eBay

alan@ebay · ‎05-15-2019

Happy Wednesday!

Join us here at 1 PM PT today for our Weekly Community Chat with eBay Staff. No set topic this week, so feel free to share your general buying and selling questions.

The chat will be open for questions from 1-2 pm PT and then we'll close it down.

If you're new to the chat, welcome! Simply reply to this post with your question after 1 pm.

Thanks!

Alan - eBay Community Manager

If a member's response helped, please give it a Helpful. If you are the author of a thread and a member's response resolved your question, please click "Accept as Solution." More on Accepted Solutions.

Check out the eBay for Business podcast! For your chance to be featured on the show, call in with a question at 888 723-4630!

community_team · ‎05-17-2019

Below you will find a recap of our Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team for May 15, 2019. We hope to see you at our next chat!

Item Not Received Requests

In addition to being at a loss for the cost of the transaction, why do I also get a defect and lose my final value fees when an item goes missing on it’s way to the buyer?

A seller will not get a defect and will receive a Final Value Fee credit when they refund their buyer before eBay is asked to step in on an item not received request. While you will need to compensate your buyer for the lost item, shipping insurance is a good way to better protect yourself from loss if an item goes missing or is damaged in shipment.

In this particular case, I had another of the same item, and I just sent it out. Can I get a Final Value Fee credit for providing this resolution?

If a refund is issued through a return then a credit will be automatically applied. If you choose to arrange a different resolution with your buyer then we recommend you contact Customer Service to see what options are available.

I didn’t know there was a problem until I saw there was an item not received request opened and a negative feedback was left. How is this fair?

An item not received request is one of the ways buyers can let sellers know there is an issue. Your buyer is not expected to contact you in any other way, and these requests should be viewed as a form of communication. The buyer is also free to leave feedback when they feel it is appropriate. When a buyer has a negative experience, such as when they don’t receive their item, they are entitled to leave feedback that reflects how they feel about their purchase.

Can anything be done about the feedback now that I’ve replaced the item?

When you have taken steps to resolve their concerns (such as the replacement you sent) you can ask your buyer if they would be willing to revise their feedback (more info here). Remember, while you may have addressed the problem that arose, this does not invalidate the buyer’s feelings about the transaction.

Guaranteed Delivery

I’ve had some of my transactions split into two orders - one for items that are not guaranteed to arrive by a certain date, and one for those that are. What is going on?

This is an issue we are currently investigating to see what might be going on.

I’m not opted into the Guaranteed Delivery program, but eBay is guaranteeing a delivery date on some of my transactions. How can I prevent eBay from putting a delivery guarantee on my items?

The guarantee eBay provides for Fast 'N Free shipping eligible sales will be placed anytime the transaction meets the following criteria:

Both you and your buyer are located in the 48 contiguous US states
We can estimate the item's delivery date as four business days or less based on your handling time, the delivery service you've offered, your location and the buyer's delivery address
You offer free shipping as your first (default) shipping option
You don't offer local pickup or freight as your first (default) shipping option
The listing isn't in Classified Ad format

If there is an issue related to late delivery and you shipped within your stated handling time, eBay will make it right for your buyer with one of these options:

Shipping cost reimbursement
Voucher for a future eBay purchase
Free return label if the sellers accepts returns

Additionally, eBay will also remove any negative or neutral feedback left by the buyer regarding late delivery.

While there is an issue with purchases splitting into two separate transactions and this is creating additional fees with PayPal, I still want to find a way to remove this guarantee. If I change my shipping from first class package to the generic 'standard shipping', would that make my items ineligible for this program?

At one point a specified shipping option was required for the guarantee to display, but this may have changed. Historical data, your location, the buyer's location, and the shipping service all factor into our estimate, so moving to a longer shipping service may not remove the guarantee on your items if we can determine the item will arrive within 4 business days.

Item Specifics And Categories

I have a large number of t-shirts I would like to list, but don’t see a way to have variations of the same shirt across men’s, women’s, and children’s sizes in a listing. Is there a way to do this?

While there isn’t a way to do this currently, we can definitely pass along the suggestion. For now, if the clothing you are listing is unisex, you can put it in the unisex clothing category.

Example: Clothing, Shoes & Accessories > Unisex Clothing, Shoes & Accs > Unisex Adult Clothing > T-Shirts

If I use sell similar to create a listing in the men’s clothing category to the women’s clothing category, why do the item specifics need to be re-entered?

Item specifics are category dependent because the vast majority of categories vary greatly. Currently, we do not have any categories that retain the item specifics when using Sell Similar or moving an item from one category to another because we want to ensure that all of the item specifics in your listing are accurate and retaining item specifics between similar categories may lead to incorrect info.

Estimated Delivery Dates

I have an order where the estimated delivery date is the final day I have to ship based on my handling time. What is going on?

The estimated delivery date is calculated in part based on your historical shipping data. You do have the full duration of your handling time to ship the item out and while you won’t have any negative impact recorded on your selling account if you wait until the last day of your stated handling, there may be times the estimate provided to the buyer for delivery is within that time frame when past shipments have shown a pattern of delivery sooner.

Mobile App

Why doesn't the mobile version of selling on eBay include the Time Left Until Renew for listings? Can we expect this feature to be included on our mobile devices soon?

No update to share at this time, but we’ll get this to our Mobile & Product teams for their consideration.

Seller Initiated Offer

I still don't have the offer to buyers feature that was supposedly rolled out to all sellers. Any way I can get that added to Seller Hub?

We will contact the appropriate team for this tool and see what we can do!

View Best Answer in original post

Anonymous · ‎05-15-2019

Hi everyone! Welcome the the Weekly Chat

vrykalak · ‎05-15-2019

1. when a parcel gets lost in the mail, the seller has to eat the cost, of the item, and the shipping, and the final value fees...and probably gets a defect. I don't think this is fair. Could we at least get FVFs back? And if there's an INR defect assigned, could it be removed?

wooden_flower · ‎05-15-2019

Hi,

I am still having issues with orders being split into multiple payments. I understand there are now other sellers with the same issue, but still nothing has been corrected.

I opted out of guaranteed delivery, but the system is still putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of some of my orders - pretty much any order that qualifies for free shipping gets split. I understand that you have the right to offer guaranteed delivery even if I do not support it, but I don't think it is fair to force me to pay extra paypal fees so that you can do this.

So short of changing my handling time to something greater than 1 day, which will then cost me the TRS discount, is there any way to get the system to stop putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of these orders?

(There is nothing in my settings to cause the system to calculate different delivery dates for various items on these orders. All of my items have exactly the same shipping settings, and 1 day handling.)

thanks,

Sue

wooden_flower Volunteer Community Mentor.
eBay member since 2001.

Anonymous · ‎05-15-2019

@wooden_flower wrote:

Hi,

I am still having issues with orders being split into multiple payments. I understand there are now other sellers with the same issue, but still nothing has been corrected.

I opted out of guaranteed delivery, but the system is still putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of some of my orders - pretty much any order that qualifies for free shipping gets split. I understand that you have the right to offer guaranteed delivery even if I do not support it, but I don't think it is fair to force me to pay extra paypal fees so that you can do this.

So short of changing my handling time to something greater than 1 day, which will then cost me the TRS discount, is there any way to get the system to stop putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of these orders?

(There is nothing in my settings to cause the system to calculate different delivery dates for various items on these orders. All of my items have exactly the same shipping settings, and 1 day handling.)

thanks,

Sue

Hi @wooden_flower, this is an issue we are currently investigating. If you have some examples, I'm happy to pass them along to our tech teams. If you have our team's email address feel free to share details there, or I can email you directly so you can respond with these details.

As for the guarantee eBay provides for Fast 'N Free shipping eligible transactions, this will be placed anytime we can confidently say the item will arrive within 4 days. If any issues arise due to this guarantee, we will review for appropriate protections.

wooden_flower · ‎05-15-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
@wooden_flower wrote:
Hi,

I am still having issues with orders being split into multiple payments. I understand there are now other sellers with the same issue, but still nothing has been corrected.

I opted out of guaranteed delivery, but the system is still putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of some of my orders - pretty much any order that qualifies for free shipping gets split. I understand that you have the right to offer guaranteed delivery even if I do not support it, but I don't think it is fair to force me to pay extra paypal fees so that you can do this.

So short of changing my handling time to something greater than 1 day, which will then cost me the TRS discount, is there any way to get the system to stop putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of these orders?

(There is nothing in my settings to cause the system to calculate different delivery dates for various items on these orders. All of my items have exactly the same shipping settings, and 1 day handling.)

thanks,
Sue
Hi @wooden_flower, this is an issue we are currently investigating. If you have some examples, I'm happy to pass them along to our tech teams. If you have our team's email address feel free to share details there, or I can email you directly so you can respond with these details.

As for the guarantee eBay provides for Fast 'N Free shipping eligible transactions, this will be placed anytime we can confidently say the item will arrive within 4 days. If any issues arise due to this guarantee, we will review for appropriate protections.

Thank you Trinton. I have provided examples through posting on facebook. If they need more, they are welcome to ask - it happens more days than not.

My question remains - how do I get you to stop putting guaranteed delivery on my items after I have opted out. It is costing me money, and that is not fair.

Sue

wooden_flower Volunteer Community Mentor.
eBay member since 2001.

Anonymous · ‎05-15-2019

@wooden_flower wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

@wooden_flower wrote:

Hi,

I am still having issues with orders being split into multiple payments. I understand there are now other sellers with the same issue, but still nothing has been corrected.

I opted out of guaranteed delivery, but the system is still putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of some of my orders - pretty much any order that qualifies for free shipping gets split. I understand that you have the right to offer guaranteed delivery even if I do not support it, but I don't think it is fair to force me to pay extra paypal fees so that you can do this.

So short of changing my handling time to something greater than 1 day, which will then cost me the TRS discount, is there any way to get the system to stop putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of these orders?

(There is nothing in my settings to cause the system to calculate different delivery dates for various items on these orders. All of my items have exactly the same shipping settings, and 1 day handling.)

thanks,

Sue

Hi @wooden_flower, this is an issue we are currently investigating. If you have some examples, I'm happy to pass them along to our tech teams. If you have our team's email address feel free to share details there, or I can email you directly so you can respond with these details.

As for the guarantee eBay provides for Fast 'N Free shipping eligible transactions, this will be placed anytime we can confidently say the item will arrive within 4 days. If any issues arise due to this guarantee, we will review for appropriate protections.

Thank you Trinton. I have provided examples through posting on facebook. If they need more, they are welcome to ask - it happens more days than not.

My question remains - how do I get you to stop putting guaranteed delivery on my items after I have opted out. It is costing me money, and that is not fair.

Sue

Hi @wooden_flower, the examples you provided through Facebook should be enough. You can review our Help Page on the Fast 'N Free program to determine what listings would be eligible and decide if you would like to make changes.

vrykalak · ‎05-15-2019

Continued from last time:

I have a couple hundred t-shirts I want to list, and each one has to have at least two listings, one for men and one for women. A few have to have three listings, one for women, one for boys, one for girls.

What's worse, when I try to Sell Similar and just change the gender, I have to re-enter the Condition information and all the Item Specifics from scratch, even tho the only change is to show the women's size instead of the mens (or VV).
There's no reason the Condition would change just because the category changes.
There's no reason Item Specifics like where it was made, what the design/color is, what material it's made of would change.
Condition Description and Item Specifics that are the same should be copied over when the category changes.

brian@ebay · ‎05-15-2019

@vrykalak wrote:

1. when a parcel gets lost in the mail, the seller has to eat the cost, of the item, and the shipping, and the final value fees...and probably gets a defect. I don't think this is fair. Could we at least get FVFs back? And if there's an INR defect assigned, could it be removed?

Hi @vrykalak, a seller will not get a defect and will receive a Final Value Fee credit when they refund their buyer before eBay is asked to step in. In these situations a seller will be out the shipping cost and item. While this isn't common, it is something sellers should be aware of as a possibility. As such, shipping insurance is a good way to better protect from loss when a package is lost and something worth considering when purchasing a label.

Brian,
Community Team

mam98031 · ‎05-15-2019

@vrykalak wrote:
1. when a parcel gets lost in the mail, the seller has to eat the cost, of the item, and the shipping, and the final value fees...and probably gets a defect. I don't think this is fair. Could we at least get FVFs back? And if there's an INR defect assigned, could it be removed?

Just a question on the situation you describe. Why would you get a defect and why would you eat the FVFs? Unless you allowed the claim to be escalated and Ebay ruled for the buyer? You know that we can't win a claim like this, fair or unfair. So why allow it to get worse by not taking care of it before escalation is necessary? Just asking. I don't like this type of situation anymore than you do.

mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999

wooden_flower · ‎05-15-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
@wooden_flower wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@wooden_flower wrote:
Hi,

I am still having issues with orders being split into multiple payments. I understand there are now other sellers with the same issue, but still nothing has been corrected.

I opted out of guaranteed delivery, but the system is still putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of some of my orders - pretty much any order that qualifies for free shipping gets split. I understand that you have the right to offer guaranteed delivery even if I do not support it, but I don't think it is fair to force me to pay extra paypal fees so that you can do this.

So short of changing my handling time to something greater than 1 day, which will then cost me the TRS discount, is there any way to get the system to stop putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of these orders?

(There is nothing in my settings to cause the system to calculate different delivery dates for various items on these orders. All of my items have exactly the same shipping settings, and 1 day handling.)

thanks,
Sue
Hi @wooden_flower, this is an issue we are currently investigating. If you have some examples, I'm happy to pass them along to our tech teams. If you have our team's email address feel free to share details there, or I can email you directly so you can respond with these details.

As for the guarantee eBay provides for Fast 'N Free shipping eligible transactions, this will be placed anytime we can confidently say the item will arrive within 4 days. If any issues arise due to this guarantee, we will review for appropriate protections.
Thank you Trinton. I have provided examples through posting on facebook. If they need more, they are welcome to ask - it happens more days than not.

My question remains - how do I get you to stop putting guaranteed delivery on my items after I have opted out. It is costing me money, and that is not fair.

Sue
Hi @wooden_flower, the examples you provided through Facebook should be enough. You can review our Help Page on the Fast 'N Free program to determine what listings would be eligible and decide if you would like to make changes.

My items do not qualify for fast 'n free - my free shipping is a combined order total promotional shipping discount.

Any other ideas?

thanks!

Sue

wooden_flower Volunteer Community Mentor.
eBay member since 2001.

theshoppingmom2 · ‎05-15-2019

@vrykalak i would also like to add to what brian@ebay has said that if you mail the package priority you automatically get at least $50 for insurance 🙂

and if the package is lost it is extremely easy to file a claim at the USPS website

ღஐƸ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒஐღ Patty ღஐƸ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒஐღ

vrykalak · ‎05-15-2019

brian@ebay wrote:
@vrykalak wrote:
1. when a parcel gets lost in the mail, the seller has to eat the cost, of the item, and the shipping, and the final value fees...and probably gets a defect. I don't think this is fair. Could we at least get FVFs back? And if there's an INR defect assigned, could it be removed?
Hi @vrykalak, a seller will not get a defect and will receive a Final Value Fee credit when they refund their buyer before eBay is asked to step in. In these situations a seller will be out the shipping cost and item. While this isn't common, it is something sellers should be aware of as a possibility. As such, shipping insurance is a good way to better protect from loss when a package is lost and something worth considering when purchasing a label.

In this particular case, I had another of the same item, and I just sent it out.
So I'm out the cost of both items, two shipping costs, and the FVF is not refunded because I sent another item instead of a refund.

This happens once every couple of years. It's certainly not worth buying insurance on every item I send out.

I think the seller should get FVFs back when the carrier admits the package got lost after it was submitted and recorded. And if the buyer opened an INR, and/or left negative feedback, both should be expunged.

wooden_flower · ‎05-15-2019

My items do not qualify for fast 'n free - my free shipping is a combined order total promotional shipping discount.

Any other ideas?

thanks!
Sue

I had an idea - if I change my shipping from first class package to the generic 'standard shipping', would that keep the system from calculating delivery in 4 days? The generic standard shipping says 1-5 days.

thanks again,

Sue

wooden_flower Volunteer Community Mentor.
eBay member since 2001.

Anonymous · ‎05-15-2019

@wooden_flower wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

@wooden_flower wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

@wooden_flower wrote:

Hi,

I am still having issues with orders being split into multiple payments. I understand there are now other sellers with the same issue, but still nothing has been corrected.

I opted out of guaranteed delivery, but the system is still putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of some of my orders - pretty much any order that qualifies for free shipping gets split. I understand that you have the right to offer guaranteed delivery even if I do not support it, but I don't think it is fair to force me to pay extra paypal fees so that you can do this.

So short of changing my handling time to something greater than 1 day, which will then cost me the TRS discount, is there any way to get the system to stop putting a guaranteed delivery date on part of each of these orders?

(There is nothing in my settings to cause the system to calculate different delivery dates for various items on these orders. All of my items have exactly the same shipping settings, and 1 day handling.)

thanks,

Sue

Hi @wooden_flower, this is an issue we are currently investigating. If you have some examples, I'm happy to pass them along to our tech teams. If you have our team's email address feel free to share details there, or I can email you directly so you can respond with these details.

As for the guarantee eBay provides for Fast 'N Free shipping eligible transactions, this will be placed anytime we can confidently say the item will arrive within 4 days. If any issues arise due to this guarantee, we will review for appropriate protections.

Thank you Trinton. I have provided examples through posting on facebook. If they need more, they are welcome to ask - it happens more days than not.

My question remains - how do I get you to stop putting guaranteed delivery on my items after I have opted out. It is costing me money, and that is not fair.

Sue

Hi @wooden_flower, the examples you provided through Facebook should be enough. You can review our Help Page on the Fast 'N Free program to determine what listings would be eligible and decide if you would like to make changes.

My items do not qualify for fast 'n free - my free shipping is a combined order total promotional shipping discount.

Any other ideas?

thanks!

Sue