OT: eBay's Late Shipping Policy - Has it changed?

[glchen]

Before February, sellers had 10% leeway if your tracking information was uploaded late. Now, it's only 3%, which is probably why you are being flagged right now. Also, your package needs to show the first tracking (or acceptance) by the USPS (or whatever shipping company you use) within the first 24-48 hours (not exactly sure what the time period is) or that the package is delivered within the estimated shipping time in your listing. Therefore, if the Post Office missing scanning your package when they pick it up, and deliver it late, then you are in trouble. This is one of the reasons why on all of my ebay listings, I've changed my shipping from First Class to Economy, so that the estimated shipping time is longer in most cases. (However, I still ship all packages First Class or better.)

[Buythatcard]

Originally Posted by glchen

Before February, sellers had 10% leeway if your tracking information was uploaded late. Now, it's only 3%, which is probably why you are being flagged right now. Also, your package needs to show the first tracking (or acceptance) by the USPS (or whatever shipping company you use) within the first 24-48 hours (not exactly sure what the time period is) or that the package is delivered within the estimated shipping time in your listing. Therefore, if the Post Office missing scanning your package when they pick it up, and deliver it late, then you are in trouble. This is one of the reasons why on all of my ebay listings, I've changed my shipping from First Class to Economy, so that the estimated shipping time is longer in most cases. (However, I still ship all packages First Class or better.)

Gary,

Does eBay really take in account that you used a different shipping method? I assumed that the rule was the same whether you shipped it personally or pony express. If that method works, I think its a great idea,

[glchen]

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

Gary,

Does eBay really take in account that you used a different shipping method? I assumed that the rule was the same whether you shipped it personally or pony express. If that method works, I think its a great idea,

Yes, they are supposed to. It needs to be put in the ebay listing, but if you have something like parcel post or economy, it will give you more time for the package to reach the buyer. If you don't do this, you basically need to go to the Post Office and have them manually scan in every package that you send so that you can make sure that they all have the first acceptance scan within the mandated time. Where I am at, the Post Office lines can get long (and they sometimes want to charge me for acceptance scans which is another story altogether), so I want to avoid that if possible.

[Sean1125]

There is misinformation in this thread.

The threshold for tracking uploaded in handling time is still in fact 10%.

3% has to due with a completely new metric called "late shipment" and it works differently than the 10% metric.

The issue here is the post office not scanning your item prior to shipment. You need to require the post office to scan the item when you drop it off and receive a receipt that they scanned it. If they scanned the item in within 24 hours of payment you would never have a problem with the "late shipment" metric (it means a buyer reported you for late shipment, this is not a valid report if you do in fact get a scan).

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Sean1125

There is misinformation in this thread.

The threshold for tracking uploaded in handling time is still in fact 10%.

3% has to due with a completely new metric called "late shipment" and it works differently than the 10% metric.

The issue here is the post office not scanning your item prior to shipment. You need to require the post office to scan the item when you drop it off and receive a receipt that they scanned it. If they scanned the item in within 24 hours of payment you would never have a problem with the "late shipment" metric (it means a buyer reported you for late shipment, this is not a valid report if you do in fact get a scan).

I have anywhere from 10 - 70 packages per day that I have picked up at my store, I always make sure the mailman scans them before he puts them on his truck. I have a regular mailman who always does this, but his fill in guys almost always have to be told to scan them. Some of them say they scan them when they get back to the post office, but I ask them if they will please scan them before loading them. About 3 years ago I had about 30 packages scanned wrong, for some reason they were all scanned as delivered, I don't know if it was a computer malfunction of some kind or the settings on the mailman's little scanner gun, but they all showed "Delivered to ~my address~" on the tracking. Some of those packages got turned over to ebay as "item not received" and I'm not sure if they really were or not, but I know I lost money because they were not scanned correctly.