eBay Selling Success: How Long Do eBay Sellers Have to Ship?

Mastering eBay selling and becoming a Top-Rated seller means knowing the ins and outs of eBay's policies – customer service policies, feedback policies, listing policies, and of course shipping policies. All successful eBay Stores have several things in common: they publish quality listings, they provide their customers with great service, and they ship their items out on time. If you're an eBay seller, knowing how long you have to ship out an order is an important part of your selling strategy, and adhering to your shipping commitments will pay back dividends in Top-Rated Seller status, better seller protections, and better buyer feedback. Ready to learn everything you need to know about shipping times on eBay? Keep reading to learn about eBay's shipping time requirements, discover the difference between handling time and shipping time, find out how to set up shipping and handling times for your eBay Store, and learn the best ways to handle late shipments to avoid negative feedback.

Understanding eBay's Handling Time Requirements

While eBay is a marketplace comprised exclusively of independent sellers with their own eBay Stores and policies, there are certain requirements that sellers on the platform must adhere to in order to continue to list and sell on eBay. Sellers who do not abide by eBay's rules can expect to have their seller ratings plummet, their accounts temporarily suspended, or even permanently banned from selling on eBay. Below, we'll discuss eBay's shipping time standards as a whole, and understand how your shipping times – in policy and in practice – affect your rating as an eBay seller.

eBay's Handling Time Standards: How Long do Sellers Have to Ship?

eBay's marketplace-wide shipping maximum for all sellers is 30 days from the date of purchase. This maximum applies to both auction and fixed-price listings and is the longest number of times sellers can take to pack and ship any item sold on eBay. In other words, this is the maximum handling time you can have on any listing on eBay, no matter what you're selling or what selling format you're using. The only exceptions to this rule are Real Estate, Classified, and Special Services Ad categories, as well as all motor vehicle categories, which do not require a handling time.

This 30-day maximum, however, is the longest you can take to ship out buyer orders, not the ideal time frame for dispatching orders. In fact, eBay actively incentivizes sellers to send out orders faster with better seller protections and higher seller rankings for sellers who have short-handling times.

How Handling Time Affects Your Seller Rating

The number of days you require to handle your orders has a direct effect on your seller rating; as a general rule, the faster you ship, the higher your seller rating will be. Seller rating depends on many things, of course, but committing and adhering to a shorter handling time is a major component of achieving – and maintaining – a high seller rating. For example, sellers who offer same or one-day shipping (plus 30-day returns) become eligible for attaining Top Rated Plus seller status, and transactions with same-day or one-day shipping will automatically receive a5-star DSR for shipping.

On the other hand, while consistently failing to meet your listings' handling times won't result in an outright account ban on its own, it will quickly tank your seller ranking and inevitably result in poor feedback, cases opened against you, and low DSR scores.

eBay Handling Time vs. Shipping Time

Understanding how long eBay sellers have to ship is just one part of a successful order fulfilment strategy on eBay. The second aspect, of course, is how fast your actual shipping times are – that is, how fast is the shipping service you'll use to fulfill your orders – and how quickly orders will reach your buyers once they've been dispatched. Below, we'll examine the difference between handling time and shipping time on eBay, and learn the best strategies for planning, managing, updating handling time for your eBay listings.

What is eBay Handling Time?

• Every item listed for sale on eBay must have what's known on the platform as a handling time, or a pre-set time frame in which the seller commits to ship the item. Essentially, this is how long an eBay seller has to ship the item from the moment they receive cleared payment from their buyer.
• Handling time applies to both auction and Buy-it-Now type listings and can be defined as a given number of business days (i.e. excluding weekends and holidays) or as a number of calendar days.

What is eBay Shipping Time?

After you've packed and processed your order, you'll drop it off either at the post office or with a courier of your choice and purchase a shipping service with which to send the order to your customer. The shipping service you choose will be priced based on a variety of factors, among them the shipping speed. This is your shipping time, and you'll need to let your customers (and eBay) know what shipping speed you'll be using to ship orders out on each item listing. You can offer multiple shipping speeds for an item, and buyers will be able to select different shipping time sat varying rates you define when creating your listing. When a buyer goes to purchase an item from your listing, their estimated delivery date will be calculated as the sum of the longest handling time plus the longest shipping time you defined for that item.

How to Manage and Update Your Handling and Shipping Times

Handling times are per-listing settings, which means you'll need to input them for each item you list on eBay. Before you set your handling times, it's important to ensure that they are both realistic and accurate; if you can't consistently meet your handling times, you'll receive late shipment metrics, low DSRs, and inevitable negative feedback, which will only hurt your eBay account's health in the long run.

After determining how long it will take you to process orders for shipment, it's time to define your handling times. You'll do this any time you create a listing, since you cannot upload a listing without a specified handling time, and you'll also be able to go back and edit the handling time for multi-quantity listings if you feel like you need a bit longer to process orders.

To do this, simply

• log into your eBay account,
• navigate to your Seller Hub,
• and click the "Listings" tab.
• Then, click into the listing you want to update,
• click on "Edit Fields,"
• then scroll down to handling time
• and select the new handling time you want for that particular listing.

Shipping times, on the other hand, are part of your business policies, which are essentially templates that you use to define shipping speed, rates, and availability based on the buyer's shipping location. Every time you create a listing, you'll need to match it one of your pre-set shipping policies. You can go back and edit this in a similar way to handling time by making edits to individual listings.

If you've been selling on eBay for any amount of time, you already know how tedious it is to update individual listings manually, especially when you sell a large volume of items. This is why many eBay sellers opt to use a smart listing tool like 3Dsellers to create, update, and manage their eBay listings in bulk, including updating their listings' handling and shipping times.

How to Set Up eBay Shipping Times with eBay Business Policies

As discussed above, handling time determines how long an eBay seller has to ship an item sold on eBay once they've received cleared payment from their buyer. In addition to handling time, which must be defined for each listing, eBay also requires sellers to provide an estimated shipping time to their buyers on the listing.

This is the time an item is expected to be in transit on its way to the buyer, based on factors like shipping service used and the buyer's shipping address. Rather than having sellers input all possible shipping options for an item on each listing, eBay has separated shipping details (including shipping times) into pre-defined templates known as shipping policies, which themselves fall under the broader definition of a seller's eBay Business Policies. Below, we'll examine what eBay Business Policies are, understand how to define them in your eBay account, learn how to opt-in to eBay's default business policies

What are eBay Business Policies?

eBay Business Policies are a simplified and optional method of adding returns, payment, and shipping policies to your listings in bulk. They are, simply put, templates that you define yourself for what your policies are for payment, returns, and shipping. You can define multiple policies for each one (i.e. multiple shipping policies, payment policies, and return policies), and when you create a listing, will be able to associate it with one of each type of policy. This way, you won't need to add each policy manually to every listing.

When it comes to shipping policies, this is particularly useful. Shipping policies are multi-faceted and depend heavily on details about available shipping services that are based on the buyer's shipping location. For example, you will need to define different shipping terms for domestic and international shipments and may want to offer expedited and standard domestic shipping options to your buyers. With shipping policies, you define a unique shipping policy for each type of item you sell and associate the applicable policy with each listing you create.

How to Opt-In to eBay Business Policies

eBay Listing Polices are designed to make listing more efficient, but if you prefer, you can choose to add returns, payment, and shipping policies into each listing individually. If you wish to make use of eBay Business Policies, you can opt-in by

• logging into your eBay account,
• navigating to Seller Hub,
• and clicking on the "Listings" tab.
• Then, in the left-hand navigation pane, scroll down to "SETTINGS"
• and click on "Business Policies."

• Go directly to the Business Policies Dashboard [US↗] [UK↗] [CA↗] [AU↗]

When you create your first business policy – whether it's a shipping, payment, or return policy – and assign it to a listing or set is as a default policy, you'll be opted into eBay Business Policies. If you decide that eBay Business Policies aren't the right choice for you, simply opt out by clicking on "Opt-Out" at the top right corner of the Business Policies page. Opting out won't affect your live listings, it will only affect new listings you'll create in the future.

How to Set Your Business Policies for Shipping

To set your business policies for shipping on eBay, you'll need to begin by creating at least one shipping business policy in your eBay account. To do this, log into your eBay account and go to your Seller Hub. There, click on the "Listings" tab, and scroll down to the "SETTINGS" section in the left-hand navigation pane. There, click on "Business Policies." At the top, you can create a new shipping policy by clicking on "Create policy," then selecting "Shipping."

Now, you can define the details of the shipping policy. You'll be able to give your policy a name so you can differentiate it from your other eBay Business Policies, input a description of your policy to help you see policy's details at a glance, set the policy as a default for all your listings, define domestic and international shipping options, exclude certain shipping locations, and more.

Tips for Meeting eBay's Shipping Time Requirements

Setting and meeting competitive yet realistic shipping and handling times is essential to achieving and maintaining a good seller rating. Ensuring that you consistently meet your shipping and handling commitments is also essential to achieving buyer satisfaction. In this section, we'll review how to choose and define the best shipping method and carrier, how to optimize your handling time for better buyer engagement, how to define different shipping times based on buyer location and discuss using the eBay International Shipping Program to offer shipping to buyers abroad.

Setup the Right Shipping Method and Carrier

When you create your shipping policies, you'll need to input the shipping method and carrier you will be using. It's important to be truthful here – you can't say you'll use USPS 2nd-Day Air, a 1-2 business day shipping service, and use USPS Ground, a 1-5 business day service, to post your items in practice. You'll need to consider a few factors when selecting your shipping methods: item weight, how big of a package you'll need to ship it, whether it requires any specialty shipping services (e.g. items with lithium batteries), and more. In our experience, using eBay Calculated Shipping in your shipping policies is the best way to ensure that shipping costs won't bite into your profits if you don't offer free shipping. Used in conjunction with eBay Labels, it's an ideal solution for handling shipping and order fulfilment on eBay for most sellers. In fact, eBay will soon begin defaulting to discounted eBay Labels rates on listings that use Calculated Shipping, which gives you even more reason to use both services to fulfil your eBay orders.

Optimize Your Handling Time

If there's one rule of thumb for handling time, it's to set the shortest handling time that you can consistently meet. While a short handling time is a good way to attract buyers, frequent late shipments are not worth saving that extra safety day tacked onto your handling time. That said, your handling time still needs to be competitive, and it's important to see what your competitors are doing in order to know what to aim for in terms of handling time. The general consensus is that a good, competitive handling time is no more than 2 business days, but that may not be realistic for your situation. In short, your handling time should strike a balance between what customers expect, what eBay encourages, and what you can realistically commit to in the long-term.

Setup Different Shipping Times for Different Locations

Not all shipping destinations are created equal; some are more remote and take longer to reach, some have higher shipping rates, and some you may not want to ship to at all. Differentiate between different types of locations – and exclude difficult shipping locations– by defining a variety of shipping policies you can use when creating your listings. You may have a certain shipping method and time frame for domestic shipping on orders to the contiguous US but use a different shipping method for orders to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico; you may offer free domestic shipping, but charge a flat fee for shipping to Mexico and Canada. If you offer more than just domestic, you will need to ensure that your shipping policies reflect the reality of shipping to these locations. Use eBay's International Shipping Program.

Use eBay's International Shipping Program

Selling internationally is an easy way to instantly grow your pool of potential buyers and multiply your sales potential. Many eBay sellers are wary of offering international shipping, however, because shipping internationally comes with higher shipping and insurance costs, longer delivery times, and customs clearance costs and delays. To help sellers on its platform sell internationally, eBay launched the International Shipping Program (which is gradually replacing the very similar Global Shipping Program). Through the program, sellers ship items locally to an eBay depot, and eBay handles the international shipping to the buyer on their behalf.

When you use the program to fulfil international orders, you're not responsible for the order's shipping time to the buyer. Instead, you'll to send the sold item to an eBay depot where it's given an international label and applicable paperwork by eBay and shipped to your buyer from the eBay depot. You'll be paid as soon as the item is received and inspected by the depot, and in the event of a return, eBay process everything from the return request to the refund; you keep your funds for the sale, regardless of what happens with the order after it's delivered to eBay.

Handling Late Shipments and Avoiding Negative Feedback

Even if you do everything right – set up a realistic handling time, ship on time, and use a reliable carrier – you'll inevitably find yourself dealing with late shipments sooner or later. And while they're not good for your sales, your eBay account's health, or buyer satisfaction when they happen, there are ways to mitigate the damage. In this section, we'll discuss the best ways to handle late shipments in order to preempt the potential fallout from a late shipment: negative feedback, poor DSR scores, and potential cases opened against you for the late order.

What to Do if You Can't Meet Your Shipping Time

If you find yourself consistently failing to meet your shipping times, you'll need to see where you're falling short so you can rectify the situation as soon as possible. Begin by trouble shooting your fulfilment process to see where the delays are – are you losing a business day by not starting your processing on the day the order comes in? Are weekends being taken into account as handling days when you don't work on weekends? If the reason for your late shipments is a technical issue like these, it should be easy to remedy; use an eBay order management platform like 3Dsellers to stay on top of incoming orders and change your handling time settings to exclude weekends.

If you ultimately discover that the problem is that you simply can't meet your handling and shipping time commitments, it's time reevaluate and update your shipping policies and handling times to ensure they line up with what you can realistically commit to. Remember, it's always better to have a longer handling time that's less attractive to buyers instead of a short handling time that you're unable to meet.

How to Handle Late Shipments

Even with the most optimal shipping and handling times, late shipments still happen. The best way to deal with them when they do is by knowing when they're about to happen and preempting any possible fallout by reaching out to your buyer beforehand. To do this, we recommend using a shipment tracking tool like 3Dsellers' eBay Shipping Tracker, a fully automated shipment monitoring solution that tracks your shipments and can even message your buyers to notify them about everything from customs delays to failed delivery attempts. This way, you can avoid angry buyers who've missed their deliveries or have a parcel waiting in customs, and work with the buyer to solve the problem with them before it spirals into a resolution case or negative feedback.

How to Avoid Negative Feedback

Knowing when an order is expected to arrive late is half the battle; the other half is notifying your buyer and providing stellar customer service, so they don't end up wanting to leave you negative feedback. In our experience, issuing a small discount on the order before reaching out shows that you're interested in working with the buyer to solve the problem, and are aware of the inconvenience caused by the delayed shipment. If the shipment delay is not your fault, make a mention of it in the email while still taking responsibility. In the majority of cases, a gesture of goodwill like this will be more than enough to turn a late shipment order into one that results in positive feedback.  

Additional Resources
For more detailed guidance on managing your eBay listings, handling shipping issues, and optimizing your selling strategies, consider exploring these resources from 3Dsellers and eBay:

• Automate eBay Listing Tool
• eBay Business Policies Management
• eBay Global Shipping Program
• eBay Calculated Shipping Costs
• Printing Shipping Labels

By utilizing these tools and resources, you can streamline your eBay selling process, improve your shipping times, and maintain high seller ratings, ultimately leading to greater success and satisfaction as an eBay seller.