Sellers check your invoice! Serious billing errors!

[zamo-zuan]

Yesterday I noticed some anomalies after an unpaid item was removed from our sales history, and then the numbers were not adding up. I took screenshots earlier in the day, and compared them, to see where the discrepancy was.

The difference was coming primarily from an offer we received, that the customer did not pay for. The offer was for $750, plus tax, coming out to $849.88 total. Between the time I took the screenshot earlier in the day, we had $800 more in sales. Counting this, we were about $200 LESS sales over 31 days, than we were in the earlier screenshot.

It was not adding up! So we did some more research, and found some very alarming issues!!

I found 2 serious issues:

1) Final Value Fees are changing after the unpaid item case was resolved!

Now that the item was unpaid, and the sale was removed from stat calculation, the FVF numbers have changed! It is now saying the FVF was only $61.13! The correct FVF is $84!

I spoke to a CSR on the phone who confirmed that the FVF should have been $84. There was no top rated discount on this item as it is a 2 day handling time (being a very large item).

I did not receive a very satisfying response, just that they will be watching it and give me a call back in up to 48 hours. 

But this is not acceptable, if the item was paid we would be paying a FVF of $84, but when it is unpaid, we only have $61 credited back to us???

2) Recent "sponsored listing" promotions are automatically adjusting your rates!!

On August 10th we recently started a small 1% sponsored promotion on select categories. During the research of yesterdays issue, we noticed that a $130 item was paying over $5 in ad fees?

The first thing we found concerning, was that we never added the Drone category to this promotion! 

The next thing we found, was that the entire promotion had increased fees. Which just happened to be 1% higher than the trending rates!

Here is a excerpt from our promotion report we found:

Item ID Ad Rate Trending Rate
300969585315 4.4 3.4
273086767474 4.4 3.4
272276762969 4.9 3.9
273060104009 4.2 3.2
270753968261 4.4 3.4 

As you can see, rather than being a 1% promotion, the promotion was set to 1% HIGHER than the trending rate!

I am aware there's the feature that lets you set the promotions at a % higher than the trending rate. In this case, as you can see, we're consistently 1% higher than the trending rate. This was one of the first things I wanted to verify - that this was not a mistake on our part.

I confirmed from our promotions sales, that we were set at 1%. Our past sales were only 1% of the fees! The promotion was created on the 10th at 1%. Our sales after that were billed at 1%. As of the 15th, it became 1% higher than trending, and we have never approved that!!!

In order for us to edit the existing promotion to be higher than trending, we would have had to use a CSV file to edit across the board. We did NOT do this! The only CSV we did to adjust this promotion was today, to set it back to 1%.

This is continuing the trend of major errors on eBay's site, but now it's directly affecting the billing system and the prices we pay them This is unacceptable and needs to stop! We can't even receive honest billing anymore!

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Sellers, please check your account activity section on "My eBay"! Both for the FVF's as well as the promotions you are doing!! You may be getting additional charges and not even be aware!!!

[twnpopcards]

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@zamo-zuan wrote:

Yesterday I noticed some anomalies after an unpaid item was removed from our sales history, and then the numbers were not adding up. I took screenshots earlier in the day, and compared them, to see where the discrepancy was.

The difference was coming primarily from an offer we received, that the customer did not pay for. The offer was for $750, plus tax, coming out to $849.88 total. Between the time I took the screenshot earlier in the day, we had $800 more in sales. Counting this, we were about $200 LESS sales over 31 days, than we were in the earlier screenshot.

It was not adding up! So we did some more research, and found some very alarming issues!!

I found 2 serious issues:

1) Final Value Fees are changing after the unpaid item case was resolved!

Now that the item was unpaid, and the sale was removed from stat calculation, the FVF numbers have changed! It is now saying the FVF was only $61.13! The correct FVF is $84!

I spoke to a CSR on the phone who confirmed that the FVF should have been $84. There was no top rated discount on this item as it is a 2 day handling time (being a very large item).

I did not receive a very satisfying response, just that they will be watching it and give me a call back in up to 48 hours. 

But this is not acceptable, if the item was paid we would be paying a FVF of $84, but when it is unpaid, we only have $61 credited back to us???

2) Recent "sponsored listing" promotions are automatically adjusting your rates!!

On August 10th we recently started a small 1% sponsored promotion on select categories. During the research of yesterdays issue, we noticed that a $130 item was paying over $5 in ad fees?

The first thing we found concerning, was that we never added the Drone category to this promotion! 

The next thing we found, was that the entire promotion had increased fees. Which just happened to be 1% higher than the trending rates!

Here is a excerpt from our promotion report we found:

Item ID Ad Rate Trending Rate
300969585315 4.4 3.4
273086767474 4.4 3.4
272276762969 4.9 3.9
273060104009 4.2 3.2
270753968261 4.4 3.4 

As you can see, rather than being a 1% promotion, the promotion was set to 1% HIGHER than the trending rate!

I am aware there's the feature that lets you set the promotions at a % higher than the trending rate. In this case, as you can see, we're consistently 1% higher than the trending rate. This was one of the first things I wanted to verify - that this was not a mistake on our part.

I confirmed from our promotions sales, that we were set at 1%. Our past sales were only 1% of the fees! The promotion was created on the 10th at 1%. Our sales after that were billed at 1%. As of the 15th, it became 1% higher than trending, and we have never approved that!!!

In order for us to edit the existing promotion to be higher than trending, we would have had to use a CSV file to edit across the board. We did NOT do this! The only CSV we did to adjust this promotion was today, to set it back to 1%.

This is continuing the trend of major errors on eBay's site, but now it's directly affecting the billing system and the prices we pay them This is unacceptable and needs to stop! We can't even receive honest billing anymore!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sellers, please check your account activity section on "My eBay"! Both for the FVF's as well as the promotions you are doing!! You may be getting additional charges and not even be aware!!!

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Ebay needs money any way they can get it.  Most people do not check what you  did so if there is a "glitch" there oh well maybe nobody will catch it and Ebay makes more money.

Also watch your future invoices as Ebays Collection letter yesterday mentioned a 1.5% late payment fee would/could be added for the late payment of your invoice, which as we all found out later was another "glitch' on Ebay side.  Now 1.5% is not all that much and if it slips onto your invoice most people will not notice it and Ebay can once again add to their need for growth fund.  I mean on a $100 invoice you are only talking $1.50 and most people are not going to want to wait on hold to get that taken care of which makes it the perfect glitch for Ebay.  I amy not like it but I will call over any amount just because i am tired of being nickeled and dimed to death by a site who cannot even put out a product that will go glitch free for 24 straight hours without it being declared a National Holiday.

So I really would advise Sellers to check their future invoices very carefully as Ebay has already been lslipping in small charges for various things on new smaller sellers and they count on sellers not reviewing their invoice all that closely and then spending the time on the phone about it.

[zamo-zuan]

We were not affected by that collections message. So hopefully we won't have any risk of that.

But I'm extremely worried that issues are now showing up in their billing system. 

Pretty dissapointed that there seemed to be a lack of urgency with the phone support. Basically just going to "watch it"... but I'm not sure how watching is going to help when the FVF's are being calculated incorrectly! 

For the promotions, I guess we just have to keep an eye on it from now on and check the fees daily to make sure they are not going up. But it seems there won't be any recompensation, even though the records should show we never uploaded a file to revise our promotion higher than 1%, and the only way for us to change it would have been to go through an itemized list and manually set the % for every different item category we sell...

[southern*sweet*tea]

Reason # 74975948743 why I use stamps.com

No errors, no miscalculations, no "glitches" and it works when I need it, every single time.

[twnpopcards]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

Reason # 74975948743 why I use stamps.com

No errors, no miscalculations, no "glitches" and it works when I need it, every single time.

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I agree completely about Stamps.com, however this does not appear to be a shipping issue but a FVF credit issue.  I guess the OP was charged one amount but when the unpaid item credit came through the amount was much lower than what was charged.  Its starting to sound like it might be related to promoted listings charges and maybe Ebay considers this amount earned whether the sale is completed or not, similar to the listing fees on an item where the unpaid item credit only takes care of the FVF but the seller has to pay to relist their item.

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@twnpopcards wrote:

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

Reason # 74975948743 why I use stamps.com

No errors, no miscalculations, no "glitches" and it works when I need it, every single time.

---

I agree completely about Stamps.com, however this does not appear to be a shipping issue but a FVF credit issue.  I guess the OP was charged one amount but when the unpaid item credit came through the amount was much lower than what was charged.  Its starting to sound like it might be related to promoted listings charges and maybe Ebay considers this amount earned whether the sale is completed or not, similar to the listing fees on an item where the unpaid item credit only takes care of the FVF but the seller has to pay to relist their item.

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Ladies and gentlemen,

This is what happens when you have multiple threads open in several tabs and post in the wrong one!

Well...I feel stupid now

[zamo-zuan]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

Reason # 74975948743 why I use stamps.com

No errors, no miscalculations, no "glitches" and it works when I need it, every single time.

---

We use ShipStation, which partly uses Stamps.com (for regional orders, etc).

To clarify, this is not a shipping issue.

The first problem is related to Final Value Fees. As we know, FVF's for an item without top rated discount are 10%. For a $849 sale, it should be $84 FVF. But once the item was unpaid by the buyer, now the FVF for our credit is saying only $61.13.

The second issue, promotion started at 1%. We have sales where only 1% was charged as the ad fee. From the 15th onward, we were charged > 4%. It seems the promotion was revised to be 1% higher than the "average" rate for each item. So if the average was 3.4%, our item was 4.4% promotion fee. We have never made this change!

The only eBay feature that sets it higher than average, is a feature that needs to be used at the time the listing was created. But our early sales for this promotion confirm it was set at 1%.

The only way you could possibly revise an existing promotion in such a way would be to edit it with a CSV file, and have edited each item by hand to the current values. This is something we never did, and would not waste time doing, as if we really wanted to do such a thing, we would create a new promotion and use the tool. 

[philsumm]

Don't worry.

Once ebay starts managed payments, they'll push the secret button and all their calculations will become 100% accurate.

[ersatz_sobriquet]

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@philsumm wrote:

Don't worry.

Once ebay starts managed payments, they'll push the secret button and all their calculations will become 100% accurate.

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Sellers slack off too much, need a bigger workload, ebay keeping us on our toes? 

Groan.......

[carlmarxx]

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@philsumm wrote:

Don't worry.

Once ebay starts managed payments, they'll push the secret button and all their calculations will become 100% accurate.

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Ebay couldn't managed payments   when  they  had bill pay  from 2000 to early 2003   ,which  went down in flames  do to  too  many issues .  

[lewisburggold]

Thank you for the heads up.  Best regards

[zamo-zuan]

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@lewisburggold wrote:

Thank you for the heads up.  Best regards

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Of course!

The biggest issue I see here is sellers will have to collect their own evidence to prove this issue.

I don't believe any of the information emailed to sellers logs the original FVF charged. You have to use the eBay statistics to check the FVF's.

Which means you will need to have the information logged prior to the FVF changing, in order to have evidence that it did in fact change.

At the end of the day, the fact that FVF's are not adding up correctly, and that being part of billing, should be enough reason to address this problem urgently.

But I don't have a lot of faith in the investigation CS is doing right now, based on the way they worded their response.

It's going to take quite a bit of time in order to collect & compare data to check for inconsistencies in the invoice... and now we also have to check the fees being charged by promotions daily.

More and more work... just to even function without losing money on eBay.

[lintbrush*]

@zamo-zuan

FVFs are not assessed on taxes.

That $750 sale on eBay motors for a store incurs an 8.15% FVF

That's $61.125  ... or $61.13

Go back to what you were actually invoiced for that transaction.  As far as I can tell, you aren't entitled to an $84 credit.

[Anonymous]

This is a different billing issue, but I noticed over the past several months that a chunk of my sales are consistently charged an extra penny in FVF. Let's say the fee comes out to $1.1145 - rounded up that's $1.15. Instead of charging me $1.15 I'm charged $1.16. A penny isn't much, but multiply it times two hundred items in a month and that's an extra two dollars in fees. How many sellers would actually notice that the fees are a penny off? And now I'm thinking about Office Space.

One of the annoying things about eBay's current system is they can only credit your account, they cannot refund your payment source. If a large sum is erroneously charged and automatic bill pay is set up then a seller can find themselves in the hole for a while.

The reason given by eBay is that there are too many fees involved with payments and refunds since PayPal is processing everything. That doesn't seem to matter to eBay when the seller is the one paying fees and a buyer asks to cancel.