eBay

Anonymous · ‎07-12-2017

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!

Anonymous · ‎07-12-2017

@vrykalak wrote:

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

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>

How many characters do you "lose" in this 800 character total by inserting line feeds <br> or using paragraphs? When the mobile app first appeared, I heard you lost 50 characters for every blank line in the description.

So, if you had a title <br> and a subtitle <br><br> manufacturer or source <br>size, shape, color, material, etc.<br>...that may be all you have room for in 800 characters.

But to write a description without line feeds is extremely off-putting to me as a buyer, so I won't do it as a seller.

Is that still true? that you "lose" 50 characters off the total for every linefeed?

This is a great question! I will reach out to the appropriate teams and update this chat for you once I have more information!

tyler@ebay · ‎07-12-2017

@blonsterkathryn wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

@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.

I have a question about that (sorry for my ignorance), but I've received warning messages. Does the buyer also receive them? I've had buyers want to pick an item up, giving contact info ... some don't seem to understand that I can't respond back/contact them directly. Just wondering, do buyer's get a red box warning?

Hey @ebaayisfun - no apologies needed! Yes, buyers get warnings for sending messages too.

Tyler,

Anonymous · ‎07-12-2017

@dhbookds wrote:

I know that time is valuable when running a business and can suggest that you check out our eBay For Business Facebook page. This page goes hand in hand with our eBay For Business blogs and is a great resource for sellers. Visit: www.eBay.com/eBayForBusiness to get in touch with our dedicated support team on this page when you have concerns and are limited on time. You can send a private message directly to the page and then focus on other tasks while waiting for a response.

I get a "something wrong" with that link..........but beyond that, like others, hate facebook and wish there was a way ON ebay to handle this easily.......but thanks for the info.......

Oh my goodness, that is embarrassing

Thanks for pointing this out! I've adjusted my original post and included a note that I corrected the URL.

tyler@ebay · ‎07-12-2017

@terrycanarsky wrote:

What, if anything, is actually being done about duplicate listings?

I'm not talking about the accidental hitting the "List item" button twice and having a literal duplicate.

I'm talking about the sellers who use stock photos and change/add/subtract a single letter/number (not part #) in the title so it's not technically a duplicate.

And then, of course, there are the usual sellers from China.......

No, I do not have examples of these at my finger tips. Yes, it is happening. Yes, we've ~~complained~~ reported.

~Melody R

Hi Melody - actions we take for duplicate listings include warning emails, removal of the duplicate listings, suppression of the seller's items in search for repeat offenders, and temporary or permanent selling restrictions. Please continue to report the items you find, so we can continue to take appropriate action. Thanks!

**Editing to include report pathway**: Report item > Listing practices > Duplicate listings > Fixed price listings OR Auction-style listings

Tyler,

Anonymous · ‎07-12-2017

@fern*wood wrote:

Last week I asked about finding a record of my offers sent via the offer option on emails for a buyer on a listing that isn't set up for offers. The example you offered to show me where to find offers was on a listing that accepts offers. I may have neglected to mention I've only used the email offer for listings that are not set up to accept offers the normal way.

Does that also show up on listings not accepting offers because I've never seen it before? Those are the offers I can't seem to find after making them.

Hey @fern*wood, I just double checked this with a listing that does not accept offers and the message sent from the seller to the buyer is visible in the same area. The option to cancel the offer would be visible under the offer and the details of the offer would be included (price, quantity, duration, message and shipipng address).

tyler@ebay · ‎07-12-2017

@*eponymous* wrote:

tyler@ebay wrote:

@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?

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!

Is eBay now paying Google for adwords and Google Keyword Planner?

@*eponymous* search engine keywords feed to Google Shopping monthly, but I don't have any information that we're paying for individual adword lookup and keyword planners.

Tyler,

Anonymous · ‎07-12-2017

@terrycanarsky wrote:

@Anonymous

The error message is "Something went wrong. We're sorry." when trying to access the page www.eBay.com/eBayForBusiness . I suspect the url is wrong.

But seriously. The phone wait can be quite lengthy - and you want us to go to a Facebook page for help? Nope, that is NOT helpful, sorry.

~Melody R

Hey Melody, sorry for the typo in my original post. I've corrected it now to say www.Facebook.com/eBayForBusiness. While the choice is yours regarding Social Media customer service, it is a great alternative to calling in if you have other matters you need to attend to. Our response time during business hours is typically under a few hours and you would not need to sit at your computer or wait on the phone for an answer. Social Media customer service is quickly becoming what chat was ten years ago - highly requested and often times expected. It is the only method I will use to contact customer service for any company and I've had nothing but fantastic experiences. The choice is yours, but if you've never tried it then I recommend you give it a shot.

Anonymous · ‎07-12-2017

@golfingaddict wrote:

Ebay needs to be very careful about how they insult their sellers because a buyer breaks a rule.

It's ridiculous to receive a "warning" shot because someone else broke a rule.

I have 19 years of selling on this site, I do not need to be chastised because a newbie doesn't know any better. I'm not about to risk my status for saving a few pennies.

But only on ebay... I get a slap because the newbie asked.

hmmm....

Hey @golfingaddict, we mean no insult when we contact you to say that there are concerns with a transaction potentially going off the site. While my personal experience with your on these boards indicates that you take your business on eBay very seriously and would never do anything to endanger that, we do have to keep our automated emails applicable to all parties. I want to further clarify that this email is for educational purposes and I encourage you to not take it personally. If you have done nothing wrong, then there is no reason to be alarmed. You would not have any kind of negative repercussions on your account (warning, hand-slap, etc) if it was your potential customer who made the request to go off the site.

As long as you are keeping your sales on eBay and being clear to others that you need to complete transactions through checkout, you can disregard future emails about this topic. Since we will send an email to both parties anytime concerns are found, I wanted to prepare you that you should expect to receive messages like this in the future if another member's message contains indicators of this kind of request. Being prepared to receive these in the future and accepting that they are not a direct criticism of your behavior can help to alleviate any frustration you have. Of course, I absolutely will pass along your feedback about these messages for consideration and potential future changes.