Thank you for the reply, much appreciated. I'll wait to hear.

Well, I sent a batch of 20*30 items using BPL2 last week and none of them have any barcodes associated with them from the eBay or Etsy integrations. Maybe this has been rectified?

I would be grateful if a member of the C&D could update on whether this issue is being looked at and an expected fix date? According to the helpdesk a fix is currently being worked on, please see below exchange:

Response By E-mail (-) (09/03/2024 12.11 PM)

Good Afternoon

Thank you for your email.

Our IT team are aware of the issue and are currently working on deploying a fix. Unfortunately we do not have a timescale for resolution at the moment.

Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any further questions regarding Click and Drop, please reply to this email or you can also contact us by phone on 03456 113 425 from 08:00 – 18.00 Monday to Friday.

Regards

Customer By Service Email (-) (06/03/2024 07.55 PM)
Hi,

I have an issue where Click and Drop is generating tracking numbers for Second Class items, which are then being imported into eBay. This is causing confusion for customers and breaking the eBay tracking system. This appears to have just started happening, and only on intermittent days - 29th February and 6th March are two, but not the days inbetween that I’ve observed. Example screenshot attached.

In the first place, I just wanted to check whether this is a known issue which is being resolved, or whether it’s unique to me and I need to look into it further?

Any assistance much appreciated.

I've no issue with these codes being generated, however they need to be properly integrated with marketplaces prior to being automatically exported.

On eBay for example, the customer tracking page now doesn't show the item as dispatched after manifesting, when previously the status would be updated to dispatched. The code is also displayed as trackable, inviting customers to click on it, which of course leads to an RM website message stating it's not trackable.

Overall this had lead to a huge spike in customer complaints from eBay, who are being told their item hasn't been dispatched and cannot be tracked. Given it is now mandatory to update tracking information with the C&D eBay integration, we have had to disable the integration entirely and go back to C&D Desktop and manual order importing, with manual updating of dispatch status and tracking for tracked items. This is far from ideal.

One fix from the C&D side would appear to be to generate the codes but then not to export them automatically for non-tracked services to the marketplaces where this is causing issues.

I think this is a bad idea. I manually add a lot of non-trackable codes to items, especially overseas, for the below reasons.

Reasoning: A lot of marketplaces like Etsy cover you if you have the authorised package code [eg AA123456789GB whether trackable or not] in the event of a buyer claim for non received item. This is verifiable on postal systems as a proper format and item so they know which courier (Royal Mail) it was sent with. So I am actually in favour of this and I imagine a lot of others will be. Countless times I have had a buyer open a claim on Etsy and the non-trackable code is sufficient to allow me to keep the proceeds, and for them to be refunded.

Ebay has absolutely no coverage so it's utterly pointless there.

The other thing, with DG4 international priority (non trackable) items, even though the barcode isn't searchable on Royal Mail, about 70% of the time I find the barcode is recognised by the overeas courier (eg La Poste FR, Correos Spain, Poste Italiane, USPS America) etc when it lands in the destination country, so it's really good in that sense. Your non trackable item has a hit on the corresponding customs/importation first point of call and thereafter it's trackable, and verifiable, in a sense.