New Shipping Templates

Michael   I don't think you are seeing the bigger picture, what you think will work for you will not work for others,

Your thinking is way over complicating things

I am one that will be sticking to my simple Shipping Templates, my set prices average out between the 2 Carriers I use,

They also cover costs, too many options confuse some people,

My templates allow me flexibility so when needed I can use an alternative carrier with no issues, I automatically use my 2nd Carrier for Rural, and shipping for Rural on my auctions reflect that, so the rural parcels are not passed over to different carrier extending delivery times,

By Trade Me selecting the cost automatically, you are not covering your own costs that we have built into shipping,

flossy63  As I said, it's not complicated. Enter costs once, choose size when you list it, done.
It can't get much simpler than that, it just does everything automatically that we already either do manually or estimate.
It would be less work, more accurate, and simple for the buyer.

ebay etc have been doing this for decades, albeit I assume they use actual costs(maybe with a seller chosen packaging cost?), rather than what the seller chooses.

The only options available to the buyer will be what's available to them. If there's only one carrier chosen, there will be a single delivery option. Likewise trademe could offer the seller an option to only show the cheapest option.

Even though it would be more complicated(though still very easy) in trademes code, it would be dead simple for sellers & buyers.

I wasn't talking about trademe deciding the cost, only *your* entered price for the ticket/bag it will fit.

eg:

seller setup for each carrier:
dle/a5/a4/whatever bag = $(enter cost)
5kg/whatever volume = $(enter cost).

seller listing:
choose size:  .....

finished.

123kitchens  No, that's not what I'm saying.
I wasn't saying sellers would only be able to charge the cost of the courier ticket. As I said, sellers would enter their price for each size. Whatever packaging cost they want to include is up to them.
That's a part of the problem with trademe shipping(no allowance for packaging costs), albeit it can usually be included in the item cost I suppose.

It would only show the option(s) that suit the buyers address.
My point was just that if one carrier charges a rural delivery fee to their address, it would naturally show a higher cost.

Personally I find it much easier to choose costs for each size group once, rather than doing it manually(including different costs to different areas for larger items) for every item I list.

Adding ANY extra costs to the start price simply makes the item seem dearer
Using third party shipping systems such as BAC, never allow for packaging costs
Same with using NZ Post prepaid bags, because they are stamped with the delivery price, buyers often get upset when you charge anything above the price of the bag.
If TM included BAC with the ability to add packaging costs to the delivery fee, TM will add that to the total cost & apply their fee percentage to that as well, (Same as Intrade gets stuck with sale fee % covering sale AND shipping charge for fee total)

Personally, the only real way to get this right & fair, is to do your own courier charges based on what YOU get charged + packaging

Just an update on the URBAN/RURAL issue. I have now had 8 sales using the new template to RD addresses with Trade Me wording that we can't change. 4 of those have selected the correct shipping, 4 haven't. So it's 50% that get it wrong. Or 50% right depending how you view these things. I have mentioned the problem to Trade Me. I made the suggestion that they add the word URBAN in front of nationwide, or come up with some other solution. The kind of non-committal is response below;

"I've passed that on to our Tech and Content team as I can definitely see how that could be frustrating. 
Just so you know, they may not be able to start working on updating this right away, but fingers crossed we'll see it soon."

Having HALF of all your rural sales be problematic is just totally unacceptable, and it's their fault that it is happening.  I won't be changing until they get it sorted out. 

Unfortunately, some of us changed over and there ain't no going back. 

Callum, your "hit rate" has dropped from 67% to 50%, ie. error rate has gone from 33% to 50%. That's expected, rural dodgers will take full advantage of this flawed template design. Just like grumpy buyers will blame sellers for "promising" a delivery "estimates" and then the couriers deliver the parcels late (let's wait for statistics on these...haha).

The rural/urban field can be separated into a radio button (mockup view below), but that's going to be a DB/UI/backend change, probably something too complicated by Trade Me's standard...haha

I have just attempted a standard auction in MP and it is only giving me template options. All my relists this week have gone to the template option and taken out combined shipping option, and the options I had available to send multiple dvds like 1-4 dvds, 5-9 dvds etc.( the majority of my listings). No wonder my sales are down. No one wants to way $4.10 shipping for every dvd I sell.

I was of the understanding that this was for buynow only auctions. Yet it has done a blanket template option for all my listings. Not happy.

Kathryn  So are you saying if we have our auctions set up, in My Products with our own shipping templates, (Not Buy Now),

but normal auctions, when we list them Trade Me is going to override our shipping templates we have set up?,

as I will be starting to list again today, but may have to re-valuate the situation before I go ahead,

Can any one clarify this please?,

If you want to use your own wording do not click on Use Shipping Template as that is what TM have taken over. Select Specify Shipping Cost and set up your own wording in that. Hope it helps.

Flossy. There is an option apparently, that allows you to opt out ( a box appears on screen) and you can revert back to the old. However, I'm not able to click this link because the whole box doesn't appear on my screen. What I have reverted to doing this morning is writing up new listings on MP using the shipping options provided ( not by choice) and I don't upload, but save and deactivate. I then go back into MP and choose the products I have just written and do a bulk shipping edit using "specify shipping". I list mostly dvds so they are all the same. But through specify shipping bulk edit I can type in 1-4 dvds, 4-8 dvds etc like I used to. I just can't do it as I write up each individual auction. When I am writing it up, the only option that comes up is the new template. Which is stupid because my auctions are straight forward, I don't use buynow only on dvds.

I spoke to someone in chat at length, and this was the only solution I could come up with in the meantime. I also had to go through pages of MP and do a bulk shipping edit on all my dvds.

Kathryn  Hi, if you read the whole thread and I know about about the box, and said weeks ago I will not go there, but way you have written it sounds like they are going to override the shipping we have in old templates?,

but now you say you have clicked it and it is overriding other auctions now,

Robyn  Yes way back in the thread I made comment I will be not ticking it, But Kathryn has clarified she did tick it and now it is overriding her non Buy Now auctions,

ok I am all good here then, I will carry on, they can stick there new template, I will not be using it at after following this thread,

I will stick to my own templates, which suit my items and way I sell,

I haven't clicked any box that appears on the screen to give me options. It doesn't appear for me for whatever reason. What I am saying is that I am going into MP, writing up new auctions and using the specify shipping costs. It doesn't save this for the next auction. So I am doing a bulk shipping edit once I have finished writing up new auctions. Sorry if this doesn't make sense. I literally haven't been putting up new auctions for nearly a month and have only just found out all his in the last couple of days.

I am not at all tech savvy and doing what is easiest for me at this stage just so I can get new listings up.

I think the buyers will love the extra option when searching. Especially because the number of listings on Trademe has increased, so it is harder to find what you want.

Sandra.
Without sellers, theres nothing to buy
The entire upgrade cycle has been an abomination from the start.
The workload for sellers has increase around FOUR TIMES more for doing exactly the same auctions, then before this "upgrade"

The moment the parcel leaves the sellers place, the entire delivery timeline is up to the specific courier driver & company (Covid restrictions on a global scale has been a nightmare)
Theres no way possible a seller can be held responsible for slow delivery, simply because the seller doesn't have the parcel & yet .. .. ... . TM is trying to nail down sellers to specific delivery times that sellers have NO control over once it's picked up.

Couldn't agree with you more David. As you wisely point out, without one the other cannot exist.

With the new shipping template, I couldn't work out how you add an RD option. Is this not possible anymore? 

I'm continuing to use the template I have in My Products, but I see I'm being disadvantaged by not using the new template, even though I'm not a professional seller. I'm helping my family find new homes for their bits & pieces!

Hi Heather. Yes you can add a Rural option. Have a read through all the posts. You might not have realised there are three pages of them. You can see some screenshots etc. Basically when you set your template up there is the wording "nationwide" or "nationwide rural"

It has been a bit of a problem that some rural buyers are seeing the "nationwide" and selecting that without reading further. Technically they are probably correct and "Nationwide" should cover them. Trade Me are aware of the issue and "working on it" But they told me not to expect a solution anytime soon.

"

Sorry if this question has been asked but are Australian buyers still a thing?

There is no "Australia" in the destination field. Therefore I can't specify costs/carrier options to Australia.

Yes, Australian buyers are still here, but you can't send using Book a Courier.

See this thread for info.

Shipping to Australia? – Help - Trade Me

Gary I'm sorry but I'm the answer provided is completely unrelated. I just want the Australian purchaser to select the right option when using the new templates.

Perhaps I'm missing something simple. I have setup the regular CourierPost options we provide, that's fine. We also provide a letter option on low cost items.. We setup our Letter option to Generic Economy (4-7 Days), put a price of $1.70 and set the destination as Nationwide, using our integrator we define that the item must be under 10g and $100 for letter to be applicable. If we then have a letter option to Australia I have to add another Generic Economy (7-14 Days) option for 3.20. Except now there are two Generic Economy options with no destination option to specify Australia as the destination. So how is there any discernable difference between the two?

Another example. Lets say we offer a tracked airmail service to Australia. We set Generic Economy 7-14 Days, Destination is Nationwide (only available location) and list a price of $8. This is now $1 cheaper than our CourierPost Rural option. How do we prevent rural buyers taking that cheaper option because it's presented to them?

If we completely forget Australian buyers, sure the current options work ok.

At the very least Trademe need to add Australia as a destination. These options then need to appear below NZ options (but ideally above the combine option) in the list as not to confuse people.

I would also appreciate if they added a Letter option under NZ Post. I see on the Shipping Templates FAQ page they are steering away from untracked options. Ideally the option should still be there though.

I have setup a test listing with the new templates and see that I can still edit the listing to add free text shipping options. I can in the meantime make a note for Australia buyers to ask a question for a shipping option to be added. 

Pretty sure you can't have an Australian delivery option in the new templates, so you'd need to make up your own workaround templates and maybe add explanation in the auction text. Any Australian buyers I get, ask delivery cost before buying and I set up a new listing for them with delivery included and notes in the auction text. Not an automatic system at all, but it works, for me.

Yes this was the conclusion I have come to. It's a bit silly making it a fixed template with the ability to go off and edit the listing anyway. I foresee Callum's problem of an increase in rural dodgers if nothing other than our own text was much clearer than Trademe's templates. I guess Trademe will hard set shipping options against the buyers provided address in the future to combat that.

Rural Postage Option:

Just gotta have another moan with this new template. Have slowly been changing some of my stock over but once again I get customers who are rural and they go select Nationwide (cheaper option). They DO NOT read any further with selecting the Rural choice, all they see is Nationwide. One customer did one buy on day 1 selected Rural from MY own shipping choices, the next day did another order of multiple buys and what a surprise out of all the choices she selected the Nationwide Express cheaper option and ijnored the Rural Option.

Trade ME could you at the very least change the order of the boxes in the template so it shows Cost, Carrier, Product then Destination. At least that would make them read the options properly or even better Box 1 Cost, Box 2 Product, Box 3 Carrier, Box 4 Destination.

There has got to be some way around this problem. Most customers just DONT read instructions. 

Please trade me make this simple change and some of us may be a lot happier. We hate chasing up customers for the correct postage.

Robyn I haven't moved to the new templates cos I hate them. Just thinking about the issue you are having, can you put those more expensive choices on top in the template? So the rural ones get displayed on top, the non rural buyers would probably keep on reading for the cheaper options below. i.e. in your template, the options go from the most expensive on top and least expensive at the bottom of the list. Do they get displayed in the order you define them in the template?

That is what I have done (rural options first) along with additional details in listings, pushing my updated listings through in a few minutes. It will be interesting to see if having rural options first also puts off urban buyers.

I'm also interested to see how the listings rank given listings with the new templates are supposed to get a boost.