Community Chat, Feb 13 from 1:00 pm PT - General Topics

[Anonymous]

Join us here on Feb 13th at 1 PM PT for our weekly Chat with the Community Team. We'll be discussing general buying and selling topics and look forward to seeing you here!

[Anonymous]

The chat is now open for replies! 

[dhbookds]

I don't see the link to the chat on the selling board.........thought sure I had seen it there yesterday........

Anyway........lol.......I'm listening...........

[a_c_green]

I'm not sure what category this might fall under, so let's just put this down as an Enhancement Request, as it's not a bug, just an omission:

The Buyer Requirements Activity Log (here) lists recent attempted bids or purchases from users who have bounced off your Buyer Requirements preferences, usually due to "Too many Unpaid Item strikes," according to the Reason given for each. In fact, I've only ever seen it list block actions due to the buyer's UI strikes. It would be very helpful if it could also show blocks due to a listing on the seller's Blocked Bidder List. I don't know if any other violations can show up on the Log as well.

I recently had a question from a user who said he was being blocked from my auctions, which I assumed was due to him having too many Unpaid Items, but in fact he wasn't in the Activity Log, and I could see no other reason for it in my other Buyer Requirements either. After some headscratching, I finally thought to check my BBL, and he was in there. Further digging showed that he had done an Invalid Bid Retraction last year, and gotten himself on the BBL as a result.

So that little mystery was solved (and I let him off my BBL after explaining what had happened), but the absence of a more-specific error message, plus the absence of any entry in the Activity Log, left both of us with no idea what had happened. As a BBL entry would certainly qualify as a Buyer Requirement in my book (or maybe "Buyer Disqualification"), would it be a huge deal to add "BBL listing" to the possible reasons for an entry in the Buyer Requirements Activity Log?

[goodluckselling]

I am seeking clarification from eBay staff about how refunds and returns should be completed and what happens when the eBay approved protocol is not followed. In this thread we are seeing a couple different understandings.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Where-do-I-find-a-return-label-or-does-a-return-request-need-t...

Starting with post number 7 where a forum user is telling others to just go to paypal and issue a label and refund as a way to handle a return and refund. There are also replies to post 7 in post 8 and specifically post 10 that are suggesting that eBay has told us that this action in post 7 would still reflect bad seller ratings.

To which this reply was offered from the author in post 7

That isn't exactly what Ebay has said. If you don't email your buyer within Ebay and outline what is transpiring, meaning the refund, then yes it is possible for Ebay to give the seller an OOS defect. But not if you are communicating with your buyer along the way on what is happening.

Here are the three questions all related to each other that I need your help with.

Question - Is it okay to just communicate through the ebay message system about refunds and returns and then proceed outside the eBay generated pathway (resolution center). Keep in mind these refunds and or returns could be for anything like out of stock or product damaged, not as described, or sent the wrong item, etc. You would not know unless there was communication from the buyer in the eBay message system about an issue.

Question - Is communications from a buyer and or seller through the eBay message system good enough for sellers to proceed outside the resolution center areas to complete these customer service tasks and also not receive bad ratings to our seller standards and service metrics?

Question - Does eBay want us to use the resolution center pathway for all returns and refunds or is there a high bred area like being talked about above that would be approved by eBay for these kinds of customer service tasks without any Bad seller ratings?

As dedicated sellers on eBay we deserve to hear eBay's official position about this. It should not be hard to give a clear and concise answer so every seller who reads this can know without doubt about what eBay intends for it's user to do and what consequence we face when we go outside the boundaries set up for us to use.

Good Luck Selling!

[mam98031]

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY to all you guys.  A day early, but certainly you won't be all in one place tomorrow.

You are APPRECIATED!  Thank you for your hard work and attentions to matters on these threads and outside these threads.

[ayeres_books]

What is the status of the issue of Everything Else items not being displayed in sellers' stores? This has been an issue for 4 months now. I have called, emailed, responded to surveys and participated in this weekly chat session and the only answer I have been given is that Ebay is aware of the problem and working on it. How can something like this take 4 months (and counting) to fix? I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps Ebay is intentionally suppressing Everything Else items from stores, but not announcing it. If that's the case, Ebay needs to let sellers know so they can reevaluate their selling strategies, because as it stands now, we're not getting full value for the store fees that we'ere paying. What is going on with this?

[forgottenape]

in the interest of transparency for buyers and other sellers shouldn't ebay link all of a members id names on their about me page? this would cut down on the  rampant rumors of shill bidders and seller competition complaints. I understand there are legitimate reasons for multiple id's but im also sure that legitimate members wouldn't mind having all their id's linked in one place both to divert traffic to their other stores and to dispel rumors and innuendo of wrong doing. seems like a simple thing to resolve the never ending conspiracy theories. and if they are true on some level it will discourage further actions

[mam98031]

We need an update to the UID policy.  On the policy page it does not mention that there is a 32 time frame for opening a UID, you have to find that info on a separate page, which doesn’t make sense to me.

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/payment-policies/unpaid-item-policy?id=4271

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/getting-paid/resolving-unpaid-items?id=4137

[mr_lincoln]

Good afternoon eBay Support Team:

Re:  Seller Hub Unsold Folder not reflecting proper count:  About a month ago on all accounts here the Seller Hub Unsold folder count (green arrow) stopped going down when items were Relisted (as did previously).  It used to be a nice quick reference to see if there were any ended listings that needed to be processed.  Now I have to check every single time I log in to see if anything was dumped in the file.  Nothing was changed on all the accounts (all separate computers all separate accounts) so the issue is eBay's.  I have tried numerous settings (red arrow) but none work like it used to.  Previously, when an item was Relisted I would delete it and the number on the Unsold folder in the Seller Hub tile would go down.  Now it just keeps going up and I want it to reflect what is actually in the Folder ... like today it should read (1) not (533) ... if this were the beginning of January it would read (1)

[mendelsons]

Not sure if you've had one yet on collecting sales tax on out of state transaction but is eBay planning on having an Q&A event geared strictly towards the new tax laws that have been rolled out and will continue to roll out  ?

Just wondering how refunding buyers will come into play, if the seller will even see that tax was collected on the transaction since eBay will be collecting it.   Ran into a strange situation on another site and prompted me to start looking on eBay but do see to many examples scenarios spelled out that might be helpful.  I saw some on it but wasn't well defined yet.  

Please advise.

Rick

[tyler@ebay]

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@a_c_green wrote:

I'm not sure what category this might fall under, so let's just put this down as an Enhancement Request, as it's not a bug, just an omission:

The Buyer Requirements Activity Log (here) lists recent attempted bids or purchases from users who have bounced off your Buyer Requirements preferences, usually due to "Too many Unpaid Item strikes," according to the Reason given for each. In fact, I've only ever seen it list block actions due to the buyer's UI strikes. It would be very helpful if it could also show blocks due to a listing on the seller's Blocked Bidder List. I don't know if any other violations can show up on the Log as well.

I recently had a question from a user who said he was being blocked from my auctions, which I assumed was due to him having too many Unpaid Items, but in fact he wasn't in the Activity Log, and I could see no other reason for it in my other Buyer Requirements either. After some headscratching, I finally thought to check my BBL, and he was in there. Further digging showed that he had done an Invalid Bid Retraction last year, and gotten himself on the BBL as a result.

So that little mystery was solved (and I let him off my BBL after explaining what had happened), but the absence of a more-specific error message, plus the absence of any entry in the Activity Log, left both of us with no idea what had happened. As a BBL entry would certainly qualify as a Buyer Requirement in my book (or maybe "Buyer Disqualification"), would it be a huge deal to add "BBL listing" to the possible reasons for an entry in the Buyer Requirements Activity Log?

---

Hi @a_c_green - the Buyer Requirements Activity Log will only display buyers blocked due to hitting one of your stated requirements (link here). Since the Blocked Bidder List is independent of those rules, activity won't be displayed there. 

I think it could be a useful enhancement for the future however, so I'll get it submitted!

[dhbookds]

As an addon to the return question........  If a buyer mails the item back with no notice, just buys the postage and mails......how is that supposed to be handled?  Ask them to open a case ?  refund thru PP?  Can't refund thru managed payments now, I don't think? 

[tyler@ebay]

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@mam98031 wrote:

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY to all you guys.  A day early, but certainly you won't be all in one place tomorrow.

You are APPRECIATED!  Thank you for your hard work and attentions to matters on these threads and outside these threads.

---

You're so sweet @mam98031 - thanks for saying that, and hope you and your DH have a fun Valentine's Day planned. 🙂

[vrykalak]

I'm experiencing a major problem with selecting categories for clothing I sell. Categories should be organized by main garment type first, then variations within that type, and whether it's for men/women/kids/unisex last.
I sell lots of t-shirts and costumes that could be worn by men or women, and sometimes kids.
But I have to choose one or the other for my listing, because nobody ever searches for unisex garments. So half my potential buyers never see my offerings.
Certainly, eBay can't abandon the current category hierarchy.

But could there be a different hierarchy, each item in it linked to the same item today, that organizes garments by type first, and potential wearer second?