Seller takes the hit for shipping changes over weekend

[Lukastreasure]

Hi, Assume I am not the only one waking up to shipping this morning only to find that I’m paying more for shipping than my buyers who purchased Friday and Saturday. For the six packages I sold over the weekend, I’m paying more to buy the postage than my buyers when they purchased Friday and Saturday. In one case, for Fedex Smartship, I had to pay more than $4 more. Pretty bad for an item that I only sold for $14.95. Other packages cost me between 0.25 and 1.00 for Parcel Post and First Class.

I called Ebay about this and they said that it is not eBay’s responsibility because the price increase was due to USPS and independent of eBay. I disagree. eBay knew the price change was coming and could have modified the code to make sure anything shipping after 1/20 gets the new rates, regardless of when it was purchased. Can’t be the first time this has happened. Can’t imagine what this is costing big sellers, especially if they offered smart post.

Now I sit on hold, 1 hour, 33 minutes and counting, waiting for someone that can take a complaint. I’m thinking I’ve just been put in an endless queue to torment me. :-/

Cost of doing business?

Mike

[MyCottage]

Postal rates went up Sunday I think. Your buyers paid on Friday and Saturday (I gather), and I think you could have printed the labels out on Friday or Saturday at the old rate. I’m not sure ebay could know in advance that you wouldn’t print them before the rates went up?

[So Cal Joe]

I printed labels Saturday night. The increase was announced a while back, so I didn’t want to get caught in the lurch.

[Lukastreasure]

I received the notification that the rate increase was coming, but the note didn’t indicate there was anything we needed to do differently because of it. If warned, I might have acted differently. I feel they could have, at a minimum, communicated better. Better would have been to pass along the expected shipping increase to the buyer, they would have at least had the option to choose to pay or not. This way I/we are stuck.

[AdventureE]

I did not realize it until Saturday, but if you look in the Seller Hub under Selling Announcements (towards the bottom), a notice was sent out on January 3rd regarding the rate increases and what sellers need to do to accommodate the changes.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/USPS-Shipping-Rates-are-Changing-and-eBay-Has-Negotiated/ba-p/27939005

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by AdventureE.

[Lukastreasure]

I seem to be the only one caught out on this. Guess I was just naive to think that I shouldn’t have to do anything and that it would be taken care of programmatically. I read through the community post and it doesn’t mention that there is any actual action suggested for the seller. A note of caution would have been appreciated to warn new sellers that they could avoid being caught out by processing orders prior to midnight on the 20th.

Perhaps I should have posted this under the eBay suggestions instead.

[T-Satt]

Lukastreasuretrov: I know that it is a bit painful that you were on the losing side on this weekend, but the good news is that was only for those past sales, and it is corrected going forward. You can also take away that this will happen every year, and if you continue to use Calculated Shipping, you can plan to pack and print the shipping labels over that weekend ASAP to try and mitigate the loss.

[Author]

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