eBay System totally breaking down?

[egarchow89]

I have had more glitches in the past couple weeks than I have had in several past years combined.

1. Whenever I create a new listing, with the EXACT same shipping policy as my other listings (which all ship worldwide), the new listings only ship to USA and Canada. I even tried copying listings that are working properly and changing only the name. The different ship destinations remain.

2. A buyer had his 30+ auction wins split into three separate orders with separate shipping charges. When I tried to cancel and refund the orders for him, eBay customer service could not help me overcome the error messages when canceling, and after a combined 15 hours with customer support, my buyer had to finally say he was going to do a card chargeback before they actually stepped in to issue the refunds for him at both of our requests.

3. A buyer from 7 months ago messaged me asking why he was getting tiny refunds from his order. I checked my payments page and there is no record of these refunds as they come in to him.

4. A buyer paid for an item on which I accepted a best offer, but the item is still in his cart at the offer price, even though I only accepted that price for one. Fortunately he only wants one but goodness.

Are they rolling out a bunch of changes that are causing all these glitches, or am I just exceptionally unlucky these past couple weeks?

[hartungcards]

That's 4 glitches by my count.  You're still under the average threshold.

[laststopgeneralstore]

Could you please post screenshots of all these glitches. It’s be very interesting to see these. 

I have never had any issues at all. Yea sometimes Ill get a “glitch” but ill try again in 5 minutes but that’s very very rare. My shipping policies have never changed on their own

[chapeau-noir]

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@egarchow89 wrote:

I have had more glitches in the past couple weeks than I have had in several past years combined.

1. Whenever I create a new listing, with the EXACT same shipping policy as my other listings (which all ship worldwide), the new listings only ship to USA and Canada. I even tried copying listings that are working properly and changing only the name. The different ship destinations remain.

2. A buyer had his 30+ auction wins split into three separate orders with separate shipping charges. When I tried to cancel and refund the orders for him, eBay customer service could not help me overcome the error messages when canceling, and after a combined 15 hours with customer support, my buyer had to finally say he was going to do a card chargeback before they actually stepped in to issue the refunds for him at both of our requests.

3. A buyer from 7 months ago messaged me asking why he was getting tiny refunds from his order. I checked my payments page and there is no record of these refunds as they come in to him.

4. A buyer paid for an item on which I accepted a best offer, but the item is still in his cart at the offer price, even though I only accepted that price for one. Fortunately he only wants one but goodness.

Are they rolling out a bunch of changes that are causing all these glitches, or am I just exceptionally unlucky these past couple weeks?

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(2) What error messages were you getting? Cancel and refund is a simple process.

(3) Don't worry about this - sounds more like a confused buyer than a site glitch.

(4) It sounds like the buyer had two items in their cart? You have no control over the buyer's cart, only the buyer does. They have to remove the item if they don't want it (though the description is a little confusing).

eBay has glitches - the site is far too complicated, yes, but a lot of things are just simple brief errors or user errors.

ETA: Maybe someone here can help with (1) - I don't use business policies.

CS is generally useless - it's better to come here and ask.

[buyselljack2016]

@egarchow89 

#3   may or may not be the reason.

Is the buyer in Michigan? I have seen posts explaining that Michigan changed their laws concerning "sales tax on shipping". ( eliminating that tax)  

Some buyers have gotten little refunds for such.

[chapeau-noir]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

@egarchow89 

#3   may or may not be the reason.

Is the buyer in Michigan? I have seen posts explaining that Michigan changed their laws concerning "sales tax on shipping". ( eliminating that tax)  

Some buyers have gotten little refunds for such.

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It was the 'refunds' plural that made me wonder. If it had just been a single refund I also would have thought could be an adjustment, but sounded like tiny refunds from the same order over a period of time? At any rate, as long as nothing was coming out of the OP's account.

Geez - I'd love to get some little refunds from WA state eliminating the sales tax on shipping!

[janet9988]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

@egarchow89 

#3   may or may not be the reason.

Is the buyer in Michigan? I have seen posts explaining that Michigan changed their laws concerning "sales tax on shipping". ( eliminating that tax)  

Some buyers have gotten little refunds for such.

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If this is the case and buyers are receiving sales tax refunds then ebay should also be refunding the seller for the fees paid on those same refunds.

[egarchow89]

"(2) What error messages were you getting? Cancel and refund is a simple process."

-It should be.  It was not. I clicked the same buttons to refund and I have done dozens of times before (usually for overpaid shipping) and it said things like "refund could not be sent, please try again later." I then had messages that the order could not be canceled because the refund could not be processed (my payment methods were all fine, multiple agents confirmed this). The messages even said that the cancel request was closed, but the order was still active. The buyer couldn't open a claim on his end because instead of the option to do so, all he saw was "see cancellation details" even though the order remained open on my end (and was still giving me a "ship by" date), yet rather than in my "orders ready to ship" it was in my cancelled orders (even though it wasn't canceled). It took the buyer and I requesting each of our latest agents to read the chat transcripts from prior agents for them to understand that it wasn't just a couple boomers not knowing which buttons to click; the eBay system totally screwed up the order.

If all that is so messed up as to be unbelievable, believe me that after a combined 15 hours between me and the buyer with customer support, it took them forever to believe that the buyer and I couldn't fix the issue just by clicking the same buttons over and over.

(3) Don't worry about this - sounds more like a confused buyer than a site glitch.

-Hopefully.

(4) It sounds like the buyer had two items in their cart? You have no control over the buyer's cart, only the buyer does. They have to remove the item if they don't want it (though the description is a little confusing).

-They made me an offer on a $50 item. I accepted offer for $45. They paid for item. Item showed up as paid on my end, but is still also in their cart at  $45 (and  the item itself is out of stock in my store).

[egarchow89]

Yes! The buyer was in Michigan. Thanks for the info.

[dbfolks166mt]

1. Whenever I create a new listing, with the EXACT same shipping policy as my other listings (which all ship worldwide), the new listings only ship to USA and Canada. I even tried copying listings that are working properly and changing only the name. The different ship destinations remain.

     I took a look at several of your listings, don't have time to go through all 1,500, but everyone that I looked at shipped through EIS to multiple countries. Can you provide a specific item number or a screen shot of one that is limited to shipping to the USA and Canada.?

[dbfolks166mt]

@egarchow89 

#3   may or may not be the reason.

Is the buyer in Michigan? I have seen posts explaining that Michigan changed their laws concerning "sales tax on shipping". ( eliminating that tax)  

Some buyers have gotten little refunds for such.

     There are a number of states that do not charge sales tax on shipping and/or handling but they vary from state to state and are part of the complexity of the whole sales tax process. I suspect we do not see a lot more postings about this since so many sellers offer free shipping in which case the shipping cost cannot be directly identified and is often baked into the item price so sales tax is applied to the total sale amount. 

[chapeau-noir]

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@egarchow89 wrote:

"(2) What error messages were you getting? Cancel and refund is a simple process."

-It should be.  It was not. I clicked the same buttons to refund and I have done dozens of times before (usually for overpaid shipping) and it said things like "refund could not be sent, please try again later." I then had messages that the order could not be canceled because the refund could not be processed (my payment methods were all fine, multiple agents confirmed this). The messages even said that the cancel request was closed, but the order was still active. The buyer couldn't open a claim on his end because instead of the option to do so, all he saw was "see cancellation details" even though the order remained open on my end (and was still giving me a "ship by" date), yet rather than in my "orders ready to ship" it was in my cancelled orders (even though it wasn't canceled). It took the buyer and I requesting each of our latest agents to read the chat transcripts from prior agents for them to understand that it wasn't just a couple boomers not knowing which buttons to click; the eBay system totally screwed up the order.

If all that is so messed up as to be unbelievable, believe me that after a combined 15 hours between me and the buyer with customer support, it took them forever to believe that the buyer and I couldn't fix the issue just by clicking the same buttons over and over.

(3) Don't worry about this - sounds more like a confused buyer than a site glitch.

-Hopefully.

(4) It sounds like the buyer had two items in their cart? You have no control over the buyer's cart, only the buyer does. They have to remove the item if they don't want it (though the description is a little confusing).

-They made me an offer on a $50 item. I accepted offer for $45. They paid for item. Item showed up as paid on my end, but is still also in their cart at  $45 (and  the item itself is out of stock in my store).

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(3) That sounds byzantine! I wasn't disbelieving you, I was just trying to understand what the order of events was because it's usually easy. For an auto cancel and refund I've always cancelled first and the refund follows. Once when I tried cancelling then refunding it got all skrooed up and I had an order just stuck - it's been a while so I can't remember how it finally worked out, but that did job my memory.

(4) Got it! I didn't quite understand the shipping cart scenario. I can say, though, that I've had 'sticky' items in shopping carts before. This shouldn't happen but it does and hopefully it'll clear for you soon.

eBay is a glitchy site - it's too complicated and there seems to be really poor followup in implementation, but it has always been that way. I'm sorry you got stuck in the mire like this, though.

[egarchow89]

Sure, this is a listing I have that is older and seems to be working properly:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175315485700

After I noticed the problem, I did a "sell similar" listing. Kept the exact same shipping policy.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176187987769

The second one ships only to USA and Canada. This has only happened for listings I have made in the last 10 days or so. I wonder if it is a 2024 thing, is there some kind of item specifics I need to ship worldwide that the older listings are "grandfathered" into? One would think that if this were the issue, I would have gotten warnings from the system like they did for all sorts of other things over the years.