eBay

hlmacdon · ‎01-28-2016

Unfortunately I couldn't reply in the weekly session thread as that has since been locked by Raphael.

Incorrect, it exists and is accessible from the US. If you using a listing template or some other service perhaps you are not seeing it.

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There is no Canada Post Small Packet USA Ground service. It was discontinued 2-3 years ago. That is a fact. Yet you say that a ground service is available. Then you say ground is available on eBay.com. Very confusing.

I believe you are referring to the eBay.com USA shipping options their Sell Your Item form, in particular the Economy Shipping services named USPS Retail Ground (2 to 9 business days) or USPS Parcel Select Ground (2 to 9 business days) or other carrier ground services.

This was my error, that should have read for the US rather than from the US. Apologies for the resulting confusion. The examples I provide are options available for sellers via ebay.ca. The Small Packets - International - Ground option is not a carrier specific option as you can see below.

These service are USA based and not available to most sellers located in Canada. If you are suggesting that a seller in Canada use a service on eBay.com in their listing for the shipping time estimates regardless of how the seller actually ships the item using a Canada Post option, then the seller would be misrepresenting what service they use. A seller in the USA would be surprised to get a package from Canada Post when the listing said it was using USPS Retail Ground or Parcel select.

You also seem to have advised in another topic to use Small Packet Ground International in a listing to get the delivery time estimate "Varies for an international country".

I can see where the confusion arises as it looks like you list on ebay.com. The options I listed under USA heading are the ebay.ca shipping options that are either carrier specific (I have omitted UPS) to the US or generic, non-carrier specific options, that are currently available, and could be applicable to the US (in the same way you use standard international shipping for the Canadian shipping option on your listings.

As you may be aware, the Economy Shipping from outside the US option which is available through ebay.com is not currently available on ebay.ca. That currently provides the longest ETA and would be the most applicable for countries where actual delivery times are typically longer (Australia being a great example). In the absence of that option being available on ebay.ca, Small Packet Ground International currently shows the varies for an international country outside of North America, which allows a buyer to refer to the seller's ETAs as stated in their listing description. It is not an ideal solution, and if Raphael can get the economy options that are available on ebay.com to be available on ebay.ca that should negate the need for the work around.

From what I am reading, you seem to think that a seller can use any shipping service available in a listing and that it does not matter what they actually use to ship the item. You have lumped a lot of service not available to a seller as US options.

Please correct me if I am wrong. I find your posts since you started posting recently in the Canadian forums a few days ago about shipping to be confusing and making no sense at all at times. Please explain better. Saying that there is a ground option available on eBay.com USA is technically correct but is unusable to a Canada Seller.

You currently use "standard international shipping" and "standard shipping from outside US" as non carrier specific shipping options, with the actual shipping services clearly explained in your listing. I am advocating the same for sellers who are concerned about the late shipment defect issue when using non-tracked services that do not receive an acceptance scan, or for sellers who want to better manage customer expectations with respect to delivery times. The primary difference, and cause of confusion, being using the options available via ebay.ca rather than ebay.com where you list. This is more pertinent to shipments outside of North America, where sellers are going to run into difficulties with the carrier specific ETAs not reflective of the realties of actual delivery times, especially in periods such as the run up to Christmas.

The point of listing all of the options was to show the limitations of the ETA ranges that are currently available to a Canadian seller listing on ebay.ca, and how even the carrier specific options for Canada do not accurately reflect stated Canada Post ETAs (whether too long or too short, if it isn't accurate it reflects a fundamental problem). Under the new standards, a large number of Canadian sellers will be beholden to what ebay enters as the ETA range. Users of the Canada Post small/light packet services do not receive any acceptance scans, which would allow ebay to evaluate shipment within stated handling times.

The point of the seller standards revision was to provide a metric that was neutral, "based on what you control - shipping your item on time." Due to the acceptance scan issue, sellers using light/small packet have no way to demonstrate they have shipped within their stated handling time, that can be verified by ebay in an automated fashion. As such the combination of inconsistent delivery times and ETA ranges which don't accurately reflect that leaves those sellers unfairly vulnerable to late shipment defects. With US sellers using USPS, this is not an issue, as acceptance scans are available for first class package services. This is where I feel there is a disconnect. If Raphael can mange to get the economy option(s) enabled for ebay.ca that will help, but the acceptance scan issue remains problematic. Hopefully that has better explains the issue from my perspective.

dutchman48 · ‎01-29-2016

If buyers don't leave feedback, sales won't matter as they are not taken into consideration.

Feedback from buyers is slowly decreasing. It would be an interesting stat if Ebay posted feedback percentage of sales left for sellers.

I am starting to see why sellers are no longer leaving feedback immediately. I realize it is voluntary, but I still believe if buyers expect feedback which means nothing, they could at least reciprocate with feedback for sellers where it definitely makes a difference.

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

@dutchman48 wrote:
Ebay never does an about face, they just introduce new which is usually worse than before....

Oh, I didn't mean they would acknowledged it was flawed, just that they would decide to do something different just when we had already contorted ourselves to fit it.

dutchman48 · ‎01-29-2016

Here is how it is figured out

HOW TO MEET THE
ON-TIME SHIPPING METRIC If you ship on time and upload valid tracking—
or your buyer confirms your shipment arrived
on time—you’re set.

Notice the or

dutchman48 · ‎01-29-2016

But every time they do that, it gets worse for sellers, especially for Canadians

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

I know what you're saying but the way I understood it and I thought the way that Raphael explained it too when I asked was that the transaction didn't count -- tracked or otherwise -- unless or until the buyer left feedback.

When the buyer goes to leave feedback, if ebay can see there was a validated tracking number uploaded within the seller's stated timeframe, the transaction counts as delivered on time, no defect. If that acceptance scan was late (for whatever reason) but then ebay looks to see if it was confirmed delivered on time (delivery attempts do NOT count) and if it was delivered within the estimated time, no defect. If neither of these two tracked postal service metrics are available, ebay then asks the buyer if it was delivered on time and if they say 'yes', no defect. None of it is relevant until the moment feedback is being left. Or so I understood it.

So then, to play the devil's advocate:

If a seller shipped 90 items with tracking and got all of their acceptance scans on time

but shipped ten orders without tracking

and the only buyers leaving feedback were the ones who were served without tracking on their packages

and those left feedback indicating all orders arrived late or past the estimated timeframe provided,

the seller's defect rate would be counted as 10 defects of 10 transactions only. Or 100 per cent failure.

The seller would get the boot despite having shipped 90 per cent of their items with tracking and acceptance scans received.

I'll see if I can find the passages. I picked at him about this on more than one occasion, it might take me awhile to find the replies I'm thinking about. Bear with me.

But let's ask to have this clarified at the next Board Hour. I'd love to learn I was incorrect about it.

dutchman48 · ‎01-29-2016

Here is the Ebay link and I don't read it the way you

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/build-your-business-online/deliver-great-service/on-time-shi...

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

I like your understanding of it better. I think you're right. The info graphic tells a different story than what I understood this to mean.

pierrelebel · ‎01-29-2016

Did you read the chart provided by eBay?

http://for-business.ebay.com/sites/default/files/images/20151809091444.png

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

I'm on my phone right now but I'll post a screenshot of it (the info graphic) when I get back to my desktop.

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

Thank you.

pierrelebel · ‎01-29-2016

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

I am pleased to see I was incorrect in my understanding of which transactions were counted and when. Thank you for correcting this.

hlmacdon · ‎01-29-2016

I'm currently parsing through the Nov-Jan sales data to see if this all aligns. From a quick review of the data one thing that jumps to mind is multi-item transactions. Each unique item is assigned a transaction ID, but may only be being counted as one shipment with respect to the late shipment transactions number, hence the discrepancy between the transaction defect rate number of transactions and late shipment rate number of transactions in the seller dashboard.

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

At first glance, my numbers do not quite compute but I don't know the reason for that yet. I'm looking for clarification on the feedback number question and found this fromUserName lia-user-name lia-user-rank-eBay-Employee lia-component-common-widget-user-name">raphael@ebay.com (0)View Listings

eBay Employee

Posts: 1,277

Registered: ‎07-26-2010

Re: 2015 Fall Seller Update

in reply to pjcdn2005

‎09-11-2015 04:51 PM

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
According to the .ca update -
"When there's no tracking information available and no response from the buyer, the transaction will not be included in the on-time shipping calculation"
On .com the statement is slightly different - "When there's no tracking information available and no response from the buyer, the transaction will not be included in the on-time shipping calculation and will not be considered on-time or late since there’s no information available."

Does that mean that if I have 100 buyers and only 46 of them answer the question, my on time percentage will be based out of 46 or out of 100? If the answer is 45 then that is a huge problem.

If 3 buyers out of 46 who replied said their item arrived late my percentage would be about 6.5%
If 3 buyers out of 100 buyers said their item arrived late, my percentage would be around 3%.
Huge difference.

In the last year, about 46% of my buyers left feedback so it isn't unreasonable to suggest that 46% or less of my buyers will answer that question.
That's a great question which I am happy to answer.

Those transactions where the buyer doesn't give an answer to the on time shipping question will not be counted in the percentage of on time transactions.
'm still not certain of the answer so I'll try asking a different way.
In my example above...if I have 3 buyers who said that they had late delivery, would the percentage be based on the total number of customers that I had in that evaluation period or would it be based on the 46 transactions that either had tracking or replied to the question in feedback. In other words, would my on time percentage be 6.5% or 3%?

This is what I was trying to get at. While shipping with tracking improves a seller's standing within the late shipment question because it populates the number of transactions upon which the seller will be graded percentage-wise, it's still not a number based on total number of sold-items transactions but the number where data is available whether it is trackable or buyer-input.

I believe it came up again in the weeks to follow for further clarification.

Again, I know I will be corrected by other members here if I am mistaken. That is a good thing when it comes to crowd-sourcing problem-solving. While, I would not knowingly put forth incorrect information, I'm not under the impression I make no mistakes.

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

Sorry, the html was all messed up on that when I went to post it. I fixed it as best as I could.

The above section comes from around page six of http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Updates/2015-Fall-Seller-Update/td-p/312578/page/6

pjcdn2005 · ‎01-29-2016

never mind...I misread something. 🙂

pjcdn2005 · ‎01-29-2016

it's still not a number based on total number of sold-items transactions but the number where data is available whether it is trackable or buyer-input.

Correct. If there is no tracking and the buyer doesn't answer the question, that transaction is not used when they figure out the late shipping percentage.

pjcdn2005 · ‎01-29-2016

There are two reasons why the transaction number in the defect section doesn't match the transaction number in the late shipment section.

1 - If you are evaluated yearly, the defect number is for 12 months, the late shipping number is from Sept 12.

2 - The defect section counts ALL transactions, the late shipping section only counts transactions where they actually know if the item was shipped on time and/or arrive on time.

pjcdn2005 · ‎01-29-2016

@dutchman48 wrote:
If buyers don't leave feedback, sales won't matter as they are not taken into consideration.

Feedback from buyers is slowly decreasing. It would be an interesting stat if Ebay posted feedback percentage of sales left for sellers.

I am starting to see why sellers are no longer leaving feedback immediately. I realize it is voluntary, but I still believe if buyers expect feedback which means nothing, they could at least reciprocate with feedback for sellers where it definitely makes a difference.

If you have tracking it doesn't matter if buyers answer the shipping time question, ebay will use the tracking info.

I don't think sellers not leaving feedback immediately has anything to do with this new system. There have been posts on the boards from buyers for years complaining that not all sellers leave feedback as soon as the item is paid for.

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

That's part of what I think is so silly about this metric. If you don't hear from a customer, you can fairly safely assume he or she is happy. That number should be based on total transactions of items sold, and not just the ones with handy data. No news is good news, after all.

Another seller put it better than I when they later said something like this: if a business took a sample of 100 sales and surveyed at random 10 of those customers and found nine of ten were completely satisfied with their buying experience, would they consider that 90 per cent of their customers were satisfied? Or that only nine per cent of their customers were satisfied?