Community Chat, March 25 @ 1:00 pm PT - General Topics

[brian@ebay]

Join the Community team here at 1 PM PT on March 25th 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.

[maxoptical]

My competitor has now been violating your duplicate listing policy for 8 weeks and no visible action against their account.   They are running the same items on two eBay anchor stores, over 3000 listings.   Same paypal account, same ship from address, same company owns both ebay accounts.  I purchased the exact same item from both stores and provided eBay with all of the documentation showing they are the same company.  

This is very frustrating,  in a given search they show up twice and I shop up once for the same item. 

I don't understand what I need to do to get somebody at eBay to take action.

John Norman

eBay ID Maxoptical  

[mam98031]

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@gwzcomps wrote:

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@mam98031 wrote:

I think Ebay is doing a really good job shutting down various FP listings that are participating in price gouging.  

But when it is an auction, they don't seem to get shut down or certainly not as quickly as an FP.  Is there a different criteria for auctions vs FB?

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I have wondered why they don't just shut down those categories for now.

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Why?  There are legit listings in the categories.  Besides some sellers that are persistent set up new selling accounts and list in categories that you would not normally find the products in.  They are trying to elude Ebay's detection for as long as they can in the hopes of getting some sales first.  Shutting down entire categories would likely harm sellers that are doing nothing wrong.  Well that is my opinion anyway.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

mam, I believe the post is talking about B&M stores. From what I've seen, some B&Ms are refusing returns/refunds on things like toilet paper and other items that people bought hoping to resell at inflated prices. When they discovered they could get in trouble for that, they tried returning for a refund and stores are refusing to accept returns from the price gougers.

[gwzcomps]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@gwzcomps wrote:

Many stores are starting to refuse to do returns and are selling things all sales final due to safety concerns. What is eBay doing to protect the safety of sellers when it comes to returns? In most cases I am not willing to refund without getting my item back. At the same time I want to make sure I am able to safely run my business. Hopefully as things continue to get worse eBay is keeping the health and safety of the sellers in mind.

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Was there a thread on this?

@gwzcomps 

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I have been out of the loop the last few days so I have no idea.  Getting ready to shutdown has been the priority.

[mr_lincoln]

Good afternoon eBay Support Team!

Subject:  Offers being sent for just opening an item

I responded to a thread today where a Buyer said they got an offer sent on an item they were NOT watching and just browsing.  I seem to recall at least one other thread about this too recently. 

I was doing some research and opened an item and when I got to I believe the description area there was a custom note to me (pic below).  Not sure if this is just a Store feature that I am unaware of or something new.

So, these two personalized communications have left me with some questions:

1.  Is the unsolicited offer just for browsing an item some kind of new test eBay is running?

2. Is the message I saw on another Seller's item (pic below) an over lay eBay does just to try and get Buyers to visit the Seller's store or is that a set up the Seller can make?

   -And this begs the question ... if eBay knows who is looking at items why can't the Seller as well (if they want that information)?

3. On a semi-related topic, since Sellers can now send offers to Watchers why can't we see a list of Watcher and their IDs like we can we can for Bidders on an Auction style listing?  For myself I have no desire to send offers to Watchers but I might like to check out their Feedback or see what if anything they sell.

[alan@ebay]

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@bookollections wrote:

Greetings, Is there the possibility of a plan to offer "non-store" sellers any fixed-price free insertions, before the end of March?  Thank you…

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Hi @bookollections, 

Thanks for stopping by today. We can't preannounce eBay updates on the Community Chat. We typically announce promos through official channels like Seller News Announcements, Seller Hub, a message in eBay message center, email, etc.  

The best thing to do is to keep an eye on those channels for news. 

Thanks again! 

[reallytalljon]

Hello, I am bringing up the old "Fedex label orientation" issue.  The problem is that the labels get printed out in portrait mode instead of landscape.  If 8.5 x 11 labels, 2 per page, are being used, the bar codes at the bottom of the label get amputated. 

This is a known issue and it is STILL happening.  A post last May from one of you guys said that it was being fixed.

I want to use Fedex more, with the more favorable rates and all, but if I have to do workarounds to print the label correctly, then I will be less likely to use them.  

[mam98031]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
mam, I believe the post is talking about B&M stores. From what I've seen, some B&Ms are refusing returns/refunds on things like toilet paper and other items that people bought hoping to resell at inflated prices. When they discovered they could get in trouble for that, they tried returning for a refund and stores are refusing to accept returns from the price gougers.

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Thanks, that changes things.  I can't say I have any sympathy for those sellers at all.  

[golfingaddict]

Thank you for the recent announcement regarding ebay protecting our seller standings. Can you please clarify? It says that our seller standards will be protected until June 20th evaluation. But some of the things that cause us to lose status stay on our account for a year. (late shipment rate, for example) I know that some things are evaluated for three months. Is this protection really going just going to delay our accounts falling below standard or losing TRS status? Or is the protection only designed to protect large accounts that are looked at with a 3 month evaluation period Could you please clarify. Thank you.

[gwzcomps]

Yes I was referring to B&M. Some stores are refusing all returns in general. I need some more pants, but I can't try them on or return them locally. Duct tape repair time so I can make it to shorts season.

[mam98031]

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@gwzcomps wrote:

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@gwzcomps wrote:

Many stores are starting to refuse to do returns and are selling things all sales final due to safety concerns. What is eBay doing to protect the safety of sellers when it comes to returns? In most cases I am not willing to refund without getting my item back. At the same time I want to make sure I am able to safely run my business. Hopefully as things continue to get worse eBay is keeping the health and safety of the sellers in mind.

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Was there a thread on this?

@gwzcomps 

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I have been out of the loop the last few days so I have no idea.  Getting ready to shutdown has been the priority.

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When you said "store" I thought you meant Ebay stores not B&M's.  Now I understand.

[gwzcomps]

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@gwzcomps wrote:

Many stores are starting to refuse to do returns and are selling things all sales final due to safety concerns. What is eBay doing to protect the safety of sellers when it comes to returns? In most cases I am not willing to refund without getting my item back. At the same time I want to make sure I am able to safely run my business. Hopefully as things continue to get worse eBay is keeping the health and safety of the sellers in mind.

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Too late to edit this so I am going to quote myself so I can specify I am referring to B&M not accepting returns on the local level.

[donnalmorgan]

A buyer requested a return/refund. The item was $10.00 with $8.52 shipping. I wanted to happily refund the full amount through PayPal. However, when I refunded it only sent her $10.00. Now I don't know how to get the shipping fee to her. Any help? Thanks so much!!

[vrykalak]

search engine is misbehaving in unusual ways again: searched for
- "Red Clover tea", got 79 results, including some w/o "Red Clover"
- saw some that said "pratense" so added "-pratense", got 113 results, some without ANY of my original three keywords!
...plus 7 links to non-ebay sites at the bottom!!!

[alcoforever]

There are problems with what you are contemplating.   First, if there is a SNAD case opened with no returns, the buyer might get refunded and you don't get your item back.   Second, if you think you can avoid coronavirus by not getting packages back, then you should refuse all mail deliveries.