I am curious what you guys would do in this situation.
I just had an experience that highlights the problem(s) with ebay. Someone made a purchase yesterday, and requested to ship a week from now. Per Top Rated Seller standards, you have 1 Business day to ship an order. Not sure why they buyer wouldn’t just wait a week to buy the item. But because they did, and I can’t hold it for a week, they were upset. Here was my communication, messages start at the bottom:
Oh and this was for a $30 item…
The way I see it, you are under no obligation to hold the card for an extra week after purchase if you did not agree to that beforehand.
I would contact eBay and have the sale canceled.
So the other issue in cancelling orders now is that sellers pay out of pocket. I had a VAPEoren420xxx buyer who bought a $100ish card, wanted to cancel because their address was wrong, and I end up paying around $7-10 to pp just for the cancel/refund.
I totally understand the buyer here tbh. I’m often in a situation where I pull the trigger on a good price but won’t be home to collect it especially near the holidays. 99% of the time the USPS hold mail still lets packages go through.
Wouldn’t marking the item shipped still keep you top rated? When I had top rated most of my cards were still shipped untracked
No. Tracking is required.
Why I posted this is to highlight how sellers are handcuffed by ebay. I personally wouldn’t mind holding an item for a week, I simply can’t. Also when you want to cancel an order, the seller pays. Even proceeding with the order, by following all of the rules, they can still return and the seller pay fees. Plus the lingering worry of negative feedback as well.
The buyer can contact his post office and request a hold on his mail. If you do decide to delay shipping, you will get a ding on your top rated seller status. If there is proof that the buyer requested a delay in ebay messages you can call customer service and ebay will remove it. Personally, I would tell the buyer to contact his post office to put a hold on his mail if you already sent the package out. The post office will hold the package for him. The buyer can can request a hold online on the usps website and it is very easy to do.
I would upload tracking within one day, not reply to the message, hold the package for 6 days, drop it in a blue box at the very end.
I dwell enough on r/eBay to know that you can make a request to USPS to hold your mail till a certain date. I am not sure if this is 100% the case, since I am not in the US of A, but some buyers just don’t understand how eBay works and as Scott points out; as a seller on eBay you have no freedom.
@smpratte What you can do? I have really no clue. But be ready to get an INAD case slammed in your face and a negative because buyers like this want it their way or else… You gonna eat the PP fees again and nothing you can do about it. But you have messages to help you on your case, but rarely eBay sides with sellers anyway
It’s an unfortunate situation that I’ve been in as well. I’d cancel the order and be done with it. Tell them they can buy it in a week if they want. You should only lose $1 in PayPal fees since it’s a low value transaction.
I actually think eBay is at fault here. They should allow for delay of shipping if requested by a customer. If this were a higher value item, I’d call eBay.
Was VAPEoren420xxx their real eBay name lol?
Can you explain what happened here? I didn’t know that sellers were bearing some of the cost now - does this happen only if someone pays, or also with nonpayments?
@charizandrew, Haha no that was another joke username. Their actual one was matmot13.
And yes this is entirely ebay’s fault. Sellers shouldn’t have to worry when following the rules.
The only issue with this is that you would still get a ding on your top rated seller status. To keep your top rated seller status you are required to have the tracking number scanned in the post office system within the handling time of 1 business day. Just creating the label wouldn’t work. The tracking number/package has to be scanned and in the possession of the post office within your stated handling time.
That’s not true. You can literally always just upload tracking. If the 1 in 10,000 possibility that eBay actually contacts you or follows up about it happens, you say “I surrendered the package to USPS within 24 hours. I am not sure why they did not continue to process the item.”
Cleared and good to go.
@funmonkey54 , are you sure? If I print a label and then drop it off a week later, I’ll get dinged for late shipping. The tracking number shows up as soon as I print the label, but the shipment isn’t registered until USPS is in possession.
Otherwise, all I would have to do is print all my labels the same day as the purchase and I can ship them weeks later.
I have never been dinged before and regularly take 48-72 hours to surrender packages. I did the top rated seller stuff for a long time until about 60 days ago. So unless it’s an extremely recent policy change, I’ve just not had that experience.
The new top rated seller policy monitors not only updated tracking, but expected delivery. The latter is crazy because you are dependent on the 3rd party to do their job. But yes they now monitor expected delivery, which is something I should have mentioned in the op, as it further handcuffs the seller.
Seems like a really fucking stupid policy to adhere to for a small bump in visibility, IMO.
At what point do you just say the top rated seller badge is bullshit and you can execute your service successfully and professionally without their leash?
I’m sure as heck not paying PayPal free money for that badge.
I don’t really know why that’s an issue. Do US delivery companies just leave packages outside people’s doors?
In the UK if you’re not in 99% of the time the company will post a slip through the door telling you where you can pick it up from. This is especially the case if the delivery requires a signature.
The 1% of the time that doesn’t happen I’ve ended up getting a refund from the delivery company as proof of delivery wasn’t available.
Actually yes, they do.
Funny story: a couple of years ago, I ordered a whole bunch of Base Set bulk from someone right before Christmas. It was delivered on Christmas Eve, but to the wrong address.
I called up the post office and they insisted it had been delivered to my house. I drove down the street and saw a package that looked an awful lot like a box of cards sitting outside someone’s house 10 doors down from me. I called USPS back up and they rectified the issue.
So yes; that does happen. As a matter of fact, any time a package can’t fit in the mailbox, it is left outside the door/at the garage/wherever unless the package has to be signed for.
Doesn’t excuse the buyer here, though.
The buyer was inconsiderate. He should have asked before hand rather then pull the trigger and then put the seller on the spot. His issue is with the delivery service so he needs to take it up with the post office to hold his mail. That’s the risk he took with buying when he wouldn’t be at the address to collect. Honestly just do what you normally do. If he wants to cancel it sucks to eat the charges from PayPal. I just had some dude do this crap yesterday, so the frustration is fresh in my mind. But I would refund to block and move on. From his messages he seems difficult and not worth doing future business with.