US Postpones New Handling & Returns Policies

By Ed | October 8th, 2008 | Category: eBay US | No Comments »

eBay.com have announced a delay until the new year of the incoming Handling Time and Returns Policy requirements due this month.

Nate Etter of the Seller Experience team posted on the US Announcements Board that due to the breadth of changes eBay are asking sellers to implement, they are giving us all a reprieve on these two items until after the Christmas peak season.

His announcement (also available here in our forums – login required) doesn’t address the disparity between legislative requirements on opposite sides of the Atlantic. European sellers are still ruled by EC and/or UK law regarding Distance Selling Regulations and Sale of Goods Act, and onerous conditions that are not applied to US businesses. eBay UK has some very good help pages on the topic. However eBay’s stance on sellers listing cross-border, into different legislative frameworks, has not yet been clarified (but see Oz announcement linked below).

Asian sellers, whose countries are like the US and do not have mandatory returns legislation, are encouraged to view the US as their primary listing site in order to avoid needing complicated returns policy explanations. Whilst it is good customer service to offer conditional or unconditional returns policies and generous periods for returns notifications and action, there are simply far too many product groups where it completely impractical from a commercial operations standpoint, as well as being a path to abuse of sellers’ goodwill.

The world progressed from the Dark Ages to the Industrialised era using the principle of “Caveat Emptor”, unfortunately in the Information Age, too many buyers seem unable to understand that concept – perhaps Google should add a fixed link to it on their home page?

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