eBay

gamersbaystore · ‎09-27-2022

As part of ebay Open 2022, director of product management & search, Pravesh Katyal, explains how ebay is further punishing sellers ability to rank based on aspects that remain completely outside of their control.

Katyal explains the more SNAD and INR claims you receive, the lower you will rank.

Too bad sellers have no control over the garbage estimated delivery dates ebay gives to buyers. ebay ignores sellers shipping policies, including handling times, and ebay is the one who decides what the estimates are.

What Katyal is saying is the more buyers who lie about the reasons for their returns, and open cases for INR's as a result of ebay's incompetence, the lower sellers will rank as a result.

I have been hammered with constant item not received claims this entire year! All orders were shipped within my stated handling time, all were received by buyers.

How are we supposed to avoid INR's when we haven't an ounce of control over what the delivery estimates are?

And let's face it, buyers are rarely ever honest about the reasons for their returns.

So this explains why my store has been trashed in search this year and I'm getting practically zero traffic. All those INR's have destroyed my business, and at no fault of my own. I've tried extending my handling times, ebay just ignores it.

Remember sellers, ebay says its your fault ebay lied to your buyers with junk delivery estimates.

Here's the video where Katyal explains how ebay is further trashing its sellers:

Fundamental Training Session: How to Make Search and Promoted Listings Work for You

yuzuha · ‎09-29-2022

@gamersbaystore wrote:
Wrong. the estimated delivery date is provided to buyers at checkout. If you view the order details for any transaction it literally states "Estimated delivery date shown to buyer."
The estimates are provided to buyers before you ever print a label.
Every time I get a new order it shows the estimate before I ever purchase a label.

I'm looking at the sale I had yesterday and it's showing an estimated delivery dates shown to buyer of Oct 3 - Oct 6, which is perfectly in line with First Class shipping and just depends on which day I ship the item. I'm going to ship it tomorrow (it's just going two states over), so it will most likely get there on Monday or Tuesday.

Do yours not show a range of dates like that?

gamersbaystore · ‎09-29-2022

My estimates do not change after printing a label or having a package scanned, regardless of when I ship it.

gamersbaystore · ‎09-29-2022

What does that have to do with ones handling time? I have a 3 day handling time and ebay is telling buyers they will receive their orders in 3 days. Where is the logic in that?

My movies ship media mail, not first class, and the estimates ebay provides buyers are almost always wrong.

I ship most of my orders within 24 hours, they're still constantly late, whining buyers, INR's, so fed up with this.

earthdreamer · ‎09-30-2022

My estimates do not change after printing a label or having a package scanned, regardless of when I ship it.

Well, that’s the issue right there. I’ll have to take another look at my own dates to see if something has changed since the last time I checked.

I just experimented with my handling time.

With a 3 day handling time, all my estimates have an earliest date of 14th October.

I just changed one item to 4 days handling time, and the earliest estimate is now 19 October, which is 3 business days extra for only a single day additional in handling.

Have you tried a 4 day handling?

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vintagecraze50 · ‎09-30-2022

Well let us hope that USPS is well staffed and in control of the Christmas shipping season or we all will be ranked lower for INR. SO far USPS Priority mail for us has been performing well. As long as Ebay keeps up with the correct estimated delivery times.

powell-memorabilia · ‎09-30-2022

@gamersbaystore wrote:
Its public knowledge that ebay paid out $1.4 billion to shareholders in the first quarter alone; and all while raising fees and cutting slashing marketing budgets, all while sales declined.
https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-inc-reports-better-than-expected-first-quarter-2022-result...
ebay's market share fell from 5% in Jan to 3.5% in June, and continues falling. Rather than invest in marketing, ebay just squanders all the money to shareholders.

Shareholders own the company. It isn’t squandering money to execute stock buy backs. Actually, it is a sign that eBay management believes that the stock is undervalued - basically, eBay is betting on itself.

gamersbaystore · ‎09-30-2022

Again, ebay ignores my handling times completely. I could set it for 10 days and the estimates are still 3 days. ebay just ignores shipping policies entirely.

gamersbaystore · ‎09-30-2022

I too am really concerned with how USPS is going to perform this Holiday season. They couldn't keep up at all during the summer. I had one package that took 6 weeks to arrive.

My recent shipments have been moving quickly though, I hope it stays that way.

earthdreamer · ‎09-30-2022

There is something definitely wrong, I hope someone from eBay can help you.

By the way, your estimates for parcels to reach Australia are very generous - 4 to 6 weeks.

I usually receive items from the US in less than 2 weeks, so you should be safe posting your items Down Under.

yuzuha · ‎09-30-2022

@earthdreamer wrote:
There is something definitely wrong, I hope someone from eBay can help you.

Yeah, something is definitely very weird there. Like I said, I shipped six packages on the 28th, a mix of Priority and First Class. When I printed the labels, none of them were showing an estimated delivery date earlier than the 4th of October. Once they received a scan at the local sort facility that evening, THEN the estimated delivery dates updated to the 1st of October, and all six of them were delivered today, so they were actually delivered AHEAD of the estimated date.

simply-the-best-for-you · ‎09-30-2022

@gamersbaystore wrote:
If I extend my handling times, the flag does show up, but the estimates don't change anymore. It used to be that when I extended the handling time it would extend the delivery estimates as well.

@gamersbaystore I wonder if you have a Business Policy set or something else that is overriding the normal process? I just tried it moments ago & it works exactly the way I said it works, which is that you get the warning & the gold flag AND IT DOES change the estimated delivery dates.

I tried it on 1 listing. With 2 day handling, my est delivery is Oct 4-5. I then changed it to 5 day handling & got the warning & the flag & the est delivery changed to Oct 5-8 & clearly says it includes 5 business day handling. I can post screen shots if you don't believe me.

This is how it works & how it's worked for years. Unless you have something overriding it, maybe business policies? Or I've heard of issues if you use cutoff time & don't have Same Day handling. Those are what comes to mind off the top of my head. But changing to 5 day DOES change the estimated delivery time, just like it has for years, I just tested it seconds ago, in case there had been a change. LMK if you need screen shots. They are time consuming for me, so I'd rather not but if you need to see them, I'll do the work 😀

This one goes to Eleven - Nigel Tufnel

Simply-the-best-for-you Volunteer Community Mentor
eBay Seller since 1996

gamersbaystore · ‎09-30-2022

It doesnt work for me. I've called and asked them to fix it too many times, I give up. There is nothing on my account overriding anything, its all ebay.

iamonourside · ‎10-01-2022

I beg your pardon elizabeth@ebay but your contention that rankings are not affected by individual instances of item not received directly contradicts the presentation by the manager of the ranking algorithm that was the subject of this thread.

You state:

Ranking doesn’t get impacted by these one-off used cases, unless a significant portion of buyers complain that they don’t get the item on time, we don’t hold it against the seller."

In contrast, Mr. Amit Sharma, stated beginning at time stamp 7:07:

"Last is really the customer service that you provide which gets reflected in your history. So any escalations like item not received, item is not accurately described or any of the former bad buyer experiences impact your ranking in a negative way,"

I believe you are thinking only of the way fee penalties are assessed only after 10 reports of SNAD.

Why would you interject information so emphatically? Was Mr. Sharma being sloppy in his information?

pjcdn2005 · ‎10-01-2022

This might not have any thing to do with your problem but on the page where we can set up the cut-off time for same day shipping do you have Saturday and Sunday checked off? It hasn’t been made clear by eBay but it’s my understanding that if you check off those days, they assume that you will ship on the weekend and that they ARE then counted in your handling time. I realize that you do not offer same day shipping but I do remember a mod mentioning a while ago that is how it worked.

Unfortunately I can’t find that page today. Does anyone else have a link to the same day shipping cut off time page?

iamonourside · ‎10-01-2022

@gamersbaystore thank you for this thread and the pointer to the video presentation,

Fundamental Training Session: How to Make Search and Promoted Listings Work for You

My take away from the video, like yours, is alarm at how the ranking algorithm is a mess of specification errors - that is, run on variables that are poor indicators of the factors the variable was chosen to represent.

It is easy to get caught in the minutia of individual data points used in the algorithm, as I did below, when the real outrage is that eBay is satisfied to use such distorting search algorithm, without considering whether they are doing more harm than good, for their own profit and ours!

You pointed specifically to how INR metrics reflect eBay error in estimating delivery times rather than seller performance. Why aren't they using a measure of mailing past one's handling time, a variable maintained for seller standing (i.e. TRS).

Mr. Sharma announced that the ranking algorithm will increasingly used "listing quality" to drive rankings. How is that going to be measured?

He mentions "great title" and " well-written titles" - what is that? Or, more precisely, how is the machine going to judge that? Especially since he also says a great title is no longer a key-word rich title.

He mentions "nicely structured description". What is that? Whether you use bullets (good!) or formatting (bad!). It irks me that eBay will increase structure as a factor in ranking at the same time eBay has handicapped sellers by limiting access to "structuring" listing descriptions. Outrageous that the listing frame that no longer provides underlining, indentation, or sub-bullets, even when one clicks to "show more formatting options." ... My mind wonders too, did eBay seek to minimize formatting so they can more easily machine "read" the listing? It certainly isn't to please customers as they claim.

Then there is the whole business of category inferencing and competitive pricing that are both so wrong most of the time! on and on.