eBay Executive Chat, Oct 17th @ 1pm PT - Brian Burke

[alan@ebay]

Hi Community! 

Next up in our series of Executive chats is Brian Burke, whom you may know from the boards already as brian_burke@ebay. 

Brian's current role is Seller Evangelist. Brian has held a variety of roles during his eighteen + years at eBay. He first joined eBay in June 1999 as the Community Development Manager, similar to the role I have today. 

As a Seller Evangelist, Brian is focused on engaging with our seller community through the Community and social platforms ensuring that the seller's voice is heard internally and supporting the multiple Meetup programs run by sellers across the country.

Over his eBay career, Brian has spent time in Trust & Safety as policy manager, including Feedback policy, Merchant Development and Seller Communications. Prior to eBay, he spent time at Apple Computer, Inc. and 3Com Corporation.

Please join this 'Ask Me Anything' hour-long chat session to get to know Brian, ask questions and share your insights about selling on eBay. 
 

Brian is looking forward to answering your questions!

[tomuchstuff5]

I hope that you will accept my perspective in the spirit it is meant. I Love the site and have sold here for 18 years. The constant changes in policy , software, and requirements to get reasonable visibility have overwhelmed most small sellers. Particularly in the niche market of antiques, collectibles and vintage. We sell unique items that do not require free shipping to compete. You can't get them anywhere else or pick up a phone and order more. These items often require careful and extensive packaging to get to our customers safely. Our buyers would typically like timely delivery and SAFE delivery rather than the 1 -3 day delivery required to get into a better visibility position. 

Meeting our customers needs often require being able to communicate with them. It also provides better customer service and a relationship conductive for future business that is common in this type of buying and selling. In general, its a little old school customer service. 

A good majority are family run or indivually run businesses in the entrepreneueurial spirit that Ebay started with. 

The subject of possibly a door to the Ebay original or classic experience has been discussed. I have a couple of points that I hope Ebay would consider on this subject.

Free shipping-not necessary

Returns policies-Sellers need to have better control and manage there own returns with Ebay stepping in only as an absolute last resort.

GD and handling times. As stated we are generally not 24/7 operations with staff. We pack each order with own hands and care.

A search for an item that was meant for vintage may bring up hundreds if not thousand of non-vintage items with free shipping before a buyer would find the vintage item. I understand the filters are meant to somewhat eliminate that however they are problematic. The phone app being really problematic. 

When entering a vintage item search with a free shipping or free returns filter the result is usually none when in fact there may 1 or 5 that do not meet this filter criteria. Can this not default to here are some other matches that fall outside of the filters. Not every buyer is a pro at search. 

Then there is the most times false INAD or SNAD that allows free return shipping. This is a situation that seems forced on sellers. While I believe most people are honest and good. This has become common place as most may not realize this is quite the hardship to absord 30.00 in shipping on a 25.00 item. Customer service and a relationship with our buyers would make this a little more difficult . You are not just some anynomus buyer or seller when you are able to have a relationship with the buyer or seller. This could be done on site without info exchange successfully. 

[banana*shoe*boutique]

So I get this message on the details in my return request details on an exchange:

"The returned item is on its wayPlease ship the new item by Oct 20, 2017 or you'll have to refund the buyer instead."

Why do I need to ship it before I get it back?  This particular item had something wrong with the shipment address and got sent back to the buyer.   Maybe this was an accident or maybe it's a scam but eBay wants e to send the ANOTHER item over $100 before I get the 1st one back?

What if I do get the item and it's a rock?  When did this start?  I don't remember seeing this in the past on exchanges.

[dhbookds]

Relative to Immediate Payment Required, ebay help pages say this:

For items priced below $1000 with a specified shipping cost and where PayPal is the only payment method offered, buyers who click Buy It Now are asked to pay immediately.

Yet GD, Guaranteed Delivery Program, requires sellers to put Immediate Payment on the listings as I understand it.

The ebay IPR seems to apply to some sellers, but not all, some who have had it.....have had it disappear......and having both IPR from Ebay AND from the seller has seemed to screw up combined invoicing......

Can you clarify whether sellers who have their own IPR in place can remove it, with the assumption that there is IPR from ebay?  Or when, if, it will be in place for all sellers......and how do they tell?

You can refer that one to Bob.....lol.....as part of the cleanup yet to be done.........

[chrysylys]

Need ability to save search settings as default: 'US Only', or 'Within'.  Also 'Free Shipping'. We should not have to continually reset these options for each search.

US Only needs to mean seller registered location, not item ship from location. We need to be able to eliminate foreign based sellers if we wish.

Seller Management list, similar to Bidder Management List. Buyers need to be able to block individual sellers from appearing in search results.

Sellers that 'dropship' need to disclose it in each listing affected.

Eliminate 'Guaranteed Shipping'. It means nothing. It's a gimmick.

[golfingaddict]

Hi Brian. You have worn many hats at eBay during your tenure. How does this one differ from the other roles you have had?    Good to see you doing these chats. As a long time seller I appreciate the efforts!!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

When ebay rolled out the new "Ask a product question" tool, I said it seemed like a good idea, but that it would be a mess if ebay failed to provide clear instructions to buyers, who generally don't draw a distinction between an "item" and a "product". Sure enough, buyers are using it to ask questions related to specific listings, not products. ebay's messaging to the buyers is Godawful. Any possibility that ebay will correct that, so the tool will actually work the way its intended to work, rather than just sow more needless confusion for buyers and sellers?

[dtexley3]

60 day returns, that reminds me.

Why are we being encouraged to offer 60 day returns when the eBay system will only refund the FVFs on refunds processed within 30 days?  This puts an unnecessary burden on the sellers to have to sit on the phone with under educated CS agents trying to get the FVF credited.

[doug@ebay]

Yes! More Community engagement workshops!

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 Top of  my wish list would be :

More days! 3 days and they were not full days in my opinion is not enough 🙂

More Community engagement workshops

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[golfingaddict]

And just for old times sake. Can we please get rid of detailed seller ratings?  🏌️😀😃

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@odditiesandantiquities1 wrote:

Good Morning Alan and Brian. Nice to meet you Brian.

I just went through a terrible experience the past week. I'll try to make this as brief as possible. 

I was suspended for a week because I gave an old friend me email address. A woman I used to worth with at Ruby Lane. We used to be close, but she had illnesses like my own and went through a bad period and we lost touch. 

I was so excited to hear from her, I didn't think twice about giving her my email address. It was my fault I sent my email address. didnt even think.

I called the Manager who is handling these cases and he said that even though he could see that my message showed no intent to sell outside of eBay, there was nothing he could do. That was completely against what they say in their policy. It clearly says that it has to be in the "context of selling outside" where mine wasn't. 

Now, as per your policy, for reference. 

"Sellers are also liable for final value fees if they offer or reference their contact information, or ask for a buyer’s contact information, in the context of buying or selling outside of eBay, even if the item does not sell."

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@odditiesandantiquities1 Sorry this occurred to you. I understand your perspective, however, our new policy states that you cannot share contact information pre-transaction. The block was not for buying and selling, only for use of the member to member system pre-transaction. My understanding is an email address written out as an email address would be blocked, so it would have to be altered to avoid the block. I understand you think the policy is unfair, but the policy was put in place to protect buyers and sellers and circumventing our filters is never a good idea. 

The reason we recently changed the policy to charge sellers who circumvent this policy is to dissuade sellers from taking transactions off eBay (which hurts sellers paying FVFs). 

Thanks for selling on eBay.

Brian

[tealt]

Hi Brian,  it's been a long time...

In re yesterday's announcement about the test of Best Offer added to auctions:

Will the low volume, "consumer" sellers who have Best Offer added to their auctions be informed that Best Offer is on their auctions?

[dtexley3]

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brian_burke_99 wrote: 

The reason we recently changed the policy to charge sellers who circumvent this policy is to dissuade sellers from taking transactions off eBay (which hurts sellers paying FVFs). 

Thanks for selling on eBay.

Brian

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<soapbox on>

Please don't be disingenuous with us, the off eBay restriction is about eBay's loss of FVF's, not seller harm.

<soapbox off>

[tomuchstuff5]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
Brian, I realize ebay believes it needs to market the "new" side of ebay heavily, because many buyers still associate ebay with "used stuff" But Christmas is a nostalgic time for many people, and seems like a great opportunity to do some targeted marketing that would directly benefit sellers of older stuff, antiques, vintage etc.

Any chance we'll see something like that as part of ebay's Holiday Marketing, or will we be pushed aside, as usual?

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I would love to see Ebay do a mass mailing/emailing/ advertising to offer to replace "a piece of your history" to the many thousands that have lost their homes and possessions with a coupon. maybe sellers and Ebay could come to some type of agreement. May help some of these folks to get back a comforting item and show them we can be the GO TO site to replace those lost belonging. Would be great if a kid could get back a lost toy or book. Sometimes things from the past are a comfort. 

[a_c_green]

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brian_burke_99 wrote: 
@a_c_green  With any system there will be limitations. You raise a valid limitation of the current system. We can evaluate building out what you suggest, and I sit right by our Pricing team, so will take your suggestion back to them. However, I don't expect a change to how we charge FVFs anytime in the near future. Fees on total cost eliminated gaming, protected buyers during the claim process. I hear you that you perceive the current system as unfair, so will take it back for review. 

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Understood; I want to be clear here that I do understand why the fees must be imposed on Sale + Shipping in general. The only detail within there that skews the fairness is the postage required to ship the item: that's a seller expense, not a seller income. You can't (well, okay, you shouldn't) be charging a fee on an expense; that gets back to the old inequality of sellers of heavy objects paying more in fees than sellers of light ones.

Once you deduct the postage cost, all other things are equal. If the seller wants to gouge the buyer for more than his actual postage cost, he will still be paying FVFs on that, as it should be.

If the seller is buying his Shipping label through the eBay/PayPal shipping interface, the postage payment is plainly visible to the process, and can be deducted from the total payment made for that item. (I know it's a bit of a programming exercise, but it would be worth it in terms of seller goodwill.)

If the seller is buying his Shipping label over the counter at the post office, this will be yet another incentive for him to start printing it on-line through eBay instead: he can lower his FVFs by his actual cost of mailing.

[mam98031]

I reported this a long time ago in regards to new sellers getting themselves in a bit of a pickle due to what Ebay states on the New Seller Guideline page.  On that page Ebay shows three steps for new Sellers.

1. List and Sell the item

2.  Ship It

3.  Get Paid

http://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/new-to-ebay/learn-to-sell-online.html

Ebay is telling new sellers to ship the item BEFORE it is paid for.  I'm confident that was not Ebay's intent, but that is exactly how that help page reads and new sellers are doing it from time to time.  They are doing what Ebay is telling them to do for success as a seller on Ebay.

Like I said, I reported this a couple months or more back and still Ebay has not put this on their priority list to fix even though by Ebay's own instructions to new sellers they are hurting their sellers.  

What is the hold up on getting this fixed?