Comics-scifi_collectibles Volunteer Community Mentor
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:
@donsdetour wrote:
Looking to be a slow day: or is it the calm before the storm.
So hope you, (Brian); and the folks at eBay are doing well.
And again thanks for talking to us users.
I can not thank the group that does this enough.
Just saying HI.
@donsdetour thanks! I really appreciate that and I hope you're doing well too 🙂 I'm thinking the weekly chats might slow down until the holidays are over, but we'll see! 🎄
🛒
OH NO! While I'm sure it would be great for the team, it would not be so good for us out here. This is often the only place we can come to get accurate explanations of things.
@mam98031 don't worry, the Community team will still be here each week through the holiday season 🙂 In past years I've noticed that engagement on the chats seems to slow down in November and December since sellers are busy with holiday demand.
@mam98031 wrote:
While we are sharing our puppies. I always call them puppies as they are forever our babies.
Ohana has moved on to be with her brother [we lost him a couple of years ago]. It is a very sad time for our family as she was such an important part of it. 💔
What a beautiful baby! I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. ❤️ I definitely wish dog's lives were as long as humans.
brian@ebay wrote:
@golfingaddict wrote:
I'm hoping someone can answer or at least give an explanation about what is going on with item specifics.
Today, once again, I am getting notice that I need to add "recommended" Item specifics.
In my selling manager, this "notice" is front and center since it is in the middle of my seller manager setup in the same box as "print labels and ship" Not exactly easy to ignore.
But what makes this so annoying is that these are exactly the same items that I added item specifics to at least 3 times. 1. when I created the listing. 2 when they first came up with this notification and 3. approx two weeks ago.
I did check "don't remind me of these again" back when that option was first given. It seems like this item specific thing is trying to nag me to death. What's worse is that the recommendations are stuff that do not even make sense!!! Compression for things that don't have compression. "character" for things that don't have character Theme for things that don't need or have a theme and fabric type, when you already ask for "fabric" What the heck is that suppose to do?
This morning I had 6 items pop up. I fixed those. I went to golf and had 2 more pop up. I fixed those and just a few minutes ago, I had 20, I've gotten that down to 4 now and I am almost done, but it seems that these will get done and you will find another few to annoy me with.
I'm attaching a view of a typical item that "needs" recommended Item specifics. I fill in a lot of stuff, much more than I typically see when I view listings. And this is not enough?
Please end the madness.
@golfingaddict @greg213213 I just looked into this and found it's a known issue with that section of Seller Hub / Sell page. It isn't updating even after a seller adds the recommended item specifics to listings. Our tech team is aware and looking into it, but I don't have any details beyond this.
Thanks but I am not sure you answered my question and I don't understand what you mean by your answer.
1. I did update them and the number went to zero. (four times today with different listings popping up each time)
2. I updated these listings when this first was announced and then several weeks ago, and then again a couple of weeks after that and now the same ones are popping up again today. Each time I clear the number to zero and then a week or so later I have more to update. Some days it will be men's items and some days women's.
Are you saying that the glitch clears them and then puts them back to be recycled and revised again after a week or so? Because that is what is happening.
I only have about 220 listings and I've updated item specifics for at least 1000 listings given the number of times I have done this.
Here it is now after I updated all the items that showed I had at least 20 to do at 1;00 and now have none. Give it a few hours and I'll probably have 20-30 more.
_____
Edit: Reply to this post can be read here
@eclecticeducator wrote:Here is my dilemma. I shipped a set of books to the Virgin Islands. The buyer chose media mail. Needless to say, the estimated time of arrival that ebay gives is inaccurate, especially with the Covid issue. The tracking states that the item has been delayed and will arrive late but is still in the system to be delivered. It has only been 3 weeks, and from what I have read, deliveries to PO boxes in the Virgin Islands are taking 4 to 6 weeks---even, during the best of times, media mail can sometimes take this long. Problem: the buyer has requested her money back because the item hasn't arrived. If it was documented as lost or missing, I wouldn't have a problem refunding the money. However, refunding her now would mean she gets the books, if they arrive, and never paid for them. Ebay's system states I have to refund within 3 days. Should I just refund or should I have ebay close the case with no seller resolution and ebay refunds the money; so that if the books arrive, I can at least try to have ebay refund my money since the tracking only showed books were delayed in transit and not lost?
You need to issue a refund or ebay will step in and force one. You will get a DEFECT on your account and you will not get your sellers fees back. I stopped using media mail and parcel select at the start of the pandemic.
If your buyer does finally receive the items then you can send a paypal invoice and ask if they will please repay you. There is not a way to force the buyer to pay the invoice so to sweeten the pot you might even offer them a discount. A partial payment is better than none.
You will need the buyers actual email address to send the paypal invoice. Ebay has said that we are allowed to ask for this contact information after we have had a recent transaction together.
@fern*wood wrote:
I'm not sure this is a question as much as a wish. It saddens me to see new sellers post on the boards after selling their first item (generally high dollar) and they have been tricked. They don't know how returns/cases work and refund without first getting the item back or ship without payment.
Heck, I've sold here for years and still couldn't explain how returns/cases work (I personally have a INR case just sitting around for almost a month now), but I do know to get my item back first on a return or complaint.
So my wish is either a required little tutorial to complete or a requirement to sell at least a few low dollar items before being permitted to sell a high dollar one.
Hi @fern*wood! I definitely would love to see something a bit more concrete to help new sellers avoid these kinds of situations. These were some of the toughest phone calls I had to take when I was working phones, because it comes as a shock and can create a lot of panic which makes concentrating on things or next steps.
In a perfect world, that's what site limits are meant to do (starting with a low item number/dollar amount that gradually increases as your experience does). From a suggestion standpoint, however, requiring a training is something that is a very difficult sell. I can think of a few other ways that that education could be given (pop ups maybe? Or what about embedded Help Pages in the selling form?). Do you have any brainwaves on that? I know we're almost out of time but feel free to start a thread on Selling and tag me to it!
