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.

pjcdn2005 · ‎01-29-2016

I totally agree that they should base it on all transactions.

But I don't agree that if you don't hear from a customer they are likely happy. I would have to be very upset before I complained about something to a seller so I think that there are a lot of buyers who don't bother to say anything.

momcqueen · ‎01-29-2016

You may be right.

I am, however, one of those people who makes a point of telling others exactly how I feel, although it is sometimes to their dismay. In my own defence, I do go out of my way to give credit where credit is due.

I was once a cashier in a small-town grocery store and was led to believe I have fairly decent people-skills so I was often put to the Customer Service desk and given the job of problem-solving and fielding complaints despite being merely a youngster at the time. I learned there that most criticism is constructive if one looks hard enough at it. All except for the lady who screamed that she would wipe that smile off my face. I must admit that one still puzzles me. She must have been having some kind of bad day to react that way to a teenage girl smiling politely to ask, 'Good afternoon, how are you today?' in greeting to her. More than 25 years later, that one still bugs me.

musicyouneed · ‎01-30-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
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

I don't know where I was when the seller update was going on. Must have missed it. Great read.

hlmacdon · ‎01-30-2016

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
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.

Regarding point 1, they both currently cover the same stated 3 month transaction period, and the account is also of volume to fall under the 3 month evaluation, so I don't think it's the first scenario. The number of transaction ID's in the sales history export for the period matches the transaction defect rate number of transactions to within 1.

Regarding point 2, of the above transaction IDs, all but 4 were shipped with tracking. From eyeballing the associated carrier shipping reports, it looks like roughly 60% of those transaction ID's were unique shipments, leaving around 20% not included in the calculation.

I'll have to dig into greater detail on delivery statistics and see if I can pull up how many may have been scanned late by the post office. ETA wise I should be fine as I switched to using the ground option I mention in this thread in anticipation of this issue. Some posters had asked how that might effect potential sales, so I've gone back and compared the last 3 months since I started doing that against the 3 months prior to making the change.

In one of those freakish number results, the total number of shipments outside of North America for Aug - Oct was the exact same as the total number of shipments as Nov-Jan. The items I sell are not seasonal, but there could some potential lost sales as one might expect a holiday lift and abandoned sales are an unknown number. Overall the tradeoff was worth it for reducing late defects in my case, but I also have a high repeat customer buy rate (30 odd %) so I may be impacted less than others.

pjcdn2005 · ‎01-30-2016

I'll have to dig into greater detail on delivery statistics and see if I can pull up how many may have been scanned late by the post office.

If you click 'get full report' on your dashboard, that should give you all of that info.

Sorry if you said this earlier, but how much is the difference between transaction totals in defects vs late shipments?

hlmacdon · ‎01-30-2016

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
I'll have to dig into greater detail on delivery statistics and see if I can pull up how many may have been scanned late by the post office.

If you click 'get full report' on your dashboard, that should give you all of that info.

Sorry if you said this earlier, but how much is the difference between transaction totals in defects vs late shipments?

I can't find anything that has comprehensive delivery statistics through the dashboard, just the details of the one defect that fall within that period. The delta between the two numbers is over 500. If the late shipment rate is logically limited to the number of unique tracking numbers (Ie one shipment counts as 1 potential defect or on time regardless of how many items in the shipment, and multiple transactions checked out separately would be similarly limited due to be tied to one tracking number), that covers a good chunk of that number, but I'm still left with a large number of transactions not filtering into that eligible pool.

Given that 99% of these are shipments that would have had a delivery scan or acceptance scan, my understanding is they should appear in the rating pool regardless of whether the customer leaves feedback or doesn't answer the late question, based on the graphic that Pierre had posted. It is plausible that a portion of those had a late carrier scan, as drop-offs near the end of day could be shunted into the next day, holidays may not have been accounted for, or sync errors with the shipping carrier APIs. The other possibility is that due to the small packet ground option populating a "varies for international location" eta for outside of NA, those transactions may not get counted. Looking at the number of those transactions however doesn't completely explain the number either.

Given the ratings for customers with reasonable volume are tied more to the percentage rather than absolute number of defects, making sure every transaction gets factored in is desirable. If the dashboard could export all transactions and not just bring up the list of transactions that caused the defect, it would be much easier to analyze in combination with the sales history reports..