Honestly your "They are not that bad"
I have asked you kindly to stop misquoting me. I don’t understand this tone and find it unnecessary and largely not in fact related to anything I wrote.
People come here to share information; it’s not just about complaints. I want to use VC, because it’s useful to me. I want the best information I can get, and I share my own experience in that spirit. Global condemnation when there are obviously problems but when on balance there’s a large amount that works well is pointless. Some of your points are inaccurate, and others I’ve raised myself anyway. Let’s just raise issues when they occur and stay objective.
In this case I thought you might want to know what I can see in the app because I know you don’t like to use it, so I had information for you that was relevant to your problem that you would not be able to see on the website, on whichever device you access it. When I said “desktop site” I really just meant “website” as opposed to app. Perhaps that was not accurate enough. Anyway, I had already checked out how far visibility might be reduced when I noticed the problem myself and found that all means other than my
website profile page of seeing my new items were working as normal (website listings, filters and searches; everywhere on the app), so I have let you know, because you posted, and also intended it to report what I’d found to anyone else here who’d noticed the issue. It was useful that you posted the email they sent saying they were aware of the fault and were going to fix it as it saves me and others chasing it up.
You may not use the app yourself but of course you still have a profile page there and your customers or followers will see it; many of them will be using the app. I haven’t suggested in what I wrote that you or anyone else should use the app - it’s a personal choice - and I’m not trying to persuade you of anything, just offering facts I have found.
I can’t really be responsible for your misreading of objective facts I share nor your misreading of my intentions or point of view. You are free to disregard my posts; other VC users might find them useful.
News from me: just lost my expert seller status due to (forced) shipping with Collissimo which took 2 weeks (christmas, new year etc) to arrive. I'm in a second round of escalations but lost cause. Fingers crossed- only 2 things to sell and done. Not buying anything this year. Already found a nice place in Poland to sell coveted items but some (eg. special edition sac de jour) wouldn't sell there, market not yet ready for no-logo items.
With regard to Nikka’s issue, which you refer to, it was one I raised as a problem regarding Post Office/Parcelforce tracking in this thread myself some months previously to her post, and it’s really annoying Nikka lost her badge because of it.
I’d like to point out that it is not actually relevant to the issue of losing her badge that Nikka’s shipment took two weeks to reach VC: it’s only the time taken till the tracking starts that matters.
As long as the tracking starts within the first 5 days after sale then you’re covered. Our seller badges aren’t dependent on the total time the shipment takes to reach VC. Many of my sales take longer than 5 days or even than 7 days to reach VC depending on holidays and they are still registered as shipped in time because tracking started within 5 days.
There will be a few times during the year when there are long weekends with Bank Holidays which can prevent the tracking showing up for a maximum of 5 days after shipping. At Easter when we have Good Friday and Easter Monday, and given that there is often no Parcelforce collection from sub-Post Offices on Saturdays, and if you miss collection the day you drop off, there is the potential for a shipment taken to the Post Office on a Thursday to miss collection and not be collected until the Tuesday, which should actually just be within the 5 days required for a seller to retain their badge, but potentially is just one day outside it, or potentially two days if you don’t ship on the day of sale, if the days themselves are counted rather than the time elapsed. When there is only one Bank Holiday over a long weekend it should be possible to get the tracking showing up within 5 days of sale. Over Christmas it could be an issue depending on which days of the week Christmas and Boxing Day fall.
I’ve found meantime it’s possible to get round the problem by taking the shipment to a main Post Office or a Parcelforce dept where the tracking shows either immediately or much quicker. Not necessarily convenient, but possible. VC needs to sort out what to do with the way Parcelforce and Post Offices operate.
Also, it’s worth noting that it actually takes 80% of items sold in the last 4 months to be sent in the 5 day period for you to retain your trusted badge, or 90% for expert, not 100% shipped within 5 days. So unless you’ve sold fewer than 4 items within the last 4 months, one item ‘shipped late’ (even though it wasn’t really) in the period will not lose you your trusted badge. You could drop down from expert to trusted if you haven’t sold at least 9 items previously within the last 4 months, but once you’ve hit that mark, one item ‘shipped late’ because of the Parcelforce anomaly will not lose you your expert badge. So mainly this is a problem when it occurs at those times of the year it does for those of us who have the badges but have only made the minimum number of sales required for the trusted badge in the past 4 months or fewer than 9 previous sales in the last 4 months for expert. It’s not ideal and it really needs tweaking, as I noticed before, and especially now that sellers are given only 7 days to ship (which you and I and others both wanted). They clearly haven’t optimised it for the new set up yet as the system is not taking into account the peculiarities of Post Office/Parcelforce shipping when sub-Post Offices are used.
So the impact is limited but is real in certain situations. An alternative we can use when we know the Parcelforce issue is going to impact our badges regardless of the points above is to cancel the sale within 5 days which doesn’t carry a penalty to the badge. Also we can put our accounts on holiday for a day or two until we know that we will be able to get the tracking starting within the 5 days. Obviously these two workarounds are far from ideal but might be preferable to losing the badge for some people if they can’t get to a main Post Office or Parcelforce depot, until such time that VC accommodates the anomalies of the Parcelforce system.
The fact that we no longer lose badges for cancelling a sale as long as it’s within 5 days is a useful new tool for when we have an unforeseen problem with the item, so although I don’t want to use it, I’m quite glad it’s there.
Edited to correct figures.
