How is everyone going with defects

[harley_babes_hoard]

Just wondering how everyone is going managing their defects. Has it been an improvement or the pits since the new requirements came into effect?

[*tippy*toes*]

0% on all 3 accounts. I truly think my 5 day handling time has helped. All tracked items have arrived before the first estimate date I still post same or next day, very rarely 2 days). I can only assume the untracked ones are the same.

[mbselections00]

Touch wood, so far so good.  Had one early in the piece that took forever and many many emails & phone calls to have removed and was concerned that's the way the future would be, but fortunately haven't had one since   Fingers crossed. 

That said, I only took particular notice today, Feedback has really dropped off - can't help but wonder if buyers choose to leave no feedback, rather than lie when asked the question ??  Perhaps they don't realise they can just leave the answer blank ?

How's it been going for you ?

[davewil1964]

0%. Until mid-September every (rare) feedback ups the allowable limit.

I live in hope that letting buyers in the sticks know that a 'No' to received by <date> is an automatic defect will continue working.

[pennyforum14]

I have just switched both my stores back to 1 day handling as a trial.  I want to see

a) if my sales improve (they have tanked over the last couple of months, coincidentally around the same time I switched to 5 day handling) and

b) if it results in defects.

Early days yet, so no change to the 0 defects, however sales are definitely up marginally for the first few days of May, so we will see.

[bakeandfry]

Im at 0%, hope you are doing good Harley.

[jfmgray]

Zero.  Kept my handling time at 1 day and I send a note to each domestic buyer about the late shipment feedback nonsence which has worked.  Has a few international late shipment defects but eBay removed these.  Sales have been very strong since July 2015.

[justcruising48]

I do not usually check but wow a big 5.07 defect on shipping for me and I post the same or next day! Think I will have to start posting day before an item sells lol. I have changed from 1 day to 2 now so maybe that will help.

[davidc4430]

no defects so far. set my handling time to the max 3 days.

[clarry100]

We set our handling time up to 3-days to combat this.
Do far we have one defect on each of our two stores.
One of those was for an item Australia Post lost. The other is a defect from October last year before the new system came into effect.
EBay say they can't remove that one because it's more than 90-days old but agreed it should not be there.
The other... what we do now is explain to the buyer when an item is lost that giving a NO answer issues us with an automatic defect and would they mind leaving that question unanswered. So far that seems to be working.
In the main our positive feedback comments about fast postage have increased since it seems all our large letter items are arriving before the eBay estimated delivery date due to the fact that we still post on the same day as the order is paid.
We can't attribute any loss in sales to the increase in handling time. It's normally slow this time of year for us.