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.
Missed the chat? Send your questions to the podcast by calling 888-723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com and maybe your questions will make it on the air! Or listen to past episodes while you wait for next Wednesday!
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
This is the most recent Announcement from ebay , posted yesterday.:
"We are aware of the technical issues occurring in Seller Hub within the Orders and Payments tabs.
The eBay team is actively engaged in resolving this issue with the greatest urgency. Please check back on this post, as we will update sellers here when the issue is resolved.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. As always, thank you for selling on eBay."
As far as I can tell, the issue has indeed been resolved. If that is correct, then shouldn't the Announcement be updated as promised?
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques good question! I'll check in on that now 🙂
@inceptions wrote:
Here are more issues with shipping labels using bulk shipping:
Instead of having the free-form field for dimensions, recently up/down arrows have been added. To use them for a package with no dimensions defined, you have to spend time clicking and clicking to get to the correct numbers. Fortunately you can type in a new value, but since the arrows cover up the second digit in many cases, you can't easily read them. I would prefer you put back the free-form field because these arrows add zero value, but if not, at least enlarge the boxes so the data can be seem.
Another issue is the customs form. If the buyer purchased multiples of an item, the customs form is incorrect. When the seller fills it out, eBay shows the correctly-extended total cost and weight for the number of units. He then checks the box swearing to the accuracy of the information he's entered. However when the form actually prints, it shows the cost and weight for a single unit. The result is that the seller has inadvertently falsified the information on the form, and the buyer pays the wrong customs duty/taxes. I've been reporting this all year and still nothing has been done.
Every few weeks I create an international label to see if it's still broken and if so, I have to void the label and create a new one (waiting two weeks for my refund). To create a correct label, the seller must monkey around with the description, quantity, and price...this is not exactly an acceptable workaround. 🙂
Hi @inceptions - we've reported the experience with the arrows in the shipping fields, but I'll make sure the team is aware you're also seeing it in the Bulk Label flow as well.
The customs form is a new one to me, I'll get that one reported too. Thanks!
@mam98031 wrote:
tyler@ebay wrote:
@mam98031 wrote:
This issue I ran across is MP related, but I thought you guys might be able to pass it along. There are two policy pages that don't completely agree with each other or lack detail to explain things better.
I'll have to give the info in a pic as I still can't seem to copy from the policy pages into a post on the forums. Such an annoying problem that I sure wish would get fixed.
Hi @mam98031 - would you mind helping me understand the disparity so I can get it to the payments team? The way I'm reading it the top one indicates what the Dispute Fee is, and the second indicates when it may be charged. But also it's been a long day and I may be missing something.
IMHO they should match. When there is additional info in one policy over another about the exact same thing, it is hard to be sure that we have all the info we need on any given subject. And this is a clear example of that.
If I were to call up the first policy and not look for other policies that may pertain to the question I was seeking an answer for, I wouldn't know that if I accepted the chargeback and voluntarily refunded that the dispute fee would be forgiven.
I don't understand why they wouldn't read exactly the same on both the policy pages. What am I missing? What makes them different between policy pages?
Thanks for the clarification @mam98031 - I'll get it shared with the payments folks and let you know if I hear back!
@glgenterprise wrote:
Apparently the site ate my long question, so here I go again.
Last week, I raised my concern about a shipping module zip code issue that has been going on for the better part of 18 months, and I was not clear enough for Tyler to understand what I was asking.
Up until about 18-24 months ago, the eBay shipping module had the same ability that the USPS site still has where you could select "ship for a different zip code". You could use your actual address, but there would be the option to change the ship from zip that printed separately, that would correctly credit the drop off post office and get the proper zone rates for packages, particularly first class packages. This disappeared during one of the updates, and at the time we were told that it was a USPS mandate - but it does not make a ton of sense since it is still available on their own site.
The work-around has been to change the ship from address in eBay to something like this:
John Doe
General Delivery
123 Main St
Anywhere, USA 00100
where the city and zip matched the PO you were mailing from. This is a problem on a couple of levels, including looking sketchy to buyers, and more so - if a package is undeliverable or refused, there is little chance the seller will get it back.
In my case, my "official" post office is a 25 mile round trip. The local one is 3 miles round trip. It is a waste of time and resources for me to have to make that trip each day. While I could request a pick-up, our delivery person is very undependable no matter how many complaints are made. Because of the odd boundaries, the local office does not have the same 3 digit prefix as my official address.
is there any movement at all to correct this or add functionality back in?
Hi @glgenterprise - thanks for taking time to clarify what you've been experiencing and trying to help me understand. To address your question: no, there is no movement I'm aware of to allow you to save just a ship-from Zip Code on labels or listings.
What I want to understand is your current experience when you do use the general delivery workaround: are you getting pushback just from the local Post Office? That's an issue I can get that reported.
From what I can see on the shipping label page, a buyer shouldn't be seeing the ship-from address at any point unless you've indicated that it is also your return address. If it IS showing up for the buyer will you grab a photo of the label once it prints (don't post it to the boards, just tag me to a thread and let me know - I can reach out for those details privately). That would be a technical issue I want to have reviewed.
@mam98031 wrote:
tyler@ebay wrote:
@mam98031 wrote:
In case it hasn't been reported, the bell in the community, which is the only way we have right now of knowing if a thread we are following has been updated either isn't working at all or its extremely hit and miss. Likely more miss than hit.
Hi @mam98031 - it doesn't look like something we've seen reports of yet (though it may be related to the mysterious 101 notifications bug from last month), so thanks for bringing this up. Would you mind also posting it on the Community Platform Feedback board so Brian and I can work on it after the chat? It also lets others who are seeing similar things chime in too. Thanks!
I will do that. It appears the bell is starting to work again. It stopped for me about 10:40AM this morning and started getting entries from this chat at about 1:40PM.
Thanks @mam98031 !
@us.quad wrote:
I am facing a very bad kind of an issue like an extra eBay fee for selling like i was sold an item $9.59 ebay charged per order fee $0.30 and the Final Value Fee is $1.20 and now ebay charged -$0.52 fee for (Blow Standard) i was work on ebay like 9mo in this time duration my account health is below standard in very short period but i never paid extra fee due to Below Standard.
please guide me I am totally stuck.
Hi @us.quad - happy to help clarify this for you! When your account is Below Standard, it is subject to an additional 5% Final Value Fee on items sold (you can read about that here).
When your account is no longer Below Standard you will no longer have the additional fee assessed. Thanks!
@bimmerpc1 wrote:
Two questions:
1) What is eBay's policy on buyers refusing package delivery and a seller's subsequent liability? We offer (free) returns. A buyer provided a vacant address with no forwarding. When the USPS attempted to deliver they marked it refused. Historically, if a buyer then opened an INR request, eBay would close it in the seller's favor as it's the buyer's responsibility to receive the package and provide a valid address. This seems to be consistent with recent eBay community staff messaging . Is that still the case? And what happens if the buyer subsequently opens an INAD for the same item when they refused it - is the seller covered for that?
2) A buyer started a return and we provided a shipping label using eBay's return labels. The buyer shipped the item, USPS seems to have lost it as there has been no tracking movement for the past few weeks. Today eBay messaged us and said that the item MAY have been delivered by now (it hasn't). Viewing the return in the console now, the tracking info for the parcel has disappeared and eBay says "it looks like the item may have been delivered, inspect and refund within 2 business days". We haven't received back the item. We no longer have access to the tracking info indicating where it might be. What happens after eBay's deadline, assuming we don't have the item back? Is eBay going to turn this into a seller-fault defect and issue the buyer a full refund on our dime?
@bimmerpc1 if an attempted delivery was made but couldn't be completed due to an error on the buyers end then the seller should be protected from an INR. If the buyer opens a INAD then the seller should still be protected since the buyer never received the item.
It does sound like it may do an automated refund and give a defect after the deadline provided to you. Typically a seller is responsible for a return if they provide the return label, even if it's lost in transit. You can contact customer service to have the return reviewed to see if any options are available (and I suggest doing this), but ultimately it sounds like you will need to issue a refund for this return.
@a_c_green wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
@a_c_green I passed the shipping label dimensions to the shipping team and they let me know it's something they'll consider for future updates.
*splutter*
It's not something for them to "consider," to use what I assume is their term; it's a coding error and they simply need to fix it. Length is becoming height in that form and height is becoming length. The values are clearly labeled in the original input, and they are being incorrectly assigned to the wrong variables when loaded into the Shipping form. This is not difficult.
You or they are free to contact me offline if they want more details on how to find the error so that they can fix it. I promise I won't bite!
@a_c_green that was my terminology, not the shipping teams. My understanding is that this will be fixed in a future update but I haven't received a confirmation of this just yet.
@freightlinepulloffpart_0 wrote:
I received my invoice, and it was over $1000 what it normally is. Looking through, I noticed there was an eBay shipping label charge for a little over $1000. I'm not sure how this is even possible. I went back to the item and it says the cost of shipping was $138. I cannot get ahold of anyone to explain this to me, or correct this issue. I'm not sure where to go from here. Any ideas on what I should do or how to get in contact with somebody?
Hi @freightlinepulloffpart_0 - UPS does reserve the right to re-measure and re-weigh the item once it reaches them. That's why you're not charged for the label up front (and are instead billed for it later). A discrepancy that large is odd to me though. I'll contact you for more detail. Thanks!
@golfingaddict wrote:
Again this week I ran into problems with doing a function on ebay only to find that it was browser related.
It was involving vacation settings and the new "away settings"
I like the new away settings but sadly I set my vacation settings before the change and went to reset them after the new away settings showed up.
I could not take my store off of vacation settings.
Eventually it times out but today I read that it could be browser related and that some users could not take advantage of away settings due to browser choice.
Again I ask. What is the browser that ebay developers or code writers use to make this site? Is everyone on the same page? I am not a browser geek or computer geek but I just expect to be able to use one of the big "Name" Browsers (that is updated and up to date) and use it for ebay.
It concerns me that my buyers are just coming to ebay with any browser and they may or may not have functionality because they don't know the browser does not work.
@golfingaddict the Time Away feature isn't designed to work in one specific browser, it should work in any of the major browsers. This sounds like a situation where clearing cache and cookies is a good first step to try (if you haven't already). If you're still running into a problem after that then feel free to tag us in a thread and we'll take a close look.
@mdw13 wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
@mdw13 wrote:
I would like my listings with large quantities to show as "more than 10 available" rather than showing the actual quantity. I have had exactly that option selected on my account for years in the "site preferences" menu. Is there some other new place on the site that I am suppose to set this option? I have tried toggling my selection to make it reset and it is still showing exact quantities on all my listings. Would love some help on this.
@mdw13 I checked some of your listings and they show 'more than 10 available'. However, if you are viewing your own listings while logged into your account then you will see the actual quantity. You'll need to log out and view your listings either while staying logged out or logged into a different eBay to see the 'more than 10 available' wording.
Hey Brian, thanks for the response. I thought that too, but today I had someone send me a message offering to buy all I had of something and they used the exact number I had in their message. They can't have been guessing.
@mdw13 my guess is that they kept entering a quantity number in the quantity field until they reached the "please enter a lower number" messaging. This would let them know they've exceeded the number available in the listing and could then assume the number just below that is the quantity available.
