Weekly Community Chat, July 12th @ 1pm PT - General Topics

[Anonymous]

Good day Community!

Please join the Community team this afternoon at 1 PM Pacific Time for our weekly chat. No specific topic is set for this week, so feel free to bring your general questions for discussion.

See you then!

[tyler@ebay]

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@llllady wrote:

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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@llllady wrote:

Greetings.

What did you do with Bob?  Did you lock him in a closet somewhere?  🙂

Seriously...is having a store one of the criteria eBay uses in determining higher or lower search placement?

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Hi @llllady - having a store subscription doesn't impact your place in Best Match. If you do have a store, you can increase your visibility with Google Shopping by making sure your search engine keywords are updated! 

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Thanks, Tyler, but that doesn't really answer the question asked.  I'm talking about does EBAY lower your items in search, like if you don't offer 60 days returns, free shipping, use product identifiers, etc.  

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Oh, sorry, I thought I had. Having a store subscription does not give a boost in search. Likewise, not having a store does not demote listings in search.

[Anonymous]

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@selsa84 wrote:

Also, when searching through the antique map category the refinement to show oNLY original antique maps disaapears often, and when you select original it show many reproductions.  Is the refinement (original antique) button going to go away completly and if so how does that make it easier for a buyer to find what they are looking for. when searching maps now the ratio of repros is nearly 100-1 making it very impossibletto find authentic maps.

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I think looking at an example for this would be best. I've reached out to you for details on another question you asked so you can include an example for this map issue in your response. If there is an issue with our search process I can get this passed on to the appropriate teams, no problem.

[alan@ebay]

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@llllady wrote:

Greetings.

What did you do with Bob?  Did you lock him in a closet somewhere?  🙂

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Hi @llllady,

Bob is at an offsite right now. I know that he is reading all of the comments on the blog as he mentioned that to me earlier. I'll check in with him to see when he can reply. 

Thanks.

[golfingaddict]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@dhbookds wrote:

Relative to scam messages, I'm a bit confused as to what should be done........

We get a message....."I'll pay you x amt over your asking price, just send me your pp address, etc"........

That may or may not garner the ebay bot message warning not to take a transaction off ebay.

As I understand it, we are supposed to answer, in the bot event, that we will not take the transaction off ebay........but what do we do if not caught by a bot? 

To be clear, there is no transaction/no purchase/no payment..........

Thanks

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I wanted to start out by saying that responding to these kinds of offers to confirm that you will keep your sales on eBay is the best course of action should we have concerns of an off eBay sale. If you do not receive any kind of warning message from our automated filters and are looking to make sure it is reported, you can reach out to customer service to have it reviewed. Our goal is to have our filters catch any instances of off eBay sales requests, and by touching base with a customer service agent we can ensure this is not only actioned appropriately, but looked into in detail to see why it was missed by our automated process.

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It appears that this may be a common concern fro sellers that ebay buyers are the ones offering to take sales off ebay.  This was posted while I was posting my concern/questions.

[ensus2015]

I was one of the buyers who posted on the threads that Mr. Lincoln referenced.  Wow, limiting the search page, when searching through the search by category process, to 25 items is terrible!  Really, why would that be good for anyone? 

Also, for some reason the ability to exclude particular sellers from my search is not working.  Is this a glitch, hope?  🙂

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

The following is from the FAQs in the Spring 2016 Update. Is this still correct?

If you have HTML authoring capabilities, you can indicate which content eBay should use for the View Item summary by encapsulating desired content (up to 800 characters) in special HTML markup. A simple way to tag your content is to include the following HTML around the text you wish to include in the mobile item description:

<div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Product"><span property="description">This paragraph contains almost 800 characters of text to be displayed in the mobile item description. And the text in this paragraph through this sentence contains 250 characters, which is the amount we will display without any actions on your part. When you tag this paragraph with these simple HTML breaks, the content will be displayed to shoppers looking at your item. This will allow the shopper to see the key information you want to display, without them having to click through to the complete description. If your complete description is 800 characters or less and uses basic HTML we will display the entire description without any action by you—so the best practice is to keep it within 800 characters. If you have a long description, make it easy for your buyers by using this option. </span></div>

[tyler@ebay]

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@b86fiero wrote:

First a shout out to recognize eBay Customer Service team member "John" in Selling who went way beyond expected response in resolving a huge listing issue for me yesterday.   The man tried everything under the sun on Monday then promised to do more research and call me back.  Which he did in record time.  Result:  One HAPPY eBay Seller!!

Second a question:  I received a message this morning that some of my listings were missing item specifics and they would not be re-listed.  No information or tool link to discover which listings were referred to or how many needed to be updated or exactly what was missing.  I and some other sellers had an issue months ago where some item specifics were not being retained when listings automatically renewed.  I have about 775 active listings.   How can I easily search for those listings to correct them?  

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@b86fiero - Great callout for John! I'll see what I can do to get him your kudos.

As for your second item: I'll reach out for more detail and see what I can do to get you more info. 

[dhbookds]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@dhbookds wrote:

Relative to scam messages, I'm a bit confused as to what should be done........

We get a message....."I'll pay you x amt over your asking price, just send me your pp address, etc"........

That may or may not garner the ebay bot message warning not to take a transaction off ebay.

As I understand it, we are supposed to answer, in the bot event, that we will not take the transaction off ebay........but what do we do if not caught by a bot? 

To be clear, there is no transaction/no purchase/no payment..........

Thanks

---

I wanted to start out by saying that responding to these kinds of offers to confirm that you will keep your sales on eBay is the best course of action should we have concerns of an off eBay sale. If you do not receive any kind of warning message from our automated filters and are looking to make sure it is reported, you can reach out to customer service to have it reviewed. Our goal is to have our filters catch any instances of off eBay sales requests, and by touching base with a customer service agent we can ensure this is not only actioned appropriately, but looked into in detail to see why it was missed by our automated process.

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Trinton, most of us would rather take a beating than call CS.....from just a time point of view.  I really suggest that if you could put the report button back on the messages with the reason of "offering an off ebay transaction", it would simplify our lives alot. 

[b86fiero]

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Search Engine Keywords - we were told a couple of years ago that they do nothing to get visibility on Google Shopping. (After the eBay / Google tiff). When did this change for the good again? Just wondering.

[Anonymous]

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@golfingaddict wrote:

Hi Alan, Trinton, Heidi, Doug, Brian, Tyler and all.

I have a question about the new push that is trying to spot "off ebay transactions" in email.

I frequently get "offers" from potential buyers that ask for a price/combination of something similar to what I am selling.  Some of the offers are quite pushy and many of them end with 'send me an invoice'

Of course, I am not about to endanger my selling account on ebay by accepting these things or sending an invoice but I am curious about one thing.  In the past, it was not allowed to send ebay sellers "best offers" unless best offer is listed in the listing.   Now it seems that I get them all the time.  Frankly, if I wanted to accept offers, I would add that to my listing.  (please no speeches about increasing sales or velocity by accepting offers)  I do not want to entertain offers and I do not want to fend off these requests and in particular I do not want to be accused of doing something untoward.  Asking me to send an invoice certainly fits the bill of wrongdoing by the buyer, in my opinion and could actually be used as a set up by ebay or a competitor.

I do not want accusatory emails by big brother ebay that picks up these attempts, particulary since they are coming from the buyers and not by me.  I also do not want these attempts at "best offers" when I do not have it listed in my ads.

I hate to ignore these emails but I also do not want to get in hot water from the "bots" or get warnings that I am doing something wrong.

what do you think?

What is the process that ebay is using to deter buyers from these types of offers

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Hey @golfingaddict happy to give you some direction on how to address these requests. I think that the best option is to work up a template response to reply to these requests. Thank them for their interest and explain that while you are unable to accept their offer, you do hope they find something in your listings that meets their needs. It can be short and polite and ensure that you are not spending an excessive amount of time on offers you are not interested in. 

Additionally, you can set up your listings to automatically decline any best offer under a certain price. This will help minimize any offers you would not take into consideration.

Any time that either party say something that could potentially be a request to take a transaction off of eBay, both parties will be educated about our stance on this. We take this matter very seriously, so I understand the message can come across stern. Rest assured, as long as you are not selling or buying items off of the site, you will have nothing to worry about and these messages can be passed over. As a best practice, I do recommend that you reply to any requests that a buyer makes, and particularly respond to the requests that could be considered solicitations of off site sales. This will ensure we can see you refused the request if a review is needed.

[vrykalak]

@mr_lincoln wrote:

“UN-Enhancing the Buying Experience”

...I suggested that these Buyers voice their concern on the Weekly Chat (1st thread on the list below) … but sadly the Weekly Chat time slot is not convenient for them and since eBay does not allow Pre-Register questions they cannot participate, though some would like to

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Has anyone investigated the idea of letting us send questions in advance?
That would make this immensely useful chat opportunity even more valuable.

As I mentioned  last week, I was on the road, and only managed to find a truckstop with wifi in the last 15 minutes of the chat. I got my question in, but most of the replies happened via email afterward, so the community at large couldn't see them.

If I could have posted the question in advance, it could have been discussed by the group before I showed up, and my answer might have already been provided. 

If you have not already done so, please talk to the PTB, and see if there's a way to make this possible.

[tyler@ebay]

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@ensus2015 wrote:

I was one of the buyers who posted on the threads that Mr. Lincoln referenced.  Wow, limiting the search page, when searching through the search by category process, to 25 items is terrible!  Really, why would that be good for anyone? 

Also, for some reason the ability to exclude particular sellers from my search is not working.  Is this a glitch, hope?  🙂

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Hi @ensus2015 - I know we'll work on getting more detail on the threads Mr. Lincoln referenced. 

As for the ability to exclude particular sellers from search, definitely not a change, it should still be available as an option. What troubleshooting steps have you tried already (different browser, clear cache/cookies, etc)?

[golfingaddict]

I see that the elusive  15 year badge continues to be awarded to a small number of users ....... it is increasing slightly every month.  6 months or so ago, you said that it was something that you were looking into as it appeared to be a bug.  Any progress on this at all?   

[djmovers99]

Hi friends,

As a follow-up to my question last week concerning the relatively new item specific called "bundle = yes, no, -", I was wondering if anyone can think of a reason that this field shouldn't always be set to "yes"???  It's kind of like is there anytime you would not want your listings to look good on mobile...

I was think about doing a bulk edit to change all of my listings to "bundle = yes"

Thanks,

David(DJ)

[vrykalak]

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@llllady wrote:

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Thanks, Tyler, but that doesn't really answer the question asked.  I'm talking about does EBAY lower your items in search, like if you don't offer 60 days returns, free shipping, use product identifiers, etc.  

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Wow! I didn't know my items were being lowered for those reasons. 
I never use free shipping, because it isn't fair to buyers who live different distances away, and I like to combine shipping when someone is smart enough to buy two of my offerings.
I had no idea I was being downgraded for that.
What other criteria does eBay use to determine SEO?

Inquiring minds want to know.