HOW TO REMOVE INVALID DEFECT LISTINGS

[golfer48736]

I made the mistake of changing my email address after 20 years.  I updated to new address everywhere but it was impossible to find everything.

Long story short, I had a handful of transaction process to an invalid PayPal email address aka my old one.  I had forgotten to update in the posting with my new PayPal email address because the field is basically hidden and another example of eBay junk.  

So, these guys bought some golf clubs and they paid via PayPal.  I didn't see payments coming through so I asked them if they were still interested.  Thats when we found the issue.  The funds were stuck with PayPal b/c of an invalid email.

In order to FIX the issue I had to cancel the transactions, create/relist with updated PayPal and reduce prices to keep them happy.  End of day the buyers were thrilled and happy with how quickly I resolved the issue (without eBay).

Now I look at my dashboard for the first time and it look like I am some sort of degenerate seller.  I am tired of this **bleep** to just get more money out of us.  If this isn't resolved I will cut ties with eBay.  I have $9k in sales in the last year just from selling my old golf clubs.  Later eBay.

[mam98031]

I am sorry that you had so many problems with changing your PP address.  Sometimes when we don't know exactly how to fix an issue we make some assumptions and possibly make some mistakes.  I'm sure you were trying to make sure you had everything taken care of but unfortunately missed a few things.

That doesn't make it Ebay's fault.  You just missed taking care of some of your listings and get them corrected.  

Ebay makes this process extremely easy for sellers.  You could have corrected ALL of your active listings by using the Bulk Edit function.  You could have fixed all of them in a matter of about a literal minute of your time.

I'm not sure, even if you made the changes manually how you missed some.  You run a handful of listings.  Even changing them one by one you could have had them all changed in just a few minutes.

What exactly was "impossible" for you to find and correct?

[fern*wood]

I'm guessing you cancelled those sold listins by using a reason that results in a defect per ebay rules.  You might be able to talk a rep into removing if you can prove the sequence of events, but I never wish to put my selling ability into this situation.  How many cancellations did you do?

One thing about selling on ebay that is imperative is to keep up with the selling rules and what will count against you.  Cancellations are right up there at the top of things that can harm you if you don't know how they can be counted against you.

One time I listed an item on ebay motors and it imported an email address for payment that wasn't the one I used.  After finally seeing that as the problem, I knew I didn't want to cancel (unless I could use a non-harmful reason), I called paypal and discovered I could just add that email and the payment went through. 

[luckythewinner]

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@golfer48736 wrote:

I had forgotten to update in the posting with my new PayPal email address because the field is basically hidden and another example of eBay junk.  

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First, the field is not "basically hidden" ... it is right there in plain plain anytime you revise a listing: 

Second, even if it were "basically hidden" on the Revise Your Item page, why would that be the reason that you forgot to revise your item in the first place? 

[golfer48736]

I appreciate your response but I said I was having trouble locating all of my accounts associated with my old email address - I never said I had 'so many problems'.

I work as a sys admin and ops engineer for a living. I can assure you that any and all issues within integrated applications such as this one are in fact the fault of the owner. Let me show you. Just navigate from your Account Profile page to the Community. It looks like you fast forwarded from 1994 to the present. Basically, the UI proves it is patched together with old/new functionality like its a Frankenstein. This means there are probably features and functionality unavailable to the primary selling/buying platform - such as additional API integrations between the applications and lets just say PayPal. Maybe PayPal offers the ability to communicate with other applications to prompt the user to confirm their current account information before creating a posting or working through a transaction. However, it might be that the owner/operator of this integrated platform can't customize a specific piece of their application with required objects and portlets to make integrations with PayPal work with more efficiency and a better user experience.

If the owner/operator of a buying/selling platform such as this expects ALL of their users to get every feature/object configured correctly each and every time without sufficient prompts and identifiable labels/fields then they are living on Mars and I am Thomas Jefferson.

Don't assume people don't know what they are doing and they are idiots. Also, just because an application isn't spitting out error messages does not mean it is a fine tuned machine.

To answer your question. Prior to posting an item at the very end there is a section for the preferred method of payment. There is no prompt to review or update. They simply use the same information OVER and OVER again and the field effectively becomes invisible to the user over time.

[golfer48736]

See my reply above...

[fern*wood]

Whether ebay functions smoothly or not wouldn't have mattered if you were up to date on what causes defects and what doesn't.  So your problem was avoidable despect ebay's failings. 

[golfer48736]

Fernwood we are not speaking the same language. I am essentially a customer of eBay as they take money from sales. However, I post an item once a month. If they are unable to understand that their customer base aka sellers have varying levels of knowledge with the application then they have a fundamental problem. They can't expect the occasional seller to read through all the release features since their last sale LOL. They have to provide a product that is usable for any knowledge base otherwise the day of the novice but loyal ebay sell is gone. I can't talk about this anymore. It is exhausting not getting anyone from eBay to say something like "that sounds like a good enhancement we could investigate"... instead I run in eBay zombies repeating the same non-sense over and over.

[fern*wood]

(despite)

[geobra-5125]

Wow. No personal responsibility at all.

[wesk_36]

The way that I'm reading this is that you updated your email address, but you missed some places.

Your old email address was in a current listing, and you realized your oversight when people were trying to buy from that listing with your old email.

You fixed the issue by canceling the transactions,  updated your email and relisted.

You "created" the problem by having the wrong email in the listing, and then you immediately fixed the problem.

I certainly understand making mistakes or missing things. 

What does ebay have to do with your mistake?

Is the negative you received a result of this problem?

[golfer48736]

I am and did take personal responsibility. I identified the issue with my posting and fixed the issues for the buyers. I even gave them a discount for their troubles. I am NOT the criminal here. I have worked hard to maintain perfect feedback over YEARS. It doesn't make sense to create their secondary seller ratings and penalize a seller for cancelling a few transactions to resolve an error in the posting of the transaction due to POOR DESIGN. I argue the design is trash and there are probably far more problems with transaction processing then anyone could imagine.

GeoDebra - it is in my professional opinion as a sys admin/ops/security engineer for one of the top ten largest and most success software companies in the planet that it eBay should not be allowed to auto populate TRANSACTION DATA information into EVERY new posting without the seller having to verify via something as simple as a confirmation BUTTON. I used the same PayPal account foreverrrr and posted hunderds of items. I was never once ask to confirm if it was still valid. It may have been me hitting the buttons but eBay has a serious flaw here that is something we call a security vulnerability in the industry. Processing payments is one of the highest risk process an organization can do. Move along GeoDebra. Troll somebody else. Its like I am speaking a wall in this posting.

[3eyedfishcatcher · Accepted solution]

Other than site preferences needing to be updated I think you have to go into each listing and change the email address. Also when you create new listings for a while you may need to change it. It looks like you can do this in the bulk editing tool with 200 listings at a time. select a group of listings then click edit to open the bulk editing tool. then select all the listings in the tool. Hit the drop down arrow next to edit fields. Then select payment information. Then next to PayPal hit the drop down next to change to and select change addresses. This will pull up a box where you can put in your new email address. Finally click save and close and submit changes.

[golfer48736]

It is eBays fault because they designed the weak workflows and processes that are in place that allowed me to create a transaction with invalid transaction data.  When data goes into their system they become responsible for it.  This is an absolute security vulnerability - the data they store is their responsibility unless there is a process in place where the authorized user validates the information.  

This post is actually now moving in the right direction.  I was getting frustrated with the remedial and useless responses such as "its your fault" or "how could you possibly not know".  I'm no longer frustrated.  I have a chance to help people learn something that I learned in my decades of IT/application experience and/or when I got my MS in Secure Information System.  I understand many people in these forums don't actually know anything beyond checking social media or sending an email.  I also understand many people definitely don't have an understanding of what enterprise security looks like.  So I will help everyone out.  My community service for the day.  My complaint here about defect listings has turned into an example of what a real life security vulnerability looks like.  Everyone has yelled bloody murder and has chased me with pitch forks for being so dumb about not updating my PayPal address.  You got me.  I'm an idiot.  However, lets look at how I was able to use invalid transactional data in a new live listing.  That is the important issue.  So, I believe we have all agreed it is possible to update transaction date before a listing goes live.  However, have we agreed on the deeper issue in that when you as a seller create a blank template for a new listing you are prompted to fill in ALL data field requirements such as title, description, price, etc, however, you aren't prompted to fill in or even confirm the very sensitive transactional data which has been conveniently pre-populated from eBay data storage?  That sounds weird... right?  Check all these boxes and enter all this detailed information to create a posting with the exception of method payment.  This should never happen.  Online retailers may store your historical transactional data but they don't systematically choose to use your most recent form of payment as default and then not prompt you as the buyer to verify that information.  This is the problem.  Take your time trying to understand this information before telling me again its my fault.  I understand its my fault.  However, its also eBays fault and they are super dumb. 

Ok everyone should let that sink in.  However, feel free to still let me know its my fault.  But don't say that it isn't eBays fault because you now know it is.

[golfer48736]

CORRECT!!  You can update the PayPal information with correct information but then are you still ok with them just pre-populating these fields.  What if you share accounts with people.  What if youre a 40 year old living with mom and can't get a checking account so you have to use her stuff but then she gets mad at you and you are supposed to stop using... but then you sell something and the money goes to her and she won't give it to you because you didn't do your chores for the last 6 months.  You see where this could go??????????