Sold a listing while on time away, says to post before I get home

[sunday_blue_zephyr]

I'm a little confused about how time away works. I was contacted by an international buyer who wanted to purchase multiple items I had listed, I ended the relevant listings, made a new one with them combined and he purchased this new listing. I am worried that creating a new listing while my account is set to time away means this new listing doesn't include extended time away postage times as ebay says to post by June 25 when my time away is set until the 26th. I can't post until the 28th which was going to be fine with the handling times but now it's going to be 3 days late. Is this going to hurt my account? I'm new to selling and so this is worrying me a bit.

[p9games]

I've used time away but I've never done what you've described (i.e added a listing while away)

I would assume that the time away setting is global. Let's say you have a 2 business day handling time.  That means you would need to ship all those orders received whilst away within 2 business days of the your return from being away.

In your seller account you can see 3 key stats.

Late shipment, transaction defect rate and Cases closed without resolution.  So any late order will impact your stats and if any of these stats reaches a certain level your account can be penalised with higher fees and cancelled.  

Depends on your volume of orders.  I in a thousand being late is 0.1% and not an issue.  1 in 100 is 1% and could be problematic.  

Worth talking to the Ebay support team.

[sugar249]

I just had a little play with one of my stores which is in time away,  and put up a new item,  and yes all my other items displayed the time away message, but not this one.

Also when I checked the EDD from another account, it showed what would be expected for an active item.

So my guess its when you go into time away it only does the currently active items.   Which is a coding thing in the DB,  but also I guess generally if you are on time away, you wouldnt be listing new items, so it shouldnt be an issue.   

I can actually see benefits with this for the store in question,  as I wanted to make that item active,  but not the others anyhow.   

[springyzone]

Okay, so it sounds as if the time away settings don't apply to this new listing.

I don't sell, I have no idea if any defects kick in simply based on date posted, but I know items arriving to a buyer later than the estimated due dates can be a big problem. 

What is done is done.

What I would do in your situation is write to the buyer, explain that you are away and can't post quite as early as you normally would but that you will be home on 28 June and will post that day & will use express postage at no extra expense, to get it there as quickly as possible.

Then follow through.

The express postage may cost you extra but just do it anyway.  Send the tracking link to the buyer same day.

I would guess that most buyers would be reasonable and would be happy with this and prepared to wait an extra few days. It's when things run late or aren't posted for a while, with no explanation, that most buyers get anxious.