So don’t get all pissy from the title but anything that you are being “opted into” without your permission is a FORCE FEED. Whether it is facebook opting you into groups or eBay opting you into Guaranteed delivery or those “monthly charge til cancel” contracts that you can’t rid of.
All of those things are probably NOT in your best interest.
If someone WANTS something, they will willingly seek it out and crave it. You don’t see chocolate or drugs or booze automatically opting you in. People who want it, go find it. No push is needed. eBay are so arrogant that they can’t see this. They think guaranteed delivery is so awesome, they can’t figure out why their sellers would not be jumping up and down to get it.
So today, they managed to just slide it into three of my sites — these sites were all offered the program since last September — why would I need to be force fed, I could have opted in anytime in the last 9 months. If you are a seller and you love the program, hey great, enjoy. I just am not happy with the horrible rollout and I love my customers but good customer service is a WHOLE LOT more than being cheap and fast.
One of the main reasons it makes no sense for me at this point is that on June 1st, they are going to force feed another of their stupid programs and that is free returns. I already give returns and if something is wrong, I pay return shipping — that is how it works. But now eBay want me to pay for the return shipping on mind changes and flakes. If you are not sure you want to buy something, don’t buy it and having to pay the return shipping is really fair — you are the one who was a flip flopper so it is a fair thing that you do it.
So anyway, this program will be required to get your Top Rated Plus discount which last year eBay hacked in half so it is only now 10% of final value fees. It won’t take very many returns for changed mind in a month to make the discount not worth it.
So I won’t be doing free returns and I will lose my Top Rated Plus discount which is fine. But I will also increase my handling time to 2 days instead of same day or 1 day so I can skip the daily trip to the post office and only go a few times a week rather than daily. Since I won’t go daily, I won’t be able to meet the hoop jump for guaranteed delivery so another reason to get rid of it.
If you are a seller and you LOVE the Guaranteed Delivery program, please comment because I would LOVE to hear from you and your experiences. 🙂