Community Chat, Nov 15th @ 1pm PT - General Topics

[Anonymous]

Hello Community, 

We invite you to join the Community team here at 1 pm PT on Nov 15th for the weekly chat.

This week we will discuss general topics, so please share your buying & selling questions. 

Thanks!

[carlmarxx]

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@sarahbru wrote:

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@a_c_green wrote:

Greetings all, 

We're now into something like our third week of eBay offering New and Refurbished condoms (screenshot below), not to mention a lot of other... delicate... categories in which a "Refurbished" category makes no sense. 

Now, I don't really want to know what the "refurbishing" process involves for condoms, diapers and such, although I'm sure everything is rinsed thoroughly, only the finest duct tape is used for repairs, etc., but still... Is there no quick way for you to yank the "refurbished" reference from categories in which it makes absolutely no sense? It seems as if that enhancement was rolled out with no maintenance or category editing capabilities, and this first became known at least three weeks ago now.

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@a_c_green: Wow -thank you for pointing that out. We would agree and have passed along this suggestion to Syed on the Structured Data team. Thanks. Sarah

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I have same question to why ebay  has refurbished  in the Toys and Hobbys categorys  lately ? when it should be there .

[dtexley3]

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@chrysylys wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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I misunderstood your concern, feel free to elaborate for me 

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My concern is that the site is loaded with cheap junk from overseas to the point people are having a hard time finding listings from US Based sellers.  You know, the people posting to these boards.

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There is a recent thread where someone paged through 54 pages of overseas junk before getting to the first listing that wasn't.

[dtexley3]

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@chrysylys wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@If you've seen threads where Best Offer is being applied after the listing has been posted to the site we would love to see more details. Feel free to @mention one of the us and we can review the specifics.

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Right here:   https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/eBay-AUTOMATICALLY-changed-my-listing-to-Best-Offer-after/td-p/27734624/jump-to/first-unread-message

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right here.  Not sure if there was a page in this thread, but it's the most current.

[mam98031]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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alan@ebay wrote:

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@vrykalak wrote:

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@threshold.sales.group wrote:

Greetings,

I just had a return that was caused by an error in the eBay catalog (wrong part fitment contained in the catalog).

If as announced, non-catalog listings will soon be matched and merged into the eBay catalog, will sellers be held harmless for returns and problems associated with bad catalog data that was added by eBay (not the seller) to the original listing?  I’m referring to item attributes and data that the seller had no control over or ability to review prior to it being included in the seller’s already active listing *if that is indeed the plan for the future*.

Thank you

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Somewhat related to this:
I posted a bunch of holiday-themed novels, using the catalog entries for almost all of them.
I noticed that all but two had visitors.
I checked those two, and found out that the catalog billed one of them as a cookbook, and one as a textbook. 
Since the catalog error had obviously reduced the effectiveness of my ads, I had no choice but to remove the catalog link. That's not good, because then they won't be seen by as many people as they would if they had a catalog link...but they weren't being seen by anyone as long as they had the erroneous link.

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Hi @vrykalak, 

Can you share the titles with me so I can pass the feedback to the catalog team? 

Also, Syed from the team does have a dedicated Community board, you can share any other issues you experience with him on the following board: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Product-Catalog/bd-p/ProductCatalog

Thanks. 

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Alan

The team should just look at the cookbook category as a whole.  There are 100's of books in that category that do not belong there.  I know many sellers have reported this over the years, me being one of them, but they remain.  At this time the cookbook category is just a junk category.

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That should have read 1000's or books, not 100's.  Sorry!

[Anonymous]

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@carlmarxx wrote:

Hi: Trinton  Got question  on  about  turning tracking upload  off  when  a Buyer checks off local pick option  in the shipping  section  of invoice request . I'am asking because of a  glich in system gave up a defect on upload tracking 9/12/17  when buyer clearly did local pickup  .  I was told it would be removed . So far it has not happen yet.  

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Hi @carlmarxx, I will reach out to you after the chat today to get specifics and see what happened. Happy to help get this resolved!

[Anonymous]

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@chrysylys wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@If you've seen threads where Best Offer is being applied after the listing has been posted to the site we would love to see more details. Feel free to @mention one of the us and we can review the specifics.

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Right here:   https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/eBay-AUTOMATICALLY-changed-my-listing-to-Best-Offer-after/td-p/27734624/jump-to/first-unread-message

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Thank you SO MUCH for the example. I will review this after the chat ends today. Once I have more info, I will repond to the thread you have shared and update here as well!

[carlmarxx]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

Local Pick up questions:

1. I recently had a local pick up sale and messaged the Buyer to ask if my address comes up for them to find me ... they said no and then included their cell phone number in the message.  Fortunately, we have not received any messages about sharing personal info, selling off the site or account closures or restirctions.  BUT, this begs the question, is it okay once a Local Pick up order has been placed for the Seller to 1) message the Buyer with personal contact info as well as the address, 2) mention Seller will send a letter in the mail with the contact info, etc.. 

2. On a non-Local Pickup sale the Buyer's email address is available in PayPal but on this recent one for me the Buyer's email did not appear in the PayPal transaction ... is that normal?

3. Paying cash:  okay, a while ago I asked that when a Local Pick up order is placed that payment through paypal be blocked forcing cash at pick up ... since eBay has not effected that change (yet) is it permissible to cancel the PP order, refund the $4 and wait for pick up for the cashola?  That is what I have read here in The Community that others recommend ... is that right and acceptable?

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You can reqire  Cash Only on Local Pickup sale's ,in the Item listing.

[dtexley3]

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@carlmarxx wrote:

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@sarahbru wrote:

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@a_c_green wrote:

Now, I don't really want to know what the "refurbishing" process involves for condoms, diapers and such, although I'm sure everything is rinsed thoroughly, only the finest duct tape is used for repairs, etc., but still... Is there no quick way for you to yank the "refurbished" reference from categories in which it makes absolutely no sense? It seems as if that enhancement was rolled out with no maintenance or category editing capabilities, and this first became known at least three weeks ago now.

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@a_c_green: Wow -thank you for pointing that out. We would agree and have passed along this suggestion to Syed on the Structured Data team. Thanks. Sarah

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I have same question to why ebay  has refurbished  in the Toys and Hobbys categorys  lately ? when it should be there .

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The use of refurbished is currently present for dozens if not hundreds of products including disposable diapers, toothpaste, toilet paper, etc.   Refurbished does not mean the same as Used or Pre-Owned.

[mongoose26]

On the new feedback page, the written feedback field is no longer an autofill box.  Why was this changed?  I no longer leave feedback for anyone as I am not going to retype the message every time to leave feedback.  Was this a conscious decision?  Why?

[wendybac]

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@vrykalak wrote:

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@sarahbru wrote:

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@wendybac wrote:

The feedback form shows stars, however I don't see any explanation of what the 1st, 2nd, etc. stars stand for.  They are not labeled in any way that I can see, so how is a person to know if the 1st star is good or bad.  If the 4th star is good or bad?

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@wendybac:  I believe you're referring to the new Leave Feedback form.... I will share this feedback with the team that works on this form though I suspect that as Feedback stars have become so standard on websites perhaps they didn't feel the need to state the explanations?  I will confirm and come back to this thread. Thanks! Sarah

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This is a case where I wish we could label a response as "Not Helpful" (or have the Facebook options: Like, Love, Ha Ha, Wow, Tears, Anger).

Most places that have a 5-star option say: 1=very dissatisfied, 2=dissatisfied, 3-neutral, 4-somewhat satisfied, 5-very satisfied. 
Since eBay considers a rating of 4 to be unsatisfactory, in need of improvement, that fact should be disclosed to buyers leaving feedback.

And this shows you what I mean by not knowing what the stars stand for if they are NOT labeled, because I always thought a "4 " would be GOOD !!

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[little_angel]

I have a suggestion for ebay, when I'm in ebay, can you have the task bar at the top be fixed in position so that if I scroll down the top portion doesn't dissapear?  so the section where it says "daily deals", "gift cards"...."Sell", "My ebay"?  I routinely go between seller hub to search to some other area in ebay and having to scroll all the way back to the top just to navigate is very inefficient.  For example if I have lots of items to ship but all of a suddent I get a notification for an email or something I don't know that I got one unless I'm at the top of the page.  I'd like to know as soon as possible if a customer contacts me so I can adjust my other tasks to respond to them as fast as possible.

[alan@ebay]

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@dtexley3 wrote:

@Oh and speaking of me using @mention in threads.  Can we PLEASE have old threads (ie > 90 days od) locked automatically?  I've accidentally paged staff in 2 outdated threads lately because I didn't notice it was a zombie thread.

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Hi @dtexley3, 

We are in the middle of an archiving project now with our platform vendor. All forum topics that haven't had a reply in 6 months will be locked and moved to archive boards. 

Thanks.

[siayan]

Sometimes I see sellers come to the boards and say eBay requests all their receipt's for the things they have for sale. What triggers this?

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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Alan

The team should just look at the cookbook category as a whole.  There are 100's of books in that category that do not belong there.  I know many sellers have reported this over the years, me being one of them, but they remain.  At this time the cookbook category is just a junk category.

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More like hundreds of thousands

[tyler@ebay]

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@mendelsons wrote:

Questions as to why eBay is running with at least three different listing frames.

I've noticed over the last couple months eBay keeps changing up the formats for listing frames or as the listing template is laid out.  Sometimes the description field is there and sometimes there is a button to press to pop open another window to show the description.  

Thing that bugs me about the pop open descriptions is that one you cannot order from that page, so if a buyer has multiple descrition pages open he/she may not find their way back to the original page they were looking at to make the purchase and two if the description is totally blank then what is the point of having a pop open  if the page is blank.

Going into the holiday season you guys seem to like rolling the dice on how things will work but would like some more clarity as to why there are mulitple layouts for listings.  Doesn't seem to uniform to me.

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Hi @mendelsons - the pop-open descriptions are the best workaround we have to Google's browser changes (detailed here). The quickest way to ensure that listing descriptions are immediately visible would be to ensure that all links or images are HTTPS compliant. 

When it comes to the listing forms to list an item for sale we do have several. These tend to go from very simple to more complex and are presented to members based in how frequently a member lists items for sale. We're also working to refine the forms too, based on member input. Thanks!