Day: June 17, 2011

Don’t forget to ship your item! Based on the handling time you selected, your buyer is expecting you to ship this within 3 business day(s) from when you received payment.

Ensure buyer satisfaction, and protect your feedback score by following the steps below.

eBay started mentioning that a few weeks ago. Sellers can specify their intended handling time and I’ve had mine set at 2 days for as long as you could do that. I usually ship in one day but I don’t want to promise to do it.

Then I got stuck for some reason and let one slip past the two days and blip! a little note from eBay-don’t forget to ship your item.

Since I don’t like them looking over my shoulder, I changed my handling time to three days.

Along comes the Canadian postal strike. I ask a Canadian customer if I should ship their purchase into the strike, they say no, wait, let’s see what happens here.

Blip! Don’t forget to ship your item………………..

I’m not going to forget-the buyers punish that. My “stars” say I don’t forget. But now eBay is hands-on about it.

Ok, fine. If eBay monitors handling time anyway, do this-take away the distraction of making the buyers rate that star. If it goes out on time, five stars. If it doesn’t, some formula.

Nobody likes those things anyway-they’re arbitrary, without definition, and annoying to both users. Only eBay cares about them.