Let me preface this by saying that this guy was an otherwise nice, friendly dude, and I’m grateful for his business! Not hating on the man. And he is far from the only person who does this kind of thing, so this is a general gripe, not a targeted thing.
But good lord. For context, I said on Wednesday that I would ship Thursday or Friday depending on my schedule, and that I would let him know and shoot him tracking info as soon as I managed to get it out. These are just the last few cherrypicked out of a slew of double and triple “let me know”-esque messages if I didn’t reply for a few hours over the ~2 days since we started negotiating a deal. And this is after I made clear that I wasn’t able to reply constantly because I was juggling a very heavy workload. I did, of course, get the card out today (Friday), like I said I would.
Pleeeeeease give sellers adequate time to reply to messages, and don’t bother/nag them unnecessarily. If a seller says “I’ll have your item shipped by X time,” you should not be messaging them checking in before X time. It’s stressful, it’s annoying, and it makes people unlikely to want to work with you in the future. Chances are good that you are not the only buyer the seller is negotiating with or shipping stuff for, and chances are very good that selling Pokémon cards is not their only or main priority.
Even if the seller doesn’t have their ship times listed, I wait at least 7 days after payment to ask if there’s an expected ship date, and even then I still feel rude lmao
Sorta makes me miss the days when almost every eBay seller just shipped cards in a PWE. Not many cards were of value, so no one cared to have tracked shipping lol.
Always the best when the cards are a surprise in the mail.
playing devil’s advocate here, you can absolutely ship on Saturday (and I often do) for Friday purchases. Let’s not dismiss the precedent that has been set by Amazon Prime, etc. People want shit now, and I’m sure you do too but agree it’s plenty annoying
OTOH, when TX experienced a week of snow apocalypse, I had about 10 items I was meant to ship out the day before it happened (Sunday). USPS, UPS was down from Monday to Thursday. I was very upfront and apologetic with everyone on ebay; let them know what the situation was, the fact that I didn’t have power, etc. and most people were super understanding. And while I understand it’s annoying to let people know when something’s going to ship, if you go out of your way to inform them, it will go a long way
Few things here (I promise I’m not being snarky with you; I’m just going over your points):
1.) eBay is not Amazon Prime. It does not require you to ship on weekends, and I know for a fact that many sellers (especially high-volume sellers) do not ship on Saturdays. The only time I make exceptions to this are during the holiday season (I understand that some items may be gifts) or if a customer informs me that it’s a birthday present for a friend or something to that effect;
2.) No, I don’t want stuff “now.” I am always very patient when it comes to sellers shipping items and give a very extended grace period before I ever ask anyone when they are going to ship the item;
3.) There are times when I get 30+ sales in a day. I am not going to go out of my way to let every single customer know when I am going to ship their item(s), especially when 99 percent of them never ask;
4.) Letting someone know that extenuating circumstances (like inclement weather, as you mentioned) are going to delay the shipping time of an item is completely different. There is a major difference between, “Hey, mail probably won’t be around for a couple of days because of (X major weather event)” and “Hey, I’ll be shipping your item out tomorrow.” Unless you are only shipping a couple of items per day, it is unreasonable to expect sellers to literally inform every customer of when their item will be shipped out, especially when the shipping time is clearly stated in the guaranteed/estimated delivery times in the eBay listings.
TL;DR: I treat every single customer the same. As of right now, I have around 50 items to ship out on Monday that were purchased between Friday and today, and not a single other customer has asked when their item will ship other than the one previously mentioned. He is no different than any of my other customers and will not be catered to just because he is less patient than the other 50 buyers.
The best eBay transaction is when you buy/sell an item, pay for it/ship it, and no communication besides positive feedback is exchanged on both sides. Going outside of this scenario is unnecessary 99% of the time.
but agree it’s plenty annoying