eBay

elizabeth@ebay · ‎12-11-2023

Hey everyone! Get your questions ready for the open Q & A monthly chat here on December 13th at 1:00pm PST. We look forward to chatting with you.

Thanks for joining us for the Monthly Chat with the eBay Community team.

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.

As a reminder, we want to be able to get to as many members as possible during the allotted hour, so we have a few things to ask of you:

Keep on topic
Scroll through the list of questions to see what has already been asked to decrease chances of redundancy
Keep the message/question simple and no more than one to two items. If you include multiple questions in a post, please be aware that they may not be addressed during the chat and (specialist name) will do their best to follow-up with it after the chat has closed

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 month!”

Elizabeth,

ltldpr · ‎12-13-2023

devon@ebay wrote:
@ltldpr wrote:
Why doesn't eBay mirror what shipping companies state as estimated times of delivery instead of expecting such short shipping times?

Case in point:

Ground Advantage pkg scanned at Post Office last Friday afternoon, in Southeast Texas.

It was estimated, by eBay, to have arrived in Kissimmee, Florida (1026 miles away) the following Monday.

It had not even left Houston on Tuesday morning, and USPS estimated it would arrive by Thursday.

Does eBay not account for non business days and types of postage/shipping when making these estimates?

Hey @ltldpr! The buyer will see an estimated delivery date based on our machine learning prediction which considers a number of factors—seller selected services have no impact on the estimated delivery date

Hey, Devon and thanks for taking the time to respond!

Seller selected services most definitely should have an impact on the estimated delivery time. Something sent "express" should arrive well before something sent "economy" and weekends should most definitely be considered.

I wish someone would teach the machine to look at what the delivery company estimates and mirror that information. I refer to AI as Artificial Idiocy for a reason lol!

coinslabz26 · ‎12-13-2023

kyle@ebay

kyle@ebay wrote:
@coinslabz26 wrote:
Further my previous question but a different topic.

Does ebay have any plans to return to pre pandemic level customer service? A couple of seasonal updates ago ebay had said that they were going to do something like that but it never happened. I sell a larger volume of high value items and customer service can almost never assist with anything. They are mostly just hostile and decide whether or not my issue is important enough for them to send an email to an offline team. These efforts are almost always unproductive and it is costing us 100's of thousands of dollars in sales. Not long ago my sales volume would have had an account manager now I can't even report a site issue or ask a basic question.
Hey @coinslabz26 that's disheartening to hear this has been your experience. I can't speak on the plans for hiring and department structure in the future, but I would recommend contacting our Customer Service folks through social media for any unresolved issues you still have. That tends to be the most convenient and successful contact option.

In the past I have always gotten to explain my situation on the forums and stuff and you guys are great. But some issues I think it is better for everyone if I don't post them publicly or I would just tag one of the staff on the forum.

I have sold millions of dollars worth of items on this platform. The issues I have effect everyone and so it is in ebay's interest to hear me out at least. I'm not someone who complains about my $5 widget. You would think someone would be willing to listen to me instead of being trained to ask me what I what them to do about it. At least 3 different reps have stated that exact talking point.

mcdougle4248 · ‎12-13-2023

Happy Holidays!

Recently I have noticed the Top Rated Plus badge is missing on the search results pages for qualifying listings (both for myself and other seller's listings). Do you know if this is an intended change or possibly a technical issue?

ETA: Windows 10, both when using Chrome and Firefox

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

mobileceller · ‎12-13-2023

Is there any possibility your team will eventually develop mobile versions of this ebay community discussion board and Terapeak within the ebay app?

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

maxoptical · ‎12-13-2023

I agree with coinslabz26, I am a 23 year eBay seller with close to 10,000 listings. In the past I had dedicated support team, it was a small group and they all new me personally. I only called with eBay technical issues, and they knew when I called it meant I had already spent an hour+ working on the issue and it was something eBay should look into. I would get call backs and some times looped in with programmers to explain the problem.

Now if I attempt to speak with tech support, I usually need to train the agent on the feature I am having issues with, once they understand the feature I can then explain the eBay technical problem. There ONLY answer is "We will pass this alone to our programmers" and then I will never hear from eBay ever again. TBH I stopped reporting technical errors, it is an hour+ of my time to do this and I don't see any positive results. I will dedicated support would return to sellers like me.

John Norman

#maxoptical

devon@ebay · ‎12-13-2023

@mcdougle4248 wrote:

Happy Holidays!

Recently I have noticed the Top Rated Plus badge is missing on the search results pages for qualifying listings (both for myself and other seller's listings). Do you know if this is an intended change or possibly a technical issue?

Hey @mcdougle4248! This is the first I am hearing of this and if you have a few item numbers that you could share as an example I will reach out to the correct team(s) to look into this!

Devon,

coinslabz26 · ‎12-13-2023

In message 27 of this thread I asked a question that accidentally got skipped. Can you please go back and check that one? Thank you guys!

clarkphilatelics · ‎12-13-2023

@mapi9518 wrote:
Hello,
For the past couple of years many sellers are abusing the variation listings system.
They have built unbeatable and unfair listing with 1000's of sales.
For example in the video games category, if you look at the first page of xbox 360 games 90% of the listings are using variation drop down menu.
I know it would be a huge loss of income for eBay but are you planing on tackling this issue anytime soon?
Would it be possible to delete the variation option?
Most of them don't take pictures and can list 100s of items in matter of second.
Many "legit" sellers are left behind and can't compete with this abuse.
Thank you

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

Third-party software like SixBit has the ability to list rapidly. Because listings are kept in your own database, missing or lost listings can be listed again. Similar listings can be more rapidly generated.

kyle@ebay · ‎12-13-2023

@mobileceller wrote:

Is there any possibility your team will eventually develop mobile versions of this ebay community discussion board and Terapeak within the ebay app?

Hey @mobileceller those are both great suggestions! We'll be glad to pass them along to the appropriate teams for review.

Kyle,

maxoptical · ‎12-13-2023

Devon, we have discussed this many times. the times shown on UPS, FED X and USPS are more accurate than eBay machine learning answers. I had to create customer Rate Tables to override eBay delivery times to show my customers accurate delivery times.

John Norman

#maxoptical

devon@ebay · ‎12-13-2023

@coinslabz26 wrote:

Hello, First of all. Merry Christmas to all. Thanks to the ebay staff and those here assisting the community on a daily basis.

In the coin category there is a concerning and apparent organized effort to spam the site with coins that have a similar title to "ddr ddo error" and ask hundreds or thousands of dollars from just a regular circulating coin plucked from circulation not worth more than face value.

Aside from just being spam and perhaps fooling some buyers, these malicious sellers are also costing ebay money. They are apparently offering high rates for promoted listings and taking away visibility from viable listings that could otherwise sell.

The reason I say this is an organized effort is because all have less than 10 feedbacks and have similar listings and all display no error, doubled die, or other die variety. It is not unusual for a seller to miss-attribute but these listings seem very related.

Can you please get this reported to Trust and Safety? I have tried reporting multiple issues with promoted listings and am just asked "what do I want them to do about it" and other hostile answers.

Hey @coinslabz26! Thank you for bringing this to our attention and we will be sure to have this reported to Trust and Safety. If they need more details or examples we will be sure reach out.

Devon,