Any way to get rid of a late shipment defect?

[rocketscollectibles]

So after over one year selling. I received my first neutral feedback today

Buyer stated not receiving the item after one month (did not opened a case yet, saying he'll wait a bit). In his feedback he clicked that the item was a late shipment. No idea why he jumped on leaving a feedback before contacting but he threw me a shipment defect by doing this. I was about to have my top rated status on my selling account so i'm concerned about this defect

The item was shipped lettermail and obviously a late shipment/item loss/steal or a false claim, its totally out of my control. There is no tracking so even the statement that the delivery is late cannot even be proven by either me or the buyer

That being said. Is there any way in a situation like this to have this late shipment defect removed? What about the feedback too? 

Saying that a shipment was late as seller feedback seems to aim the wrong person. And without tracking nothing prove that the buyer states the truth too. It would not be logical. Anything to do against that?

[byto253]

In this case you don't have recourse, just part of the risk with lettermail shipping.  Top rated status requires 0.50% defect rate, so 1 will not likely trigger that.   Check your seller dashboard to see what the rate is for your number of sales.   I picked one up and did not lose top rated. 

It resets every year as well. 

[recped]

One late shipoment means nothing.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/selling/selling/seller-levels-performance-standards?id=4080#section6

[dobo5250]

i wish you luck on this one with ebay -- they love love defects -- trying to  get expunged  anything attached to a defect is very hard --  but it can be done i had one removed after about three emails and two phone calls - it was only one from about 10 months prior to getting it removed - but at least i got one didn't really change my defect number but it made me feel better- i still had 6 others from over 6 to 9 months ago that they wouldn't remove-- keeping the fight up but they make it so hard--good luck

[pjcdn2005]

The only way to get a late shipment for an item sent without tracking is for the buyer to say that it didn't when they are filling out feedback so logical or not, that's how it works.  It's unlikely to be removed and as others have said, one late shipment ding is not going to affect you at all.  It is not considered a defect in that it doesn't make you go below standard.

[ricarmic]

A couple of thoughts, avoiding getting these IS in your control, in eBays eyes you can control this by tracking everything.

You as well as most of us along with our buyers won't support an "everything tracked" scenario for low value items because of the exhorbitant cost of doing so relatively speaking.

So we as sellers are choosing to bear the risk of late deliveries by sending untracked. Generally buyers are understanding and we're able to live within the 3% level.

If one starts to rack them up and get close to the 3% (I have before!) then one can consider doing other things to help avoid getting the late deliveries such as:

-sending a note to buyers advising of the estimated lenght of time until delivery along with notes about situations (like COVID) that may slow the item down and thanking them in advance for their extra patience

-changing the handling time to longer (although this doesn't do anything really for untracked stuff)

-possibly other things

When my rate started to get "up there" I changed my wording (I've always sent a note to buyers advising their item was on its way) to advise of the current trials and tribulations (it was during COVID times of course) and that worked, or it just came down natrually.

I don't see any neutrals on this account. However you respond to the neutral, if you do, is an opportunity to demonstrate your professionalism, ie don't respond negatively, call them a liar etc, if you say anything simply note that it was shipped on time and something caused it to take longer to arrive. Normally for late shipped stuff there isn't much one needs to say, buyers won't likely be disuaded from purchasing with one or two slow shipping comments.

[rocketscollectibles]

My problem with leaving the ability to state manually that a shipment is late while it's untracked is that it could be false or something coming from someone else than the seller. A competitor literally have the power to buy a bundle of cheap items from you and make you lose your top rated seller status by stating they all arrived late. Odds are low but its just to say that still, it leaves the possibility open. There is no proof that a shipment is late when it's untracked, buyer words should not have this kind of impact without any proof. It could be lost by the carrier, stole by a porch pirate, took by a neighbour, a false INR, etc, so we receive a shipment defect based on a possible unnacurate statement, or take the blame for a possible mistake from someone else. This defect is totally unfair, seller could did nothing wrong

The fact that this is in our control because we could ship tracked can't be defended, we all know we can't ship tracked under a certain price. I cannot sell a $5 item for $20. By allowing untracked shipments to be top rated, eBay know it too

[ricarmic]

I don't think ebay is doing it "on purpose" or for their gain, we have to remember that whilst I'm sure all of us on these boards are honest upstanding online sellers, there are sellers out there that aren't. Who can eBay believe when a customer does not receive an item because there is no proof of anything when there is no tracking so it is the buyers word against the sellers word, both can or have misrepresented things over time.

I can recall problems where (in the old days) sellers would show up sell a bunch of stuff quick and disappear. As we've seen eBay will side with the customer, which is probably what we would also do if we were "ebay". That's also what likely caused some of the current holds we also so despise.

If someone goes out of their way for sure they can cause problems for us, this is true way beyond eBay, I saw an article in the news a while ago where folks were generating false online negative reviews to punish companies for various reasons (sometimes whether they required one to wear a mask during covid for example).

None of us enjoy the way things are set up here when these kinds of things happen but you really have to compartmentalize the bad stuff that happens here (which is really hard to do) and think of it like a business, and not personal. The odd time bad things will happen no matter what we do. When that happens you have to do what you can to minimize the cost and time it takes to move on from it.

The good news here is that one late shipment on its own and one neutral on its own (as long as it is responded to profressionally) really should have very very minimal impact on ones selling.

[busybeas_books]

95% of my shipements are lettermail. Years ago I changed the shipping options from 'lettermail' to 'economy shipping'. That gives you a a week or two extra time for delivery. Get a lot of 'Wow, faster shipping than expected' feedback, though probably lose some sales from people looking at the expected delivery times.

[byto253]

I went the same path.  Economy gives the flex time for untracked shipments to make it ok.  I list on .com so the economy time frame for outside the US is pretty long and I am sure it costs some sales but for me it is a good trade off.  Recently I started to add to the description that delivery is usually in 8 to 14 businsess days, which is shorter than the official "economy" option.  

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@byto253 wrote:

I went the same path.  Economy gives the flex time for untracked shipments to make it ok.  I list on .com so the economy time frame for outside the US is pretty long and I am sure it costs some sales but for me it is a good trade off.  Recently I started to add to the description that delivery is usually in 8 to 14 businsess days, which is shorter than the official "economy" option.  

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With the new listing tool the 2 options are letter in 2 to 6 days and economy in 1 to 15. UPS Daysaver shows 1 to 2 business days. That may work fine within a province but several provinces over to a non standard location is unlikely to be delivered in that timeframe.

With the new listing tool if you are able to use letter to the USA it states 4-7 days. Sounds extremely optimistic. Both Economy standard/Intl Stardard do not include a time frame if you choose until after the listing is created. In the past there was a letter option to USA for 1 to 15 days. Appears that option got purged.

From your testing @byto253 were you able to tell if you increased handling time did that gave you more leeway with the eBay estimate?

-Lotz

[rocketscollectibles]

I don't like using economy shipping, people expect it's lettermail/untracked so i assume this attract scammers. I always used standard shipping, this way people cannot premeditate false INRs, it puts more a doubt about if it's tracked or not

[flipistics]

I wonder if "standard shipping" is treated any differently with eBay as opposed to "economy shipping" when it comes to defects and expecting tracking, or if the only difference is 5 business days on the back end? I don't really understand why they both wouldn't be listed under economy otherwise. I really wish we could add like 2 business days to the tail end of lettermail (make it 2-8) and I'd happily just select that. That would protect us during peak periods and unexpected weather.  I really haven't had any fraud issues with choosing "economy".

devon@ebay 

[byto253]

Hi Lotz, I list on .com and with economy shipping from outside the US, the ebay listing states delivery between Tue, Dec 13 and Fri, Dec 30, if purchased today.   I mainly use this on small free shipping items. 

[byto253]

In the US everything is tracked, so I don't think US buyers are associating economy with not tracked as that is not a option they really think of.  That may be different in your card market though. 

[reallynicestamps]

A competitor literally have the power to buy a bundle of cheap items from you and make you lose your top rated seller status by stating they all arrived late.

Pretty paranoid. The competitor would have to feel very very threatened by your success to do this. And of course it opens him up to similar retaliation.

While Responses tend to draw attention to a negative, and thus are not usually a good idea, you could Respond with "Shipped Canada Post Air Mail 31/10/2022 . Estimated delivery 21/11/22. FB left 20/11/22. " with of course the correct dates.

I would not mention tracking or name the untracked service in FB. That's me being paranoid.

[flipistics]

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@rocketscollectibles wrote:

My problem with leaving the ability to state manually that a shipment is late while it's untracked is that it could be false or something coming from someone else than the seller. A competitor literally have the power to buy a bundle of cheap items from you and make you lose your top rated seller status by stating they all arrived late.

I'm pretty sure if they bought them all at the same time (same order), it would only count as one defect. If they bought a whole bunch separately and marked them all as not arriving, you could probably petition eBay to have all but one defect removed. If you were worried about it and the bundle was large enough, you could also send it tracked and add the tracking number to each one. While it sounds good in terms of paranoia, I doubt this is something that would likely happen in real life.

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

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@rocketscollectibles wrote:

I don't like using economy shipping, people expect it's lettermail/untracked so i assume this attract scammers. I always used standard shipping, this way people cannot premeditate false INRs, it puts more a doubt about if it's tracked or not

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I think you're overthinking this.