Has Ebay un-consciously shot self in foot with late delivery rate in new defect sys

[GreenBean]

Originally Posted by muzzie

EB rep has told me, that if you manage to post items on time, and it is clearly seen from the tracking, you are safe from that new type of defect.

And that makes more of a nightmare.

Value of items does not allow expenses of tracking.

Can see a need for price increases to offset the need to stay on top of ebay's artificial expectations.

[luverlyjuberly]

I hope it's Ok to add this to the thread. I was ill beginning of April and a few items were posted late. I explained to buyers I had been ill but to no avail it seems. Now it seems May Bank holiday has shot me in the foot and my Delivery defect rating is now at 7%.
Any advice on what to do as I am concerned i will reach the dreaded 9%.
I've already changed my delivery time to 5 days by courier.

[luverlyjuberly]

If i stop selling for a few months will this reset the Defect Rating?

[Play]

Originally Posted by muzzie

if the item got lost inside RoyalMail, it is not seller's issue anymore.

Until an item gets into the recipients hands, ebay hold the seller responsible. That includes when its in the possession of Royal Mail. If they delay the shipment, your defect rate will go up, and you would be held responsible.

[GreenBean]

Originally Posted by Play

Until an item gets into the recipients hands, ebay hold the seller responsible. That includes when its in the possession of Royal Mail. If they delay the shipment, your defect rate will go up, and you would be held responsible.

You did notice muzzie offered those pearls in 2015, and not recently...

[taerese]

Originally Posted by luverlyjuberly

If i stop selling for a few months will this reset the Defect Rating?

You should effectively stop selling low cost items that you cannot provide trackings for. Going forward, change your dispatch time to 5 days and delivery 3-5 working days. That gives you a window of 10 working days to reach buyer, yet, make sure you dispatch same day or next day which in theory means your buyer will receive the item within 4 working day.

Monitor your DRS or whatever it is called and if any buyer said the item was delivered late, you can contest this with ebay by providing tracking and you will be fine as long as the tracking proves that you dispatched on time. They will reverse the associated late delivery.

Hope I make sense.

[luverlyjuberly]

Sadly almost all of my sales are for low cost items.
I've changed my delivery times so that item will arrive in five days time of order so I'm hoping that will help. I'll let you all know how I get on!

[taerese]

Originally Posted by luverlyjuberly

Sadly almost all of my sales are for low cost items.
I've changed my delivery times so that item will arrive in five days time of order so I'm hoping that will help. I'll let you all know how I get on!

Unfortunately, this new changes to ebay does not encourage selling low cost items. Try move on from them if you can or as soon as you get an account into a good standing, filter out the low cost items into a new account. 5 days, 10days delivery will do little to help if you cannot contest that you dispatched the item on time. The only thing ebay would believe is the tracking code.

Some pple want to place order after 5PM and want it delivered next day cause they are traveling to Casablanca for holiday. If you cannot fulfill their request, then you get marked down for late delivery and nothing you can do about it other than to move on from low cost items.

Anyone selling low cost items is on a knife edge. I lost a £48,000 /1800 limit account cause of low cost items.

[luverlyjuberly]

Thanks for the reply.
I have noticed two other thigns that cause problems when selling low cost items.
1} A small number of them "disappear" after i post them and buyer then gives a late delivery because - of course - the second item has arrived later.
2} The sorting office decides my items have insufficient postage - even though they have! - so the buyer asks for a new one to be sent out. Another late rating.

No-one has answered this question - I am on a three month score system from February to present. If i slow down my sales or even stop selling for a few months will the delivered late rating reset itself?

[taerese]

Originally Posted by luverlyjuberly

No-one has answered this question - I am on a three month score system from February to present. If i slow down my sales or even stop selling for a few months will the delivered late rating reset itself?

Its like not studying and wanting your GDPA to improve.

The way I see it. I think there are two ways your ratings could be calculated.

1. If you make up to 400 sales within 3 months, they your score is based on 3 months report
2. If you do not make up to 400 sales within 3 months, then your score is based on 12 months sales figure.

So, I don't think slowing down sales or leaving the account dormant will help either. Think of it like this.

Your current score is 10 based on 30 sales:

Over next 2 months your score : (30 + 0 + 0) / 3 = 10
In this case, you completely stopped selling in the following 2 months which leaves your score at 10 if not worse off. So, you will remain below standard for 2 consecutive months and you will eventually loose the account

Or over next 2 months you increased your sales, to 5 in following month and 15 the next month which gives you a score of 16.6
(30 + 5 + 15) /3 = 16.6

This is just a simple analogy of the situation which concludes that to improve on your score, you need to sell more goods.

[Haidukken]

Oh I totally forgot the way they measure deliveries... I've not checked my sellers dashboard for over 6 months. Jesus, should get on it right away.

[luverlyjuberly]

Mine is at 7%.
I've had some interesting replies from buyers justifying their late Delivery Rating - many assume it does not effect my account.

One person declined to answer the delivery date question - she left it blank - and I still got a late delivery orange dot!

Sadly - and this crazy - I have had to change my delivery to courier (3-5 working days) and post date to 2 working days giving 7 -10 days before buyer gets their order!
And what really pisses me off is that some of my late delivery ratings are caused by the post office losing my parcels (or stealing them) or claiming insufficient postage on parcel (so the item is returned to me) which is complete bollocks.

[zenohki]

I switched all my items to tracked in the hope of fixing my 14% late delivery rate!

Christmas really screwed me over on delivery times, especially on exported items. So I don't really understand why ebay brought this in. I really think Christmas should not count in this! Items are pretty much guaranteed to be late in December.

I figured tracking was the only way I could be sure to fix the late delivery rate, all because customers expect same day dispatch and next day delivery. Even though my items say 3 days to dispatch and 2-3 day delivery, I still get people asking why it's not been sent or why they haven't received it, well before it can even be considered late.

I also wondered what happens to those who aren't at home to receive their parcel so go and collect it from the local depot? They can mark it as received late even if delivery attempt was made on time :/

[luverlyjuberly]

I've now had two late delivery date defects removed. I asked the buyer to send a message to me stating they had left the late defect by mistake. i then copy this message and send it to eBay. They then remove the dreaded orange dot.