eBay

pierrelebel · ‎09-10-2015

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m09/i10/s05

eBay Changes Seller Defect Rate as Part of Fall Update

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m09/i10/s06

pjcdn2005 · ‎09-13-2015

So there is the answer to my own question:

For same-day shippers, your new business day no longer ends at 11:59 pm, it ends whenever your local postal counter (which you now must attend in person if you didn't before) closes; you must have an acceptance scan that same business day or it's liable to be considered your fault and no one else's if it is late.

I thought that the first part of your 'answer' was what I was saying all along. To be honest, even though ebay didn't require it, as a buyer, if I was promised that a package was going to be shipped the same day, I would probably assume that it would be at the post office the same day. Although...since I rarely check to see where a package is, it's unlikely that I would notice or care.

I guess the situation changes for one day handling sellers too. Instead of having to just upload the tracking the following day by midnight, they have to have it scanned by then.

sylviebee · ‎09-13-2015

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
So there is the answer to my own question:

For same-day shippers, your new business day no longer ends at 11:59 pm, it ends whenever your local postal counter (which you now must attend in person if you didn't before) closes; you must have an acceptance scan that same business day or it's liable to be considered your fault and no one else's if it is late.

I thought that the first part of your 'answer' was what I was saying all along. To be honest, even though ebay didn't require it, as a buyer, if I was promised that a package was going to be shipped the same day, I would probably assume that it would be at the post office the same day. Although...since I rarely check to see where a package is, it's unlikely that I would notice or care.

I guess the situation changes for one day handling sellers too. Instead of having to just upload the tracking the following day by midnight, they have to have it scanned by then.

I've been sort of loosely following this thread. Enough to know that it's not making a lot of sense.

If a buyer pays me at 9:55 P.M. the idea that I have the package at the PO in time for the last scan at 10 PM is absurd, not to mention pointless.

If that's what the rules state then they have almost half a year to fix it and so there's no point in worrying about it today.

cumos55 · ‎09-13-2015

Does not a seller have to specify a time ....

such that if the payment was received before that time...

then the purchase can be mailed on the day the buyer paid?

cumos55 · ‎09-13-2015

Same-day handling

momcqueen · ‎09-13-2015

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
So there is the answer to my own question:

For same-day shippers, your new business day no longer ends at 11:59 pm, it ends whenever your local postal counter (which you now must attend in person if you didn't before) closes; you must have an acceptance scan that same business day or it's liable to be considered your fault and no one else's if it is late.

I thought that the first part of your 'answer' was what I was saying all along. To be honest, even though ebay didn't require it, as a buyer, if I was promised that a package was going to be shipped the same day, I would probably assume that it would be at the post office the same day. Although...since I rarely check to see where a package is, it's unlikely that I would notice or care.

I guess the situation changes for one day handling sellers too. Instead of having to just upload the tracking the following day by midnight, they have to have it scanned by then.

Yes, it changes for all of us, regardless of the handling time you've set, it HAS TO BE SCANNED before the postal counter closes. That shortens everyone's 'business day' by three to six hours. If you're in a small town, you'd be using an actual post office and not a postal counter in a retail environment licensed to provide that service as an authorized dealer. The authorized dealers are required to operate a minimum number of hours but they want those to be the hours customers come in to shop as well as ship. Those counters will be open past 6 pm even if no mail in the back room leaves until the first pick-up of the following morning. That's the reason an acceptance scan after the last pick-up of the day is meaningless in terms of delivery time even if it helps meet the criteria of an acceptance scan within handling time.

I am a stickler for details (and that is largely the reason I'm such a giant pain in the neck on these Boards) so I study and I mean really study how tracked parcels move both and I mean both those that I send and the ones that are sent to me whether via ebay or elsewhere. Most retail operations with online storefronts ship within one or two business days and when I say 'shipped' I don't mean the order is doing anything other than sitting in a box on a pallet in their unloading dock. It spends another day in transit to the carrier or courier who might get it moving overnight or within 24 hours and then it's on the way. The bigger the place, the longer it takes usually to collect the stuff and then send it along since they're moving large volumes of items.

'Handling time' as last defined in 2013 and 'the time in 2016 during which we're required to get an acceptance scan' are similar but still different things. Not quite as dissimilar as apples to oranges but say nectarines to peaches? This is my take on it. Perhaps the good folks at ebay Canada will share a different opinion.

momcqueen · ‎09-13-2015

And, no, if same-day shipping means to ebay that it ships anytime that business day until 11:59 pm (as indicated by ebay's terms for it) then exactly how is a seller going to put that parcel in the hands of the post office at 11:58 pm? Wake his lettercarrier? No. Dump it in a mailbox. And if you're going to dump it in a mailbox for pick-up the following morning, you might as well save yourself the trouble of an item that is liberated overnight by the local hoodlums and take it to the postal counter at 9:01 am the following morning for an actual acceptance scan. That's how it works. Unless that thought never crossed anyone's mind at HQ. If same-day meant before 6 pm then that's what it should read, even now. Not 11:59 pm.

tobyshitzu · ‎09-13-2015

Cp promotes putting them in a mail box so i don't see it as a mistake. If its not tracked, what difference does it make, being there is no insurance and no updates. CP pays claims for items put into mail boxes that have coverage. The ability to fit in a mail box affects my decision to even list it, being its so much easier then the local postal outlet that closes at 6 (inside a little 85 year old drug store). My sisters in a near 20k pop town is open 9-5:30 with no weekend hours, basically unusable by anyone with a normal job

Granted for the new ebay tracking thing, if I put it in a mail box after 11am today, it will be picked up the next day, and not scanned until the day after that being it all goes straight out of town after everything is collected for the day, and goes through the plant after midnight

Don't see it as an issue at all, anyone could just change from same day to 1 day or 2 day with a click. Anything with tracking is still protected with either the drop off scan or the delivery scan. Its only the untracked items that this unfairly hits. Anyone who sends the majority tracked is better off with the change

momcqueen · ‎09-13-2015

@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
Cp promotes putting them in a mail box so i don't see it as a mistake. If its not tracked, what difference does it make, being there is no insurance and no updates. CP pays claims for items put into mail boxes that have coverage. The ability to fit in a mail box affects my decision to even list it, being its so much easier then the local postal outlet that closes at 6 (inside a little 85 year old drug store). My sisters in a near 20k pop town is open 9-5:30 with no weekend hours, basically unusable by anyone with a normal job

Granted for the new ebay tracking thing, if I put it in a mail box after 11am today, it will be picked up the next day, and not scanned until the day after that being it all goes straight out of town after everything is collected for the day, and goes through the plant after midnight

Don't see it as an issue at all, anyone could just change from same day to 1 day or 2 day with a click. Anything with tracking is still protected with either the drop off scan or the delivery scan. Its only the untracked items that this unfairly hits. Anyone who sends the majority tracked is better off with the change

I'm not trying to aggravate you with this question but you really don't find that your mailbox-deposited items vanish once you drop them? I stopped leaving mine anywhere but directly into the hands of the person at the postal counter and my Items Not Received cases on untracked orders immediately went from around seven per cent to about 0.25 per cent. Of course, other factors may play into that as well. The authorities may simply have nicked whomever it was that was helping themselves along the way.... Or perhaps I grew more cautious with tracking. Or perhaps I gained a high enough feedback score that I didn't have a target on my forehead anymore. It's difficult to say.

tobyshitzu · ‎09-13-2015

same guy collects items from the mail box as takes the stuff from the outlet. The mail box just eliminates the invovlement of the ladies at the postal counter.

1 item of of thousands was in a mail box when it was set on fire. CP actually paid for the uninsured item after saying they'd just send me a book of stamps (which I got too)

1 items out of hundreds the postal counter somehow left sitting there for 2 weeks before it moved along

femmefan1946 · ‎09-13-2015

and my Items Not Received cases on untracked orders immediately went from around seven per cent to about 0.25 per cent. Of course, other factors may play into that as well.

I strongly suspect that your rising feedback numbers were the factor.

In many years of selling everything from wood stoves to postage stamps by mail order, it is my impression that there are more complaints about slow delivery or non-delivery from eBayers than from any other customers.

Still, most people are honest and even those problems have been few over thousands of shipments. And some of those might have been my fault.

It's why when I ship by PP shipping label I put the number into the FB I leave. Even for Light Packet. The presence of the number reassures the honest buyer and warns off the scammer. Even though the number may be meaningless. Smoke and mirrors.

rose-dee · ‎09-13-2015

Hi 'mj' -- I'll give you my two cents' worth on this subject, if you don't mind, having read through all the posts on it.

First, I do agree with 'pj' that, given the new rules, specifying same day handling creates problems that aren't necessarily going to be offset by a significant difference in how your customers perceive your service.

Yet same-day shipping is clearly going to cause you a whole lot of extra stress under the new rules. As 'pj' says, I think offering a reasonably fast, 1-day shipping time, and then over-performing most of the time, is going to be seen as excellent service by most buyers, and won't get you into hot water with scanning time problems.

It's true that the "business day" for all of us will be shortened by several hours now that an actual scan is required, and that sellers with same-day handling will now have a ridiculously short window (essentially the time between 2:00 p.m. at the latest -- eBay's default same-day handling cut-off time -- and the time at which the local postal counter closes). But if you use tracking, chances are very good you'll have delivery confirmation within the applicable time estimate anyway, which is sufficient under the new rules.

All of this is no doubt why Raphael suggested that Canadian sellers extend their handling time. I don't see (as Pierre has suggested), that doing so is "lying" to the customer. If you state your handling time as 2 days but actually get an item scanned within 1 day, that's good service over and above what you've promised.

You could presumably move your cut-off time earlier, to give yourself another hour or two, but to my mind that defeats the purpose of offering good service. Many of your buyers will purchase after that cut-off, which means their parcels may not go out until the following day anyway. EBay's new rules makes same-day handling a contradiction in terms actually.

My stating handling time is 1 business day. Yet almost all of my weekday orders go out the same day, often within a couple of hours, along with a message to the buyer that their item has been dropped off at the P.O. I'm actually considering changing my handling time to 2 days, in light of these new rules, although I'll continue to ship most orders within hours (and continue to let my buyers know that).

I honestly think most buyers don't expect individual sellers to have the same sort of semi-instantaneous shipping capacity as a large commercial retailer. Personally I think eBay is pushing a rather dubious bill of goods in making sellers believe it will somehow give them a significant edge.

Much of the time, racing to the postal outlet on the same day doesn't get the item moving along the process any faster in any event if the morning pick-up truck has already left your P.O. before your buyer has purchased and paid for their item.

To be honest, I've even had scanning missed on tracked parcels handed over the counter, and only saw the online data show up a couple of days later. Whether the clerk misses it, forgets to do the scan, or the scanning tool isn't properly working, it can happen. Maybe not as frequently as the people who pick things up from mailboxes forget or miss scans, but when it happens -- there goes all your effort and rushing to get the item out the door.

I know you want to give the best service you possibly can. But there is a difference between excellent service and service which is unnecessarily excessive. The buyer will notice the former, but may not care about (or even notice) the latter. I'd give yourself some leeway and try 1-day handling. You don't want to end up burnt out over eBay.

Chin up!

(I guess the above was more like five cents' worth LOL).

momcqueen · ‎09-14-2015

Thank you, everyone. I'm not terribly concerned about missing the new, abbreviated-business-day handling time hat ebay has set down with this update; I was more flagging that they were changing the rules but without making it abundantly clear that they had.

I've been meeting same-day handling criteria for at least two years now and waited almost a full year before making the switch to 'same-day' in my listings so that buyers would have a more realistic idea of how long it should actually take to get their package. People often wait until the last minute to buy something special like a toy and so if they need it in a week and I know I can get it to them in four to five business days, that's important information in their buying decision.

Noon local time is my cut-off because it gives me the afternoon to get orders into the mail stream before 4:45 pm. Any order placed after about 10 pm is packed by 6 am or so and is sent on its way that same-day. It would be rare for me to miss that last pick-up of the day at 4:45 pm, never mind having to race to the counter before it closes at 9 pm. That being said, the holiday season approaches and there are going to be times between now and Dec. 25 where I am packing orders and printing shipping labels until the wee hours.

As I've said all along, I am extremely confident that I am offering the best possible service to my customers and so far everyone who leaves feedback has agreed (with the exception of a pair of overseas competitors who left me three-star marks and who I have to thank for 4.9 DRS on shipping speed and shipping cost) so I'm not going to change a thing about what I am doing in order to placate changing rules here. I'm not doing anything wrong but it might eventually be perceived as such because so few of my buyers leave feedback at all.

And, femmefan, wood stoves by mail order? Heavy. Very heavy.

sylviebee · ‎09-14-2015

@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
Cp promotes putting them in a mail box so i don't see it as a mistake. If its not tracked, what difference does it make, being there is no insurance and no updates. CP pays claims for items put into mail boxes that have coverage. The ability to fit in a mail box affects my decision to even list it, being its so much easier then the local postal outlet that closes at 6 (inside a little 85 year old drug store). My sisters in a near 20k pop town is open 9-5:30 with no weekend hours, basically unusable by anyone with a normal job

Granted for the new ebay tracking thing, if I put it in a mail box after 11am today, it will be picked up the next day, and not scanned until the day after that being it all goes straight out of town after everything is collected for the day, and goes through the plant after midnight

Don't see it as an issue at all, anyone could just change from same day to 1 day or 2 day with a click. Anything with tracking is still protected with either the drop off scan or the delivery scan. Its only the untracked items that this unfairly hits. Anyone who sends the majority tracked is better off with the change

When dropping a package which requires scanning into the mail box rather than delivering to the PO, the CPO no longer guarantees delivery dates.

I found this out when an item which I mailed that way was lost and I had to trace it.

It sort of makes sense when you think about it. When you drop at a depot they scan and do an initial sort right away.

When they pick up at the mail box they con't expect trackable packages and aren't specifically set up to scan those items.

It may also be that all insurance on those packages is void when mailing that way, but they have no way of knowing how you mailed unless you tell them.

cumos55 · ‎09-14-2015

How does one get a wood stove into a mail box?

Must be one of those salesman's samples... a highly collectible antique... from many years ago........

cumos55 · ‎09-14-2015

Same day handling has got to be merry-go-round...

Perpetual action.....

Does it work best on smaller items?

How much can one person handle... to a maximum each day?

tobyshitzu · ‎09-14-2015

Its not only fine to drop things in a mailbox, cp specially mentions the on time guarantee on their site. The only exception is priority, which wouldn't be used very often for ebay

tobyshitzu · ‎09-14-2015

https://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/manual/PGpscanada-e.asp

Depositing

Canada Post provides the following options for the deposit of items:

Post Office: during advertised hours of acceptance. Visit canadapost.ca or call Customer Service at
1-888-550-6333 to locate the Canada Post approved postal facility.
Street Letter Box: prepaid products and items processed and paid (by credit card or postage meter) through Electronic Shipping Tools or Ship-in-a-click, may be deposited into a street letter box (excluding Priority™ items), if size permits.

NOTE:

It is unacceptable to deposit Priority™ items in street letter boxes, parcel receptacles or other such mail receptacles. The On-time Delivery Guarantee shall not apply to items deposited in such receptacles.

Canada Post provides the following options for the deposit of Priority™ items:

Priority Drop Box: prepaid products (provided that all selected options have been paid for) and items processed and fully paid (by credit card or postage meter) through Electronic Shipping Tools or Ship-in-a-click, if size permits.

sylviebee · ‎09-14-2015

@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
Its not only fine to drop things in a mailbox, cp specially mentions the on time guarantee on their site. The only exception is priority, which wouldn't be used very often for ebay

toby, I'm just telling you what they told me when I requested compensation.

I was told that all guarantees of on-time delivery for trackable items are void when dropped in the box.

In any case, I wouldn't volunteer that information if it happens again and I no longer drop trackable items in the mail box.

pjcdn2005 · ‎09-14-2015

@mjwl2006 wrote:
@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
Cp promotes putting them in a mail box so i don't see it as a mistake. If its not tracked, what difference does it make, being there is no insurance and no updates. CP pays claims for items put into mail boxes that have coverage. The ability to fit in a mail box affects my decision to even list it, being its so much easier then the local postal outlet that closes at 6 (inside a little 85 year old drug store). My sisters in a near 20k pop town is open 9-5:30 with no weekend hours, basically unusable by anyone with a normal job

Granted for the new ebay tracking thing, if I put it in a mail box after 11am today, it will be picked up the next day, and not scanned until the day after that being it all goes straight out of town after everything is collected for the day, and goes through the plant after midnight

Don't see it as an issue at all, anyone could just change from same day to 1 day or 2 day with a click. Anything with tracking is still protected with either the drop off scan or the delivery scan. Its only the untracked items that this unfairly hits. Anyone who sends the majority tracked is better off with the change
I'm not trying to aggravate you with this question but you really don't find that your mailbox-deposited items vanish once you drop them? I stopped leaving mine anywhere but directly into the hands of the person at the postal counter and my Items Not Received cases on untracked orders immediately went from around seven per cent to about 0.25 per cent. Of course, other factors may play into that as well. The authorities may simply have nicked whomever it was that was helping themselves along the way.... Or perhaps I grew more cautious with tracking. Or perhaps I gained a high enough feedback score that I didn't have a target on my forehead anymore. It's difficult to say.

I've never had anywhere close to 7% for inr and I try to go into the postal outlet as little as possible. Even if I have a more expensive tracked item that I want to bring in I will put the other items in the outside mailbox first. Most of the po ladies don't every check my packages but there is the odd one who insists on putting every single light packet through the 2cm template and only allows it if it falls through on its own without any sort of 'push'. To prevent all that hassle, I mail most of them outside.

As toby said, the same person who picks them up inside the outlet also picks them up from the outside box.

femmefan1946 · ‎09-14-2015

"How does one get a wood stove into a mail box?"
We actually did sell tiny wood burning stoves for use on boats. They could have shipped by Canada Post. They were about 12"x8" x 6" and weighed in the vicinity of 20lbs. There were a few models.
None had ULC/CSA certification.