eBay sellers who use Standard Envelope (ESE) to send small, low-value items such as trading cards were left unable to ship items for a few hours on May 5 due to an outage. In cases where buyers had paid for lower-priced ESE rates, some sellers decided to eat the cost of alternative shipping methods, fearful of being dinged for late delivery.
“Is anyone else having this issue,” a seller asked on a thread on the eBay discussion boards. “I just sold a trading card I had listed with eBay standard envelope as the shipping option but when I tried printing out the label it says its temporarily unavailable and my current only option is USPS Ground Shipping. The dimensions of the envelope meet the threshold so I’m not sure what to do as shipping for $4 isn’t even worth it at that point.”
Another seller said they received the following message when they tried to print an ESE label on May 5th:
“Please be aware that eBay Send is experiencing issues at the moment. We apologize for any inconvenience and if affected, ask that you try again later.”
As eBay explains the shipping service on its website: “eBay standard envelope services are competitively priced and include seller benefits like integrated tracking and shipment protections at no additional cost.”
Specifically, it explains: “eBay standard envelope shipments are protected in the case of loss or damage that occurs during transit. Each shipment includes up to $20 of shipment protection on single-item orders and up to $50 on combined orders. If your buyer claims items weren’t received or damaged in transit, we recommend you file a shipping protection plan claim.”
In another thread where sellers discussed the outage, they confirmed other USPS and shipping carrier labels were printing without issue. Some sellers weighed whether to eat higher shipping costs since ESE wasn’t available to them, with one writing, “I wonder how many sellers are going to get frustrated and select a higher dollar shipping method even though their buyers only paid for the standard envelope option? I hope this doesn’t affect seller shipping time if it isn’t fixed soon??”
Another seller said they were going to do just that: “I know I’m not the only one. I’ve got the alert to ship some sales today and I’m going to pay 5x the expected shipping for having to use GA instead of ESE.”
The eBay Standard Envelope outage lasted under 3 hours. It’s unknown whether sellers who paid higher rates for ESE alternatives during the outage would be able to file for reimbursement.