eBay Packets

[Pompey Boy]

Just thought I'd post this in case anyone had any thoughts.

A guy came up to me the other day to complain about our service. He said hat several things that he ordered on eBay haven't arrived. The latest was something posted at Kentish Town PO on a Saurday afternoon to be delivered to Southsea, second class signed for. Guess what - the item never arrived and the sender is having to go through the compensation process to refund the guy, who in turn lost something that he really wanted.

What do people here think? I thought that posting after the Saturday collection means that packets are sitting around in the PO until Monday lunchtime. Also what route would the packet take from Kentish Town to Southsea (other than SOMC).

Thanks for any thoughts, but I really feel for customers who have this haapen to them Perhaps I'm getting sentimental in my old age after walking past POMC - other than Cashco just rotting away now

[Seymour Buts]

One of the firms I collect from told me that they sell on both ebay and amazon; they sell the exact same products and post exactly the same way (Royal Mail). The denial of recipt on amazon was less than two percent; it was over 30 percent on ebay. Now, obviously the packages ain't handled any different so it's obviously the customer that's the issue. Obviously I have no idea in your specific case because things do go missing.

On Saturday collections it depends when it was posted. There's a cut off time, so something posted second class before the cut off time should arrive either Tuesday or Wednesday. Anything posted after cut off time would not be collected till monday, so would have an expected delivery time of wednesday or thursday. Hence why they're the worst days generally.

[HTPostman]

Denial of receipt plus businesses play the game too. I used to work for a small online retailer, I wasn’t given any training but soon realised I could mark 1st class + recorded items bought over the weekend as dispatched on the Monday even though they wouldn’t actually be collected till the Tuesday. It would stop customers asking when we were posting, we’d meet eBay top seller requirements and cleared the items from our dispatch screen. Naughty I know, but if little old me with no training did it, how about the bigger retailers with all kinds of budget pressures and stressed managers.

On a related note if I ever deliver a parcel that has the post office printed label on it I always make a mental note of the date (eg posted 10th, delivered 11th). Then if the customer says “oh I’ve been waiting ages for that” I can say “you know it was only posted yesterday” and 9 times out of 10 the customer will say that the seller said they’d posted it before then.