The delivery date is before the shipping date. What’s up with eBay?
Summary: A participant discusses the discrepancy between eBay's estimated delivery times and the actual shipping times. petersmodellbahnstuebchen explains that eBay uses sellers' shipping history to calculate the estimated delivery time, which sometimes leads to unrealistic estimates. The algorithm rewards faster shipping in the past with more optimistic delivery dates. It is suggested that eBay employees, such as mmstore74, could pass along the discussion results to address the problem. More information is requested from mullewapp to clarify the situation.
A customer contacted us because he has not yet received the item. Since it is a made-to-order item, we have set a processing time of 5 business days there. The customer bought it on 28.10. and complained that the item had not yet arrived on 30.10. He was shown 30.10. as the delivery date. I have now checked this and looked at the order data. In fact, the delivery date shown to the customer is 30.10. and the shipping date is correctly stated as 4 November, based on the stored processing time of 5 business days. That means the customer is being shown a delivery date that is before the shipping date???? Even if we had only had a one-day processing time, that would be a very tight delivery date, not to mention the turnaround times of postal and delivery services. Is there a rational explanation for this? Because we make the item to order and then cancel it, since the customer is shown a delivery date before the shipping date.
mullewapp
·1 month agoHello,
unfortunately, after now 8 months, I still can't see any change or adjustment. The delivery date shown for the buyer is still before my shipping deadline.
miriam@ebay
Hello @universalhandel24! We have been following the exchange here and have now made changes for you. Please check and let us know whether you are now happier with the displayed delivery data 🙂.
Best regards
Miriam
mullewapp
·9 months agoHello,
are there no adjustments for everyone? For me it keeps getting more and more amusing.....now suddenly the delivery date is 2 days before the shipping date! A little while ago it was 1 day, and that doesn't work either.
A letter is also usually no longer on the way for 1-2 days. The post office announced on 01/01/25 that a shipment can be on the way for 3-5 days. Unfortunately, this still hasn't been adjusted.
My processing time is 3 working days, none of it adds up from start to finish and I wonder why 🤔
miriam@ebay
Thanks for the heads-up, @mullewapp - I'll take that into account again!
Best regards
Miriam
mullewapp
·9 months agoMany thanks @miriam@ebay
mmstore74
·10 months agoHello @miriam@ebay , please be so kind and take this along to the discussion right away, thanks, because this is very similar to what @universalhandel24 describes here.
https://community.ebay.de/t5/Versand/Warum-makiert-Ebay-automatisch-einen-Artikel-als-verschickt/m-p/4990409#M35679
Kind regards
Marc
universalhandel24
OP10 months ago? What exactly are you trying to show me here? The delivery time that’s displayed when someone orders from Bangladesh?
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·10 months agoHey @universalhandel24
nah, but since you didn't provide an item number that could be used to verify your statements, one has to look at what is in your offers. And after looking at some offers, I keep seeing a 2-day processing time.
And since I can't be bothered to look through 95,000+ of them, I just picked one of the few you did specify.
So please, always give concrete examples, then the case can be assessed better too.
But apparently you don't want that, so I'm out, ciao
universalhandel24
OP10 months agoI’ll take a deep breath now.
So we have over 300,000 listings on eBay. We are a large factory. We have items with a one-day processing time, we have items with a 2-day processing time, we have items with a 3- or 4-day processing time, and items with a 5-day processing time, as well as items with 6, 7 days and more processing time, depending on whether they are stock items or made-to-order items, and on production time.
But all of that is completely irrelevant if you read and understand the thread title. It says: delivery date is before shipping date. So which items have which processing time is totally irrelevant. The question is why the delivery date is before the shipping date. Or even simpler: how is the customer supposed to receive the goods days before they have been shipped? I used the example above from a current case where a customer opened a dispute and I could only have contested it if I had provided a tracking number that would only be created 4 days in the future and would have had to be valid retroactively before 30/10. Sounds paradoxical, but that’s what this thread is about. I could tell you the item now, which stands as an example for thousands of other items. But you need the sales data. You can’t see a payment date or, above all, a shipping date in the listing, only a delivery date. So you can look at any of our items, imagine that you would buy it now, and then a delivery date is shown that lies before the shipping date, which is only shown to you after checkout.
But we can take the item you picked out from us as an example. It says, “Ships within two days after payment is received.” That means the item here has a processing time of 2 WORKING days. If you were to buy it now, then the shipping date would be November 4. But you will probably be shown the delivery date November 1 or November 3. No, more likely November 3, because tomorrow is a holiday. Otherwise it would have been the 1st. I haven’t checked this for all sales to see whether it’s the case; I only did spot checks, and yes, there is a similar discrepancy in all of them, and I’m only wondering why no one has noticed this yet. But anyone who only sells goods in stock with a processing time of 1 to 2 days won’t notice it anyway, because eBay would then have to display a date that is before the purchase. Other sellers who also have several days of processing time should take a look at this for themselves. I suspect it doesn’t matter whether you have a processing time of 3 or 10 days, the buyer always gets a delivery date = purchase (payment date) + 2 shown; at least that’s how it seems to me. That’s why this error doesn’t stand out at all for sellers who ship the same day or have a one-day processing time. And when I look at your listings, you only sell items ready in stock, so a one-day processing time is enough, which means the error can’t occur for you and you can’t verify it either.
But I’ve just noticed something else strange. I was wondering why you have a 30-day delivery time. I checked whether I was set to a different country. In the neighboring tab, there was then a normal delivery time of about 2 working days. So I pressed F5. 3 times in a row I was shown a 2-day delivery time, then after the fourth F5 a 30-day delivery time was shown again, and on the 5th F5 likewise 30 days, and on the 6th it was 2 days again. etc. So eBay really does have a problem.
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·10 months agoHi and a good evening to you too @universalhandel24
if you're referring to my listings and also taking a deep breath, until just before now there was an absence set for my listings. If you look at it now, you shouldn't notice any listing where the latest delivery is shown after the stored processing time, e.g. here:
I don't see any latest delivery before the stored processing time there (item number: 157291691012)
I also don't see any item on your side that should be delivered by the stored processing time at the latest:
So without knowing an item number, I can't see an error.
And I never claimed anything more as a little small-time trader compared to the number of items you offer. So from my point of view, that's it for this topic, ciao.
universalhandel24
OP10 months agoJust to clarify again, since that apparently is such a big problem. It's about the data that is displayed after the sale and after payment. So what do you want with an item number? Do you want to buy the item and then see what's displayed? You can do that with any one of the over 300,000 items; I don't need to name a specific item for you. But then you still wouldn't have understood what it's about. Again: The thread is called: delivery date before shipping date. And not: incorrect information is displayed in the offer. Because it isn't, but when an item is sold that has several days of processing time, then AFTER the sale and only to the buyer and seller in the order overview, false info is displayed and NOT in the offer.
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·10 months agoWell @universalhandel24 ,
if you don't want to name a suitable offer, that's your business. But without concrete information, assessing your problem is just guesswork.
So far, you haven't backed up any of your claims with a single screenshot. So I can believe you or not. Since I can't and don't want to look into your account, I just turned it off.
But maybe you'll find someone here who understands your problems and can solve them. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.
universalhandel24
OP10 months agoOkay, here are a few screenshots:
As you can see above in the first image, the buyer purchased and paid on 28/10. In image 2, you can see the handling time of 5 days for this exact item. Also underlined in red in image 2 is the delivery window that is currently displayed when you look at the listing now. With a handling time of 5 days, the shipping date would be November 7, and the earliest possible delivery date, if the shipping service delivered within one business day (which, as we know, is not always the case, but rather the exception, especially with DHL), would be November 8. But November 5 is already shown as the delivery date, and the 8th, which is actually the earliest delivery date, is shown as the latest delivery date. So the latest delivery date should be the 10th or 11th, according to DHL transit times.
In the current case with the payment dispute (image 1), the buyer opened a payment dispute on 31/10 because he had not received the item. The stated November 5 is also shown here as the latest delivery date, although it should be the earliest. This affects all items with a handling time of 3 days or more. But here is the item number of the specific case, even if it would be irrelevant, but you can look it up directly; practically, it applies to all items with over 3 days handling time: 406129709871
Anyway, if I set a handling time of 5 days and the buyer purchases on 28/10, then October 30 cannot already be shown as a possible delivery date, 2 days after purchase. Then we would have had to ship on the same day to guarantee 100%. But you can test it yourself. Take one of your listings and change the handling time to 5 business days, then see what delivery date is shown. This can get expensive, especially for sellers who make items to order or sell personalized items that cannot be shipped right away. You make the item and already get a payment dispute 3 business days before the shipping date, and of course you don't have a tracking number you can use to contest it. I hope you can now understand the situation.
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·10 months agoHello @universalhandel24
just so you understand, this is what the listing looks like for one of my customers:
Shipping with DHL with a processing time of 2 days set
ttd4it
·10 months agoActually, no calculation is needed.
Each seller specifies their processing time. So at most the note "Latest shipping date xx.xx.xx"
No one can predict the delivery and transit time.
miriam@ebay
Thanks for the description, @universalhandel24! As @petersmodellbahnstuebchen already points out, the displayed delivery date is calculated dynamically and is based on a calculation logic that takes various factors into account.
We will take *the order ending in -49766 along with us to draw internal attention again to the calculation of delivery times for letter shipments and your reactions to it - thank you!
Thanks and best regards
Miriam
universalhandel24
OP10 months agoI’m trying to understand the calculation logic. If November 4 is the shipping date, then common sense says November 5 is the earliest possible delivery date and not the latest possible delivery date. And certainly October 30 is not the earliest possible delivery date either, 5 days before it’s shipped. I’d really like to know the mathematical formula without ignoring the physical laws of space and time that we’re all subject to. What’s next? Ordered on 10/28 and delivery already on 10/23?
sunrise1605
·10 months agoBut I also keep wondering about customers like that.
Not only that the stated delivery time isn’t binding, which eBay could perhaps highlight better, one would still expect a bit of common sense.
Ordered on the 28th, supposed to be there on the 30th, with custom production ...... yeah right
And then, above all, complain right away. I’d put them on the blocked list immediately.
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·10 months agoHi @universalhandel24
that is a long-known "feature" of eBay's delivery time estimate and is based here:
In doing so, eBay uses the seller's shipping history and "rewards" them for having shipped particularly quickly in the past. I unfortunately don't know to what extent data from comparable sellers is also used for this.
But maybe a nice eBay employee can comment on this sometime, @patrick@ebay , @miriam@ebay , thanks a lot🤗
universalhandel24
OP10 months agoHello Peter,
it only says how Ebay calculates the delivery times, but not how Ebay estimates the delivery times and why completely different times are used than the seller gives, and also no explanation of why the shipping date is later than the delivery date. So why an item is supposed to arrive with the buyer 4 days before the item is shipped. I would very much like a physical explanation in line with Einstein's theory of relativity.
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·10 months agoHi @universalhandel24
but it says there that the "latest delivery date" is always mentioned after the processing time. That too is an old and often discussed topic here in the past.
And it should be well known by now that the shipping providers are using drones with Warp 8 for pickup and delivery, since Scotty is on the bridge.😉
But more precise details on how Ebay now calculates it can certainly be provided by @patrick@ebay or @miriam@ebay . Thanks to you both.🤗
universalhandel24
OP10 months agoJust nonsense. Shipping date November 4, latest delivery date November 5. Name me a shipping service, even just one, that delivers something 100% after one day without an express surcharge? If November 4 is the shipping date, then November 5 is the earliest possible and not the latest delivery date. Consequently, the customer should have been shown November 5 as the earliest possible delivery date and not 30/10, i.e. 5 days before shipping.
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·10 months ago@universalhandel24
then you don't have to discuss this nonsense with me, but with Ebay. Because we users didn't create and program this process, Ebay did.
You're just making a big deal out of something that's been an issue for at least a year now.
Please check your handling times and shipping settings. I just looked at some of your items and see the following: