eBay

autopiacarcare · ‎10-10-2019

I posted in the weekly chat yesterday about an increasingly common issue we are running into with Markdown Sales where there is a delay between scheduled start and end times and actual start and end times. @Anonymous asked for some examples, so I'm starting this thread to provide examples and hopefully anyone else who is experiencing this issue can provide some examples as well.

This issue has been going on for months, but as far as examples, I'll start with some from yesterday.

Item 253490280974 - This markdown sale only had 9 items. When I created it, I set the start time to "start now" at 1:02 PM Pacific Time. You can see from the revision history that the sale didn't actually start until 1:23 PM Pacific Time. It may sound like I'm being really picky to complain about a 20 minute time difference, but when I asked about it in the chat, I was told "most of the time, these promotions will go live immediately", so I am giving an example of a situation where a sale with a relatively small number of items did not go live immediately.

Yesterday I also attempted to start a markdown sale that had 500 items in it. That sale was scheduled to start at 11:30 AM Pacific Time and was scheduled to end at 11:30 PM Pacific Time. The idea was to test a limited time "Flash Sale" to drive a sense of urgency and see if that resulted in a mid-week bump in sales (where we usually fall off during that time of week).

As far as I can tell, that markdown sale never actually started. When I left the office last night at 5 PM Eastern (2 PM Pacific), it was still in "pending" status. Out of curiosity, I checked a few of the items from home last night around 9 PM Eastern (6 PM Pacific), and none of them were showing the discount sale. When I came in this morning, that markdown sale shows in Promotions Manager as "ended", so I can only assume it changed status at the scheduled "end" time, even though it never actually started. Item Number 253567659047 would be an example of a product that was supposed to be included in that promotion and you can see from the revision history shows no markdown sale starting or ending on 10/9/2019

Just to test, I attempted to copy that promo into a new one to start this morning. That was scheduled to start at 5:28 AM Pacific. It is now 6:17 AM Pacific and the new one is still in "pending" status.

magtrust · ‎10-11-2019

Today, my listings also became active after a while. This makes me happy.
Hope these are temporary issues.
Good luck and patience to everyone.

Anonymous · ‎10-11-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

Hi @autopiacarcare, thank you for providing examples. I've looked over what you shared here and don't see any indications of a technical issue; as we discussed in the Weekly Chat, most promotions do process immediately but some can take some time for us to re-index into the site. Since Markdown Manager is adjusting the price of the item that is visible in search, these items do need to go back through the indexing process that occurs when the item is first listed. In some instances this can take up to 24 hours to complete. A variety of factors contribute to the length of time that will pass from submission to when the listings or promotion are live on the site and I can confirm that what you are experiencing is within the range of normal experiences for this process.

@Anonymous - I understand what you are saying and also understand that it can take time for the prices to index. That is nothing new and I think we all understand that is how the system has always worked and that sometimes we just need to be patient.

However, it seems that this issue has gotten worse in the last few months. While eBay may have always said it "may take 24 hours" for them to index, most of us had previously never experienced it taking anywhere near that long. So, what we are seeing may still fall within eBay's stated standard of "normal operations" (ie. it may take up to 24 hours), but the increased delays are not within the standard of normal operations many of us have experienced previously.

The reason I brought this up in the chat was that I have personally been experiencing this far more often and with much longer delays recently and I also have noticed recently that there have been more posts on the messages board about delays. As you can tell from the replies here, other sellers are experiencing the worsening conditions as well.

Not to mention, as @mcdougle4248 pointed out, many people are reporting delays that exceed the 24 hour "range of normal experience". Some people have said they have had sales that are stuck for days. I don't believe this can or should be dismissed as just normal operating conditions.

Hi @autopiacarcare, I'll definitely get examples over to our tech teams of excessive delays. When looking into this I didn't see a spike in reports of delays - though the experience of some of the sellers here seems to have changed recently, the indexing process will take different amounts of time for different sellers as this time period may be used for us to manually review the items being listed/marked down. That isn't to say that there might not be an issue going on with some of these longer delays, just a potential explanation for why some members who never saw delays before are now running into them now (and my not see them again in the future, then may see them again, etc.).

Anonymous · ‎10-11-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

Hi @autopiacarcare, thank you for providing examples. I've looked over what you shared here and don't see any indications of a technical issue; as we discussed in the Weekly Chat, most promotions do process immediately but some can take some time for us to re-index into the site. Since Markdown Manager is adjusting the price of the item that is visible in search, these items do need to go back through the indexing process that occurs when the item is first listed. In some instances this can take up to 24 hours to complete. A variety of factors contribute to the length of time that will pass from submission to when the listings or promotion are live on the site and I can confirm that what you are experiencing is within the range of normal experiences for this process.

Thank you for responding @Anonymous . Can you please give me more detail about what you meant in the chat about it being related to site security?

Hi @autopiacarcare, the indexing process is in part a time where we can review the listings being published to the site for any security concerns. This includes any policy violations or prohibited items that would need to be removed or otherwise actioned. When a listing price is changed through Markdown Manager, this process would need to occur again to minimize the risk of fraudulent activity on the site. Factors such as account history, item category, suspected fraud trends for the item itself, etc. can all impact when a closer look is needed. This is generally performed by our investigative teams and subsequently can result in longer indexing times based on volume. This is one of the many ways we work to keep eBay a safe place buy and sell. Anything under 24 hours would be within the normal expectations, even if this is not something you usually see or not something you saw until recently. Some of the extended time frames reported here for promotions to go live are beyond what is typical and I appreciate you helping bring this to our attention for review!

autopiacarcare · ‎10-12-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi @autopiacarcare, the indexing process is in part a time where we can review the listings being published to the site for any security concerns. This includes any policy violations or prohibited items that would need to be removed or otherwise actioned. When a listing price is changed through Markdown Manager, this process would need to occur again to minimize the risk of fraudulent activity on the site. Factors such as account history, item category, suspected fraud trends for the item itself, etc. can all impact when a closer look is needed. This is generally performed by our investigative teams and subsequently can result in longer indexing times based on volume. This is one of the many ways we work to keep eBay a safe place buy and sell. Anything under 24 hours would be within the normal expectations, even if this is not something you usually see or not something you saw until recently. Some of the extended time frames reported here for promotions to go live are beyond what is typical and I appreciate you helping bring this to our attention for review!

Thanks @Anonymous , that is very helpful. That would make sense too as far as the timing I was talking about as well. I can imagine if a lot of sales are trying to start at certain peak times, that could cause longer processing times as there would be more items going through that review process at those times.

Out of curiosity, does that review process start when we complete the set up of the markdown sale or does the review process take place only at the scheduled start time?

If we set up the sale further in advance and scheduled the start time for like 5 or 6 hours later, would the review process be happening during that pre-start time? I was just wondering if that might be a strategy to try to get markdown sales to be active closer to a specific desired start time.

autopiacarcare · ‎10-12-2019

@Anonymous - I have a new issue with the promotion that started yesterday.

Sale was scheduled to start at 10 AM Pacific, went active at 10:59 AM Pacific. It was scheduled to end at 11:30 PM Pacific Monday. That sale is still showing "active" in the Promotions Manager, but none of the items in that sale are currently showing sale pricing.

For example, item # 253758223124 - You can see from the revision history the sale price started at 10:59 AM and then it shows ended at 1:04 PM Pacific.

So, now I have 378 items that were supposed to be on sale through the weekend that aren't, even though the markdown event is still "active".

I'm going to have to try to end that one and start a new promo, but hopefully these screenshots will be enough of an example for you.

autopiacarcare · ‎10-12-2019

Just for everyone else following along -

I ended the sale that was "active" but not applying sale pricing to the products.

I then created a new sale and individually selected the same items, instead of copying the previous sale.

I scheduled it to start at 9 AM Pacific. It went "active", at 9:08 AM Pacific. All items in that sale are currently showing the correct marked down sale prices.

It is scheduled to end on October 14th at 11:30 PM Pacific.

I guess I should be glad that I was asked to fill in for someone else and come in on a Saturday. Normally, I wouldn't be in the office today and wouldn't have caught this until next week. As it stands, hopefully we'll only end up having lost out on about 18 hours worth of sales instead of a whole 3 day holiday weekend.

I'll check again before leaving in about 3 hours. Keep your fingers crossed for me that eBay lets this one run all the way through to its scheduled end date/time.

autopiacarcare · ‎10-12-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:
Just for everyone else following along -

I ended the sale that was "active" but not applying sale pricing to the products.

I then created a new sale and individually selected the same items, instead of copying the previous sale.

I scheduled it to start at 9 AM Pacific. It went "active", at 9:08 AM Pacific. All items in that sale are currently showing the correct marked down sale prices.

It is scheduled to end on October 14th at 11:30 PM Pacific.

I guess I should be glad that I was asked to fill in for someone else and come in on a Saturday. Normally, I wouldn't be in the office today and wouldn't have caught this until next week. As it stands, hopefully we'll only end up having lost out on about 18 hours worth of sales instead of a whole 3 day holiday weekend.

I'll check again before leaving in about 3 hours. Keep your fingers crossed for me that eBay lets this one run all the way through to its scheduled end date/time.

Ugh. The same thing just happened - sale is still active in promotion manager, but no sale prices being applied. Shows that it "ended" at 12:47 Pacific.

I guess I'm just out of luck for this weekend. Extremely frustrating.

Anonymous · ‎10-12-2019

I'm so glad I found this topic and thread after looking for help for almost a week. I am having the exact problems described by numerous other people concerning the huge lag in start and stop times on mark-down sales and when adding additional items to an existing sale, it takes 3 days or more and sometimes never.

Last night I was on the phone with customer service for almost an hour. The rep continually told me there was not a glitch of any kind in the mark-down/sales promotion area. I pointed out to her that some of the items had been waiting for almost 4 days to be added to a sale. She told me the items were really showing that they were in the sale and customers could see they were on sale. This is debatable since I had tried from a different computer and did not sign in to see if they really were on sale and they were not. She then told me sales start could take up to 48 hours. Again, proven to be not true. I asked her how a weekend sale would work since the sale takes so long and sometimes never starts. She told me I had a good point, but didn't give me any idea how to fix it other than tell me to cancel the sale and restart it. I did that and I'm still waiting for the sale to start and tomorrow is the last day of the weekend.

This is 4th quarter. We do not need glitches like this. Does anyone have any idea of a work around until Ebay admits there is a problem and fixes it? The only way I know is to relist everything at the sale price, but it's just not the same. Buyers love a good sale. As long as my sales work right I have very good responses, but when things go sideways, it's like I am invisible to buyers.

zhjy47 · ‎10-13-2019

I have been having the problem with promotions in recent couple of months.

Not just longer pending processing time to start or end a promotion.

What trouble me most are excessive delays when removing or adding items to existing promotion.

Now a removal or adding takes days to be actually processed.

autopiacarcare · ‎10-13-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:
Ugh. The same thing just happened - sale is still active in promotion manager, but no sale prices being applied. Shows that it "ended" at 12:47 Pacific.

I guess I'm just out of luck for this weekend. Extremely frustrating.

This is getting ridiculous. I've now had to babysit this sale from home during my time off from my job just to try to get this sale to actually work.

I start the sale, it goes active shortly after, I confirm the listings are actually showing the sale prices, and also confirm that the scheduled end date/time is 10/14 at 11:30 PM Pacific. I then come back a few hours later to find that the sale is still showing as "active" in promotions manager, but the listings no longer show the sale prices and the revision history shows that eBay randomly ended the sale.

I'll use the same example I used before, item # 253758223124

The most recent "restart" on that sale went live at 8:08 AM Pacific. It is now 12:30 PM Pacific and still running. We'll see how long it lasts.

The crazy thing is I have a different promotion going with about 100 more products than this one and it is just fine. It started on Thursday at 1:30 PM Pacific and is scheduled to end on 10/14 at 11:30 PM Pacific and has been running the whole time with correct sale prices on all listings and no issues.

eBay needs to provide some serious answers here. It's bad enough to experience delays, but randomly ending sales like this while still showing them as "active" in promotions manager is completely unacceptable.

autopiacarcare · ‎10-13-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:
The most recent "restart" on that sale went live at 8:08 AM Pacific. It is now 12:30 PM Pacific and still running. We'll see how long it lasts.

Apparently the answer was "about another 10 minutes".

Oct-13-19 12:41:32 PDT

Buy It Now Price
Sale End

guranse · ‎10-13-2019

I have been having similar issues. Specifically, this past week I attempted to add a newly created listing to a percentage markdown sale. It took three days for the markdown to occur. Today, I am attempting to remove an item from a markdown sale and it has been 3+ hours and counting. These delays are not new, not consistent, and have been an intermittent issue for months. Lately, if I need to make multiple changes to markdown items I test one first to see how long it takes - sometimes minutes, other times days. My longest was around a week. I have checked possible contributing factors on my end and not found anything that would account for these delays. eBay needs to identify and address this as it directly affects my eBay sales.

autopiacarcare · ‎10-14-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:
@autopiacarcare wrote:
The most recent "restart" on that sale went live at 8:08 AM Pacific. It is now 12:30 PM Pacific and still running. We'll see how long it lasts.
Apparently the answer was "about another 10 minutes".

Oct-13-19 12:41:32 PDT
Buy It Now Price
Sale End

It just gets weirder and weirder. I restarted the sale at 1:31 PM Pacific yesterday then eBay once again ended it at 6:49 PM Pacific yesterday, so I gave up and stopped trying yesterday.

Now this morning at 5:13 AM Pacific time I went to restart that sale event and among the available start times for today are 4:00 AM, 4:30 AM, and 5:00 AM - all of which had already passed. Normally eBay does not show possible starting times in the past. Was eBay taken over by time traveling gremlins? Also, eBay usually only offers on the hour or half hour options, but for some reason there was a random option of 5:52 AM thrown in there in between 5:30 AM and 6:00 AM.

I don't expect to get answers today with it being a holiday, but hopefully @Anonymous can update us ASAP on what is being done to resolve these issues.

Anonymous · ‎10-14-2019

@autopiacarcare wrote:

@autopiacarcare wrote:

@autopiacarcare wrote:

The most recent "restart" on that sale went live at 8:08 AM Pacific. It is now 12:30 PM Pacific and still running. We'll see how long it lasts.

Apparently the answer was "about another 10 minutes".

Oct-13-19 12:41:32 PDT

Buy It Now Price
Sale End

It just gets weirder and weirder. I restarted the sale at 1:31 PM Pacific yesterday then eBay once again ended it at 6:49 PM Pacific yesterday, so I gave up and stopped trying yesterday.

Now this morning at 5:13 AM Pacific time I went to restart that sale event and among the available start times for today are 4:00 AM, 4:30 AM, and 5:00 AM - all of which had already passed. Normally eBay does not show possible starting times in the past. Was eBay taken over by time traveling gremlins? Also, eBay usually only offers on the hour or half hour options, but for some reason there was a random option of 5:52 AM thrown in there in between 5:30 AM and 6:00 AM.

I don't expect to get answers today with it being a holiday, but hopefully @Anonymous can update us ASAP on what is being done to resolve these issues.

Hi @autopiacarcare, the indexing process does occur at the start of the promotion when the prices are changed, so scheduling in advance won't expedite the process. Our tech teams are looking into the examples provided here. I don't have any new information to provide but will touch base with you if I need further examples from your end.

kartingwarehouse · ‎10-14-2019

@Anonymous

We're still having the exact same issues on both of our seller accounts. Something has definitely changed in the last couple of weeks in regards to the Markdown Manager.

Previously, whenever we started a sale,or added / removed products, it would generally update within 30mins and sometimes take as long as an hour.

Starting a couple weeks ago, any modification of the sale takes over 36 hours if not 2-3 days. So if you want to move a product from one sale to another you are looking at 4-6 days (2-3 to remove from the previous and 2-3 to add the new sale).

In fact, we haven't had a sale modification that has taken less than 36 hours in the last couple of weeks, when before it would always be under an hour.

We thought it was a temporary glitch occuring and to wait it out, but it's starting to become a major issue now that we've been unable to adjust any of our sales without having to wait several days.

Any updates will be very appreciated!