Community Team Community Chat, Nov 29th @ 1pm PT - General Topics

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone! 

Come join tyler@ebay, brian@ebay, doug@ebay and myself this afternoon for the weekly chat. No specific topic is planned for today, so feel free to bring your general buying & selling questions 

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@dtexley3 wrote:

To tag onto the above posts about email messaging, there does seem to be an issue with the timeliness of email notifcations.  I this morning received notifications on items that sold on Monday...  In one of the threads about "eBay adding Best Offer" (don't get me started) two people noted that they had items altered during the night, but no email message.  In a couple other threads extremely late or non-existant messaging was mentioned.  

Could there be an issue with the messaging system that generates these emails?

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@dtexley3 Can you provide the specific item numbers for the late emails - you can send them to me directly - bburke@ebay.com

Regarding the best offer - we will include best offer on items for new and occasional sellers where the item is priced above what it is selling for. The goal of all sellers is not to list items, but to sell items. Sellers can choose to ignore any offer sent by a buyer. 

Thanks for selling on eBay.

Brian

[tyler@ebay]

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@golfingaddict wrote:

I was searching to buy an item on ebay and found a listing that I liked.  The seller has TRS and the TRSplus seal was present, they had a 30 day return policy.

I clicked on the "see details"

And there the seller wrote, "returns only accepted if the item is grossly not as described"

My question:

Which is right?  Does the seller have to stand by the return policy or am I stuck with the item if the seller thinks it is a buyer's remorse or changed my mind is the reason? 

Will I be able to return the item?

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Hi @golfingaddict - if a member offers 30 day returns we expect them to honor the 30 day return policy, for any reason (Remorse or Not as Described). Thanks!

[chrysylys]

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@chrysylys wrote:

Per this page, November 2001:

https://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/identity-user-ids.html

I have also reported a number of IDs that were registered or changed well after that date.  To my knowledge none of those reports have been acted on.

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Forgot to add, you have to look under Additional Information to see the effective date.

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@thegreenhouse2 wrote:
Confirm, I am having same problem. Ebay emails coming through days later or not at all. Pay pal emails are working fine.

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@thegreenhouse2 Please post the specific item number this late email was associated with or send it to me at bburke@ebay.com.

Thanks

Brian

[Anonymous]

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@golfingaddict wrote:

Back in October there was an issue with sales tax.  Even though my listings were set up correctly, buyers were not being charged sales tax.  I brought up this issue on the chat and to Customer service.

I called into customer service when it first happened.    They did not know it was an issue. 

On a subsequent call, when it happened multiple times, I called back in and was told it was already reported and that any credits were on hold because they did not want sellers to get "double credit"

I called back in November 14 after a response from here from  @Anonymous  and I was told that a credit would be requested and would take a day or so to process.  @Anonymous also said that if I gave him the date and time he would review the call because the CSR told me that I had to end my variation/muliple listings and list them again by using sell similar because he said my listings were corrupt.

I still see no credit.

So I called back today.  I was told that they could see that I called several times and could see that I did not get any credits and he wanted all the information again, including user IDs, dates and item numbers.

He said he would put through a credit when he got this information.

So my point:

ebay's issue

My revenue loss (I had to pay the sales tax myself)

several calls to Customer Service and posts to this chat AND an email to @Anonymous

And pulling out the records from mid October several times.

I probably wasted more time trying to get credit than it was worth.

If this is the kind of Customer Service ebay provides they are falling down on the job.  This is not acceptable to treat a paying customer this way when it was ebay's issue/glitch.

Thank you.

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Hi @golfingaddict, I definitely agree that your experience is not what we would want for you. I will look into this issue for you today and give you an update later this afternoon.

[papermoneyforme]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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@alcoforever wrote:

In last weeks' Community Chat, post #41, brian denied a seller's request for relief from a buyer
circumventing a buyer block on the grounds that there was no clear evidence to ebay that the buyer was trying to disrupt the seller's business. 

So, isn't the seller the sole judge of whether a buyer is disruptive? Ebay would have no knowledge of that buyer's past interactions with that seller, e.g. things such as unreasonable demands, fishing for a partial refund etc.

The policy clearly states that using a different id to circumvent a buyer block is a policy violation.

If ebay won't back a seller when a buyer circumvents a buyer block, then the whole BBL program might as well be scrapped.

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Hi @alcoforever - you as a seller are definitely able to consider something disruptive. When it comes to what we consider unwelcome or malicious, if we have evidence that a buyer circumvented a block with intent to harm a listing or to leave negative or neutral feedback, or low DSRs we can work on an appeal of those. 

We can definitely view previous interactions various members have had with you as a seller, and can then take any included details in the 'Report a buyer' section into account when investigating buyer activities.

Please utilize the 'Report a buyer' flow to report any members you feel are circumventing a block you have in place so that appropriate review and action can be taken. Thanks!

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Then please rewrite the policy instead of puuting into poicy what is not there!

[*eponymous*]

I have one from today with the seller's email.

[coinslabz26]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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@coinslabz26 wrote:

I have a very high number of buyers who are buying items "by accident" or telling me that they did not in fact buy the item in question and are requesting cancellations. What is causing such a high volume of error buying?

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Hi @coinslabz26 - while I don't have a single 'silver bullet' answer for you I can say that we have an influx of seasonal buyers this time of year and they may not be as savvy as the buyers you're used to. 

@mam98031 has another factor that may be at play as well too. 

If you do come across a specific hindrance or feedback from your buyer that leaves you feeling like there is a trend please reach out so we can address it! 

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The buyers I have dealt with were upstanding ebayers who meant me no harm and nothing malicious. I just get a lot of buyers hitting the buy it now and then telling me several days later they only viewed the item and didn't purchase or some other reason why they did not buy it or it was some sort of actual error. This has nothing to do with the holidays and there is no increase now.

More importanly though I posted a question about the coin catalog in page one of this thread that is super important can you please make sure it gets answered?

[brian@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
I am running some Promoted Listings. For what seems an eternity, this shows at the top of the PL page:
"We are currently unable to show impression data for promoted listings. This does not affect the actual visibility and performance of your promoted listing campaigns, nor does it affect the reporting of clicks and sales. We are working to fix this as soon as possible, and apologize for the inconvenience."

As soon as possible? I do not think those words mean what ebay thinks they mean....

Is there any estimate as to when the possible will finally arrive, and this will be fixed? Or should we just assume ebay has decided it isn't worth fixing?

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Hi @my-cottage-books-and-antiques, we definitely want to get impressions working as we know this data is important for sellers to have available. Our developers are aware of the issue and are working to diagnose the cause of the problem. Once a cause and resolution are determined, we'll implement a fix on the site.

[a_c_green]

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partial*eclipse wrote: 
@*eponymous*.  PayPal will show the buyer's email address to the seller, but doesn't show the seller's address to the buyer any more.  I don't know when they stopped showing the seller's address to the buyer.

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It depends on how you look it up, at least for right now...

In the transaction history, a payment from a buyer also includes a link to see the details on their "classic site," and in the "classic" view, the buyer's email is shown. A payment to a seller does not include that same link.

However, it's possible when viewing a "classic" site payment to simply paste in a different transaction ID in the URL of your browser window, such as the one for a purchase you made, and thus you can view a payment to a seller that way. Their email address is shown there. 

Finally, emailed PayPal confirmations for either purchase or sale that you receive in your email account also show the other party's email address. Hopefully they won't be removing those anytime soon.

[dtexley3]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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@coinslabz26 wrote:

I have a very high number of buyers who are buying items "by accident" or telling me that they did not in fact buy the item in question and are requesting cancellations. What is causing such a high volume of error buying?

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Hi @coinslabz26 - while I don't have a single 'silver bullet' answer for you I can say that we have an influx of seasonal buyers this time of year and they may not be as savvy as the buyers you're used to. 

@mam98031 has another factor that may be at play as well too. 

If you do come across a specific hindrance or feedback from your buyer that leaves you feeling like there is a trend please reach out so we can address it! 

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Tyler, when purchasing I recently had a case where the confirmation page had the exact item I had just purchased for less (only a few cents in this case) but had not shown up in the search.  It is happening.

[dtexley3]

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brian_burke@ebay wrote:

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Regarding the best offer - we will include best offer on items for new and occasional sellers where the item is priced above what it is selling for. The goal of all sellers is not to list items, but to sell items. Sellers can choose to ignore any offer sent by a buyer. 

Thanks for selling on eBay.

Brian

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Read through the threads, it's happening to sellers with stores as well.  

[brian@ebay]

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@vrykalak wrote:

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brian@ebay wrote:

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@vrykalak wrote:

I relisted about 40 items yesterday, and somewhere around #30, I noticed that it had a fixed shipping cost of $2 (less than the cost of ONE OUNCE at First Class rates).
I never use fixed cost shipping, even if it's likely to be First Class or Media Mail.
How/why did this change happen?
Is there any way to find/fix the problem with the bulk editor?

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Hi @vrykalak, I'm not sure why that would have happened. I want to take a closer look at the listings so I have a better idea of what may have occurred. I'll send an email to you after the chat, so keep an eye out for that.

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I may have exaggerated: I only see the last three with fixed price shipping now, if you look at my listings in order by "ending soonest"

I also noticed that, at least on those, the handling charge has been set to $0, which I never do. 
(At the very least, I need to drive to the post office to post every package, to be sure it gets checked in on time. If I let the carrier pick it up, or just drop it in the chute at the post office, it's likely to take a couple of days to show up, and then I'm in line for a late shipping defect.)
I don't know if the handling charge on any of the listings that still show calculated S&H have a $0 handling charge now. I'll have to check that. I know that used to happen a lot when I used Sell Similar.

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Hi @vrykalak, thanks for the additional information. I'll send an email out shortly and take a closer look.

[Anonymous]

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Thanks so much for joining us this week! The chat is now closed for replies and we will work to respond to any further comments that need to be addressed 

[tyler@ebay]

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@gracieallen01 wrote:

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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@alcoforever wrote:

In last weeks' Community Chat, post #41, brian denied a seller's request for relief from a buyer
circumventing a buyer block on the grounds that there was no clear evidence to ebay that the buyer was trying to disrupt the seller's business. 

So, isn't the seller the sole judge of whether a buyer is disruptive? Ebay would have no knowledge of that buyer's past interactions with that seller, e.g. things such as unreasonable demands, fishing for a partial refund etc.

The policy clearly states that using a different id to circumvent a buyer block is a policy violation.

If ebay won't back a seller when a buyer circumvents a buyer block, then the whole BBL program might as well be scrapped.

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Hi @alcoforever - you as a seller are definitely able to consider something disruptive. When it comes to what we consider unwelcome or malicious, if we have evidence that a buyer circumvented a block with intent to harm a listing or to leave negative or neutral feedback, or low DSRs we can work on an appeal of those. 

We can definitely view previous interactions various members have had with you as a seller, and can then take any included details in the 'Report a buyer' section into account when investigating buyer activities.

Please utilize the 'Report a buyer' flow to report any members you feel are circumventing a block you have in place so that appropriate review and action can be taken. Thanks!

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I'm curious here.

If ebay can refuse service to any seller - at their sole discretion - why does a seller need ebay's permission to refuse service to a buyer that they presume to be hazardous - for whatever reason - to their business?

ebay is still a venue, isn't it?

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Hi @gracieallen01 - you aren't obligated to complete any transaction. When it comes to the policy  that is mentioned, we need evidence in order to consider it a violation.