Community Chat, March 13 @ 1:00 pm PT - General Topics

[alan@ebay]

Hi everyone! We hope to see you here today at 1 PM PT for our Weekly Chat with the Community Team. Bring your general buying and selling questions for discussion 

See you soon! 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

ebay and Sales Velocity: Wouldn't a better negotiated rate with USPS help with sales velocity? App sites competing with ebay have negotiated these, why not ebay? The easier and cheaper it is for us to ship, the more time we can devote to sourcing and selling. Also, in this regard, what is going on with the ebay shipping supplies store? I remember when it first opened, ebay was asking us what size boxes we wanted to see, etc. A lot of people were pretty enthusiastic about it. But last I looked the selection had diminished yet again. I'm fine with shipping supplies that help brand ebay, but you guys provide an ever diminishing selection for me to choose from.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Regarding GTC, one objection to GTC is that GTC listings only get a newly listed search "bump" when first listed. 30 day (or ten day) get the bump every time they are manually relisted. Sellers don't want to lose that bump. My question: what is that bump worth? We know there's a bump in the Newly Listed search sort, but can you provide some rough statistics here? What percentage of searches are Best Match? Newly LIsted? Ending Soonest? And within Best Match, how much weight is given to a newly listed listing? Any real information here would be helpful.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I'm a little confused about the status of Terapeak. I'm a long time subscriber, but was happy to drop that in favor of the free subscription that comes with my store. However, the free Terapeak (and I'm happy for it, don't get me wrong) is a stripped down version of the old Terapeak. Obviously, I figured they would drop Amazon data once you guys bought the company. I get that. And I gather they are saying that some former features have been (or will be) incorporated directly into Seller Hub. So my question is: ebay sellers who don't get the free Terapeak can still purchase it. I assume they are buying the same thing we are getting for free? Is that correct? And, is there a way to pay for a more robust version, similar to the old Terapeak? Or is this now the only version available? Also, will there be a Terapeak app available for smart phones? Apps are usually easy to use than the browser version on a phone?

[papermoneyforme]

Concerning Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro

When Seller Hub was coming in were we not told that these would go away as well as TL?

What is the situation with these?

[eauctionmanagement]

We are now in Mid-March.

Do you have a specific date on when the Forced GTC change will take place?

[tyler@ebay]

Hi @mg152 - hoping your fur baby heals quickly! Spoil her a bit for sure. 🙂

[ekmadonna]

Hi, what is the actual date when we will no longer be able to access the shorter duration listing cycles and ALL listings get changed to GTC sitewide? Also, will our current active listings AUTOMATICALLY change over or will they ACTUALLY END first so we can make any necessary changes to a listing before it gets the GTC designation upon a relist or sell similar? Thanks

[brian@ebay]

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@mam98031 wrote:

I’d like to make a couple suggestions for whatever team or department handles the rules that guide Feedback.

First I think it would be a good idea not to have buyer FB any longer.  Many sites have moved to this type of policy.  No FB for buyers.  Rating our customers is just not a good business practice IMHO.  By removing Buyer FB then sellers can focus more on taking good care of their customers and provide the level of service that they have the right to expect. 

I think once the buyers got use to it, that it would lead to a healthier environment and alleviate some stress buyer’s feel when they don’t get FB when they expect it or for sellers is wondering why they can’t say anything negative about their buyer. 

I know that some buyers really enjoy collecting FB.  It is important to them.  But I do think that my not having buyer FB buyers will learn to accept it and be OK with it.  I just think this would be a very positive move for everyone.

The other thing is about FB removal.  The legit reasons why a member may be able to get FB removed.  While we do have a policy page for this, it is incomplete.  There are other policy pages that contain additional information on the subject and I think it would be much easier for everyone if the full explanation and list of reasons would be better all on one policy. 

Certainly other policies could reference each other.  But when you are trying to research the valid reasons, it just seems so much easier if the policy page didn’t make you go here there and everywhere to gather the info you are seeking.

There may be more, but these are the policies I’ve found that have stuff referenced regarding reasons why FB can be removed.  But no one link has everything.

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-manipulation-policy?id=4231

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-extortion-policy?id=4230

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-seller-terms-conditions?id=4229

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy/seller-performance-def...

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/member-behaviour-policies/membertomember-contact-policy?id=4262

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Hi @mam98031, you bring up some good points and I'm happy to get these suggestions to the right teams. Thanks!

[mam98031]

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brian@ebay wrote:

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@mam98031 wrote:

I’d like to make a couple suggestions for whatever team or department handles the rules that guide Feedback.

First I think it would be a good idea not to have buyer FB any longer.  Many sites have moved to this type of policy.  No FB for buyers.  Rating our customers is just not a good business practice IMHO.  By removing Buyer FB then sellers can focus more on taking good care of their customers and provide the level of service that they have the right to expect. 

I think once the buyers got use to it, that it would lead to a healthier environment and alleviate some stress buyer’s feel when they don’t get FB when they expect it or for sellers is wondering why they can’t say anything negative about their buyer. 

I know that some buyers really enjoy collecting FB.  It is important to them.  But I do think that my not having buyer FB buyers will learn to accept it and be OK with it.  I just think this would be a very positive move for everyone.

The other thing is about FB removal.  The legit reasons why a member may be able to get FB removed.  While we do have a policy page for this, it is incomplete.  There are other policy pages that contain additional information on the subject and I think it would be much easier for everyone if the full explanation and list of reasons would be better all on one policy. 

Certainly other policies could reference each other.  But when you are trying to research the valid reasons, it just seems so much easier if the policy page didn’t make you go here there and everywhere to gather the info you are seeking.

There may be more, but these are the policies I’ve found that have stuff referenced regarding reasons why FB can be removed.  But no one link has everything.

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-manipulation-policy?id=4231

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-extortion-policy?id=4230

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-seller-terms-conditions?id=4229

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy/seller-performance-def...

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/member-behaviour-policies/membertomember-contact-policy?id=4262

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Hi @mam98031, you bring up some good points and I'm happy to get these suggestions to the right teams. Thanks!

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Thank you Brian.

[tyler@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
Last year at eBay Open Mohan Patt promised sellers that by 2019 (I think he said Q1, which is coming to an end in a few weeks), sellers with employees would have the ability to provide employees with limited access to the sellers account, so that the employees could do more without actually being privy to all the account info. This was greeted with much applause by sellers, many of whom had been asking for this tool for years. Since then, I'm hearing....nothing. Is this still in the works? For Q1? For Q2? Or...what?

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Hi @my-cottage-books-and-antiques - I remember that, it was a really exciting announcement! 

I also have not heard any updates on this as a roll-out, though I'm hopeful that we'll see this as a feature in the future.

[mg152]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

Hi @mg152 - hoping your fur baby heals quickly! Spoil her a bit for sure. 🙂

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I will try but they are already pretty spoiled. I’ll give you an example, for dinner the dogs had homemade dog food I made them with ground chicken, turkey, rice and various veggies. Hubby had frozen pizza he cooked himself. Lol!! 

[eauctionmanagement]

Ecommercebytes has written up several detailed articles concerning the Early Spring Update. They have gathered a lot of feedback from eBay sellers, much of it critical about the forced change of Fixed Price listings to GTC only durations. An overwhelming number of sellers are not happy with this change, both reflected by Ecommercebytes non-biased reporting... and on the eBay forums themselves.

Based on all the feedback, will you consider re-evaluating this change and allow sellers to keep shorter fixed price durations?

[goodluckselling]

eBay has told us that some time in the near future Paypal will be added into the approved managed payments options for buyers to use. 

Are all sellers payment processing fees going to be the same regardless which payment option a buyer chooses, albeit Adyen, paypal, apple pay or any others that eBay might approve?

If not could you explain in simply terms why it might be different?

I would also like to request at this time that the managed payments team schedule a chance to participate in this weekly chat again very soon as there is a lot of talk about the coming changes.

Good Luck Selling!

[mr_lincoln]

tyler@ebay   Sorry Tyler, I thanked you as "Trinton"on the first reply ... ooooooops!

[tyler@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
Ebay has said that improving sales velocity is an important part of their 2019 plans. For many of us, especially sellers of one-offs, social media is a key part of our own sales velocity strategy. Yet eBay provides woefully little in this regard. There's been no change to the four (largely unnoticed) links at the upper right of listing pages: email, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. As ebay moves everyone to GTC, the value of these sites increases. Perhaps ebay could do more with these? And why on earth, in 2019, is Instagram not one of the links? And speaking of social media, many of us see value in it, but I'm sure more sellers would use it if ebay provided some incentives: maybe an FVF discount for items bought when clearly referred by Social media? Or maybe some contests for referrals? At least some thing....

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Hi @my-cottage-books-and-antiques - this is a great call out! There are a few different initiatives to incentivize sharing items on social media, and it's something that we're working on developing more broadly. 

When it comes to an Instagram share, I think that would be a valuable addition too. I'll get it suggested. Thanks!