eBay
eBay handling time and the dispatch clock you cannot see
Unlike Amazon and TikTok, eBay does not hand you a deadline. It hands you a policy you configured, and derives the deadline from it. That indirection is where the trouble starts.
Handling time is a promise, not a preference
The handling time on your listing is a commitment to dispatch within that many business days. Buyers see a delivery estimate built from it, and your metrics are measured against it.
Sellers set it low because a faster estimate converts better. That is true, and it is also why so many otherwise careful sellers have a late dispatch problem.
Business days are not days
Handling time counts business days, and which days count depends on your settings. A one-day handling time on a Friday evening order does not mean Saturday.
This is generally in your favour, and it is also why the deadline is hard to compute in your head. Read it from the order rather than deriving it.
The dropshipping mismatch
Your handling time measures you. Your supplier determines when a tracking number exists. If your supplier reliably takes three days and your handling time says one, you have listed a promise you structurally cannot keep.
No amount of diligence closes that gap. The only fixes are a faster supplier or an honest handling time.
Measure the supplier, then set the policy
- Record, for thirty orders, the hours from payment to first carrier scan
- Take the slow end of that distribution, not the average
- Add a day if your suppliers do not work weekends
- Set handling time to that number, and revisit it when you change supplier
Most sellers set handling time once, at listing creation, and never revisit it - including through a supplier change, which is exactly when it breaks.
The cost of one extra day
Sellers overestimate it. A slightly longer estimate costs some conversion on price-sensitive items and almost nothing elsewhere.
A late dispatch rate problem costs you seller standing, which costs you visibility across your whole catalogue. The asymmetry is not close.
What to check today
Look at your handling time against what your suppliers actually do. If you have never measured the second number, that is the work - the setting is easy to change once you know what it should be.