Community Chat, June 17 @ 1:00 pm PT - General Topics

[brian@ebay]

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to 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 thread 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 work 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.

[rebecca@ebay]

Thanks for joining our chat today. Before we get started I wanted to stop by and say that we know that some of you may have questions about the news regarding former employees and the unthinkable acts they committed.  While we aren’t able to comment further in this forum other than the statements by eBay here and Jordan, our team’s SVP, here and here, we will be listening to your thoughts and concerns, and following the chat will share them with the right people within eBay, including Jordan. Above all please know that we all are shocked, horrified, and saddened by the news and commit to never tolerating any kind of discrimination against people who are critical of the company - including right here in this chat.

With that in mind please feel free to share your feedback below, and as with every Community Chat we are here to answer any questions you may have about buying or selling here at eBay.

[gwzcomps]

It is disheartening still seeing posts from less experienced sellers getting scammed or being targeted by scammers. Does eBay have a gameplan on how they are dealing with the current preferred tricks the scammers are using? Even something as simple as making it so non buyers can’t send messages on completed items would be a good step. My understanding from talking to CS in the past is that buyers are allowed to send personal info through messages. Maybe just filter all messages and block known forms of contact info from being shared? It would also be nice to see more aggressive verification of buyer accounts rather than letting buyers run wild.

[fjbfour]

Hi, thanks for giving us this channel to chat with staff.

I got a Facebook message from someone I'm not friends with, that I did not see for over a year.  He had seen a listing for a historical UPI photo of my dad when he in the Marines, overseas in Thailand in the 60s.

He sent me the item number, but obviously we are way past being able to look up that item through the regular UI accessible to us.  Is there a channel to request this to be looked up in your internal archive, so that I can find out who the seller or buyer was depending on if it sold or not, so I can try to track it down?

[gwzcomps]

I have noticed that recently on Firefox running on Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit that the descriptions have been having a scroll bar show up if there is “too much text”.  I was curious why this was happening and if it is a bug.  It doesn’t seem to happen on Chrome.

Item # example:  373084608107

[magsmg101]

Offensive Materials Policy.
Looks like another case of left hand / right hand fumble,

And help from customer service?? Really??? Rebecca these takedowns are done by an AI bot.
Your phone or chat CS teams have all been properly trained in the nuances of the Black Americana policies announced today?

From the pained cries of affected sellers on the boards I think not.

Listings (as of a couple of hours ago) in Black Americana collectibles…US sellers only…14K available for purchase, 8.6K sold prices realized range from $1.00 to $6,500.00 a nice return for a company that touts its self as a venue only.

[coinslabz26]

I have a question about the ebay "THANKSALOT" coupon given to us by ebay for our next purchase of shipping supplies.

First of all, that was a very nice gesture and thank you very much!

However, ebay shipping supplies is sold out of all of the most popular shipping supplies. Due the the pandemic they have informed me that it could be up to 5 weeks before they can even take pre-sale orders for many supplies. Can ebay look into this issue and consider extending the expiration date of the coupon?

[dtexley3]

On the same note, for a long time potential buyers were blocked from including email or phone numbers in messages or offers for items.  

Lately I've seen several fairly new sellers asking if it was normal for them to receive an offer significantly in excess of their asking with an email or phone number included in the message for contact.  

Why are buyers being allowed to include email addresses and phone numbers when making offers via eBay?  Blocking them would reduce the ability of scammers to try to steer the naive seller into believing they had been paid and shipping their item to the scammer.

[vrykalak]

I ordered an item several months ago, and just now opened it.

It is not usable, because the seller told me an untruth about it.

He is willing to take it back, and asks me to open a return through eBay...but I don't know how, since the transaction is too old. (27Oct19, 133230609654)

Help?

[golfingaddict]

I am very concerned about what I read this week regarding the former employees.

You guys have  a lot of information about me, including my ss number, my bank account information and my business information.  If the top security guys at your company can go rouge, it concerns me that my information is not safe.   So what if another group of employees decides to careen off course.  Will my personal information be in jeopardy?  Will I say something wrong and they can go after me or disclose information about me and my account.

This is scary stuff.  And yes, while they are former employees, they were employed by ebay and essentially doing the deeds for ebay when they happened  (allegedly).  That is quite different than saying former employees as if they left the company and tried to do a little damage after the fact.

and rebecca@ebay   you can tell that to Jordon and others if you are passing on comments.

[mam98031]

Yes this is quite horrifying to find this out about some former employees of Ebay.  And for all then inquiring minds, we would like to know more details, but I do understand that isn't likely possible due to the court cases pending.  So our vivid imaginations are running wild.  

A question that I think is important is were any of these people ever able to identify some of the posters on the site so they could also retaliate against them?  To say that some of the posters on that site hate Ebay for whatever reason they may have, they are certainly passionate as well as persistent about of how they feel is such an understatement.  

[theshoppingmom2]

Hi everyone!!

I have a question for brian@ebay  

Have you been able to find out why we are not getting notifications ? I used to get  email notifications every time someone posted on the boards or  in groups. I am signed in to receive them , I just checked so that's not the issue.

In one of my groups several people are complaining of the same.... no notifications. 

Please  let me know if there is a fix in the near future. TIA

[tyler@ebay]

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@fjbfour wrote:

Hi, thanks for giving us this channel to chat with staff.

I got a Facebook message from someone I'm not friends with, that I did not see for over a year.  He had seen a listing for a historical UPI photo of my dad when he in the Marines, overseas in Thailand in the 60s.

He sent me the item number, but obviously we are way past being able to look up that item through the regular UI accessible to us.  Is there a channel to request this to be looked up in your internal archive, so that I can find out who the seller or buyer was depending on if it sold or not, so I can try to track it down?

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Hi @fjbfour - what an incredible story! With it being fairly old I'm not sure how much data would still be accessible, nor how much I'd be able to provide you (our privacy policies are fairly strict in that regard). I'm happy to see what can be done though, please keep an eye out for an email from us for more detail. 

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

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@gwzcomps wrote:

I have noticed that recently on Firefox running on Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit that the descriptions have been having a scroll bar show up if there is “too much text”.  I was curious why this was happening and if it is a bug.  It doesn’t seem to happen on Chrome.

Item # example:  373084608107

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Hi @gwzcomps, thanks for sharing an example we can take a look at. I just checked the listing and I don't see a scroll bar when I view the page in Firefox, though I am running Windows 10 on my computer. I'll get this reported to see if there is anything going on, but this may be related to an individuals display settings ie. not a technical issue. Happy to look into it further, though!

[themodernavenue]

I have a question about the service interruption on buy it now listings and on the website (on the system status page).  When will this be fixed?