Listing on .com? Check your shipping services carefully!

[rose-dee]

If you're listing on .com, you may want to watch for this new wrinkle, which is apparently a result of the forms connected with the new Seller Hub on .com.   

The new .com Revise Your Item form now defaults to U.S. domestic "Economy Shipping" that has a 1 to 10 day delivery window.  

I have always, ever since the introduction of the on-time delivery metrics, stipulated the "Economy Shipping" with the 11 to 23 day time frame.  Yet when I pulled up a listing to make a revision today to its description, I noticed the default in the form was set at the "1 to 10 days" Economy shipping.  

After several rounds of back-and-forth today at the Wed. Board Hour, I think Raphael finally began to understand what I was getting at with this, and I hope he's looking into whether the listings themselves are defaulting to the shorter delivery time, or if they retain the 11-23 day time frame if that was set before the forms were changed.  In other words, whether this default is applied retroactively to .com listings that originally had the longer Economy service designated.  This is my main concern.  

Even if existing listings themselves haven't defaulted, it would be easy enough to miss this default detail when making a revision to another part of a listing.  You'd hit the "Apply" button, and end up, unbeknownst to you, with a listing that has a 1 to 10 day delivery window to the U.S.  Good for a few on-time defects if you're not using tracking 100% of the time.  

The screenshot below is what I see when I bring up one of my listings at random (I've now tried over 10 of them).  The shorter economy service is shown as the default (red circle); the longer one is much further down the pop-up list -- you need to scroll down with the navigation bar to be able to see it. A number of new U.S. services seem to have now been added, which has lengthened the list. 

Also, the usual box that says "Apply my promotional shipping rule" is nowhere to be found on this form.  Raphael is checking into that too. 

In the meantime, I thought I'd mention this so that Canadian sellers listing on .com don't miss the change in the form defaults when revising a listing.  I don't yet know whether this default to the shorter "Economy" service is also the case on the new .com SYI form -- perhaps someone could test it and see. 

[rose-dee]

Having noodled about this for hours, I've just realized why the .com "Revise Your Item" form defaults to the 1-10 day Economy service (i.e. the shorter Economy service) -- it's designed solely for the benefit of American sellers. 

If you're an American seller, the longest default service on the domestic list is the Economy with 1-10 days.  No American seller would be looking for the longer, 11-23 days Economy service under "Shipping from Outside the U.S.", so they stuck it near the bottom, beyond the visible portion of the pop-up window. 

Just be sure to check that you have the correct "Economy" service selected if you're making other revisions to your .com listings.  The same applies to the Bulk Edit (BEAR) system -- it defaults to the shorter Economy service there too! 

Given this, I wouldn't be surprised if the same default appears on the new .com SYI form too.  

[pjcdn2005]

What do you mean by defaults to?   If I click on sell to start a new listing from scratch the shipping service is blank.  If I use sell similar, it shows the shipping option that was previously used. as far as I can tell, it only defaults to that for you because that was the device stated on your previous listing.

[rose-dee]

---

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

What do you mean by defaults to?   If I click on sell to start a new listing from scratch the shipping service is blank.  If I use sell similar, it shows the shipping option that was previously used. as far as I can tell, it only defaults to that for you because that was the device stated on your previous listing.

---

No, the defaults are shown on the "Revise Your Item" form, as well as the Bulk Edit -- see the red-circled text in the screenshot above.  This is exactly what appears when I pull up "Revise" -- I didn't set it that way.  Normally I would assume, like you, that it would capture the existing settings in my listing, but apparently not. 

None of my listings originally had the 1-10 day Economy setting.  It just isn't safe enough for Light/Small Packet to places like California from where I'm located.  I always chose the 11-23 day Economy option ("Shipping from outside U.S."). 

With respect to the SYI form, that is exactly what should happen: a blank line for the service.  And that's the problem with the "Revise Your Item" form I used today -- it defaults to the 1-10 day Economy U.S. (domestic) shipping.  If a seller isn't aware of this, they'll make other revisions and end up unknowingly with a shorter delivery estimate when they save the changes. 

I've asked Raphael to specifically check and confirm whether the SYI and Sell Similar forms are affected.  What I do know is that I've been looking at a totally newly-designed "Revise Your Item" form.  I'm wondering, given what you've said, whether I'm being presented with the newly-designed forms, but some sellers are still being shown the old forms?  Or is it possible eBay.com started with the "Revise" form but hasn't yet got around to re-designing the SYI and Sell Similar forms yet? 

I'm going to check the SYI and Sell Similar forms now myself to see what happens, and will report back.  In any event, I've asked Raphael to update us next week on this whole issue.  It could result in unwitting late delivery defects for a lot of Canadian sellers revising their items who aren't aware of the default. 

[rose-dee]

I just ran a brief experiment: 

1) Item #1 - I manually revised the shipping to "Economy 11-23 days" ("Shipping Outside U.S.") and saved the change.  I then tried both "Sell Similar" and "Revise Your Item", and each form picked up the new setting (11-23 day Economy), as one would expect would occur. 

2)  Item #2 -- I made no revisions to this listing, but selected "Sell Similar" and also "Revise Your Item" from that listing.  In each case, the 1-10 day Economy default was shown on the form automatically.  This listing had the 11-23 day Economy service originally stipulated.  

I'm now thinking that this is an issue between existing (older) listings and new, post-Hub listing forms, i.e. that the new forms are defaulting to the new parameters without picking up the information from the existing listing.  Which of course is a problem nonetheless. 

It appears that once you actually use one of the new forms and set new options, those options will carry over, but this doesn't seem to happen with pre-existing listings.  

I think I'm going to be revising all my listings to re-set the proper shipping service using the new forms, just to be sure I don't overlook an older listing when revising something else and unknowingly get stuck with the 1-10 day delivery time frame. 

[pjcdn2005]

The impression that I got from Raphaels posts is that there is nothing to look into...it is working as it should. Did you see the edit that he did in one of his posts to you? The reason that economy option is showing up when you revise is because according to many of your listings, that is what the shipping has been set up for. Very few of your listings that I checked are using the shipping from outside of the U.S. option.

I have never used the new form but I doubt that it has anything to do with this as listings that you did last year are showing the domestic economy shipping option. I am guessing that if you used the old form to list with, it would show that same form every time you revised and if that's the case, the new form wouldn't ever be used for your older listings.

[raphael@ebay.com · Accepted solution]

---

@rose-dee wrote:

I just ran a brief experiment: 

1) Item #1 - I manually revised the shipping to "Economy 11-23 days" ("Shipping Outside U.S.") and saved the change.  I then tried both "Sell Similar" and "Revise Your Item", and each form picked up the new setting (11-23 day Economy), as one would expect would occur. 

2)  Item #2 -- I made no revisions to this listing, but selected "Sell Similar" and also "Revise Your Item" from that listing.  In each case, the 1-10 day Economy default was shown on the form automatically.  This listing had the 11-23 day Economy service originally stipulated.  

I'm now thinking that this is an issue between existing (older) listings and new, post-Hub listing forms, i.e. that the new forms are defaulting to the new parameters without picking up the information from the existing listing.  Which of course is a problem nonetheless. 

It appears that once you actually use one of the new forms and set new options, those options will carry over, but this doesn't seem to happen with pre-existing listings.  

I think I'm going to be revising all my listings to re-set the proper shipping service using the new forms, just to be sure I don't overlook an older listing when revising something else and unknowingly get stuck with the 1-10 day delivery time frame.  

---

Hi rose-dee,

I'm sorry to butt in but I need to set this straight: there is no bug there, no one changed your shipping for you. When you click Revise and find Economy Shipping (1-10 days) on the form, it's because that was the shipping service on the listing already. There is no such thing as a shipping default. Isn't it possible that you simply selected the wrong Economy shipping by mistake? With all the tests I ran, that's the most likely conclusion.

**UPDATE** For anyone reading this after the fact, it was established that Auctiva, a 3rd party listing tool, was at the root of the issues encountered by rose-dee.

I have extensively tested on your listings since yesterday, and everything works exactly as it should. I would love to be able to tell you I found the issue and I will get it fixed, but I couldn't find anything wrong. I highly advise for you to revise all your listings that have the wrong shipping service ASAP.

Thanks!

[rose-dee]

---

raphael@ebay.com wrote:

Hi rose-dee,

I'm sorry to butt in but I need to set this straight: there is no bug there, no one changed your shipping for you. When you click Revise and find Economy Shipping (1-10 days) on the form, it's because that was the shipping service on the listing already. There is no such thing as a shipping default. Isn't it possible that you simply selected the wrong Economy shipping by mistake? With all the tests I ran, that's the most likely conclusion.

I have extensively tested on your listings since yesterday, and everything works exactly as it should. I would love to be able to tell you I found the issue and I will get it fixed, but I couldn't find anything wrong. I highly advise for you to revise all your listings that have the wrong shipping service ASAP.

Thanks!

---

Thank you Raphael for looking into this, I appreciate your intervention.  I apologize for creating a bit of a brouhaha over this subject, but it was very worrying to say the least. 

I think I now know what happened to my listings.  It was not eBay, but I believe Auctiva, which caused the problem (for my particular listings anyway).  

There have been some changes/additions to the shipping list on eBay.com, correct?   I don't quite recall exactly what the old list consisted of, but I do know it looks different -- and longer, and that things are in different places.  Am I wrong, or has the "Shipping from Outside the U.S." section been moved down? 

I know I chose the 11-23 day Economy service on my .com listings when I first listed them.  I did it deliberately and carefully on each listing to try to protect myself from late delivery defects, since I use Light/Small Packet a lot.  I would never have considered, let alone chosen, a .com shipping option that said 1 to 10 day delivery.   

What I think happened is that a lot of my listings were posted from Auctiva, either before they caught up with eBay's shipping changes, or more likely afterward -- in which case Auctiva probably defaulted my earlier "Economy 11-23 day" selections to the shorter 1-10 Economy, because I chose (from Auctiva) to list on the .com (U.S.) site.  

Unlike eBay, Auctiva has no idea I'm located in Canada and that I would only ever want the the longer "Shipping from Outside U.S." options.  They must have defaulted my old "Economy" choice with the first U.S.-based "Economy" choice on the new eBay list -- the 1-10 day service, which is the longest delivery time amongst the domestic choices at the top of the list.  This was all completely unbeknownst to me, which is why I was so shocked to see the latter service pop up on revising within eBay.  

I believe the reason you found a few listings that still had my 11-23 Economy option (such as 171942188988, which you tested), was because I created those CD listings within eBay itself.  They were never downloaded from Auctiva, so they would have retained my original settings. 

I am sorry for any confusion I may have caused.  I hope other posters who come here will read this and realize that it was very unclear at first what was really happening.  With all the sweeping changes that have been happening on .com lately, it was far too easy to conclude that something had created a glitch in the listings themselves.  

This is all very convoluted, but I hope I've made some sense here.  I suppose the message is that anyone using Auctiva for uploading .com listings recently should double-check their shipping settings.  New Auctiva listings shouldn't be affected as long as the proper service is chosen from the shipping options list --  the "Out of U.S." service options are now way down the list, out of view, needing some scrolling to see them. 

I will be doing as you suggest and revising all my listings today to ensure the shipping settings are correct.  

[rose-dee]

---

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

The impression that I got from Raphaels posts is that there is nothing to look into...it is working as it should. Did you see the edit that he did in one of his posts to you? The reason that economy option is showing up when you revise is because according to many of your listings, that is what the shipping has been set up for. Very few of your listings that I checked are using the shipping from outside of the U.S. option.

I have never used the new form but I doubt that it has anything to do with this as listings that you did last year are showing the domestic economy shipping option. I am guessing that if you used the old form to list with, it would show that same form every time you revised and if that's the case, the new form wouldn't ever be used for your older listings.

---

Please see my reply above to Raphael's post.  He is right about eBay not being the problem, but it took me quite some time to figure out what the source of the issue was.  I'm quite certain it was Auctiva.  

I know without a doubt I had chosen the 11-23 day "Out of U.S." Economy service for all my listings.  This is why I was so shocked to see 1-10 day domestic Economy pop up.  I didn't set them that way, but I believe Auctiva defaulted them to the longest domestic U.S. economy service when they introduced the new eBay shipping list on their site and thought I was an American seller because I was choosing to list on .com.  

I downloaded a whole slew of listings from Auctiva recently that were probably auto-defaulted this way by Auctiva.  As I said, the listings of mine that still retain the 11-23 day Economy option that I originally set are the ones I actually drafted on eBay itself, so there were no changes made to those.  

Sometimes it takes a lot of puzzling and testing to figure out the reason for issues here.  Mostly it turns out to be something eBay has done or broken, but in this particular case they're not the culprit.   

[pjcdn2005]

Anything is possible although wouldn't they have done that to my listings too?  Plus, they didn't eliminate the service you said you were using so there would be no reason for them to change it.  It doesn't really matter how it happened, it's good that you are aware of it now.

[vintagenorth]

Well, I'm even more confused now.  Just looked at some of my listings that just sold and noticed that the .com ones show delivery times as 8 to15 business days instead of the 11 to 23 business days. I list on TL, not Auctiva and always use Economy from Outside US? this normal? I can't get into my PC just now, just my iPad.

[vintagenorth]

Well, I'm even more confused now.  Just looked at some of my listings that just sold and noticed that the .com ones show delivery times as 8 to15 business days instead of the 11 to 23 business days. I list on TL, not Activa and always use Economy from Outside US? this normal? I can't get into my PC just now, just my iPad.

[ypdc_dennis]

---

@vintagenorth wrote:

... Just looked at some of my listings that just sold and noticed that the .com ones show delivery times as 8 to 15 business days instead of the 11 to 23 business days. I list on TL, not Activa and always use Economy from Outside US? this normal?

---

For a reference point:

When listing via eBay's old selling advanced form on ebay.com I still see:

Economy Shipping from outside US (11 to 23 business days) as a choice

BUT

when I check a listing it shows as Estimated within 9-16 business days

eBay is definitely promising the seller one thing and the buyer something else.

I wonder if this has any connection with the new eBay.COM selling hub.

Making adjustments there without passing the new standard to other stakeholders.

-..-

As always, programming quality control is not one of eBay's strong points.

-..-

[pjcdn2005]

That is really strange since that time frame doesn't even exist when you look at the choices when listing.  I revised one of my listings to ecomnomy ousidevof US 11+ days and it showed up as 8-15 just like yours.  As far as I can tell the option that I normally use - standard from outside US hasn't changed.  

If economy was really 8-15 business days I would use that rather than standard  but 11-23 seems too long.  But regardless of that, it shouldn't say 1 thing on the listing form and something else on the listing.

[gwrocen]

---

@ypdc_dennis wrote:

---

@vintagenorth wrote:

... Just looked at some of my listings that just sold and noticed that the .com ones show delivery times as 8 to 15 business days instead of the 11 to 23 business days. I list on TL, not Activa and always use Economy from Outside US? this normal?

---

For a reference point:

When listing via eBay's old selling advanced form on ebay.com I still see:

Economy Shipping from outside US (11 to 23 business days) as a choice

BUT

when I check a listing it shows as Estimated within 9-16 business days

eBay is definitely promising the seller one thing and the buyer something else.

I wonder if this has any connection with the new eBay.COM selling hub.

Making adjustments there without passing the new standard to other stakeholders.

-..-

As always, programming quality control is not one of eBay's strong points.

-..-

---

We have been finding the same thing happening with our listings.

When we use “Create a listing” we pick

“Economy Shipping from outside the US (11 to 23 business days)”.

Then we pick “Handling time 3 or 5 business days”.

This should give us a total of “11 to 26 or 28 BUSINESS DAYS” for delivery.

When we look at our listings, here’s what we see:

“Delivery is estimated 12-19 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 11-18 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 10-17 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 9-19 days”.

Nowhere do we see “11 – 23 BUSINESS days”

or “11 - 28 BUSINESS days” which would include handling of 5 business days.

We received a "late delivery" defect because the estimated delivery time

was shortened by a  FULL 9 BUSINESS DAYS when we looked at the listing

- i.e. 10-17 days instead of 11-23 business days plus 3 business days handling..

Doesn't seem right that seller's Delivery Time of choice is being shortened.

Thanks.

gwrocen

[gwrocen]

---

@gwrocen wrote:

---

@ypdc_dennis wrote:

---

@vintagenorth wrote:

... Just looked at some of my listings that just sold and noticed that the .com ones show delivery times as 8 to 15 business days instead of the 11 to 23 business days. I list on TL, not Activa and always use Economy from Outside US? this normal?

---

For a reference point:

When listing via eBay's old selling advanced form on ebay.com I still see:

Economy Shipping from outside US (11 to 23 business days) as a choice

BUT

when I check a listing it shows as Estimated within 9-16 business days

eBay is definitely promising the seller one thing and the buyer something else.

I wonder if this has any connection with the new eBay.COM selling hub.

Making adjustments there without passing the new standard to other stakeholders.

-..-

As always, programming quality control is not one of eBay's strong points.

-..-

---

When we look at our listings, here’s what we see:

“Delivery is estimated 12-19 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 11-18 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 10-17 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 9-19 days”.

---

Should mention that his happens when looking at shipping to the USA.

International shipping will show "Varies" for estimated delivery.

[pjcdn2005]

I am going to send Rapael an email about that.,....they have obviously goofed up somewhere.

off topic -  I noticed that your shippin to the US is 11cents. Is that what you wanted to charge?

About 15+ of your listings do not have a shipping cost showing for Canada or many other countries, just mentioning it in case you aren't aware of it.

[gwrocen]

---

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

I am going to send Rapael an email about that.,....they have obviously goofed up somewhere.

off topic -  I noticed that your shippin to the US is 11cents. Is that what you wanted to charge?

About 15+ of your listings do not have a shipping cost showing for Canada or many other countries, just mentioning it in case you aren't aware of it.

---

We were planning to post this question re: discrepancy with Delivery time with Raphael on Wed. as well.

Re our shipping quotes:

We cannot use CALCULATED shipping on eBay.com and since we have many LARGE and HEAVY parcels

we have had to improvise with an artificial shipping quote for US shipping. Cannot leave that blank on the SYI form.

Shipping can vary from $30.00 to $130.00 depending on destination for the items we sell.

There is no way we can offer free shipping and there is no way we can guess at an average shipping amount

depending on the destination so for the time being we have used an "artifical" amount for the USA and have not entered

any amount for the rest of the world.

It is more work as we have many buyers ask for shipping costs prior to them bidding.

Small Packets and letter mail are not a problem as those are fixed rates.

Thanks.

[rose-dee]

---

@gwrocen wrote:

We have been finding the same thing happening with our listings.

When we use “Create a listing” we pick

“Economy Shipping from outside the US (11 to 23 business days)”.

Then we pick “Handling time 3 or 5 business days”.

This should give us a total of “11 to 26 or 28 BUSINESS DAYS” for delivery.

When we look at our listings, here’s what we see:

“Delivery is estimated 12-19 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 11-18 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 10-17 days”  OR

“Delivery is estimated 9-19 days”.

Nowhere do we see “11 – 23 BUSINESS days”

or “11 - 28 BUSINESS days” which would include handling of 5 business days.

We received a "late delivery" defect because the estimated delivery time

was shortened by a  FULL 9 BUSINESS DAYS when we looked at the listing

- i.e. 10-17 days instead of 11-23 business days plus 3 business days handling..

Doesn't seem right that seller's Delivery Time of choice is being shortened.

---

I'm glad you stopped by this discussion board, I was hoping to hear further from you. 

What you report is what I've be seeing too.  I decided to go through my listings, one by one, because things were getting changed that I knew I had not originally set.  When I spot-checked several of them, even after correcting all my listings to 11-23 business days, I did not see 11-23 days displayed (I list on .com and sell mostly to the U.S.). 

It really seems there are two issues happening here: (1) Originally-set shipping times somehow getting changed; and (2) Seller-stipulated delivery timelines not being accurately reflected in the live listings. 

You are absolutely right that sellers' choice of delivery time should not be shortened.  Please take this up further with Raphael on Wednesday, as this will be a "hidden" cause of late delivery defects, as you discovered.  Many sellers will have no idea this is happening unless they carefully check all their listings. 

By the way, do you use Auctiva to prepare/upload your listings?  Do you list mainly on .com?

I'm now beginning to wonder whether Auctiva really was the problem after all.  I also originally thought perhaps the migration tool may have created these problems, but that doesn't seem to be the case in my own situation.  Did you use the migration tool?  I didn't, I moved my listings to .com one by one. 

[gwrocen]

---

@rose-dee wrote:

---

I'm glad you stopped by this discussion board, I was hoping to hear further from you. 

What you report is what I've be seeing too.  I decided to go through my listings, one by one, because things were getting changed that I knew I had not originally set.  When I spot-checked several of them, even after correcting all my listings to 11-23 business days, I did not see 11-23 days displayed (I list on .com and sell mostly to the U.S.). 

It really seems there are two issues happening here: (1) Originally-set shipping times somehow getting changed; and (2) Seller-stipulated delivery timelines not being accurately reflected in the live listings. 

You are absolutely right that sellers' choice of delivery time should not be shortened.  Please take this up further with Raphael on Wednesday, as this will be a "hidden" cause of late delivery defects, as you discovered.  Many sellers will have no idea this is happening unless they carefully check all their listings. 

By the way, do you use Auctiva to prepare/upload your listings?  Do you list mainly on .com?

I'm now beginning to wonder whether Auctiva really was the problem after all.  I also originally thought perhaps the migration tool may have created these problems, but that doesn't seem to be the case in my own situation.  Did you use the migration tool?  I didn't, I moved my listings to .com one by one. 

---

Hi rose-dee,

Appreciate all your comments.

In the past we have used Turbo Lister for preparing and uploading our listings. Since the end of being allowed to list in US$ on .ca came about in June we have been listing mainly on .com so we could continue to list in US$.  We do each listing manually using the SYI form on .com.

We have never used Auctiva and we did not use the migration tool.  Just relisted everything on .com one by one as they ended on .ca and then rewrote them on .com.

Never paid too much attention to the variance in Estimated  Delivery Time until we got the defect.  And then found much to our disappointment that the defect occurred because the delivery time shown to the buyer was 9 Business Days less than we had picked.  Just wonder how many other sellers are getting defects because of this.

Now we notice that NEVER have we seen 11-23 days displayed in the listing.  Feel like our Delivery time choice is being sabotaged. Will ask Raphael on Wednesday (with examples).