Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us for the Weekly Chat with eBay Staff. We don't have a specific topic this week, so feel free to share any general buying or selling questions you may have.
The chat thread will remain open until 2 PM PT at which point we'll close it from additional responses. After that time, we'll continue to work on responding to any queries that might still be unanswered.
To post your question, click Reply in the lower right corner of this post, type your question, and hit submit between 1-2 PM Pacific Time. The format of our chat mirrors the format of our Community Discussion Boards, where each post will appear in the thread chronologically. The Community Team will review each question as it comes in, and will quote the original question in our reply. This quote and the reply will appear later in the thread, so just keep scrolling down to see our answers.
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@mam98031 wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
@tink012 wrote:
Hi, Thanks for holding chat again!
I have a question about group 2 of managed payments. It appears I will no longer get an invoice for my store subscription or late shipping fees(ie FedEx). Instead those will be taken from sales receipts. Then if not enough cash is left, the remainder will come from my checking, not a credit card or PayPal even if I were to prefer. I phoned cs twice and this was confirmed. My settings reflect this – I cannot add a credit card as a preferred payment method for fees.
Can you confirm
- No more invoices or “heads up” when excess fees are taken from checking?
- We must pay store subscription fees and FedEx shipping in cash instead of credit card? Permanently?
If these two things are correct, there are several problems.
- if we can’t pay our subscription fees with a cash back or points card, that is another cost to us to use MP.
- If part of a fee that belongs to a prior sale (like a late shipping charge) or is non-specific (like a store fee) comes partially from current sales receipts and the rest from checking, that is extra accounting adjustments we have to make. This is exactly what happened to me last week with December FedEx fees, a small amount came out of a current sale and the rest from my checking.
- I struggle with the idea that our customers can pay in credit card but your customers(us) have to pay cash.
- I understand group 1 will be notified before this happens to them, but I joined MP on Jan 1, and what I understood from the website was that I could continue to pay my invoice via credit card. There was no information letting me know that I was in a group for whom the MP settings were different. Will you be updating the website to indicate that everything, even store subscriptions, must be paid in cash?
@tink012 I can confirm that sellers on this type of billing will no longer receive a monthly invoice. For sellers who do not receive a billing invoice your fees will be deducted from your Available funds awaiting to be sent to your bank account. This means you cannot use PayPal to pay for them. I believe the Expenses tab in Seller Hub should provide information on fees and give more information.
A checking/bank account will need to be used to pay for fees. Credit cards are not an option. If you want your fees to come out of your checking or bank account, you need to proactively change your payment method by going to your Account Settings, or in the Payments tab for those who are opted into Seller Hub.
Except the Expense tab doesn't allow for downloading or printing. You can only view it on screen.
Question? When do these fees get deducted from those in Phase 2 of MP, those that entered between approximately November of 2020 and now? Do the deduct immediately upon the fee being charged the seller or after it is 30 days old? I suspect that it is when the fee is issued but I just want to verify. So it is when the fee is incurred.
Your mention of "checking/bank account". It is my understanding that the only form of account that can be attached to MP is a Checking Account. Has this changed? I know things do frequently in MP so just asking.
@mam98031 I'm not an expert in payments so I have limited information, unfortunately. It does look like there will be a monthly financing statement according to this page. That might be printable/downloadable, but I'm not sure. That page also give more information that may better answer some of the questions that were raised in this chat. Otherwise, contacting the payments team for current information is recommended.
@valueaddedresource wrote:
tyler@ebay wrote:
@valueaddedresource wrote:
tyler@ebay - just my weekly reminder, checking in on that issue with taxes being overcharged on batteries. 😊
I think it's more important than ever to get some sort of resolution on this. eBay just reported Q4 2020 earnings today and all of those overcharged fees were presumably counted in GMV. 😬
Agreed @valueaddedresource - I got it escalated last week (thanks for your help there) and am hoping we'll see something come of it!
That's great news tyler@ebay ! Thank you for continuing to knock on those doors. 😊
@valueaddedresource - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CobBt7Fz3LY 😉
@sunshines-surprises wrote:
Hello! My seller name is sunshines-surprises. Because I haven't read my emails from ebay in a long time, I didn't know that Paypal is no longer related to eBay. I sold an item a few weeks ago, and the buyer paid me. I went to paypal as I always do, to retrieve my money, put it in my savings account, and then print up a usps label to ship. Welll, no matter how I tried I couldn't get the money out of ebay since the payment was not in my paypal account. I was beside myself and so I wrote to the buyer and said I couldn't get their money out, so they cancelled the sale and took their payment back. Okay, so I thought that was it and I put my entire auction list on "vacation" until I could figure out what happened to eBay. Apparently it doesn't stay on vacation forever, because today I sold a pair of socks. Same problem as the last sale. Couldn't retrieve my money and for whatever reason, the cost of a USPS First Class Shipping label was over $5.00 for a 3-oz package, which is $2.00 more than I always pay. So, I cancelled the label with USPS and here I sit, unable to get my money and unable to print up the shipping label for the correct amount. I've been trying to get through to eBay for hours, but we know that's impossible. I don't know what to do and I would SO SO appreciate it if you could help me. I will be watching for a response, or if you possibly could, a phone call! Thank you so much!
@sunshines-surprises - I appreciate that you've come back to selling and I'm sorry for the confusion you ran into when making these sales!
Based on what you've said it sounds like you may be enabled for managed payments, which replaces PayPal as the payment processor for your sales. Go here for detailed information on how payments are processed to your bank account once you received payment for a sale.
If you have more questions on this, I would recommend contacting our payments team by accessing any of the Help Pages related to payments and using the 'Have us call you' feature at the bottom of the page for more info.
@coffeebean832 wrote:
brittanie@ebay wrote:
@coffeebean832 wrote:
I'm having an issue with items in "Inventory" not updating when I make changes to business policies which is duplicating and triplicating all of my policies.
I think it might be an Inventory or possibly Seller Hub issue and not necessarily business policies, but I don't know for sure. I don't know where to go to report this. I can tell you from experience that general CS doesn't even know what the Inventory section is- or business policies, for that matter- and I'm not about to waste my & their time with phone calls that go nowhere.
@coffeebean832 - Hmmm... usually when we see business policies being duplicated, the policy is being changed from the listing level and because it's different from the existing policy this then creates a new business policy with the adjustments that were made. I haven't ever run this issue with inventory however.
I understand where you're coming from, but the best thing to do would be to provide examples to customer service to have them report it. You could contact our customer service team on social media team (on Twitter or Facebook) as you can then send screenshots of exactly what you're seeing to make things easier in diagnosing what's happening.
Can I use someone else's FaceBook account? I'm not on social media.
My policies are not being changed at the listing level. The actual policy is being changed then kicking out an error that it couldn't update my Inventory templates, thereby creating a duplicate "copy" policy with the old policy info tied to Inventory templates.
@coffeebean832 - Thank you for clarifying what you're seeing. I definitely haven't run into that one before. Yes, you can contact them from a Facebook that's not under your name for assistance.
@wooperwares wrote:
Are you deleting questions? I submitted a list of concerns regarding Standard Envelope which is gone. That or it's glitching out which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
- Still gives errors in purchasing Standard Envelope labels maybe 25% of the time. Even after the warning disappeared.
- Postage price not showing up on transaction detail. In accounting things need to align, it seems eBay doesn't understand this. Postage shows $0 regardless.
- Cannot change the payment method for these labels, but I also don't have any charges in my account or credit card. Going to be a fun day when eBay decides to charge me for 300 of these they missed.
@wooperwares we haven't deleted any posts. It's odd yours vanished, sorry that happened! I'll look into why that happened after the chat.
Without a specific example to review it's difficult to know what may be happening. However, I do know that if a buyer purchases multiple items and the orders total is over $20 then the order won't be eligible for eBay Standard Envelope. The transaction still allows the buyer to select this service in this scenario even though eBay Standard Envelope won't be available for the seller to use when printing a shipping label. Our shipping team is aware of this gap and is working to resolve it.
If you encounter this situation then I suggest shipping with a different service, such as USP First Class Package if the item is less than 1lb or USPS/FedEx/UPS if the combine orders are over 1lb.
@mam98031 wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
@coffeebean832 wrote:
I’ve been trying to reach Payments CS for nearly a week and I keep getting the below message.
My issue is regarding a technical error with funds on one of my transactions. I’ve been in Payments for about 2 years now and I know the issue I’m experiencing is not how the system works. I also have a question about a transaction with no identifying information- also not the norm- so I have no idea what it’s for.
Please tell me-
- How can I get a Payments rep on the phone (for quickest resolution) or chat? I've been trying for nearly a week with zero luck.
- How does eBay expect sellers to run a business here when they can’t get help concerning their finances that eBay is controlling?
- What if this was a time-sensitive issue regarding a large dollar amount and there were circumstances that required CS assistance? What are sellers supposed to do?
Payments CS used to be great. Now that it's opened up to everyone, CS is non-existent. I know they’re overwhelmed with newbies to the program, but this is ridiculous that I can’t get any help for nearly a week.
@coffeebean832 I know the wait times and experience contacting payments support hasn't been ideal and we're working to address this. You are going through the right steps to contact that team. The payments team can definitely give you more details about the unknown transaction you mentioned. I've also seen several posts lately from sellers getting an unknown charge that ended up being a USPS short paid label. I don't know if that could be the scenario you're facing, but if you check this page then it'll let you know http://www.ebay.com/ship/lmng.
No disrespect to you or any others on this Community Team but how long are we suppose to accept that reason exactly?
I started my journey of learning what I could about MP last March/April. The ability to get ahold of someone on the MP team via the customer Service phone number is about the same now as it was then.
@mam98031 I understand. If I had a different answer to give you I would. I don't like telling you this any more than you enjoy receiving it.
@wooperwares wrote:
I'd also like to point out in my category, counterfeits are appearing at an alarming rate. I went through and reported many items one day, every single item still exists. I'm not going to continue to waste time reporting counterfeit items because the history is clear eBay will do nothing. It is turning the category into a joke though. I've never had sellers ask if my cards are real or legitimate, common occurrence now. This is what eBay is becoming known as. I asked the teenagers I manage if they ever purchased on eBay, not a single one has.
@wooperwares I appreciate that you've taken time to report items for review. Our team do review all member reports received and take actions based on their findings. Those actions aren't shared publicly, but can range from listing removals to account suspensions. It's also important to note that reports can take some time to be reviewed, which sometimes means action could be taken after a listing has ended/sold.
Reporting items that may be counterfeit is optional and we don't want you to feel obligated to spend time doing this. However, these reports do help our teams find listings/sellers that may not be caught through our manual review processes, so they can be helpful. Again, thank you for the time you've spent on this!
@coffeebean832 wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
@coffeebean832 wrote:
I’ve been trying to reach Payments CS for nearly a week and I keep getting the below message.
My issue is regarding a technical error with funds on one of my transactions. I’ve been in Payments for about 2 years now and I know the issue I’m experiencing is not how the system works. I also have a question about a transaction with no identifying information- also not the norm- so I have no idea what it’s for.
Please tell me-
- How can I get a Payments rep on the phone (for quickest resolution) or chat? I've been trying for nearly a week with zero luck.
- How does eBay expect sellers to run a business here when they can’t get help concerning their finances that eBay is controlling?
- What if this was a time-sensitive issue regarding a large dollar amount and there were circumstances that required CS assistance? What are sellers supposed to do?
Payments CS used to be great. Now that it's opened up to everyone, CS is non-existent. I know they’re overwhelmed with newbies to the program, but this is ridiculous that I can’t get any help for nearly a week.
@coffeebean832 I know the wait times and experience contacting payments support hasn't been ideal and we're working to address this. You are going through the right steps to contact that team. The payments team can definitely give you more details about the unknown transaction you mentioned. I've also seen several posts lately from sellers getting an unknown charge that ended up being a USPS short paid label. I don't know if that could be the scenario you're facing, but if you check this page then it'll let you know http://www.ebay.com/ship/lmng.
No- the mystery transaction is a credit not shown on the page you linked and I don't know what it's for.
The technical error is for funds that say released in one area- but they're still on hold and missing from available payouts in another area. That's not normal.
I'm sorry to make your job difficult, but 'just keep trying' is not an acceptable answer. It's been a week of trying. How many weeks does eBay expect sellers to keep trying when it's a matter of accessing their funds?
@coffeebean832 I get it. And, honestly, I don't enjoy giving that answer, but this is the current situation. Steps are being taken to improve payments queue times and their availably. We're not there just yet but this is in the works.
brian@ebay wrote:
@timelessauto wrote:
Hello
Sorry for the long post….
Is anyone addressing the long standing issue with the Ebay Shipping calculator error for items that have a standard additional handling surcharge when using UPS ( Never have any problems with Fedex) ? This results in excess charges when billed later for UPS shipping labels purchased through Ebay
We have had trouble getting the point across to Ebay customer service reps for months. We have several examples of UPS shipments where shipping charges were exactly $16.00 more than the Ebay shipping calculator estimated ( and what we paid for the estimated label ) These are all different items, weights, and sizes , and all were the same $16.00 extra charge on our UPS bill back from Ebay.
We do know other sellers who faced the same issue and Ebay customer support UPS dispute department responded to reference the UPS surcharge page related to one of the following;
Please provide the member this link that explains why the additional handling charge was added.
https://www.ups.com/us/en/help-center/billing-payment/avoid-charges.page
https://www.ups.com/assets/resources/media/en_US/package-accessorial-pricing-preview.pdf
Additional Handling can apply whenever:
- An item is not fully encased in corrugated cardboard.
- When a package weighs more than 50 pounds.
- If the package's longest side is longer than 48 inches, or if its second longest side is greater than 30 inches long.
- Any cylindrical-like item, such as a barrel, drum, pail, or tire, that is not fully encased in a corrugated cardboard shipping container.
Interestingly all of our examples would fall on point number 2 ( all weigh more than 50 pounds), and since it is exactly $16.00 for all examples, it would make sense it is a standard excess weight surcharge from UPS. We finally got a CS rep that understood what our issue was, replicated the issue on their end with a walkthrough with us, took a lot of notes and created an SR # on our behalf ( we assume with all the details we covered on the hour long call but we can’t see the SR). They said they would reach out to Ebay UPS dispute reps on this. We do not have an answer yet, but suspect something like the surcharge response above.
This issue really needs to go to your technical support team to fix the calculator to recognize set fees for additional handling charges and show the true amount that will be billed to us. Weight and Size surcharges at a minimum should be fixed as these are easily identified based on the customer input to the calculator, whereas irregular shapes or non-corrugated boxes fall on the seller to accept surcharges later.
While we now know to “ADD $16.00 to the estimater if over 50 pounds” it would be best to get accurate rates. It would also be better for the ebay community who may not know of the extra surcharges that are not being estimated at the time of shipment and are surprised later when billed.
It appears UPS is planning on April 11, 2021 to change the flat additional charges to a tier charge based on the zone, making this even more important to get accurate rates from the calculator for UPS up front.
@timelessauto thanks for this information. I'll pass it along to our shipping team!
@timelessauto will you tag me in a thread and provide some item numbers this has recently happened on? I want to give some examples to the shipping team for review. Thanks!
@coffeebean832 - I got a follow up. Unfortunately, there's a limitation with multi-SKU variations where they are not shown and cannot be filtered. You would only be able to view variations needing updating when editing the listings.
They said this Seller Center page has more info on multiple variations at the bottom. They know this is not ideal and it sounds like they are hopeful there may be a better solution in the future to identify these.
@carlqsportscards wrote:
When I click on ship your next item, it goes to the most recently paid. I want it to go to the earliest paid. Is this possible? I tried changing the order of the list, but it still goes to the most recently paid.
_____
Edit: A reply to your post can be found here
@carlqsportscards I received an update on your question. Currently setting it to 'Earliest paid' is not an option. The feedback has been provided to the right team though and they continue to monitor if this would be a change they can make in the future.
