What To Do If An eBay Buyer Requests Delayed Shipment

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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Buyers and sellers have been asking eBay for years for an easy way to buyers to request a delay in shipment without it causing any harm to the seller's account status.

While it's not exactly easy, an eBay community rep did confirm in last week's chat that as long as the request is made through the eBay messaging system, the seller can call customer support to have the late shipment ding removed.

Re: Community Chat, December 15 @ 1:00 pm PT - General Topics
When is eBay going to recognize that buyers sometimes wish to delay delivery after buying an item? How can a seller respond to buyer requests that will result in a late shipment according to eBay? Who is right - the buyer or eBay ? ----- Edit: A reply to your question can be found here

When is eBay going to recognize that buyers sometimes wish to delay delivery after buying an item? How can a seller respond to buyer requests that will result in a late shipment according to eBay? Who is right - the buyer or eBay?

Tyler@eBay answered:

A late shipment ding can be appealed by Customer Support if the buyer requested you to delay shipment after they paid. Just make sure that the conversation happened in eBay messages or as a note to you when they checked out (CS will need to be able to see the message from the buyer).

It's a good start, but sellers shouldn't have to rely on an appeal process that under-trained customer support personnel may not understand or be informed they have the ability to action.

A better solution for eBay's tech led reimagination would be to create a way for the buyer to submit the request when completing the transaction and have the system automatically adjust the expected shipping date accordingly, thus avoiding any "dings" in the first place and not adding additional call volume to an already overburdened support system.

ShippingeBay

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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.


Recent Comments
Avatar Placeholderterry5521 hours ago
Sales down 40% from last year, this is gonna be a small business killer
Avatar PlaceholderJaeLynn2 days ago
I've had this happen a few times, and it confused me. One seller alleged that they had to use Amazon's services to make sure I got my item in time. I recently bought something simple, and the seller made a mistake. They'd sent me 3 different messages, one of them too early, telling me they hoped my item arrived in perfect condition. The next day, the item was marked as shipped, and I got an official Ebay shipping email. The seller was using direct messages to give me item updates. If I wanted Amazon, I'd have used them myself! lol
Avatar Placeholderlessthanthreerecords2 days ago
Happening to me too. On my active listings page (with the full list) it looks fine, but when I click on them, many have the random characters. I reported it, and that's when one glitch led to another! As I was typing the message after clicking the "?", letters were repeatedly not coming up (usually one or two at the end of a word). I was finally able to get the message entered, but how tedious!