Australia like I do. eBay wants to compete with Amazon, fair enough. But it's best-match algorithm is obviously punishing sellers that have chose not to opt in because they'd rather be honest with their customers! My impressions have dropped significantly since the introduction of this, yet sales through my website sales are at an all time high..

I see people offering a 3 day guarenteed delivery on items less than $5, which means they would have to be sending the items as a large letter without tracking and any guarenteed delivery date... If this is happening there must be a greater benefit to being dishonest with your customers than there is risk of negative feedback or returns?

Should I be lying about my delivery times in order to help my best match ranking?

[clubesquire]

Truly, given the nefarious background to postage generally and the countless variables, I wonder how these ideas in all their incomprehensible glory, gather in the minds of the movers and shakers?

It's a good thing to be able to promise and then follow through with great customer service, but to fail on a promise and disappoint a buyer is simply asking for trouble. I know it's on an opt in basis at the moment, but seriously - opt in to trouble you can well do without?

The underlying agenda, the true and tangible agenda, has me totally confuzzled. If AP and carriers opted in with their own guarantees and indemnities, sure, go for it, but as it stands, why leave yourself open to the obvious risks?

Its an idea already in the 'dead chook' position, isn't it, surely? Or, is it just like a deliberate Govco leak, designed to condition us to something that will perhaps become something other than an option?

Theres so many other worthy and 'tangible' initiatives that could be undertaken to improve the eBay experience. Why is this dead chook so palatable to eBay when it will obviously create more confrontation and widen the abyss between buyer and seller?

Melina

[brerrabbit585]

Please don't talk about dead chooks.  Brer Fox visited me on Saturday afternoon and again this morning (in broad daylight and in town).    Now why couldn't he have chased that bunny rabbit I saw hopping across the vacant block next door?

I just hope ebay have to pay out for a lot of parcels, but that probably won't happen (just because it's what we need).

I suppose for anyone who regularly uses express post it's a good thing.  There are quite a few sellers who only use express satchels and don't post any other way.  Some who use large letters have probably opted in without realising the ramifications.

[springyzone]

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@brerrabbit585wrote:

Please don't talk about dead chooks.  Brer Fox visited me on Saturday afternoon and again this morning (in broad daylight and in town).    Now why couldn't he have chased that bunny rabbit I saw hopping across the vacant block next door?

I just hope ebay have to pay out for a lot of parcels, but that probably won't happen (just because it's what we need).

I suppose for anyone who regularly uses express post it's a good thing.  There are quite a few sellers who only use express satchels and don't post any other way.  Some who use large letters have probably opted in without realising the ramifications.

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I looked into my crystal ball & this is what i saw. Ebay will hardly have anything to pay out. That's because in the main, the sellers who opt in will only do so if they are pretty sure it will work for them, and they will limit the areas. At the moment, the majority of sellers are probably not included in the scheme.

Plus of course, ebay will only step in and pay for a limited time.

The system will be judged a huge success, a brilliant idea in fact. It will be pushed more widely, maybe even in time it might be more difficult not to opt in. They may even introduce a second tier of guarantee within the week. There will be incetives for opting in but the downside will be that eventually all the risk will be with the sellers & none of the responsibility with ebay.

Buyers will like it but if they are guaranteed something, you won't be able to blame them if they don't claim for their freebie if they don't get it.

[brerrabbit585]

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@springyzonewrote:

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@brerrabbit585wrote:

Please don't talk about dead chooks.  Brer Fox visited me on Saturday afternoon and again this morning (in broad daylight and in town).    Now why couldn't he have chased that bunny rabbit I saw hopping across the vacant block next door?

I just hope ebay have to pay out for a lot of parcels, but that probably won't happen (just because it's what we need).

I suppose for anyone who regularly uses express post it's a good thing.  There are quite a few sellers who only use express satchels and don't post any other way.  Some who use large letters have probably opted in without realising the ramifications.

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I looked into my crystal ball & this is what i saw. Ebay will hardly have anything to pay out. That's because in the main, the sellers who opt in will only do so if they are pretty sure it will work for them, and they will limit the areas. At the moment, the majority of sellers are probably not included in the scheme.

Plus of course, ebay will only step in and pay for a limited time.

The system will be judged a huge success, a brilliant idea in fact. It will be pushed more widely, maybe even in time it might be more difficult not to opt in. They may even introduce a second tier of guarantee within the week. There will be incetives for opting in but the downside will be that eventually all the risk will be with the sellers & none of the responsibility with ebay.

Buyers will like it but if they are guaranteed something, you won't be able to blame them if they don't claim for their freebie if they don't get it.

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A lot of buyers would be honest enough not to claim anything even if they could.  They'll be the ones who don't need it yesterday but that's what was on the listing anyway, or else buyers won't be told they can claim if it doesn't arrive last week.

[joztamps]

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@springyzone

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I still don't get why there is this obsession by ebay with guaranteeing delivery in 3 days. No other retailers do it. I suppose there might be the occasional emergency product people are after, but for me, I am pretty impressed with any seller who says in the ad that they post off within 24 hours. Some even say same day postage if bought before noon or whatever. As long as they follow through with that, the item will generally be with you within about a week in any case, if you are both in metropoltan areas. If you're not, then you're unlikely to find too many sellers guaranteeing 3 day delivery to your area anyway

I strongly suspect that there's a little bit of panic setting in about Australian Amazon and, in particular, the persistent rumours that it will use Australia as a testing and development ground for its drone delivery service. 

[hobby_cds]

I had a buyer buy an item off us on Friday night and emailed me yesterday (Tuesday) asking for me to either post it or for a refund. Even though the delivery time is estimated at Thursday or Friday this week. We have a pretty quick postal service from our area but still buyers seem to have no idea when it comes to delivery times. 

[digital*ghost]

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@springyzonewrote:

I still don't get why there is this obsession by ebay with guaranteeing delivery in 3 days. No other retailers do it.

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That's pretty much why, I would say. I think there are some retailers who are prepared to in some cases (eg Vistaprint actually does guarantee the express delivery service), but it's not overly common. 

eBay's issue now, more than ever, is getting buyers to shop here over anywhere else, they need something that sets them apart from other retailers. Their other problem is they can't seem to think of anything truly unique, so just keep trying to capture the magic from elsewhere - but they only bring over the idea, not what rests at the core of the implementation (eg when they introduced collections - something very much like a Pinterest board, or the similar but now defunct option on the handmade site), they failed to connect the dots to what made those features so successful and worthwhile on the other sites. Same with GD, it borrows from Prime, with none of the supported infrastructure or membership services, they just throw it out at the sellers and either hope or expect they'll get the results they want without offering any of the real support that's needed for it to be widespread and successful. (Prime costs members money for a reason, though there are a lot of benefits above and beyond access to very fast shipping services). 

The government is giving buyers a reason to shop elsewhere when it comes to international items, with the introduction of GST on OS purchases, that due to it being applied selectively, means that the same seller on eBay will have an item with GST added, but not if sold on their own website. If the security fee also comes in, I think they will suffer a bit from lowered international sales, so they would then need to look at bolstering domestic sales (and probably in a way that doesn't overtly tick off the other "local" sellers, IYKWIM) .

Retailers are everwhere online, often cheaper than eBay, or has some other benefit. So I think many of eBay's time is spent trying to answer the question "how do we keep buyers shopping here".

They're like a wannabe Mythbuster with sub-par knowledge, skills and experience. They have a question or problem to solve, and rather than looking for elegance and / or simplicity in the solutions, they often try to impress with convoluted schemes and structures that ultimately don't function, or at least they only function well enough to simply confirm a bias, leading to more skewed and outlandish - but ultimately disappointing - experiments. 

[clubesquire]

Love the last para Ghost 🙂

Melina.

[countessalmirena]

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@digital*ghost@  wrote:

They're like a wannabe Mythbuster with sub-par knowledge, skills and experience. They have a question or problem to solve, and rather than looking for elegance and / or simplicity in the solutions, they often try to impress with convoluted schemes and structures that ultimately don't function, or at least they only function well enough to simply confirm a bias, leading to more skewed and outlandish - but ultimately disappointing - experiments. 

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The Cardenal Cisneros Pedro Ximénez nearly went all over my grilled salmon.

[clubesquire]

You're roughing it ternite 🙂