Postage, despatch and return option changes

August 14, 2008

eBay have today given advance notice of changes that sellers need to make to their listing templates by October. The intent of the changes is to give better visibility of important information to buyers and was first revealed on the Developers Blog last June.

From October eBay will highlight to buyers when they should expect to receive their item based on the sellers despatch time and the estimated delivery time of the chosen shipping option. From next year sellers will be required to enter a despatch time but I’d recommend sellers add it to their auctions by October if possible.

Hopefully this will improve the despatch time DSR if buyers have a cleared expectation of the time to receive their items but I can already see problems where the carrier takes longer than normal to deliver an item. If no transit time is specified (e.g. for “Seller’s Standard Rate”), then eBay will indicate the despatch time only.

There will also be a change to the returns section of listings. From October every seller will have to indicate if they accept returns, but the option to specify within 7, 14 or 30 days of receipt will be removed. Sellers will have to edit their returns policy on every listing to indicate how long buyers have to return an item.

Business sellers already have to offer returns for at least 14 days from the buyer receiving the item even though the law specifies 7 working days as the minimum.

It seems a backwards step that a clearly defined returns time will not be presented to buyers - they’ll now have to read through sellers returns policies to find this information.

If you want an easy method to edit your listings I highly recommend Bulk Reviser from Comsulting which enables you to edit returns and shipping information.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 11 Comments