eBay

luvintasy · ‎07-05-2018

Hello, I am a seller from Europe, and I have this issue that started a couple of months ago. It's begun with a small quantity of items which still was visible, now there is no any items are displayed in my store at all. The impressions from eBay Perfomace tools, also showing no activity. Most of my items have Worldwide shipping. I have subscription - Premium Store, and what does it mean, that I haven't any store or it's just not working? Can you guys tell what I should do with this? If it is a technical issue, will eBay make at least a half refund for subscription? Thank you

berserkerplanet · ‎07-06-2018

There is something odd going on.

I'm in California, USA, and checked yesterday and saw 1000+ items in your store and in search for you items.

However, 0 items appeared when I changed my country to any country I checked other than Germany, UK, Australia or Canada.

(the following is all speculation and theory)

You ship worldwide, but it LOOKS like nobody other than those in main large countries, that have their own eBay sites? and/or are part of the "Global Marketplace" grouping that eBay rates TRSs on? can see items in stores or search results for sellers in other countries.

Since you are not in one of those countries, you can't see your own listings in search or in your store.

Try changing your country to Germany or Canada (use zip code S3N 0C3) via the shipping and payments tab of any eBay listing, and then look at your store. Do your items now appear?

Can anyone reading this, NOT in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, or Germany look at:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/buyrose/m.html
and report back if you see 1000+ results or 0 results ?

This may be related to the similar issues Asian sellers have been seeing, and may indicate that the "geolocation IP" reason one of those sellers said eBay CS gave him was incorrect.

berserkerplanet · ‎07-06-2018

Experiment with changing my country and trying to view buyrose's listings in search

https://www.ebay.com/sch/buyrose/m.html

These return 1200+ search results:

USA Australia Canada Ireland Austria Switzerland

UK Germany France Spain Italy

These return 0 results:

Gibraltar Sweden Israel Lithuania China

Russian Fed Japan Greece New Zealand

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/global-seller-performance-policy?id=4351

We have four regional performance standard programs, with slightly different minimum performance thresholds, and your performance is measured against the standards of the region into which you sell an item. The four programs are:

Global: This covers Australia and any other market outside of the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
US: This covers the US market.
UK: This covers the UK and Ireland
German: This covers Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

That is what I was referring to when I said "or are part of the Global Marketplace grouping that eBay rates TRSs on? " in the previous post. The countries I listed above that produce 1000+ search results for seller buyrose in Lithuania pretty much align with eBay's US/UK/German grouping as seen above, and the "Global" group sees zero results.

Except Canada, Australia, Spain, France, and Italy don't fit in with the above - so maybe really not a good match to what I'm seeing.

Unknown if same thing happens for viewers actually in those countries.

Thinking maybe the search engine got broken (similar to the Alaska/Hawaii/Territories/APO/FPO weirdness) when eBay implemented the Summer Seller update "Global" market changes.

luvintasy · ‎07-12-2018

Dear berserkerplanet,

Thank you very much for your researches, experiments and generally for helping me and for your time in resolving my issues. Recently I wrote to eBay with this issue, they also told me that they don't see any issues, they see all my listings. Anyway eBay agreed that they had problems with "own store visibility" and assured me that it's happens only for store owners, other users can see my listings without problem. (screenshot of this message will be attached below). But anyway, I do not understand why I have such big drop in impressions in my eBay store (almost to zero, screenshot attached in my first post).

@berserkerplanet wrote:
Try changing your country to Germany or Canada (use zip code S3N 0C3) via the shipping and payments tab of any eBay listing, and then look at your store. Do your items now appear?

Yes, I followed your advice and changed country to Germany/Canada, and it worked, and I can see all my listings. But anyway I don't understand completly how this visibility system works. I thought if I sell on eBay.com and providing a Word Wide shipping, then obviously I can sell to all over the world. Did I understand you correctly, you wrote that there is some search system thresholds? I really didn't figure out what is that and what to do with all that. If there is an opportunity to get more info about this, and bring an eBay store visibility to normal state?

Best regards,

Oleg

luvintasy · ‎08-29-2018

I still have this issue. Any more thoughts about this?

berserkerplanet · ‎08-30-2018

>>I still have this issue. Any more thoughts about this? @luvintasy

Unfortunately, no. This is something that appears to be broken in eBay's code or databases, and all I can see is for you to keep calling, emailing or chatting with them.

You are registered in Lithuania, your items appear to be located in Sweden, and are listed on ebay.com That may complicate things, and is outside my areas of (self proclaimed) expertise

I didn't check all the countries again, but did switch my location to Lithuania on one of your listings and came up for AERO results for your item in search when I did that, so assume the same issue is still in play.

I'm wondering if listing site and/or international visibility plays a role in this? @pjcdn2005 @Anonymous

dhbookds · ‎08-30-2018

Ebay has said that since the store changeover in May/June, store impressions have not worked.........everyone's say 0 on that page that you showed. Supposedly it should be fixed soon.......

You are in registered in Lithuania, but apparently shipping from Sweden........ When I show either of those locations as shipping destination, both show international shipping........no local shipping..... Ebay will not show items to buyers who are in a country to which shipping is not available, so you need to add a local shipping option to your shipping for those countries........ I have no idea how you do it for both.....

We've gotten alot of questions like this (can't see the items) in the last several months and it always holds true that the local country shows international shipping to home country buyers. I think Ebay changed something which suddenly made the problem show up...........

@luvintasy

dhbookds · ‎08-30-2018

I should say that if you only want to view the items, you just need to change your shipping destination to another country on any shipping page...... That will hold until you change it.... and I think, even if you sign out, but I'm not sure of that....

berserkerplanet · ‎08-30-2018

>>I should say that if you only want to view the items, you just need to change your shipping
>> destination to another country on any shipping page...... That will hold until you change it....
>>and I think, even if you sign out, but I'm not sure of that....

That doesn't work. Changing to most countries that OP's listings actually ship to results in zero search and store results for OP.

Look at one of OP's listings like https://www.ebay.com/itm/163142057953?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true which is apparently located in the Ukraine.

Switch country to any country of the 224 the listing ships to that ISN'T one of the big countries in the eBay "Marketplace groupings" I talked about in post #3 - pick a country like Finland. That listing shows international shipping to Finland, but now go look at seller's other items: https://www.ebay.com/sch/buyrose/m.html or OP's Store - ZERO results in both places.

Seems to hold true for the ones I tested before, and you only see seller's items with a location set to:
USA Australia Canada Ireland Austria Switzerland UK Germany France Spain Italy
(that I tested - there could be more, but I don't think so - it seems to track with those general marketplace groupings )

The country change sticks until changed to something else in that browser or until logged out in that browser. Changes in one browser don't affect status in other browser sessions. Location reverts to registration address country (I think) when logged out and then back in.

(funny thing is, it doesn't appear to be cookie based from my limited testing, even though that would make sense and fit the per browser session behavior. Maybe the location data is encoded in one of the cookies also critical to maintaining a signed in status, and when that cookie is deleted, session ends, and location reverts to default. I would like to puzzle that out as it could come in handy making it easier to switch locations more easily than finding an appropriate listing and using the S&P tab)

dhbookds · ‎08-31-2018

I should have been more clear.......you cannot have international shipping specified if the item is being sent to the same country in which it is located.......and expect to see it ......if you are signed in in those countries.

I don't know how she's managing the different shipping locations.....perhaps listing in each marketplace, but the lack of local shipping is the problem in items not being visible, I really believe....... if she signs into the US......she should see it all.......

@berserkerplanet

berserkerplanet · ‎08-31-2018

I understand that and it makes sense, but at this point I don't know where OP is. Registration country is Lithuania, and some items are Sweden and some Ukraine.

My point is that the ones I looked at ship to 200+ locations, but when you look at for example, the Ukraine based item, and change your location to Finland, proper international shipping results for that item, but subsequent search comes up with zero items for OP and zero store items.

Or change location to Peru, or Fiji, or China. Same result.

It looks like zero search visibility from anywhere but the main countries (even though OP's items ship to most or all of the world)

Anonymous · ‎08-31-2018

@berserkerplanet wrote:
>>I still have this issue. Any more thoughts about this? @luvintasy

Unfortunately, no. This is something that appears to be broken in eBay's code or databases, and all I can see is for you to keep calling, emailing or chatting with them.

You are registered in Lithuania, your items appear to be located in Sweden, and are listed on ebay.com That may complicate things, and is outside my areas of (self proclaimed) expertise

I didn't check all the countries again, but did switch my location to Lithuania on one of your listings and came up for AERO results for your item in search when I did that, so assume the same issue is still in play.

I'm wondering if listing site and/or international visibility plays a role in this? @pjcdn2005 @Anonymous

Hi @berserkerplanet, I'm not quite sure why certain countries do not show the listings, as I checked and there is no reason I could find for this to be happening. That being said, I was able to recreate the issue and have submitted it to our tech teams for review! I will touch base early next week with an update

berserkerplanet · ‎08-31-2018

>>I was able to recreate the issue and have submitted it to our tech teams @Anonymous

Excellent Trinton. This isn't the only (non-US) OP who has complained of this issue. Hopefully some resolution will be forthcoming.

3 questions:

1. Is the location setting a cookie based setting?

2. Is changing location via a shipping and payments tab the SAME as actually being in that other location as far as visibility of item in search and stores, or is there something else in play? (in other words, is my changing my country to Japan the same effect as being a buyer in Japan and a useful diagnostic tool?)

3. Does viewing location default back to user's registration country or is it geolocation (via IP?) based as I think you may have hinted at elsewhere?

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-31-2018

@dhbookds wrote:
I should have been more clear.......you cannot have international shipping specified if the item is being sent to the same country in which it is located.......and expect to see it ......if you are signed in in those countries.

I don't know how she's managing the different shipping locations.....perhaps listing in each marketplace, but the lack of local shipping is the problem in items not being visible, I really believe....... if she signs into the US......she should see it all.......

@berserkerplanet

@dhbookds

As the other poster explained, that isn't the problem but I did want to comment on your post as unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, your premise isn't correct.

I'm in Canada and when I list on .com my 'local' domestic shipping is to the US. Shipping to Canada and everywhere else is international. If I do ship to Canada I will see my listings on .com and .ca. If I don't ship to Canada then I will not see my listings unless I change my location in the shipping tab to a country that I do ship to. In the cases that are being posted here, those sellers are shipping to their own countries so they should be able to see their listings just like I can.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-31-2018

@berserkerplanet wrote:
>>I was able to recreate the issue and have submitted it to our tech teams @Anonymous

Excellent Trinton. This isn't the only (non-US) OP who has complained of this issue. Hopefully some resolution will be forthcoming.
In

3 questions:

1. Is the location setting a cookie based setting?

2. Is changing location via a shipping and payments tab the SAME as actually being in that other location as far as visibility of item in search and stores, or is there something else in play? (in other words, is my changing my country to Japan the same effect as being a buyer in Japan and a useful diagnostic tool?)

3. Does viewing location default back to user's registration country or is it geolocation (via IP?) based as I think you may have hinted at elsewhere?

@berserkerplanet

Interesting questions. However it works, it has changed recently. As many of my items sell to the US I am searching items on .com using a US zipcode in the shipping tab so that I compare the price plus shipping for items similar to what I sell. That US zip would stick until I either changed it or closed my browser and shut down my computer. In the last few months though, it keeps reverting back to my Canada address even though my browser has remained open which is actually quite irritating because if I wanted it to change, I would change it.

I do suspect that the problem some of the international sellers are having has something to do with the new store format as it seem to be come up about that time. Do you recall of anyone who was complaining about this who did NOT have a store? It seems to me they all have had a store.