The Houston-area postal delays that impacted people during the Christmas shopping season have spread to other parts of the country – including Virginia and Georgia, and eBay indicated it would protect sellers who run into problems as a result.
“Across the country, residents and businesses have been reporting widespread slowdowns in mail and package delivery by the U.S. Postal Service,” NBC News reported today, April 6, 2024. It noted that the delays have become so persistent that lawmakers have urged the USPS to correct course.
eBay is keeping an eye on things, according to the eBay for Business podcast. In Tuesday’s episode, the hosts said they saw a map of delays that indicated the entire country was experiencing delays but said they were pretty sure the eBay Shipping Team was covering for the delays so that there would be no consequences.
The issue arose when the podcast hosts were discussing the dilemma of a seller whose buyer opened an Item Not Received claim and sought advice on whether it was best to refund the buyer despite eBay Customer Service advising him to “wait it out.”
In today’s article, NBC said the delays it reported on appeared to stem from the USPS overhaul “that will eventually funnel all the nation’s letters and packages through a consolidated network of 60 regional distribution centers” – part of the 10-year Delivering for America plan. But weather may be compounding matters. Colleagues advised a seller today about what to do after he experienced a spike in Item Not Received claims that he suspected stemmed from weather-related delays.
eBay generally posts announcements about specific events and how it will protect sellers from delays, such as this announcement from last month that explained how it would automatically protect seller performance.
Yea, their keeping an eye on it, won’t do anything but watch.Their reps will tell you not to worry your covered but all you get is a hassle and a defect plus lose your item and shipping.
Ebay is telling an absolute lie. I had a Buyer return an item to me which I have no problem with. The Buyer paid $4.62 for the original shipping, label purchased through Ebay. Ebay sent him a label for return and charged me $6.25. Called Ebay, talked with a CS and was told that is how much it costs for Ebay labels, basically “Too Bad”. So, no more labels through Ebay anymore, I’ll just wait for the money to get to my bank and I’ll purchase all labels through a third party vendor. Have you ever seen a company, such as Ebay, shoot themselves in the foot so much for lying? It’s a wonder they don’t have gangrene.
I have learned to file a missing mail request with USPS for any item where the tracking has gone stale for a few days. Of course that won’t work for larger sellers who, unlike a small seller like me, have too many shipments to monitor tracking.
Often after filing a missing mail request, I see the tracking start to move again after a couple days. May or may not be a coincidence, or maybe the request stirred USPS activity,
If the goal is to degrade the service level of the UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE … then the end-goal might be to get rid of it and give a DELIVERY MONOPOLY to the likes of AMAZON, UNITED PARCEL SERVICE, FedEx, or any other delivery carrier out there.
As it is, Amazon pretty much has a MONOPOLY when you consider how they operate to ADVERTISE, SELL, and DELIVER goods and services for themselves as well as sellers on their marketplace … they pretty much CONTROL all those PLATFORMS and made sure to PROFIT from each step. It reminds me of the MONOPOLY the MOVIE STUDIOS had when they also OWNED THE MOVIE THEATERS … they had TOTAL CONTROL and a MEDIA EMPIRE until the government broke it up!!!