Suggestion for improvement eBay - Inquiries about shipments not received
Hello everyone,
this is about eBay buyers’ requests regarding shipments not received, which they can already open immediately after the expected delivery date has been reached. (Why the rush?)
Many sellers, including us, send their parcels via Deutsche Post letter mail. However, it keeps happening that delivery is delayed by 1-2 days. It would therefore be extremely helpful if buyers could not open their request for a parcel not received directly on the day of the stated delivery date. Often we then have to ask our customers for patience for 1-3 days, since delivery still takes place within that time 99% of the time.
Why not extend the option to open a request by 2-3 days? You can only leave positive feedback after 7 days as well.
For us sellers, this would be a significant advantage and would save us a lot of time if the customer could only open the request after 5-6 days.
In most cases, we end up having to chase after our customers so that they close the request again.
Furthermore, basic shipment tracking does not always work for all shipments. Is there a way for eBay to contact Deutsche Post to find out why this is the case?
Kind regards
primanovo
·1 year agoHello @miriam@ebay
You write:
"Unfortunately, right now we don't have a better way to display the "delivery event (The shipment was processed at the logistics center)" differently. There are various ideas about how we could do this better in the short and long term, but unfortunately nothing yet that we are allowed to share here."
My question:
Why does eBay have to display that at all?
It should be completely sufficient to provide the shipping carrier's link.
The buyer should be grown-up enough to click on that link.
Then they land directly, for example at DHL, and find out firsthand what the situation is.
That would solve the whole mess!
miriam@ebay
Hello @injectorzone! What you're talking about is a well-known topic in the community. The wish for changes to the "delivery event" of Deutsche Post's Internet stamps keeps coming up. We understand the challenges this creates for you and are continuously passing your feedback on to our contacts in the shipping teams.
At the moment, unfortunately, we don't have a better way to display the "delivery event (The shipment was processed in the logistics center)" differently. There are various ideas about how we could improve this in the short and long term, but unfortunately nothing we can share here yet.
Are there any specific order numbers here that we should pass along?
Your suggestion for taking paragraphs into account in eBay messages as well as your wish for expanded placement of your external eBay ads on additional Meta and TikTok platforms has been noted - but you probably already know our announcement More visibility thanks to Facebook Marketplace?
Thanks for the exchange here - and to you too, @dartshop_luggis_de! 🙂
Kind regards
Miriam
injectorzone
OP1 year agoHello @miriam@ebay, thank you so much for your reply! I’m hoping for an improvement in shipment tracking.
Furthermore, I’d be interested in why inquiry cases with "not received" are extended by a few days? 99% of the time it’s always the case that customers receive their shipments within 1-3 days, from the delivery date shown by eBay. It’s always such an unnecessary fight, where you end up begging the customer to close the inquiry/case again.
You’re not blocking the customer’s option to open a case; you’re just giving the matter a few more days. As already described above, most of the time it sorts itself out. That would still be a super important improvement for us(all).
dartshop_luggis_de
·1 year agoHello @miriam@ebay,
my company had this case again the other day.
Shipping by letter, traceable all the way to the final mail center because it was documented as described in one of my posts below.
The customer opens a request after 5 days; of course I’m not refunding yet because the German Post may take up to 20 days for delivery. The listing even points out a possible delivery time of (up to three weeks).
The customer then gets a reply from us that he doesn’t like and contacts eBay again a few days later. Of course, eBay refunds the full purchase price after 12 days.
The customer would have received the purchase price from us anyway, because he has a legal right to it, on day 21 if the goods still hadn’t arrived by then.
Why does eBay think it can simply refund money that doesn’t even belong to eBay ?
We’re now thinking about whether a criminal complaint against eBay for possible embezzlement would be appropriate, because eBay withholds revenue from us that we could only collect through eBay’s payment processing and then distributes these funds arbitrarily without any legal basis.
There is no way to understand on what legal basis this happens, because eBay is not even a contractual party to the purchase agreement and therefore actually cannot pay out funds that it did not itself receive as proceeds, but only holds in safekeeping.
In our view, eBay can probably refund the customer’s money if it thinks it has to, but then it should please use its own money and not that of a company with which it only has a platform user agreement and whose money it is holding.
eBay also boasts about seller protection for trackable shipping. For purchases up to €20, even a letter shipment with a scan at a mail center counts as proof, of course only if the matrix stamp was bought through eBay.
Maybe that’s due to the hefty commission eBay gets from Deutsche Post/DHL for selling postage stamps and shipping labels.
Back to the topic above,
we file an appeal with the tracking number and a photo of the fully stamped shipment so that eBay can read the matrix code itself and verify our details.
What happens?
Of course, the appeal is rejected because there is no proof of delivery.
Sure, if the stamp was bought through eBay, even the last scan in the mail center is enough.
But the most ridiculous thing is the note or recommendation that you should ship insured.
The purchase price was rounded to six euros; eBay takes about 35% of that without VAT, and then you’re supposed to frank at least by registered handover mail, which you’d then have to top up by at least another 25–30% because eBay charges fees on every euro cent it receives.
€2.65 + €0.86 (30% eBay all-inclusive) that makes a purchase price of over nine euros.
Does anyone at eBay ever wonder where the buying customers are supposed to come from if such extortionate prices have to be charged?
Of course not, the euro is still rolling in plenty at the moment.
Once again, we’ve lost money and goods and ended up with a shortfall in the account.
A computer science degree doesn’t automatically make you a good seller.
Maybe several so-called specialist departments should take a look at this issue.
chipsnmore
·9 months agoYesterday a customer complained at eBay because he had not received the item after 2 days - bought on Monday - on Wednesday eBay already allows a case to be opened "Your money will be due to..."! Because he had again received the usual eBay false message "delivered"... (For years we have been trying to get eBay to stop reporting such shipments, which DP tracking classifies as "entered delivery", to the buyer like this).
Today, once again, a new case - probably because of eBay's unrealistic promises:
"Hello. Where is the promised item that is supposed to be there by Wednesday."
our reply:
"Good day. We naturally very much regret that. This shipment was bought by you as a merchandise shipment, as offered, on 12/10 (Saturday) and was also sent on its way by us accordingly. So the post office could at the earliest have processed this shipment on Tuesday (14/10). However, DP claims up to 7 WORKING days for the regular delivery of letters and merchandise shipments! Most of the time it goes quite quickly - but of course we have no influence over that! We really can't do anything more than dispatch the goods promptly after a purchase. Should your shipment actually not arrive by the end of the week, we can provide a replacement and only then also initiate a complaint (inquiry request) with DP."
Maybe there will also be a negative review for this, which eBay will then also leave up and support? At least selling isn't really much fun for us here anymore...
dartshop_luggis_de
·1 year agoHello@injectorzone ,
you can wish for and suggest a lot here.
Implementation? What is that?
Ebay is far too busy with pointless programming.
When it comes to letter shipping, ebay is basically already pretty hard of hearing, if not outright deaf.
This has so far meant that currently, despite basic shipment tracking, a photo of the fully addressed and stamped shipment, you have no claim to seller protection if the postage wasn't purchased through ebay. Regardless of whether you can prove the shipment just as well as with the postage purchased on ebay with a matrix code.
miriam@ebay or someone else from the team has already forwarded this once to the specialist department regarding equal treatment of seller protection for externally purchased stamps.
I rather doubt that anything will come of it.
injectorzone
OP1 year agoHello @dartshop_luggis_de ,
first of all, thanks a lot for your reply.
To be honest, I think eBay is already very good when it comes to implementation. They’re constantly trying to improve, at least that’s how it feels to me. I also buy shipping labels almost only through eBay, and I כמובן find the subtitle "seller protection" on the eBay shipping labels pretty funny, because in this sense there is no seller protection, since it means you can’t prove that it was actually delivered.
It would just be mega good if the opening of claims were really extended by a few days, because every time you have to deal with customers, although I also have to say that the customers (at least ours) mostly always show understanding and wait another 1-2 days.
+++ another improvement suggestion: expand external ads more, instead of only advertising on Google. Why not include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc.? +++
dartshop_luggis_de
·1 year ago@injectorzone,
we here also know about the problems with delayed letter shipments and eBay delivery windows. 98% of the orders leave us as letter shipments.
eBay should refrain from naming any delivery windows at all for domestic letter transit times of sometimes up to 3 weeks.
Often the shipments are scanned in the last mail center and then sit in the delivery bases without any further scan.
On top of that, neither Deutsche Post nor the Federal Network Agency guarantees any letter transit times. With Deutsche Post, a letter shipment is only considered undelivered after 20 days / working days if it has not been delivered within this period.
You know yourself from when we should / must issue refunds at the latest.
So a request should only be allowed to be opened after at least 15 days of letter transit time.
With us, every customer has the option to choose registered mail at cost price, so without postage costs, but including eBay fees, if they want speedy delivery.
We also document every letter shipment photographically so we can determine the tracking number in case of problems.
Like you, we also stay in contact with the affected customers in a solution-oriented way.
How many customers have contacted you afterwards to say that the goods actually arrived after the above-mentioned time?
I have only had one honest one so far; many of the others pocketed both the refund and the goods. The latter is my personal assessment, but it cannot be proven.
In principle, the presumption of innocence also applies to everyone individually, and I do not want to imply anything with this statement.
On the contrary, I urge everyone to take a look at themselves and how he, she, or it does this for themselves.
injectorzone
OP1 year agoAlso, it would be nice if you could send messages to customers via the app, and if you set a paragraph in the text, it would also be kept. After sending the message, the paragraphs disappear again. In my opinion, that would be beneficial for readability.