eBay Pushes Faster Shipping & Delivery Times For Holidays
First a bit of good news - eBay has added a search filter option for expedited shipping!
If you're in a rush or concerned about holiday carrier delays, you can now filter your eBay search to show only sellers who offer expedited shipping methods including USPS Priority Mail & Priority Mail Express; UPS 3 Day, 2 Day, and Next Day Air; and FedEx Express Save, 2 Day, and Overnight services.
Unfortunately at this time, it appears to only be available on the eBay mobile app, not the desktop site.
Interestingly, eBay is showing the same estimated delivery for both USPS First Class and USPS Priority Mail services.
Anyone who has been paying any attention to what is going on with the Post Office this year will find it very unlikely that a package going from California to Florida via First Class mail would have the same delivery time as Priority Mail.
I'm not sure where they are drawing those estimates from, but I can't believe they are entirely accurate.
Which brings us to the bad - eBay still apparently has no idea how to calculate realistic delivery estimates. And that brings us to the perennial seller complaint of eBay completely ignoring their stated handling times as well.
With the increased sales volume, I recently changed my handling time to 3 business days from 11/28 - 12/3.
A buyer purchased upgraded Priority Mail on 12/1. Luckily I shipped it on 12/2... one day handling. But ebay is showing the buyer an ETA of 12/6 (today) and buyer is peeved that they don't have the item yet.
If you do the math, the ETA ebay gave the buyer is 3 business days after purchase! How can the ETA be on the exact same day as the last handling day?? Ebay is giving the package ZERO DAYS shipping time.
I know what some of you are going to say about this though... so again, what's the point of ebay letting sellers set a handling time at all?!
You handling time is only one factor, and likely the least important influence on the delivery estimate. For the most part, if you ship the same or next day THAT behavior will influence what is posted for the buyer. Carrier delays likely play no part. The unrealistic times, are likely posted as an incentive for the buyer to purchase, and also part of the reason why the handling times are no longer displayed on a listing.
By extending your handling time, however, it will protect you from metric dings for such things as 'not uploading tracking ontime' or 'getting scans before your handling time expires'. For a while there, eBay was issuing some sort of " cash coupons" to buyers when the last estimated date did not produce a parcel. Buyers were watching the tracking very closely. I don't think eBay provides those anymore.
(ETA means Estimated time of arrival not Exact time of arrival. The problem is with the understanding of "estimated" and buyers who think that means actual delivery date.)
Although eBay is using their expertise to make those estimated times on
(behalf of the sellers). I can assure you that eBay officially considers them
as part of the (sellers item description) and the sellers responsibility to
meet them.
Any package that arrives past that date is a SNAD return if the buyer chooses to do so.
Last year many sellers were caught in an impossible situation - massive carrier delays did not meet the unrealistic estimates eBay had shown to buyers, those buyers then opened item not received cases and received refunds when the seller could not provide tracking with a delivery scan, and then days later the item would arrive leaving the buyer with both the money and the item and the seller with neither.
Sellers' attempts to get eBay to extend delivery estimates (or at least offer assurances of seller protections) to avoid a similar debacle this year have mostly fallen on deaf ears with the official line from eBay essentially being "don't worry about it, we have everything under control."
However, based on my experiment with the expedited shipping filter, that doesn't appear to be the case.
Until eBay honors seller selected handling times and uses real time carrier data to provide accurate in transit estimates, I'm not sure how much difference it will make to be able to filter search by expedited shipping options.
What do you think of the expedited shipping filter? Will you use it to make sure you get your holiday gifts in time? Let me know in the comments below!
