Email from Webinterpret saying Ive been opted in. Is this real? More fun stuff.

[soccerteeth]

I just woke up to 3 problems as usual. One big one is web-interpret cross border welcoming me and saying that ebay opted me in.   Im not clicking through anything and I know there were major issues in the past.   I never would opt in and have offered international shipping for 10 years.  Im at a point where I may stop all international shipping.  I had 2 - no pickups, 1 in Germany and 1 in the UK. Really Im at the point of about closing my store after almost 3 million in sales.

The last thing I want is being auto-opted into a program that is scammy. Also telling me I have to offer 30 day paid returns, which I will close my store before doing that. Ive always taken returns, Ive always shipped international but, I need to have some control over that. An overseas return is costly and buyers not wanting to pay customs is becoming common.

I want to sell to everyone, everywhere. Its in our best business interest but, when ever little thing is micromanaged poorly, we stand to lose more money and time which gives us no time to actually work on our store.

I called ebay while writing this and couldnt be told if I was opted in or not.  I was told to go to webinterpret and click a link and send a message and to report to spoof@ebay.   It seems rather antiquated that ebay couldnt tell me and that I have to write companies to see if Im opted in.  Its just one thing after another here.

Another issue some of you may be able to clarify for me.  Weve shipped everyday since the beginning.  Noone had to make us do this or threaten us with defects.  Yet of course they did. The most common feedback we get is super fast shipping or something like that.

it took us a long time to sort out usps as we had no full time carrier becasue our mail route was long and noone wanted it. For a long time, we were literally chasing carriers, running to the post office before close and always stressed out about something we already did but, to get that scan. We had 7 different carriers some weeks, all at different times. After a lot of begging, we got on a route for pickups becasue we did enough volume.  We have guy who comes everyday so it was a load off our shoulders.  Now we moved close by and the same guy comes and he's great.  The issue is now that due to our sales taking a dump, and some days we have 0-2 packages, it looks like we are losing our pickup.  USPS will not pickup on a route unless you do x amount of packages, which we no longer do and it is 100% ebays issues.  We never had blackouts and were on a constant climb until June 2018. 

Recently with the quadrupling of returns, we started charging shipping again. Things changed for the worse and free  shipping became an open invite to buy without thinking.  We have no discounts, I dont beleive anything we do can make Cassinni like us, so if we lose our carrier we will stop shipping daily. Not intentionally, as we will still do the packages but, we will not drive to the post office daily or have the stress of chasing down an unsuspecting mailman with a bunch of packages. We will have to put them out with scan sheet and cross our fingers.  We have a job box with a code and instructions on our porch. We can request pickups through the site again and add instructions but, we know how that worked out last time, which was sometimes packages wouldnt be picked up.  

This will surely tank our shipping % if a decent size load doesnt get picked up and I cant bare to call ebay everyday like the old days.  What will this do to our account ? We dont care about badges, weve been here long enough to have repeat customers and weve seen this terror ship coming at us for years so made lots of money and diversified, assuming that we wouldnt be selling here some day.  Of course I dont want to see the work weve put in to the store go away but sunk cost fallacy be damned.

So many unintended consequences have made doing business here harder.  We have almost always been 100% feedback sellers, we had all the discounts and shipped 6 days a week. 45k a month was average. Almost 3 million in sales.  Right now if 1 of of every item in our store sold, the value of current prices is 500k. much of that stuff we have in large quantities not listed on ebay. We also have enough inventory to quadruple the size of our store but, severely diminished returns if we go at it like we used to for much less. Many millions in inventory.

Weve done every edit and change over the years, weve tried free returns, done free shipping for years and now find ourselves selling much less but constant issues. The customer has almost become a unintended adversary. We block at the slightest hint of issue and look at feedback left by buyers when they ask questions.  This is the only protection we have when ebay stopped protecting us.  We have always been top sellers , never losing discounts and being crazy to get our scans and packages out as intended. Ebay has constantly made this harder to achieve through the one size fits all, treating us all like were crooks and not doing something right.  We used to rewards, now we get threats constantly. Psychologically, its pretty messed up. It doesnt matter if its un-intended, thats what it is. Constant problems, different solutions from different people and usually several cs calls or emails to get a halfway decent solution. 

This is different than what has ever happened here.  I would bet that some of us sellers were ebays best buyers as well. Now we see no reason to invest more and more time and money as the present and end looks bleak. I'll beleive seller protections when I see them. 

Started the day out with manufactured problems is becoming more the norm and it doesnt get ant easier, it just builds up until we are about to pop.

[castlemagicmemories]

Previous two posts edited for redundancy

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Technical-Issues/HAS-ANYONE-ELSE-BEEN-PUT-ON-WEBINTERPRET-WITHOUT-PERM...

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/5/1525916167.html

[brettyg599]

Hey Triton!  You keep using the phrase "Great success" with web interpret.  Can you provide any factual information about the successes that are being achieved.  Something like an on average increase in sales or something like that.  I want to go back to the days where a company proves to you something is good instead of just blindly believing you. 

Also you said "opt in" means "enroll"  I just googled definition of enroll and it basically means to register. 

What people are telling you is they DID NOT register, DID NOT enroll, DID NOT opt in.  Not sure where you are getting confused, it is the ebay wording that is misleading, not the people messaging you in this chat. They understand what those words mean, but clearly ebay has made up a new definition for them.

Also for added info for yourself, my friend was auto enrolled with this and has personally spent over 4 hours with customer support on the phone and NOONE out of the 4-5 associates he has talked to knows basically anything about the program and definitely doesn't know how to opt him out or remove it from his account.  It has been a huge headache for him.  (1 associate actually told him this happened because he set up accounts on variance ebay sites and listed them like that.) So you saying it is very easy to opt out and associates are trained on it is just not the experience a lot of us have had.  I do agree though that the associates should be well versed and trained on something before you roll it out. Training has been lacking in support for the last couple years.

[gracieallen01]

Some people keep doing the same thing, the same way, never learning.  I remember the EB article from last year.  Seems like history is repeating.  Perhaps it is going to be a long, hot summer.

Soooo, I wonder whose technical error it is this time?

Thank you for finding that. 

[twnpopcards]

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@dasarock wrote:

@zamo-zuan 

very well stated and reflects my thoughts also...  i do not ship internationally. at all, and was sent the message back a few months ago to voluntarily opt in.

almost every move ebay is making this year is erroding seller's trust and confidence, as well as costing the sellers more $$$ in the long run.  things like this do not fix ebay into a stabile platform that i would recommend anyone new to sell on.  i myself am trying to ride this out to see where ebay ends up and if i can work with ebay at that point.  i am not a large seller ... but i can smell the coffee brewing ... ebay wants every1 in:  managed payments, promoted listings, and international shipping/selling.,. free 30 returns (or more) and conforming to ALL of their ideas.  but arm twisting, doing things behind our backs, and penalizing us even when we do them is not a good way for them to convince us.  

i do have stores on another site selling antique collectibles and silver place settings and such, things i will not attempt to sell on ebay because of the seriousness of their breech of trust and confidence over the past 2-3 years and their penchant for penalizing sellers and forcing terms on them that do not benefit the seller in any way.  i limit my items here to small used car parts which are always in need.  i wish i could trust ebay enough to list ALL my items here and not take the kinds of losses that the current policies encourage, because ebay does have much over some of the other sites that i do list on.

maybe when ebay's growth spurt evens out it will be a better place for sellers.  i hope so.

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Ebays CEO has openly stated in the quarter end conferences with Wall Street that Ebay is no longer spending the $$$ they once were on marketing and that they fully expect sales to continue to drop, but they are counting on being able to get additional revenues from their current Sellers even though their sales are declining.  This appears to be another attempt at digging deeper into the Sellers pockets at some point in time as in the past this offer was only free for the first 30 days.  There is no way that WebInterpret is going to continue to provide their services unless they are getting revenue out of it in some shape, form or fashion as they would be out of business in nothing flat.  Since Ebay has already stated they are reducing their marketing costs drastically from prior years, that would lead one to suspect at some point in time Webinterpret is going to wind up getting some money from the Sellers pockets who were automatically opted into this program.  

I am sure that when all the dust settles, this will wind up being nothing more than another money grab for Ebay.  Ebay never does anything without an end game of being able to monetize it at some point in time.  Ebay does not care about whether Sellers sell anything or make a profit, only that Ebay is able to continue pulling more and more money from those existing sellers pockets.

[castlemagicmemories]

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@gracieallen01 wrote:

Some people keep doing the same thing, the same way, never learning.  I remember the EB article from last year.  Seems like history is repeating.  Perhaps it is going to be a long, hot summer.

Soooo, I wonder whose technical error it is this time?

Thank you for finding that. 

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Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”Dec 13, 2017

Ihttps://www.thesimpledollar.com/if-you-want-different-results-you-have-to-try-different...I If You Want Different Results, You Have to Try Different Approaches *************************************************************************************

While you remember that article, I never saw it the first time.  It's very interesting.

I also wasn't aware that some were posting about it on the Tech Issues Board.

You're welcome!

 

I

[twnpopcards]

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@castlemagicmemories wrote:

I understand your concern.  

It's interesting~your email says you were opted in, yet when you call, they say you aren't and Trinton confirmed, if I am not mistaken, that you are not...enrolled.  He also said no one is enrolled without their consent, yet it seems some are?  Perhaps Trinton will be back to further explain.

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https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2019/07/19/ebay-enrolls-seller-into-cross-border-listing-program/

This article seems to contradict what has been said on here about not being automatically enrolled. Once again when Ebay does not get the participation level they want they just change the rules and automatically opt everybody into it.  As i seem to remember this is what happened with the Guaranteed Delivery program also as I seem to remember another article stating that  Ebay just opted everybody into it again.  I might be wrong on this, but that is something i seem to remember reading.

Ebay is already having problems getting people to enroll in their Managed Payments program and the CEO has stated that as soon as their contract with Paypal allows them to, ALL SELLERS will be required to use Managed Payments if they wish to sell on Ebay.  It will be very interesting to see what additional demands that Ebay will add once this happens as they can't seem to wait to control all aspects of our businesses.  They have already added the additional $.25 transaction fee for any invoice containing more than one item number having been sold on the order.  No other Company does this nor are they charged ANY additional Transaction fees by the processor, this is just another one of Ebays ways to dig deeper into a sellers pocket for no reason other than they want more money from their current sellers for a site that continues to do less for the Sellers.

[gracieallen01]

It would appear that ebay greatly respects Einstein and wishes to thoroughly test and confirm that statement.

[castlemagicmemories]

[castlemagicmemories]

A timely article indeed!  I saw that it was dated July 19, and takes you to this thread!  Thank you!  

[readabouthorses]

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@castlemagicmemories wrote:

If you are ever concerned about an email potentially not being from eBay, you can forward it to spoof@ebay.com for us to review those concerns.

No response necessary~just a side note.  I received a message that I thought was possibly not from Ebay.  It was a long time ago and I can't recall now what the subject of the message was.  I forwarded it to spoof@ebay.com and asked if it was legitimate or not.  I never heard back from them, but later determined it was indeed legitimate.

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I tested the spoof thing once with a message I knew absolutely was from eBay. They replied quickly that it was indeed a spoof and they would be checking it out!! Checking out themselves? LOL

[a_c_green]

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@soccerteeth wrote:

if i decide to edit individually for the sake of figuring out whats up. I have to login to each different ebay foreign site and then when adding something to the description adds in in english on the german site. Meaning I cannot edit a listings info on a site that I do not speak the language. 

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Given that the foreign listings are propagated from your original English entries, you should find that changes to your original listing are propagated to the foreign-language equivalents. In other words (and as the error message you quoted seems to be saying), you just edit the source entry, and all its foreign-language equivalents should be updated to match. You don't edit the foreign version(s) directly.

Try editing an original English listing to put in a new line of text, for example, something that you can recognize even if in another language (maybe try a different text color?), and then see if that text shows up in translated form in the entry's foreign-language equivalents.

[gracieallen01]

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@a_c_green wrote:

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@soccerteeth wrote:

if i decide to edit individually for the sake of figuring out whats up. I have to login to each different ebay foreign site and then when adding something to the description adds in in english on the german site. Meaning I cannot edit a listings info on a site that I do not speak the language. 

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Given that the foreign listings are propagated from your original English entries, you should find that changes to your original listing are propagated to the foreign-language equivalents. In other words (and as the error message you quoted seems to be saying), you just edit the source entry, and all its foreign-language equivalents should be updated to match. You don't edit the foreign version(s) directly.

Try editing an original English listing to put in a new line of text, for example, something that you can recognize even if in another language (maybe try a different text color?), and then see if that text shows up in translated form in the entry's foreign-language equivalents.

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I agree, it SHOULD update. And, that would be a logical assumption.

However, that is predicated on the premise that Webinterpret does a follow-up on all listings they originally do, in all the languages that they interpret, and is aware that a listing has been updated, in the first place.  Then, the question would be, does the listing poster have to update on 'their' (Webinterpret) website, or just a normal ebay 'update'?

And then, is that a part of the service of the original promotion plan, or is it an 'extra'?

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

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@readabouthorses wrote:

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@castlemagicmemories wrote:

If you are ever concerned about an email potentially not being from eBay, you can forward it to spoof@ebay.com for us to review those concerns.

No response necessary~just a side note.  I received a message that I thought was possibly not from Ebay.  It was a long time ago and I can't recall now what the subject of the message was.  I forwarded it to spoof@ebay.com and asked if it was legitimate or not.  I never heard back from them, but later determined it was indeed legitimate.

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I tested the spoof thing once with a message I knew absolutely was from eBay. They replied quickly that it was indeed a spoof and they would be checking it out!! Checking out themselves? LOL

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How many times have we seen sellers come to the boards with the info from CSR that a particular promo/offer is a spoof/hoax etc? Only to have other sellers tell them it IS totally legit?

[dasarock]

i don't have an answer for the webinterpret problem .... but i do know that trinton's responses seemed to be like he was trying to soothe the raging beast after the grasshopper attacked king kong. it is very simple for sellers to see that the webinterpret is not a good deal, or even well-thought out. ebay is turning into microsoft .... trying to keep a strangle hold over the market while making the users (us) pay for debugging their defunct plans and programs. (without any clear info and guidance on where they are trying to lead us.) the "us" being the white mice and guinea pigs... though it appears they are trying to 'milk' the milk cows until the teats can't produce anymore. did anyone else catch in the link that wenege broke out the lifeboat and is setting course for GM? (getting ready to bail after milking ebay?)