US Postal Services announces cost cutting initiatives. How will this effect people on eBay?

14 Permanent link to USPS cuts costs; closes offices. Will you be affected? USPS cuts costs; closes offices. Will you be affected?

FEATURED POSTRichard Brewer-Hay / Monday, March 23rd, 2009

USPS cuts costs; closes offices. Will you be affected?

Last Friday, the US Postal Service (USPS) announced that it was taking “aggressive steps to cut costs” and revealed the closing of six of its 80 district offices. The six offices closing were located in Lake Mary, FL; North Reading, MA; Manchester, NH; Edison, NJ; Erie, PA, and Spokane, WA.

I was wondering how this might directly affect eBay sellers. Currently there are four feedback categories in which a buyer can leave a rating on a scale of 1-5 and two of those four categories involve shipping the item itself:

1. How quickly did the seller ship the item?
2. How reasonable were the shipping and handling charges?

The press release clearly stated that the offices to be closed “house only administrative functions and will not adversely affect customer service, mail delivery, Post Office operations or ZIP Codes.”

Having said that (and I realize I’m making a sweeping generalization here), online sellers are probably much more up to speed on news like this than the casual buyer. If the cost cutting efforts of package carriers, such as the USPS, do end up making for longer shipping times or higher priced services, it will be essential to set the expectations of the buyer in advance, because they’re used to a certain service for a certain price.

According to the press release, in the past year the Postal Service has taken very aggressive cost-cutting actions, including:

• Cutting 50 million workhours;
• Halting construction of new postal facilities;
• Negotiating an agreement with the National Association of Letter Carriers that adjusts letter carrier routes to reflect diminished volume;
• Freezing salaries of all Postal Service officers and executives;
• Instituting a nationwide hiring freeze;
• Reducing authorized staffing levels at postal headquarters and area offices by at least 15 percent;
• Selling unused and under-utilized postal facilities;
• Adjusting Post Office hours to better reflect customer use; and,
• Consolidating mail processing operations

I read through the discussion boards about packaging and shipping and, even though there are a lot of great tips and conversations happening over there, I couldn’t find a thread talking about Friday’s news. I did try and wade through a conversation thread started in 2001 “A Buyer’s Tutorial to Shipping and Handling…” but that was pretty intimidating too.

Then I spent some time on the USPS Shipping Zone on eBay.com. I had been there before of course but hadn’t really kicked the tires completely. It breaks everything down pretty succinctly: from “Listing Items” to “Buyer Support” if you’ve got a question about shipping expectations, as a buyer or a seller, you’re going to get a lot of information there. However, how many buyers are going to take the time to read through all of this information?

So, in addition to all of these tools and FAQs, if you’re a seller on eBay, how do you set expectations with a buyer to ensure – to the best of your ability at least – that the buyer will leave positive feedback in these two categories?

Cheers,
RBH
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mindelec / March 23rd, 2009 at 7:22 pm

“1. How quickly did the seller ship the item?”

so is ebay finally acknowledging that this is not what we are being graded on? after all if we truly were the usps changes would have no effect.

“2. How reasonable were the shipping and handling charges?”

well i sell books, so ebay has pretty much decided what is reasonable, which means that any increases come out of my pocket.

these are the 2 areas where DSRs fail miserably.

JJH / March 23rd, 2009 at 7:32 pm

This is like rubbing salt in a wound, even bringing up the shipping DSRs, which are THE MOST idiotic thing I have seen eBay create in my 11 years of selling. Is somebody finally realizing we are being graded (and not even objectively) on something that we have NO control over?

@Mindelec:

NO! You DON’T have to let eBay dictate to you how much shipping “must” cost on those book, and NO you DON’T have to have it come out of your pocket. Use the shipping calculator and enter the weight of the item rather than a fixed cost. Then the REAL postage cost will be charged to the buyer. Fair IS fair, and eBay is NOT fair by expecting you to take a loss on your profits.

Shop4uniquegifts / March 23rd, 2009 at 9:39 pm

Hello,

We know that it’s communication, communication, communication as a seller whether brick n mortar or online selling is paramount.

Ebay has included in the auction listing this statement:

*Sellers are not responsible for service transit time. This information is provided by the carrier and excludes weekends and holidays. Note that transit times may vary, particularly during peak periods.

I have been advising my clients to copy this and include it in their auctions description being that this message is way down the page. It doesn’t hurt to have it twice in our auction descriptions up higher so that it communicates right away what the the buyer should understand about the DSR’s shipping
category.

Being that this new update pertaining to the USPS I would also add a blurb about the closing of these six districts. Not only will this effect shipping out product but the receiving of a product as well.

Locations will be changed and this can effect transit times which is what the above statement from eBay addresses.

In addition to adding this to our auction descriptions placing something in our shipping package to remind the buyer of this would be a proactive measure to help with educating our buyers of the shipping categories we as sellers are being evaluated on.

I believe once communication is addressed then the rest will follow. Focus on educating our buyer as best as we can is all we can do when circumstances are out of our control.

tommy v / March 24th, 2009 at 4:29 am

surely affected? effected would mean everyone was being very camp, no?

Amber / March 24th, 2009 at 9:51 am

Could be a Brit vs. American thing but we use affected.

Effected can be a verb, but it’s rare.

Kerry Lynn / March 24th, 2009 at 9:51 am

I am a very small seller on eBay. I was rated poorly once by a novice buyer who did not understand the DSR system and I’m still trying to make up for it. I have all 5.0s except for the shipping time category and for this I suffer in the search ranking. We are encouraged to give free shipping which often means MEDIA MAIL however that slows down the time to get the item to the buyer and we get a lower rating. This does not make sense! The scale should be reset! eBay is putting far too much pressure on its Sellers–esp. the SMALL SELLERS! You are running us off and making eBay a commercial Seller’s only website. Why? The peons are no longer important to the big corporation?

Kerry Lynn / March 24th, 2009 at 11:21 am

Postal Strapping Guru / March 24th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

I have already seen the effect of these cuts in my home town. The hours are shorter and the staff is smaller, meaning longer wait times. I really hope there are no more cuts in the near future, as the wait times are bad enough as it is.

speckles / March 25th, 2009 at 5:20 am

To answer the question in your title:

USPS cuts costs; closes offices. Will you be affected?

Nope. The changes that have been made here, have already had what I have to believe is the desired effect on me and plenty of other sellers and it’s now trickled down to the post office (and other shipping companies for that matter).

When you combine how many people don’t sell anymore, all the new means of communication and a bad economy, the post office doesn’t stand a chance. : (

Gaz / March 25th, 2009 at 7:51 am

Amber

“Affected” and “Effected” and which of them to use, depends on the context of the active or passive voice

e.g.
Active voice = the boy kicked the ball
passive voice = the ball was kicked by the boy

When using affected and effected, the differentiation is the same -

the boy effected movement of the ball (by kicking it)
or
the ball’s movement was affected (when the boy kicked it)

The use of “effected” means something was “achieved”, whereas the use of “affected” means something was “changed”.

None of which has anything to do with selling on eBay, or the USPS, or shipping DSRs …
however, this does -
http://blogs.ebay.com.sg/gazlannathai/entry/Did-eBay-tell-the-Buyers-Despatch-or-Delivery-Tim/_W0QQidZ611003012
(apologies that it’s very long, but it details everything RBH needs to know for his opening question).

Gaz

TekGems / March 25th, 2009 at 10:11 am

Richard — It doesn’t really matter how it affects eBay sellers. eBay doesn’t navigate their business based on seller demands. I think we can have an honest discussion after CEOs stop insulating themselves and actually do some of the day-to-day work that all sellers have to do like field questions, process payments, print packing lists, box orders up, ship products out, and wait for feedback from customers.

If every eBay employee, including John Donahue, was required to buy at least one thing and sell one thing a month, we’d have a very different eBay! If John ever wants to work for me, I’ve got a packing station for him to work at! Wear tennis shoes!

Amber / March 27th, 2009 at 7:48 am

Thank you Gaz. I was aware of how to use it, but unsure if the rules differed for those across the pond.

As I stated above, effected is rarely used. I’ve only seen it in terms of ‘effected change’ or ‘effected legislation.’

As for the article, itself, I’ve fired off a few letters to Sen. Feinstein (and received replies) about this very issue. The problem with the postal service is the same as the problems with eBay. They keep charging more for increasingly poor service and wonder why they are losing market share.

It is no coincidence that the decline in the Postal Service’s profitability comes just a few short years after passage of the Postal Accountability Act. They have angered many of their long-time users by eliminating services (Bound Printed Matter and international surface mail) without providing an increase in service level. The rules make each service ‘pay for itself’ instead of looking at the entire spectrum of services offered.

Raising rates on parcels twice within 12 months is not good business. And providing NO improvement in service (in either tracking, reliability etc) is not the way to win back business or gain new customers.

The parallels are obvious to eBay’s increasingly diluted value as a sales venue, so I’ll refrain from pointing them out.

TekGems / March 27th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

Maybe Amazon is monitor this blog.

Jeff Bezos Works In Kentucky Distribution Center For A Week

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/siliconalley/big-tech/henry_blodget_jeff_bezos_works_in_kentucky_distribution_center_for_a_week_2009_3.html

C’mon Mr. John Donahue. You’re not gonna let Jeff Bezos out do you, are you? It’ll be a good growth experience for you as well. Get some perspective and it’ll help you navigate eBay better.

Wayne P. Myers / April 13th, 2009 at 8:34 am

Ever since the US Postal Service has gone private, they have reduced or eliminated servies and increased costs. I believe that this shows a failure of the privatization of government services. The US postal service should never have been allowed to be privatized and we as citizens should force the US Government to take it back and restore services and jobs. We the people should never allow cost to be the banner around privatizing government services. The US Postal Service is just that, a federal government service to the people, buy the people(not machines) and for the people.