New consolidated groud service at USPS starts soon – 7/9/23.

[ChristineR]

USPS Ground Advantage will combine USPS Retail Ground^®, First-Class Package^®, and Parcel Select Ground^® services into a single, streamlined ground shipping service.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ebay/comments/14ge50q/usps_ground_advantage_rates/

Reddit discussion above.  Ebay has a brief notice but it doesn’t say what happens to existing listings and hopefully they know if estimated delivery dates should be pushed out.

Thoughts?

[ChristineR]

New today from Ebay:

Do I need to update the shipping service in my listings and business policies?

In most cases, yes. Listings with the following USPS services will need to be updated to select USPS Ground Advantage

• First-Class Package Service
• Retail Ground
• Parcel Select Ground if offered in addition to First-Class Package Service and/or Retail Ground

These changes can be applied starting July 9. We recommend that you make these updates as soon as possible in order to keep your shipping information up-to-date for buyers.

 

[Retro Treasures WV]

Oh man… I hope they create  a tool for us to identify and fix these listings.

…also I hope said tool doesn’t break all of our listings….

…and I hope the change in general doesn’t break all our listings…

 

 

 

….who am I kidding – they’re definitely going to break everything one way or another.

[Sharyn]

I have business policies set up. First class and parcel select should change to this new service. If someone has both first class and parcel select in one policy, then they will have a duplicate. eBay should automatically delete duplicates.

Is there something complicated here that I’m not understanding? Just seems like a name change to me.

[debitendcredits]

I would LOVE to understand how these changes impact cost, but so far I can find nothing that is clear.

[SellingCoolThings]

Someone on reddit crunched the numbers and did some comparisons on price here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Flipping/comments/13gwmob/usps_ground_advantage_prices_announced_effective/

 

Also honestly I would be surprised if eBay didn’t automatically roll over listings that have calculated shipping for first class/parcel to Ground Advantage. Changing them manually would be such a hassle

[Lukastreasure]

I was just looking over the USPS site and this quite jumped out at me as a major change:

• $100 insurance is included (for both outbound and return shipments), and you can purchase up to $5,000 in additional coverage against loss or damage for merchandise.

That’s a game changer in itself.  I kept looking through the post to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, but seems to be real.

[craig rex]

Just bumping this in case anyone missed it. I got a bit grumbly when I first saw the headline, but I agree with the consensus that this change doesn’t appear to mean a whole lot of anything other than a rebrand — and the $100 of included insurance is potentially a very nice perk. Though I would still recommend ShipCover for anything above $100, they are a breeze to pay out compared to USPS.

I hope I’m wrong but I expect package delivery to be somewhat slow the week of July 10th as USPS adjusts to their new system.

[ChristineR]

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2023/7/1688603393.html

I am seeing Parcel Select already updated to Consolidated Ground.  So it looks like we may have to manually edit any first class listings.    I don’t see a way to do that in bulk editing.  (I don’t use business policies but maybe I’ll bite the bullet and do that now.)

I’m looking at a 6 oz item and the Ebay estimate for consolidated ground is higher than first class by up to $3.  Ebay still has first class as an option as well.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Allegedly the price shows up correctly for your buyer if you do ground advantage for light weight items even if it doesn’t show right while you are listing.

[Steven S]

A pretty seamless transition, I didn’t have to do anything as far as updating an listings.

[Retro Treasures WV]

You still have to update every listing that has 1st class. They won’t work in 30 days and eBay has no way to fix it.

[Steven S]

I guess I just don’t understand. On the label creation page for a previous 1st class package yesterday I’m given both Ground Service and 1st class options at the same price, what happens if I don’t change anything when the 1st class option goes away, won’t the 1st Class option just drop off and the Ground Service be the only option?

[Retro Treasures WV]

You would think, but ebay has stated that you have to specifically remove the 1st class option within 30 days and replace it with ground advantage.

It is mind blowing that ebay can’t fix this behind the scenes. It seems so easy. Clearly something went really wrong during the beta test of fixing this. Remember photogate when they deleted all our photos? Or when they made it so that the dimensions you put into your shipping had to be under a certain limit or your shipping options didn’t work. I spent HOURS putting “10x8x3” on every padded flat rate listing I had and had to find them manually.

 

Anyways, I guess it’s time I got with the program and started using business policies.

[Lukastreasure]

I went in to update my policies just now and about half were already updated, while the remaining I had to change.  Weird.

[craig rex]

In case anyone hasn’t printed labels yet this week, the option for first class is still there — but when you print the label, it prints as ground advantage. I assume this will be phased out over the next month.

I’m thrilled at the included USPS insurance, which is perfect for those $50 to $100 items which are just below the threshold of being worth sending priority mail.

[JasonK]

I got busy earlier this week and didn’t have time to update my business policies right away. My sales absolutely tanked, zero sales! I normally sell around 10 items a day. Tuesday night I went in and updated the shipping on my policies from First Class and Priority Mail to the new consolidated ground and within an hour sales started happening again at the normal rate. If you have listings that still have the old First Class or Priority Mail on them you may want to fix them ASAP. I obviously can’t confirm but I suspect that listings that have not been updated are not getting placed in search.

[Sharyn]

I thought that the new ground service replaced First Class and Parcel, not Priority?

[JasonK]

Oh you are right, my mistake. I had decided that I was going to ditch priority mail and make everything consolidated ground so I guess I just had that in my head because I was getting rid of it.

[Sharyn]

I decided, based on your suggestion, to go ahead and update my business policies. Ends up that Parcel Select was automatically updated to Ground Advantage, and I did not have to do anything. I did go and update the First Class, but I can’t see how that is going to affect sales much because it is just a small percentage of my inventory.

Perhaps you got additional sales because your overall cost of shipping went down? Or, maybe it was just coincidental.

[JasonK]

It probably affected me more than some because pretty much ALL my listings were first class with just a small percentage set to retail ground or priority mail.

[Steven S]

From Bonanza this morning, they seem to have their shiitake together.

Hi Vintage_Variety_,

USPS has replaced USPS Retail Ground, Parcel Select Ground, and First-Class Package Services with the new Ground Advantage service.Bonanza has automatically updated USPS Retail Ground, Parcel Select Ground, and First-Class Package Services to Ground Advantage in seller account shipping settings. If your listings used any of those services, there is no action that you need to take to update them.

[ChristineR]

I think I might wait for 20 or so days to see if Ebay can get their shitake together and do first class.

Someone I follow on Youtube did a bulk edit and is seeing how that goes.

[Sharyn]

All this talk of mushrooms …

🙂

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