@digital*ghostwrote:
@needsome12vbasicswrote:
If there are other issues that concern you, make eBay aware of them. Get other sellers to make eBay aware of them too. You never know when they might listen.
As I said, I already do, and my biggest concern has already been added to the list of things for eBay AU's tech team to look at implementing. Sometime, anyway. Maybe never. (The other issues that affect sellers right now are related to instant payment required being implemented on listings without the seller activating it, and not being able to turn it off, problems with parcel locker / collect address and the lack of ability to block them like sellers can with PO boxes, cart issues that prevent purchase entirely, for no discernable reason, postage options only applying to one item in the cart when a buyer changes it, instead of all, resulting in the purchases being split into two separate orders with two separate payments, and two separate postage methods and costs, combined postage calculating incorrectly - I've seen things like $5 + $2 = $18, not being able to cancel one item out of a multiple item order, no longer being able to send an invoice to reset checkout when a buyer changes their mind about the payment method they want to use, requests only affecting one item out of a multiple item order and there being no way for buyers to open requests on the remaining items [I mean where they buy multiples of the same item in one purchase, not multiple different items]).
I know there are many others, but that's just off the top of my head.
Editing handling times may be a PITA, but at least the ability to do it is there, and I can't see it being more a PITA to do that than message every buyer who purchases, calling eBay about late shipment defects, or whatever else one has to do to try and deal with the fallout.
The only other thing I want to say, or ask, rather, is what makes you so sure sellers would ignore it if advised their handling time - if left unchanged - may cause problems?
Sorry to hear that you have so many issues, we can all live in hope that eBay will help one day. I hope you accept the following as genuinely trying to help, and apologise in advance if I have offered wrong or misunderstood the concern, as little information given.
May be able to help you on some items on your problem list at least - the instant payment requirement thingy, as that is something I encountered and fixed. It is in the Business Policies section, go to each of your Payment Policies one at a time, and edit, scroll down to Safer Payment Methods, and in the middle of that section is has a check box to untick - Require immediate payment when buyer uses Buy It Now. If that is not ticked on all your Payment Policies, that one issue hopefully will be fixed.
You are correct in assuming that parcel locker and PO addresses issues don't affect everyone, me included, as I only use Australia Post, so sorry, no advice able to offer on that issue - hopefully eBay will help soon.
Not sure if your cart issues are the same as what I encountered, but I have managed to work around the cart issues I had, that is why I have multiple postage policies. It just means that if a buyer wants items from different postage policies, they make 2 or 3 purchases, so you get enough postage to post them all. Having to send 2 or 3 parcels is better than being paid not enough to post them in a combined cart.It is a work around that works ok for me anyway. Just more effort needed to create listings, and think of all possible scenarios.
Never thought to look for a reset feature for checkout when buyers change mind, but there is a work around, a few times I have just had to cancel orders and ask the buyer to purchase again when they make a mistake or change the order. As it is the Buyer's changing their mind, they have always been good with this work around.
Don't know about the multi item requests bit at all, never had that issue - yet....
Yes, we can edit handling times, the ability is there, but as already mentioned, eBay don't even have this written as something sellers should be doing when turning on holiday mode, if they did, then maybe there wouldn't be as many complaints about the postage dates issue. And no, agreed, I don't know that all sellers would not be bothered to find the postage policies and change them all every time they go away, just my guess, especially considering the last time I needed to change a Postage Policy, I couldn't find them, and had to Google where they had been moved to.
wrote:
You mention that you don't use business policies in your shop and your account is 10 years old. You may need to check, I think you could have them anyway, and this might still be the source of some of your payment issues.
I am the kind of person that explores every option available, and clicks every button or link to see what's what, I also like to troubleshoot, for some reason I enjoy doing that for anyone, not just myself, and I switch over to new things if/when it doesn't break things, even if it's at the expense of something else (eg I lost 4 custom pages when I switched my store from the old format to the new, because the new doesn't support them but that was a seamless transition and I like the new format).
I mention that because I'm just trying to get across that I (occasionally) know what I'm talking about 
, and I definitely do not have business policies enabled on my store account. I have them enabled on this account, so I know how they work, what they look like etc. and I also have seller hub on this account so I can explore that too, but the truth is, the majority of bugs come from the new versions of things while the old versions carry on functioning as normal (which sometimes includes bugs and such), however the payment issues I experience are caused by eBay - either through glitches, or incompetence (and by incompetence, I actually mean their lack of ability to provide an intuitive and cohesive checkout experience for buyers).
Re: the handling time and holiday mode issue - the problem with eBay taking over the handling time, recalculating it as the holiday progresses, would be that they have no way of knowing / deciding when the seller will post an order once they get back. For some sellers it could take several days to clear a backlog, meanwhile new buyers continue to purchase and their orders likely delayed some as well, so automating that in any way will be ok for some, but very problematic for others. There needs to be an ETA of some description, though, because eBay's Money Back Guarantee timelines are based (and therefore rely) on it, and so leaving it in the seller's hands to adjust accordingly is probably the best thing they could do that doesn't cause even more problems for X number of sellers.
I think - at best - when holiday mode is switched on, where the ETA is could have a banner than says "May not ship until after [date]",since if people are taking notice of ETAs, they should notice that, but there would still need to be an ETA of some description, for MBG purposes (I hate the ETAs, anyway, and wish in listings it was a timeframe in days, not this "on or before [specific date] thing - have the timeframe / dates for the MBG in order details, IMHO). But, eBay are pushing for guaranteed delivery, so they're moving in the opposite direction.
