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.
@golfingaddict wrote:
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.
Hi @golfingaddict - we work with shipping carriers on updates daily (announcement and updates here) and update estimated delivery dates accordingly.
In the case of item not received situations, we do still ask you to reply to the buyer within 3 business days. If asked to step in we will absolutely allow extra time for the delays in shipping routes that are going on at the moment. If your items scans as delivered (or attempted to be delivered) within that time frame, the INR will be found in your favor.
As to how things will work after the June 20th evaluation, I don't have a specific answer for you on that, but I'll see what I can find out and update you as I hear back. Thanks!
@golfingaddict wrote:
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)
Sorry for the confusion @golfingaddict! Without knowing which account you were seeking help with I just went with the one you posted from 🙂
I'll do some research and look into it. As a matter of curiosity, what setting is different on your golfingaddict account from your others that prevent item level questions being submitted?
@glgenterprise wrote:
Are there any plans to further open the variations option to additional categories? As a seller, I'd really like the option in more categories for variations on a single listing.
And as follow up - why when I use a category that has variations available and create a listing if I use a "sell similar" option for that listing does the variation option disappear? I much prefer to "sell similar" and change categories as necessary to not have to copy over a bunch of boilerplate stuff on my listings, but if I do, there is not an option for variations, even if I don't change categories.
Hi @glgenterprise - adding variations to a category is something we evaluate regularly, is there a particular category you'd like to see it expanded to? Happy to pass that along. 🙂
Sell Similar is designed to keep the category and various aspects of the original listing, but isn't going to carry over all data (so your variation description and photos may disappear). When you change categories it will always remove all variations because variations are category-specific.
