eBay randomly drops selling limits for TRS

[hknumismatics]

Hi,

Firstly some background information: My eBay account is registered through eBay.com.hk site, but I sell everything through the ebay.com platform, as the ebay.com.hk site has TWO major issues. 1) It is not available in English (which is rather odd seeing and English and Chinese are equally regarded languages in HK) and 2) If listing through it you can only ship to about 10 Asian countries, so it is impossible to sell internationally.

So on Friday I see my sales limits drop from 360k HKD (about 45k USD) and 910 items down all the way to 94k HKD and 78 items. It comes with no warnings, messages or information. I check on eBay.com, and my account shows TRS and also would be TRS if evaluated now.

Because this makes no sense I had my girlfriend call eBay CS for the HK site. (They supposedly have English support, but based on past experience half the time you get a non-English speaker when calling and choosing English, so I have given up on calling them myself) It so transpires that on the eBay.com.hk site it is showing a late shipping rate for 18% of the transactions - which is apparently the cause of bad metrics. Note that the metrics I can see on ebay.com are totally different displaying a late shipment rate of 3.5% which is close to reality.

After looking at the data there are two major causes for this "late shipment" (I have 3 day handling advertised on all sales) stuff happening.

1) Items posted through Hong Kong Post are not correctly picked up by eBay's tracking system in a timely manner. I.e. the tracking information I enter on the day of posting (and it shows data through tracking manually at HK Post website always within 1 working day) sometimes takes 3+ days to show up on eBay. Because of faulty/insufficient connections between HK Post and eBay it is giving me shipping delays for these items despite them clearly having been posted and scanned by HK Post system within 3 days.

As an example I looked at items I posted on Aug 4 and they were all scanned into the HK post systems on Aug 4 or Aug 5, with further updates on Aug 6 to some of them. By Aug 8 none of these had been picked up by eBay, but on Aug 9 they were picked up.


2) For items that I list on eBay.com, and I offer local pick-up (which I do for all items). At the invoicing stage I cannot choose "Local pick-up" for sales to HK (or anywhere outside US). The site thinks that 'pick-up' can only happen to a US address, despite my sales location being in Hong Kong. So for whatever items I sell locally in Hong Kong and the buyer picks them up I will have to simply issue an invoice with 0 shipping and "mark as shipped". THIS APPARENTLY CREATES LATE SHIPPING DEFECTS BECAUSE LACK OF TRACKING DATA. It is completely absurd, as clearly a pick-up item does not need or require tracking and there is no possibility to invoice a buyer in Hong Kong using "pick-up" option. [Now I am unsure of how this would work on ebay.com.hk site, but as listed in the introduction listing there is not an option due to the language of the site and the shipping restrictions]

So basically all of my supposed shipping irregularities are down to these two technical issues that lie ENTIRELY on eBay's side.

Do I have any actual late shipments? Yes probably about 1-2% of my sales that are primarily down to buyer requests to hold shipping due to holidays, or occasional shipping glitches like when HK post was closed for a week due to virus and it was impossible to ship anything [I had no auctions ending that week but one or two orders that were paid late and due to ship out then].

I am at a loss what to do now - eBay CS representative by phone just said there was nothing they could do and to send an email to them. Which has now been 4 days without response (and they have CS open throughout weekends here in Asia).

[srduck]

My guess is that it's tied to the political situation in Hong Kong and all the uncertainty around it. Are other large Hong Kong sellers having the same experience as you?

[hknumismatics]

I don't know anyone in Hong Kong that sells any quantities on eBay. I know some people that are small time sellers, but they would not be affected by sales limits or metrics if they only sell a few thousand USD per month.

I can assure you that the political situation and the virus are not affecting the eBay CS because eBay CS for ebay.com.hk is all based in mainland China anyway. The eBay IT systems being unable to invoice 'pick-up' outside US, and the bad linking to the tracking data on hongkongpost.hk to eBay's tracking tool also for sure are not related to poltics or virus.

[hknumismatics]

Anybody with any insight into especially how to avoid reason 2 for the late shipping defects caused by picked up purchases?

As far as I know, and can simulate, I cannot choose to invoice a buyer outside US for pick-up, despite my goods being shipped from Hong Kong, and my account based in Hong Kong.

It is clearly a technical issue on ebay.com that I cannot invoice for pick-up, and when I have been issuing invoices with zero shipping and "mark as paid" manually this appears to have given me defects. I can trace one such defect to a US buyer (he paid online, I delivered the item in person to him when we met at a trader show the following month - we know each other well outside eBay). For Global clients I cannot access the specific data causing the defects on ebay.cn site (which shows 18% shipping defects), while eBay.com and eBay.com.hk both show zero shipping defects for Global sales region.


brian@ebay ?

[hknumismatics]

brian@ebaySorry I see I tagged you incorrectly!

I still have no response whatsoever from eBay China/HK on my complaints and queries.

On eBay.com for Global region I can see one case of late uploading/shipping (which is correct as HK post was entirely closed for 5 business days) and no missing/incorrect tracking data. eBay.cn is showing 18% missing tracking data for period 12.7 to 25.7 which is what have caused me to drop to below standard and have all my sales limits dropped. eBay.cn does not allow me to access the data to see which transactions it believes I was faulty on, so it is impossible for me to analyse. eBay CS said by phone they also cannot see the data which transactions it refers to (?!?!?).

For ebay.com US sales region I can access the data very well and based on this I have been able to come up with a few theories what is causing my defects (despite actually shipping 99% of my orders within the handling time in reality).

1) At invoicing stage THE LOCAL PICK UP option does not appear to buyer addresses outside USA. For myself being based in Hong Kong (both account and item location) it should be clear that 'Local pick up' means that it is happening in Hong Kong and not in US...

I have been issuing 0 shipping invoices and using "Mark as paid" and "Mark as shipped" for these orders to make them disappear from my unpaid/not shipped orders. This appears to be creating shipping defects as they obviously lack tracking data because the items were in fact picked up.

There would be many ways of solving this (e.g. just always allow "Local pick-up" at invoicing stage if it is in the listing), or more advanced things like only allowing it if the item location country is the same as buyer location country (but that being said many countries e.g. in Europe or close to US/Canada/Mexico borders it is well possible that a buyer from across the border would like to pick up an item).

2) There is a glitch in the eBay to Hong Kong post tracking linking, whereby eBay picks up the data late (sometimes after 3-5 days, sometimes shorter sometimes longer). It is unclear to me how this is affecting my defects/metrics, but there is at least one transaction for US sales region that I can see where this has caused a defect beyond my control. Something I specifically notice is that a status "Posted", which is the first scan that HK post does, appears to not show in the eBay 'sweep'. The first status that usually appears is "Arrived at processing centre", which is the second status that an item gets from HK post. Specifically this second status at times takes more than 3 days (my handling time) for surface mail as it is sitting at the P.O. and not forwarded to the processing centre until closer to the time they actually have an outgoing sea mail shipment to said destination.

It is very hard for me to analyse what is wrong at this stage without knowing more about which transactions it has been giving me defects for. However it is clear that it has given me at least one defect for this.

3) As reported in my other thread in Shipping&Returns  there is at least a faulty error message for buyers with a US shipping address trying to change it to a foreign shipping address. When they try to change shipping address to out of the country it claims that I do not allow shipping to the destination (which I do).

Following my reasoning in that thread it may well be so that the buyer can in fact change this from "My account", but it for sure displays this faulty error message when they try to do it from the invoiced order directly. Because of the error message being incorrect I never thought to instruct the buyers to try to change it in "My account", so I am unsure if it works from there or not. (Then I would have to issue a new invoice from there and it may or may not work)

Either way, these occasions have been creating shipping defects because the metrics tell that tracking does not work (despite working perfectly on hongkongpost.hk), so I suspect there is a link between the eBay sweep checking for the destination country? When tracking mail on hongkongpost.hk the destination country is the only thing about the addressee that shows - so if there is another cause it would be related to issue 2) about the sweep not picking things up correctly in general.

I realise that you cannot answer issues directly related specifically to my account - but the issues described here have a general nature apart from my specific transactions.

[hknumismatics]

"hknumismatics  sorry I haven't responded to the thread you tagged me in just yet. Thank you for bringing up your question in todays chat though!! If you are listing on eBay.com then the domestic options (including local pickup) will be for the .com site, which is in the USA. If you want to offer local pickup for  Hong Kong buyers then you'll need to list the items on the HK site and offer international shipping to other countries you want to ship to."
@brian@ebay

This is your reply from the weekly chat thread - and I can no longer respond there.

There are TWO major issues with your reply.


The ebay.com.hk site IS NOT AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH (!!!) so there is no possibility for me as a non-chinese speaker to list through it.

ebay.com.hk does not allow for worldwide selling. It allows sales to approx. 10 Asian countries. This makes it useless in terms of selling international material.

You have millions of international sellers and buyers on eBay.com. Why are you saying you are trying to exclude them from doing a pickup?

It is something I can clearly offer at the listing stage (so eBay is allowing us to list for pickup - hence not trying to exclude us from offering pickup?). And actually at the listing stage it is not at all clear that it would only apply to a US address. [I know from experience that "Domestic shipping" refers to "US shipping" on eBay.com, but the way it would be taken to be meant on most international sites with an international user base/seller base would be that domestic refers to the domestic shipping from the location of the seller/goods.]

What is the case is that I can list an item with "payment at pickup" and "allow local pickup", but there is in the end no way to actually reflect this at the invoicing stage, unless the buyer is in US.

It is absurd that an international seller such as myself can list items for "local pickup" and it would assume that the buyer is to be on a continent 7000 miles away. Just as likely as someone in NY picking something up in Hawaii 5000 miles away.

[hknumismatics]

"hknumismatics  sorry I haven't responded to the thread you tagged me in just yet. Thank you for bringing up your question in todays chat though!! If you are listing on eBay.com then the domestic options (including local pickup) will be for the .com site, which is in the USA. If you want to offer local pickup for  Hong Kong buyers then you'll need to list the items on the HK site and offer international shipping to other countries you want to ship to."
@brian@ebay

This is your reply from the weekly chat thread - and I can no longer respond there. Thanks for your reply.

However, there are TWO major issues with your reply.


1)The ebay.com.hk site IS NOT AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH (!!!) so there is no possibility for me as a non-chinese speaker to list through it.

2)ebay.com.hk does not allow for worldwide selling. It allows sales to approx. 10 Asian countries. This makes it useless in terms of selling international material.

You have millions of international sellers and buyers on eBay.com. Why are you saying you are trying to exclude them from doing a pickup?

It is something I can clearly offer at the listing stage (so eBay is allowing us to list for pickup - hence not trying to exclude us from offering pickup?). And actually at the listing stage it is not at all clear that it would only apply to a US address. [I know from experience that "Domestic shipping" refers to "US shipping" on eBay.com, but the way it would be taken to be meant on most international sites with an international user base/seller base would be that domestic refers to the domestic shipping from the location of the seller/goods relative to the buyer. I.e. domestic shipping is when seller ship from and buyer ship to countries match]

What is the case is that I can list an item with "payment at pickup" and "allow local pickup", but there is in the end no way to actually reflect this at the invoicing stage, unless the buyer is in US. All international users can see that I allow pickup and I am yet to have anyone expecting to pick it up in USA when the item location is Hong Kong.

It is absurd that an international seller such as myself can list items for "local pickup" and it would assume that the buyer is to be on a continent 7000 miles away. Just as likely as someone in NY picking something up in Hawaii 5000 miles away.

edit: Sorry about the double post - but I was trying to edit it and it gave more flooding/html errors.