Ecommerce news: eBay’s Good Til Cancelled issues and late delivery rate protection ends

In this week’s news roundup eBay is experiencing problems with Good Til Cancelled listings not renewing, and they’ve also ended their protection against late delivery marks for two Royal Mail tracked services.  

eBay issue ending Good Til Cancelled listings

A number of sellers have been experiencing an eBay issue which is ending their Good Til Cancelled listings due to missing product identifiers, even when they have the necessary identifiers in the listings. Good Til Cancelled listings are fixed price listings that are automatically renewed every 30 days, until the seller cancels them - the sales history for the listings are carried forwards, which can help them to appear higher in search results.

Last week, eBay announced that it was delaying its new product identifier requirements, and the removal of the ‘Does not apply’ option. However, since 28 January, a few sellers have found that some of their Good Til Cancelled listings are not being renewed because they are missing required product identifiers. In most cases their listings already had all of the required product identifiers, or they were using the ‘Does not apply’ option, but these have been removed and their listings haven’t renewed.

An eBay employee responded to a discussion about the problem on the Business Seller Board saying that eBay is aware that listings had been ended and that it was a “confirmed technical issue and the team is looking into the root cause of it. Items that were already ended will need to be relisted (or sell as similar).” They went on to say that, “no more listings will be ended until the root cause is established and issue fixed.” Despite this, sellers have still been reporting that their listings are ending.

eBay hasn’t made a formal announcement about the issue and hasn’t offered any timeline for when it will be resolved.

Late delivery rate protection for Royal Mail tracked ending

eBay’s late delivery rate protection for Royal Mail Tracked 24 and Royal Mail Tracked 48 services will end on 1 March. Last year, eBay launched its new Seller Standards with the ‘late delivery rate’ metric, which meant if you uploaded tracking details for a delivery that showed you had dispatched the item on time or it was delivered in the estimated delivery time that it would be considered as on time.

However, the tracking information for some Royal Mail services was incomplete so eBay has been removing any late deliveries for sellers using Tracked 24 and Tracked 48 services. eBay has announced this week that they’ve worked with Royal Mail to resolve the problem and tracking information for these services is now working when used on eBay. From 1 March, sellers will no longer be protected against late deliveries if they use Royal Mail Tracked 24 and Tracked 48 - if you use these services and don’t upload the tracking information within your stated dispatch time, the transactions will be counted as late deliveries, unless the buyer confirms that they received the item on time.

Any late deliveries for these services will appear on your Seller Standards dashboard from 20 April, which is the first evaluation date after the protection ends. Royal Mail 1st Class Signed for and 2nd Class Signed For services will continue to be protected.

Read the full announcement from eBay here. 

Stripe introduces support for European payment methods

Online payment system Stripe has introduced support for five European payment methods: Bancontact, Giropay, iDeal, SEPA Direct Debit and SOFORT. To accept these payment methods you need to activate them in your Stripe Dashboard. Bancontact is the most popular payment method in Belgium, while Giropay is popular in Germany and iDeal is the Netherlands’ most popular payment system. Both SEPA Direct Debit and SOFORT are used across Europe. If you’re looking to attract international buyers to your ecommerce website then giving them the option to pay using local payment methods as well as card payments can increase conversion rates.

Find out more about Stripe’s new support for European payment methods here.

DPD Precise Deluxe

DPD will be launching a new service, DPD Precise Deluxe, on the 20 February. Last year, DPD introduced DPD Precise, which allows shoppers to pick an hour delivery slot once they’ve placed an order. DPD Precise Deluxe, will be built into a shop’s website and shoppers can pick an hour delivery slot at the point of sale, as they’re placing the order.

Find out more about DPD Precise Deluxe here.