Community Chat, April 15 @ 1:00 pm PT - General Topics

[brian@ebay]

Join the Community team here at 1 PM PT on April 15th for our Weekly Chat with eBay Staff. We don't have a specific topic this week, so please bring any general questions you may have about buying or selling.

The chat will be open for questions from 1-2 pm PT, at which point we'll close thread from additional responses. After this time, we'll continue to work on responding to any queries that might still be unanswered.

If you're new to the chat, welcome! Simply Reply to this post with your question from 1-2 PM Pacific Time and we'll be happy to look into it for you.

[brian@ebay]

The chat is now open for questions 🙂

[wooperwares]

One month ago I inquired about the status of the egregious 25 cent fee per listing under managed payments.

It’s been an ongoing issue for months upon months. Is there an update available yet?

If not I have a follow-up question. Do you think we’ll be able to accomplish an outcome for this in 2020? Or should I set a reminder for 2021? Maybe 2022?

What about a conversation with the managed payments team (requested by others on here repeatedly)?

What exactly does Jordan Sweetnam do each day? It does not appear he is focused on addressing marketplace issues, evidenced by this ongoing months long specific he has even acknowledged as concerning.

[golfingaddict]

On my smaller accounts I have indicated on the question and answer area that I do not accept questions from potential buyers.  At least three times this week, I've had buyers send questions through the listings.

Has this part of ebay been abandoned? Do these settings no longer work?

Attached is a screen shot in the "manage communications with buyers" section showing how I have set up my communications and clearly they are not working.  All the questions I receive are regarding 1. price or 2.  shipping costs which are both indicated in the listing.  I do not want to answer buyers that insist on making "best offer" when no offer is available on the listing or asking me to reduce the shipping prices.

[gwzcomps]

The free listings was a nice gesture by eBay. Being that they expire the end of this month will another promotion be given to help sellers out during these tough times? Assuming the answer to the question isn't top secret 😜

[fern*wood]

I'm at the point where I need to make the decision of whether or not to commit to the yearly renewal of my store.  Before doing so, I would like to know what scenarios would allow me to end the store without paying the penalty.    In particular, being in a shut down state for a prolonged time frame or a disruption with USPS/possibly shutting down.

Tks

[selsa84]

Good afternoon. I purchased an item 2 weeks ago and when i recieved it it was not as described. Opened case, shipped back, tracking shows item recieved. Asked for my refund and they wont answer now. Seller has 10 negatives stating that after return process the seller never replys. Ebay case says i am not covered by Money back guar. Why? 

[dhbookds]

The Selling Board is getting alot of questions about who/how is authorized to sell the banned items....  Is there a process to apply to be able to sell them.....or is it by Ebay invitation only?

Thanks

[papermoneyforme]

I would like to give Kudos and a great thank you to Harline who I dealt with in chat on Friday and also to the individual who he referred the issue to who fixed it on Monday.

It is greatly appreciated and all seems to be as it was before Friday.

Please pass this on to them.

[golfingaddict]

Recently I've had extreme shipping delays when items are mailed to Michigan.  I've spoken with postal employees in the area that have told me that they are looking at 2+ week backlogs due to the Covid issue and employees out sick and lack of employees.  Clearly I am aware that there are problems and have no problem waiting, however, I've had several buyers that are less than patient.

When they open a claim for INR and the item shows that I shipped on time (with tracking) ebay gives me only a short time to respond to the claim and then it says 3 days until the buyer can ask ebay to step in.    This seems like a recipe for disaster for the seller.   We need to resolve the claim (whether that be by proving delivery or  refunding) which puts us in a tough spot.  We can "take the defect" for not taking care of the customer in the short allotted time we are given or we can refund and just accept it as a cost of doing business.

What happens is that ebay support says "we have your back" but the process does not show that and still insists that we take care of it "Or else" and the or else is less than satisfactory.  Do I trust ebay to remove defects or delay action?  It's never happened in the past that I've had these bad marks removed (there is always some reason like a "glitch" or an issue or the ever overused "It isn't going to hurt you"

IN the seller metric/standards announcement, ebay says that they will not change our selling standard for the next couple of months but what happens then?   Is it like the fee deferral program when it all comes down on us then instead of now or are those defects actually removed completely.  A deferral is not going to help when these defects or metrics stay on our account for  a year.

Is ebay aware of the hot spots that are having mail issues?  I don't even know where they are until a package stops moving and buyers start complaining.  

[mdw13]

Last winter I posted in this chat several times about combined shipping being widely broken on the site.  The final answer to my posts was that the eBay shipping calculator is unable to combine shipping for items where the default shipping option of the items is different (ie, 1 item has priority mail shipping, 1 item has first class shipping by default and a priority mail option).  I continue to not really understand why it would be built that way, but fine, it doesn't work and isn't intended to work.  So I let it go.

This week, I got a message from a customer who was trying to buy two First Class shipping items and the site just absolutely would not let them be combined.  I was able to recreate the problem myself for verification.  I even went to the "edit item" screen for each item just to make sure.  I was able to verify that in the shipping section of the two listings, the items were specified as weighing 13oz and 2oz.  Together, the system should be able to see they are 15oz, which falls inside the parameters for first class shipping in a single package.  Why would it refuse to combine these items?

I further went on to do some additional looking and could not find a single example of it properly combining any two first class items in my store, regardless of weight.  I checked my combined shipping settings and found the following was still properly in place:

Calculated shipping rule

Help on calculated shipping rule

Shipping Discount Profile: Combine all item weights. (ID: 1324122015)

Specify a handling cost in the Sell Your Item form.

Can I get a PM from someone who knows the ins and outs of the shipping calculator so I can have a private discussion about the problems I'm seeing and some help in investigating if there is something wrong specific to my account or how I can make combined shipping of any kind work for me?  Thanks

[Anonymous]

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@gwzcomps wrote:
The free listings was a nice gesture by eBay. Being that they expire the end of this month will another promotion be given to help sellers out during these tough times? Assuming the answer to the question isn't top secret 😜

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Hi @gwzcomps, nothing to announce at this time but keep an eye on our Announcement Board for future communications. We are closely monitoring the impact of recent events and will continue to work towards supporting our Community as needed. 

[tyler@ebay]

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@golfingaddict wrote:

On my smaller accounts I have indicated on the question and answer area that I do not accept questions from potential buyers.  At least three times this week, I've had buyers send questions through the listings.

Has this part of ebay been abandoned? Do these settings no longer work?

Attached is a screen shot in the "manage communications with buyers" section showing how I have set up my communications and clearly they are not working.  All the questions I receive are regarding 1. price or 2.  shipping costs which are both indicated in the listing.  I do not want to answer buyers that insist on making "best offer" when no offer is available on the listing or asking me to reduce the shipping prices.

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Hi @golfingaddict - that setting does prevent a buyer from submitting a question from the item level. However, it looks like it does not prevent someone from contacting you directly through your profile (I sent you a test message from the profile page - did you get it?). 

I've attached screenshots of what happens when I try to submit a question from an item page. 

[colin5148]

I pay for Terapeak, and they removed without any notice the ability to analyze eBay Motors listings. I sent a note to customer service, but never got a response. Again, I pay for this access. Thanks.

[golfingaddict]

tyler@ebay 

I responded to your email.   Buyers have always been able to email sellers from the feedback pages but I am speaking about the listing page itself.  And I sent you the user ID's in which I am having a problem.  

I did a test for 6 months that kept track of all of the messages I got on my small accounts and nearly 100% of the emails I received were from buyers asking me to accept a lower price on the items I have listed, basically "best offer" when no best offer was used.

I didn't blindly stop taking buyer emails, I just chose to not accept best offer on my items when I did not implement best offer.  At one point it was against policy for a buyer to send offers when best offer was not enabled on the listing but that was changed when ebay decided that best offer was the best thing ever.  I don't.  My choice and I use the tools to prevent buyers from asking (or at least I thought I did)