Ebay bug - Vacation does not affect Delivery Estimate

[dipmicro]

I wanted to take Friday off but did not want to completely loose the traffic. The only people affected would be ones who shop between now and tomorrow noon.

Placed store in vacation mode with return on 29th, allow to buy. Unfortunately, it did not work. The vacation setting did not change the delivery estimate at all.

I am little disappointed. After so many years in business I would expect something so basic as Delivery Estimate to work properly.

[recped]

Just change your handling time from 1 day to 2 or 3 days

[mr.elmwood]

Put yer store on vacation and ya have one day handling, they still expect you to ship in one day. Not a bug, it has always been this way. The only real way out si to make your listings invisible. That, or never take a day off.

[recped]

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@mr.elmwood wrote:

 The only real way out si to make your listings invisible.

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Or change you handling time which means that buyers can still purchase.

Personally if I was taking one day off I wouldn't bother to do anything but then I don't offer 1 day handling, I offer 5 day handling but I doubt many buyers actually bother to see what my handling time is.

Since Canadian sellers don't need 1 day handling toget discounts the ONLY reason to offer it would be to impress buyers, if buyers don't even notice (mine don't seem to notice my 5 day handling) then what's the point other than to give buyers an unreasonable expectation of the total delivery time.

I do inderstand that for some goods a shorter handling time can make the difference in getting a sale or not but I think that for most stuff it doesn't matter, especially true if you competition is located in the same country as the buyer, it's pretty obvious to a buyer where time is critical that equal items with one day handling the one shipping domestically if going to arrive a lot faster than one coming from another country.

[dipmicro]

Already offer 3 day handling and often get people angry because they expect/assume 1 day handling. Despite 3 day handling way too often I get people (Americans mostly) asking day after purchase why it did not mail.

It should add handling time to first day after vacation and add postal estimate. Nor a rocket science.

I gave up on this and will deal with the consequences. It was just a heads-up for the community that it does not work as expected.

[recped]

Sorry but it works exactly as expected in my opinion and every listing of yours that I looked at shows 1 day handling. if you want to extend the delivery estimate by two days then add two days to your handling time.

It's not rocket science!

[dipmicro]

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@recped wrote:

Sorry but it works exactly as expected in my opinion and every listing of yours that I looked at shows 1 day handling. if you want to extend the delivery estimate by two days then add two days to your handling time.

It's not rocket science!

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was not talking about this id, ben

it is your opinion that vacation ending on sept. 29 + 3 day handling time + 1 day in the mail = delivery on or before october 1 works as expected ? you should ask your math tutor for money back

[recped]

Make the handling time 5 days and the delivery estimate will change to on or before Oct 3rd

I just tested this on one of my listings

Normal

5 day handling delivery estimate 7 - 11 days

Revised

10 day handling delivery estimate 12 - 16 days

My math is fine and so is eBay's (although their overall estimates may be optimistic)

[rose-dee]

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@recped wrote:

Make the handling time 5 days and the delivery estimate will change to on or before Oct 3rd

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To 'dpmicro' -- I appreciate your pointing this vacation setting glitch out; I had no idea.  Handling times are very important for many of my buyers (mostly US). 

To 'recped' - This is probably a stupid question, but are you saying revise all active listings to show a longer handling time?  This might be counter-productive for a seller with hundreds of listings taking a short vacation.  Or can this be done with the bulk editor?  I use Auctiva, so I rarely use eBay's editing tools and am not familiar with them.   

[recped]

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@rose-dee wrote:

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@recped wrote:

Make the handling time 5 days and the delivery estimate will change to on or before Oct 3rd

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To 'dpmicro' -- I appreciate your pointing this vacation setting glitch out; I had no idea.  Handling times are very important for many of my buyers (mostly US). 

To 'recped' - This is probably a stupid question, but are you saying revise all active listings to show a longer handling time?  This might be counter-productive for a seller with hundreds of listings taking a short vacation.  Or can this be done with the bulk editor?  I use Auctiva, so I rarely use eBay's editing tools and am not familiar with them.   

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It's not a "glitch" and yes bulk change the handling time, I currently have 500+ listings, I could change the handling time on all of them in much less time than it takes to write this post and many many fewer mouse clicks.

[rose-dee]

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@recped wrote:

It's not a "glitch" and yes bulk change the handling time, I currently have 500+ listings, I could change the handling time on all of them in much less time than it takes to write this post and many many fewer mouse clicks.

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Thanks very much - I'll keep this in mind next time I need to have a vacation (somehow that's less often now than when I was working in an office, although I have much more fun now, and I get to have my lunch outside on the deck in the sunshine).  

I think most buyers realize when they see the vacation notice on a listing that there's going to be some sort of shipping delay, even if the date may be incorrect.  It would be a nice idea for eBay to fix it, but they've got a truckload of other problems they need to work on first.

[recped]

It would be a nice idea for eBay to fix it,

There is nothing to fix, it's not broken, it works as intended. When you set your account in Vacation Mode you have two choices, one just places a banner but buyers can still purchase, the other hides your listings entirely and buyer can't purchase.

If you want to make it so buyers can purchase while you are away then you need to adjust your handling time to accurately reflect reality.

Note that the hiding of listings only applies to Fixed Price, Auctions cannot be hidden, if your vacation is gloing to be long it's best to end them, if it's short then just adjust the handling time.

[recped]

I think most buyers realize when they see the vacation notice

I'd guess that plenty of buyers would never even notice the Vacation message, I turned it on (not hidden) for my stuff during August and I was surprised how subtle the message was.

[dipmicro]

OK, vacation setting with listings enabled is vacation notice only.

My expectastion was based on this Ebay notice: This seller is currently away until <mm/dd/yyyy>. If you make a purchase, there may be a delay in processing your order.  Ebay is informing buyer there will be additional delay.

On another place it says The message is informational only and you still need to meet your responsibility ...

So Ben is right, I am wrong, according to Ebay my handling started during vacation.

This function works as expected albeit is useless. There is no point announcing to buyer you are on vacation if you still need to ship within your specified handling time.

[rose-dee]

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@dipmicro wrote:

OK, vacation setting with listings enabled is vacation notice only.

My expectastion was based on this Ebay notice: This seller is currently away until <mm/dd/yyyy>. If you make a purchase, there may be a delay in processing your order.  Ebay is informing buyer there will be additional delay.

On another place it says The message is informational only and you still need to meet your responsibility ...

So Ben is right, I am wrong, according to Ebay my handling started during vacation.

This function works as expected albeit is useless. There is no point announcing to buyer you are on vacation if you still need to ship within your specified handling time.

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Aha - I see.  Rather typical of what I'd expect of eBay - useless helpfulness.  

In other words, there isn't much point in using vacation settings unless you either change your handling times or shut down the store for vacation.  In fact it appears there's significant risk.  

I'm glad I read this discussion.  I had no idea, was blithely going on vacation leaving items for sale at the usual 1-day handling time.  I won't next time. 

[pjcdn2005]

I have to agree with Ben as the system does exactly what it says it is going to do. At least now we can hide our listings and prevent anyone from making a purchase which wasn't possible before.

Ebay doesn't know why we are placing our store on vacation or how we want it handled. For example,there have been a few times when I've had something else going on here and didn't want a lot of sales so I've put my store on vacation with the message and listings still showing. If someone purchased an item I was still around to mail it within the specified handling time but my purpose of using the vacation mode was so that there would be less messages and less sales for those days when I was busy with something else. I didn't want ebay to change my handling time and actually, it never occurred to me that they would or should change it. Different expectations I guess.

[rose-dee]

You do have a point, 'pj', but it might have been more helpful for eBay to add a note for sellers using the "live but on vacation" setting to remind us that we should change handling times if we wished, rather than simply saying sellers must continue to meet their responsibility, etc.  

I didn't interpret that generic comment to mean that handling times wouldn't be altered by eBay accordingly (perhaps I should have), and that I needed to do change handling times myself if required.  A note to that effect by eBay would have been very useful.  As you say, different expectations.