So in my post about the Half.com changes yesterday, you’ll notice that I was suspiciously quiet on the fact that they aren’t just requiring that sellers use some kind of tracking, they are also enforcing a no less than 3 day handling time. I didn’t say anything about this because this deserves a post all its own.
Let’s look at some key phrases from yesterday’s update. The ones I really want you to look at are bolded:
1. To improve trust, safety, and user experience on the site, beginning July 12, 2010, sellers who offer expedited shipping will need to enter tracking information into the Half.com website for all expedited orders within 3 business days of making a sale.
Please note: The policy change outlined above only impacts orders where the buyer has paid for expedited shipping. Sales with standard shipping will not be affected by this policy change.
(…)
3. If tracking is not uploaded within 3 business days, expedited shipping will be disabled on the seller’s account and will not be available as a shipping option on the seller’s current and future listings.
4. In order to re-enable expedited shipping, sellers must upload tracking for all outstanding expedited orders within 3 business days after the expedited shipping option was disabled; otherwise, expedited shipping will be permanently disabled on the seller’s account until the seller contacts Half.com Customer Support to review and approve re-enabling expedited shipping.
So, in plain English, you only have three days from the sale of an expedited item to prepare the package for shipment (though I suppose you could delay before putting it in the mail). Now, like me, you are probably saying, “Well, yeah. What’s the point of expedited shipping if you take more than 3 days to mail it out?” I am totally with you on that. There is no point to offering expedited shipping if you are going to sit on the item and not mail it out and I like their “No expedited option for you!” method of taking it away from you if you aren’t performing.
But I still want to talk about this in a more of a big picture kind of way. After all, Half.com is still eBay’s weird cousin. Anything they do in one place is fair game for the other.
eBay has really pushed for sellers to ship items faster in this DSR world where buyers get to rate how fast items go out. Right now, they are weeding out the slow shippers through feedback. If you take too long to ship, you get low stars and suffer that way. But if they really want to be like Amazon and give buyers a consistent ship time estimate, it isn’t a stretch to see them setting an minimum handling time. Maybe it won’t be a site-wide requirement but it wouldn’t be a stretch for them to add it to Top Rated or some other performance level.
Right now, Get It Fast is on something of the honor system. I can say I have a 1-day handling time and offer Express and eBay marks my item as Get It Fast, giving me some additional exposure. But there is nothing to double check me on that. I could say I ship in 1 day and actually ship in 4 days, how would eBay know other than with bad feedback? With the Half.com system, they are very literally saying that if you don’t have a label tracking number to give us within 3 days of the sale, you lose that expedited advantage.
Might eBay, in the foreseeable future, start calling us on our handling times in the same way? If I don’t give them a tracking number in 24 hours from the sale, will I lose my ability to specify listings with Get It Fast? Instead of something we specify manually, maybe Get It Fast could become an average based on how soon after sale we post a tracking number of the item?
It may sound like a far fetched conspiracy theory but isn’t that essentially what they are doing with this Half.com update? Why is it a stretch to say it could happen on eBay?
Now, in an ideal world, this automatically calculated handling time would replace the shipping time DSR and then I would actually be all for it. How great would it be to actually have a notice of how fast we ship based on real numbers instead of an arbitrary rating on a stupid system given by buyers who think they are rating shipping time? But we surely do not live in an ideal world.
Of course, there are several things I don’t love about this and, after all, this is all based on pure speculation and hysteria. But this Half.com update does set an interesting precedent.
So what do you think? Is the handling time DSR rating enough to regulate handling time or might eBay start a stricter requirement in the future?
And if they did, is that a bad thing?
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Personally I'd prefer real data to the DSRs but I can see some pitfalls.
From my understanding, when eBay suspends an account or PayPal limits an account they expect you to continue fulfilling your orders yet don't let you access your orders. No access to your orders means you can't upload the tracking info. No tracking info would mean a strike against your account.
I came very close to the above situation myself a few years ago during the apex of my eBay business. I received an order from someone in Russia and PayPal decided at that moment that there was enough of a chance that I was running some sort of scam that they needed to shut me down for an indefinite number of days. One of the requirements to lift the restriction was to provide tracking info for that package they wouldn't let me ship (limited accounts can't use PayPal shipping for labels). My customer in Russia was understanding but said I had one week to ship the item or they'd file a chargeback and leave negative feedback. I'm guessing the negative would have triggered an avalanche of negatives and chargebacks from my other foreign customers still waiting on their packages. USPS Click N' Ship refused to let me print for their address. Endicia and Stamps.com wouldn't either. Only PayPal's shipping labels seemed to work (probably a glitch). My only option was to either take off from work and walk two miles (each way) to the nearest PO or hope PayPal came to its senses.
Knowing eBay they'd probably also have some glitch that affects a small number of users preventing them from uploading the information.
Most USPS labels I print just say the info was submitted to the USPS. It usually doesn't say when the item was shipped. This is rare for Express but has happened even with that.
Finally if eBay does have hard data like this and a buyer says something completely contradictory in their feedback it may weaken eBay's protection from a resulting lawsuit. Grace v eBay declared “We conclude that section 230 provides no immunity against liability for a distributor of information who knew or had reason to know that the information was defamatory.”
Personally I’d prefer real data to the DSRs but I can see some pitfalls.nnFrom my understanding, when eBay suspends an account or PayPal limits an account they expect you to continue fulfilling your orders yet don’t let you access your orders. No access to your orders means you can’t upload the tracking info. No tracking info would mean a strike against your account.nnI came very close to the above situation myself a few years ago during the apex of my eBay business. I received an order from someone in Russia and PayPal decided at that moment that there was enough of a chance that I was running some sort of scam that they needed to shut me down for an indefinite number of days. One of the requirements to lift the restriction was to provide tracking info for that package they wouldn’t let me ship (limited accounts can’t use PayPal shipping for labels). My customer in Russia was understanding but said I had one week to ship the item or they’d file a chargeback and leave negative feedback. I’m guessing the negative would have triggered an avalanche of negatives and chargebacks from my other foreign customers still waiting on their packages. USPS Click N’ Ship refused to let me print for their address. Endicia and Stamps.com wouldn’t either. Only PayPal’s shipping labels seemed to work (probably a glitch). My only option was to either take off from work and walk two miles (each way) to the nearest PO or hope PayPal came to its senses.nnKnowing eBay they’d probably also have some glitch that affects a small number of users preventing them from uploading the information.nnMost USPS labels I print just say the info was submitted to the USPS. It usually doesn’t say when the item was shipped. This is rare for Express but has happened even with that.nnFinally if eBay does have hard data like this and a buyer says something completely contradictory in their feedback it may weaken eBay’s protection from a resulting lawsuit. Grace v eBay declared “We conclude that section 230 provides no immunity against liability for a distributor of information who knew or had reason to know that the information was defamatory.”