Bogus Shipping Dates

I have been finding more often that sellers are sending notices that "Your item has been shipped" but when you check the postmark or tracking number you find that the item didn't ship for several days and sometimes many days later.

When I find a seller has done this...
there goes his "5 star feedback!"

I wonder how much ebay pays attention to the star ratings as opposed to the mailing time frame that shows with the item listing? The quick 'item mailed' notification is done in an attempt to keep their seller rating up. But I wonder if the stars really count towards anything in ebay's scheme of things.

I would consider blocking you as a bidder. Although every attempt is made to ship on the same or next day, it is often the case that the post office doesn't get around to postmarking until early the next day. Sometimes, the barcode is not scanned until the delivery destination is reached. Last year, the post office was closed for three or four Mondays in a row because of excess snow. If stamps are used, the date the barcode is printed won't have the same effect as with printed postage.

Rather than give four star or lower feedback, try a different seller. Less than five stars may be justified if it becomes apparent that late shipping is part of a pattern or if the seller consistently overlooks obvious defects. The ebay rating system is tied to economics. Give a seller enough indifferent or poor ratings and his or her prices will go up after ebay discounts are lost.

Unfortunately, there is no effective way to rate sellers on ebay without causing economic damage which ultimately falls on buyers. Worse, ebay no longer does much about misdescribed or misidentified stamps, deliberate or not. Buyers lose out again paying too much for damaged or worthless stamps instead of investing in properly described stamps with some future resale value.

In the end buyers lose. Think very carefully before dinging a seller. Make sure you mean it. It is possible for sellers to fine out and block dingy buyers.

Clark

I buy lots of tchotchkes on e-bay from Chinese sellers. Invariably very soon after purchase the item will be marked as shipped. I know this is not accurate - I only care that the item is (eventually) delivered.

And as mentioned previously, postal services aren't always as speedy as we would like.

I agree with Clark. Part of the problem is that the definition of "was shipped" is subject to reasonable disagreement. As best I can tell, ebay considers an item shipped when data about the shipment has been uploaded to ebay. But this doesn't mean that the item actually has to move off the seller's desk, and there could be exigent circumstances. Also note this, from ebay:




So, in some cases, the less-than-5-star rating that you gave may have no effect.

Item sells on Friday night, seller updates and takes to PO first thing Saturday morning and drops in PO box. PO closed for weekend. Mail gets collected sometime on the following Monday and loaded on truck sent to sorting PO. There is no way the seller can ensure the postmark is going to be the same date the letter was taken to the PO. Also any public holidays will cause delays. Bad weather in some countries may close PO on those days.

Therefor its not fair to lower his "5 star feedback" for that reason.

As long as you get said item in reasonable time frame that should be good enough to give seller 5 star rating. And yes less than 5 stars affects sellers performance rating after sometime if he gets to many below 5 stars he will loose his top rating

Post office delays cannot be controlled by sellers full stop

I did NOT say slow to ship. I meant sellers LIE by sending a message "Your item has been shipped" and then they don't actually ship that item for several days or weeks.

If you send someone an email: "Your item has been shipped", it should already be in the shipper's hands before you send that email.

Example: I purchased some stamps on ebay, the seller sent me a message saying "Your item has been shipped". Over 3 weeks later I finally received the stamps. According to the postmark it took the seller 2-1/2 weeks after I got the email "Your item has been shipped" just to ship the stamps. When I asked why it took so long to ship... their reply was they were vacationing in Europe.

Lately there have been several sellers who send the message "Your item has been shipped" and they don't actually mail the item for another 7 to 14 days or longer. I am not referring to a 3 day holiday/weekend period; I am referring to a week or more! I go by the postmark or tracking number. They LIE about when the items are shipped.

Because of ebay's ridiculous did your item arrive on time new rating scheme, is why buyers have this entitled to have yesterday mind frame.

What ever happened to patience? If you got your item in a reasonable amount of time and it is as you ordered, that should rate as an excellent transaction.

What has happened to buyers that they have lost realistic expectations?

My one question of "Timm" would be Where is the Fire?

Guilty as charged,

I regularly mark items shipped when I am about to go to the Post Office. I find that easier than worrying about it when I return sometimes hours later when I have more important things to do,

Pagoda

Most sellers ship quickly. When I sell, I ship the next day.

Shipping quickly doesn't guarantee that the item will be moved quickly by the USPS, especially if one uses tracking.

I know from experience that mail can sit in a p.o. for days without moving. With tracking, mail seems to be routinely misdirected.

Bottom line is, you can't always know if the problem is with a seller, or with the postal system. I wouldn't assume that the seller is lying or "dragging his feet".

1000% agree




agree in this case its too long but the matter of a few days you should not punish the sellers 5 star rating

Getting an international item in a few weeks is actually the norm these days

Australia post now is slower than it used to be, You pay more for the stamp for local mail and it can take 5 to 6 days to get there unless the prioity label is added at an extra expense. The slowing of the local mail seems to have had an affect on international mail. I wait up to 4 weeks for a parcel of goodies from UK. I don't give seller low rating because its not his fault it took that long to arrive. Patience your letters will arrive

The seller most likely didn't send you the item shipped e-mail. It gets auto-generated when you fill in the tracking details or buy postage through E-bay. If a buyer pays for an item tomorrow (Friday, 2/12), and I prep it for shipment by buying the postage through e-bay, it still won't get in the mail stream until Tuesday, since Monday is a holiday. I drop the parcels at my work in the stamped mail collection, it gets picked up by 11am each weekday. Anything after 11am goes out the next business day.

Here's an example: You make a purchase right now. I package it and mark it shipped. You get that "your item has shipped" email and I go to sleep. It's after 11P.M. and my wife takes the mail when she leaves at 7A.M. for work the next day and drops it on her way at the mail box because the Post Office is closed. The mail gets processed after 12 noon and awaits being taken to the sorting facility. After 5PM it's then picked up and it's on it's way and it won't get to the first sorting facility till the next day and it's already been 36 hours since you made your purchase. The point is...however quickly a Seller ships, it's still going to take 3-5 days before it gets to it's destination and if a weekend is involved, perhaps even longer. It's not the Seller's fault...we have no control once it goes in the mailbox.

The insane part of this is the way ebay has established this metric. This metric has no need to be human influenced, the metric is simple. Item was sold at a specific date, item enters delivery process at a specific date, item is delivered at a specific date. For tracked items these dates can be determined and calculated without any subjective human input. Non-tracked items should be excluded from any delivery performance metric. (If buyer wants the added expensive of tracking, they should willing to incur the added cost.)

I disagree that a seller can drop off a shipment and have their responsibility end there for tracked shipments. Sellers should have to take a bit of a hit to their performance rating when the shipping company fails or does not perform. This is because the shipping company is selected by the seller. If a seller has a lot of problems with a certain shipper, they should be made aware of it and make a change. Every vender rating system that I have seen works this way. (If a seller has no responsibility once they drop off a shipment, there is no motivation to ship with the best delivery company.)

But having buyers making subjective opinions about delivery time on non-tracked shipments is just nuts. There are no guidelines that defines a 'good' or 'bad' amount of shipping time. I concur that some sellers play the delay game, we must acknowledge this. But on the other hand, sellers of stamps often want to be able to send a shipment via First Class mail or other non-tracked, economical method. ebay should drop all performance metrics for these type shipments.
Don

Absouletly 1000% right could not have said that better myself, ebay should not have performance metrics for sellers who ship via standard airmail or first class etc. Its just crazy, and I am in Oz and sell on ebay USA and they try to measure my airmail service??

A buyer should be happy to get his item if its international anwhere from 1 to 4 weeks. I sent from Oz to Brazil country via tracked which takes two months to get there. Every country has a different leed time. I sent to UK in 3 days in some instances, others to UK a couple of weeks.

And tracked is not absolutely a safe bet it will get there. Usually its much slower than airmail I have hada few tracked items go missing never arriving to me and investigations raised with USPS, one even seemed to be lost in the ebay GSP warehouse at Kentucky