Episode 124 || Reflect and Review: 2021 U.S. Tax Code

[podcast_team]

This week, we speak to tax attorney Cliff Ennico about what sellers should keep in mind when looking ahead for the 2021 tax year. From the eBay Selling Team, Vivian Geldhill will share his news about the new listing experience. Rebecca joins Griff to answer five seller questions.

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Episode 124 Links
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Cliff’s YouTube Channel
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Recurring Links:

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Hosts:
Griff, Rebecca Michals

Guests:
Cliff Ennico (Tax Attorney), Vivian Geldhill (eBay Seller Team)

Transcript:

This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

Rebecca: This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

Vivian Geldhill: "So together with our sellers, we developed a new unified listing experience, which lets you focus on the important things that you need to fill out in order to list something. And then at the same time, we are also trying to be cross-platform. What it means is if you start your listing on a desktop, but you're taking your pictures on your phone, then you don't want to learn a completely new listing flow. So that's happening at the moment. The listing flows are different if you're using a mobile device then on desktop. Going forward we try to align that? So if you start your listing on desktop and you want to add your photos from a mobile device, you can, you can easily do that without learning a new listing flow."

Cliff Ennico: "Most people I know who sell online and who have businesses of their own, make the mistake of not being aware of all the deductions that they can take. I mean, if you have a Rottweiler in your home and your Rottweiler sleeps in the basement next to your inventory, you might be able to deduct that as a guard dog!"

Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.

Griff: And I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and the inspiration to start and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 124. Hello Rebecca.

Rebecca: Well, hi there, Griff. How are you?

Griff: I'm okay. It's been an interesting week. All things considered

Rebecca: It has. Can you believe that we are already most of the way through January?

Griff: I know I was thinking that and I was also thinking how I haven't actually left my house now for almost two months.

Rebecca: Well, I mean, you know, it's winter anyway so.

Griff: Winter in the Bay area, it's a real trial. I just can't face shoveling all that sunshine.

Rebecca: You know, most of my family lives back East and I have to admit sometimes I enjoy seeing their winter photos and thinking about how I'm going to go outside in flip flops later.

Griff: It's nice getting pictures, but I, I just definitely don't ever want to live in that kind of weather. Snow is beautiful and I love the cold, but I hate driving in it. And in most situations now you have to drive unless, well, I'm guessing unless you're like us and you're staying at home all the time.

Rebecca: Exactly. But you know, some people do legitimately love winter time. So hats off to them, or maybe I should say hats on.

Griff: Right, and mittens.

Rebecca: Exactly.

Griff: Especially for sellers, I hope if you're a seller, hopefully all our sellers are snug and warm and busy and making sales. And to that end, I think we have time for some news. Rebecca, what do you have for this week?

Rebecca: Well, the big news this week Griff is that eBay has just announced a long overdue overhaul of the listing tool. Starting today some sellers will be able to try out our newly redesigned listing experience, which brings more consistency to how you list, especially across devices, which I know is something that has been asked for for a while.

Griff: It sure has.

Rebecca: Right. So you can learn more on the seller news board at ebay.com/sellernews. And I think we have someone from the Selling Tools Team with us this week to share more detail. Is that right?

Griff: Yeah. In fact, we do, I'll talk with Vivian Geldhill from the team about the new listing experience to learn more about it, as well as how the release will progress.

Rebecca: So the listing tool, well, it's gone through some changes over the years Griff.. Will you remind me, you know, I'm still kinda new here.

Griff: There maybe some people within the sound of my voice who were selling on eBay, who can remember when it was six pages long, you had to click through six different web pages to complete it. And then we reduced it to three and we thought we were geniuses. And then we finally got it down to one a few years ago, but since then it really hasn't changed too much.

Rebecca: So basically what you're saying is this is huge news.

Griff: Actually. Yeah. It's huge. It's way overdue. I'm very excited about it. I don't know when I'm going to get opted in, but I can't wait.

Rebecca: Yeah. I haven't seen it yet myself as I, as I sell, but I'm looking forward to it also, even though I don't have as much history as you do.

Griff: You will. Mark my words. You will have it. And in addition to that, as part of our reflect and review theme for the month of January, we're also going to talk to tax attorney, Cliff Ennico. He's here with us to talk about how the changes to the 2020 tax code could impact your business on eBay.

Rebecca: Well, great. Sounds like we should get going.

Griff: Lets start the show.

Griff: We have some news this week about a very familiar page on eBay that every seller knows, and I'm not going to spill the beans. I know a little bit, I don't know everything. And that's why we're bringing on someone who does know. So join me in welcoming Listing Tools Product Manager with eBay, Vivian Geldhill. Hi Vivian. Welcome to the podcast. It's your first time.

Vivian: Yes. Hi Griff. Yes, indeed. That's my first time to be in the podcast. So it's an honor to be here.

Griff: You have some news when it comes to listing tools about a very familiar page on eBay and that's the listing page.

Vivian: Yes, true. So together with our sellers, we developed a new unified listing experience, which lets you focus on the important things that you need to fill out in order to list something. The majority of the use cases, the draft is already filled out with some data. We just want to make sure that the user finds the pieces that he needs to fill out. But at the same time, we want to make sure that you can also easily revisit areas that are already filled out. So we want to make sure the attention is at the right point where the seller needs to be. And then at the same time, we are also trying to be cross-platform. What it means is if you start your listing on a desktop, but you're taking your pictures on your phone, then you don't want to learn a completely new listing flow. So that's happening at the moment. The listing flows are different if you're using a mobile device on a desktop. Going forward we try to align that. So if you start your listing on desktop and you want to add your photos from a mobile device, you can easily do that without learning a new listing flow. The new listing experience, it's also built on a new technology. So what that means is it allows us to move faster and support all different platforms. A very good example is background removal. That's a feature that we launched last year for IOS and Android. And we had a lot of sellers asking us, when is this coming to desktop. With this new launch, we are also introducing background removal with that. Sellers can easily remove the background of any pictures.

Griff: This new listing tool for desktop. What we always call the a listing form or sell your item page. Is this going to look drastically different from the page that sellers see today?

Vivian: There will be a learning curve I would say. So the UI will be a lot cleaner so you can really focus the attention on the areas that you need to. Before it was like over time, when you create a listing flow or listing tool then you add features on features over time and it's more complex. So what we did is we cleaned this up and made sure that the important things are visible to the seller and things that are not important are basically not always in the view of the sellers. Yes, this UI will change. It will look way cleaner than before. And that will help basically being more efficient with listing the item.

Griff: What about things like uploading photos from a desktop, will that look different? I'm trying to think of each component and how different they may be. Will that be a different experience?

Vivian: Photos in general. It's not two different students like select your photos and can upload them. There were a few features in there where you can just modify the picture directly in the browser. And then as I mentioned before, background remover is something that is very new to the desktop experience now.

Griff: One of the questions that I've heard from people is that it's really difficult for sellers when they're using their mobile phone to for example, select different business policies as you can do on a desktop. With this kind of coordination across all devices will the features that are available on a desktop be available on a mobile listing as well?

Vivian: The new platform allows us to support all different features for all platforms. Meaning before we had restrictions, we were limited in how we can support features for all platforms. So that's one of the reasons why at the moment, you can't create or edit business policies on a mobile device. Going forward, this new platform allows us to support these use cases. So a time when we have B to C sellers asking why don't you support this on a mobile device? That's because our platform was old. Now we put it on a new level and this allows us now to support all these use cases.

Griff: Change is always a little bit scary, especially when you're talking about your business. How is this going to be released? Is this all going to happen all at once?

Vivian: No. It will come over time. So yes, there's a release plan in the upcoming weeks, we are going to allow more and more sellers into the new unified listing experience. Sellers can switch from the, from the old tool and the new tool and back and forth. And then after four or five months will be the default tool. We just want to make sure there's enough time for sellers to learn the new tool.

Griff: When your team was building this out, were you getting any input from sellers?

Vivian: Yes. So sellers were a big part in developing the new listing experience. Right at the beginning, we talked with sellers, what are the pain points? And we learned from them what they need to have in the listing flow, what they need to focus on. And based on that, we designed various versions of the listing flow and then over a time period of a couple of a months we worked together with these sellers and iterated on the listing flow. So this is like the outcome of working together with a group of sellers. Yeah. So we're very excited to now bring this outside. And now to a much larger group of sellers.

Griff: If a seller doesn't see the ability to opt in and try it. Can they apply for it? Or is it something that just is going to be released in groups?

Vivian: It will be released in groups. So there will be this opt in link in the top right corner of the current old listing flow. And yeah, majority of sellers are going to see this in the upcoming weeks and they see it. They can just like try it out and provide feedback.

Griff: There will be a link where you can send information and feedback to the team.

Vivian: Yes, correct. So there is a question mark or like a feedback button that the user can hit and there is like a second place where the user can provide feedback. If they switch the tool, then we also ask for additional information. If you want to switch, then it's always great to get some feedback. So we understand why and then based on that information, we can iterate on the tool.

Griff: Again, the link, if you are opted in as a seller will appear on the, where will it appear on the listing page?

Vivian: Correct. So if you just like create a new draft or resume a draft, then on that page, on the top right corner, there's the link, try the new listing tool. That's the same place we can basically switch back and forth.

Griff: I really want to be in the Guinea pig pool. I want to be one of the first sellers, but I'll wait my turn.

Vivian: Just wait for it.

Griff: Yeah. It sounds really exciting. I know that I like many sellers when I'm listing on the mobile device have been somewhat frustrated that some of those features that I've just grown used to over the years on the desktop listing page, weren't there, it's really reassuring to hear they're coming together and they'll all be on all devices. That's really good news. And congratulations to your team for building this tool out.

Vivian: Yeah. Thank you. That is one of the reasons why we want to make sure that it's also working for all different devices because we see more and more sellers. They want to start their listing on a mobile device. Yeah. And at the moment, because of these restrictions, they are just limited and we'll make sure that they can use the full power of eBay to list their items. Only then they can be effective and successful and that is the most important thing for us.

Griff: Well Vivian, I want to thank you so much for coming by and telling us about this new listing tool. It's very exciting news.

Vivian: Thank you Chris. For having me.

Griff: Vivian Geldhill is the Listing Tools Product Manager on Harry Temkin’s team. They've been hard at work, building out a new consistent cross-platform listing tool for sellers that you can use, whether it's on desktop or on a mobile device. As Vivian said, this will be a staged release over the next few weeks and months. There'll be an SNA, Seller News Announcement posted this week as well. So look for that on the Seller News board, which you can get to at www.ebay.com/sellernews.

Griff: Keeping with this month's theme of Reflect And Review. One of the things that's really important for every business owner on eBay to keep in mind is the tax code. Specifically we're talking income tax, not sales tax, fewer eBay radio listener. You will remember our next guest. He's a small business attorney. He's a columnist and an author. Please join me in welcoming, back to the eBay universe. Cliff Ennico. Hi cliff.

Cliff Ennico: Griff. It's a pleasure to be back.

Griff: We haven't really been in contact for the last several years.

Cliff Ennico: Well that is okay. You know, I tell my clients this, every once in a while, I'll get a call from a client that I haven't spoken to in a while. And they, they were all apologetic about, Oh geez, I'm sorry. We haven't been in touch. And I said, look, that's perfectly okay. You haven't needed a lawyer in five years. That's pretty darn good. Uh, you know, I'm worried about why you're calling me now after five years, but for five years without a lawyer, that's pretty darn good Griff. That's a great track record. Keep it up.

Griff: Well, we, we called you because we need you as we always do, but it's also good to hear your voice. It's a little too late to talk about the end of year tasks for sellers when it comes to taxes for 2020, but it's just the right time to start talking about what sellers should be doing for the new year of 2021. So in your view, what are maybe the top three points you would make to a business seller on eBay? When it comes to setting up their business for 2021?

Cliff Ennico: This is going to be a very tough year. 2021 is going to be a very tough year because we have had a change in Congress. This is going to be a very difficult year to predict what's going to be happening in terms of the tax code and like a famous movie director in Hollywood once said, nobody knows anything. Don't believe anybody who says, well, here's what you really should do for 2021, because we're all kind of waiting to see what comes out of the new Congress. We have a Congress now that's much more democratic leaning than the last Congress was. But what I'm telling people is there's two things you have to do this year. One is stay on top of things, go online and subscribe to some small business tax blogs. There are a lot of law firms and CPA firms that are doing these. And they're usually pretty good. They're not up to the minute, but they're usually within like the last couple of weeks or so. And that's enough. That's as much as you have to stay on top of things. I mean, if you're following on a month by month basis, subscribe to at least two or three of these, I actually have one it's at www.succeedinginyourbusiness.com. That's the website. succeedinginyourbusiness.com. It's a weekly blog. It comes out on Tuesdays. I don't always talk about tax stuff. Sometimes I talk about stuff that eBay sellers aren't going to care about. But I try to focus on the legal and tax developments that are affecting small business. The second thing that I think eBay sellers have to do is they have to start cleaning up their act a bit. The one thing that I know both parties agree on, it is one of the few things they agree on, is that the IRS has been seriously underfunded for the last 10 years. There is a $400 billion gap between what the IRS should be collecting under current law and what they actually are collecting. And both parties are in agreement that that needs to change. I'm anticipating that within the next few months, we're going to see a bill to fund the IRS more aggressively and to fund their audit activities. What I'm telling my clients is if you are taking any kind of, uh, an aggressive or creative position on your tax return right now, now is the time to stop that and get within the regulations. Because if there's a much greater chance that they're going to catch you at something, if they audit you and you don't want to be in that position.

Griff: That's good advice. Cliff, what are the top three mistakes? You see merchants making all the time when it comes to running their business from the accounting and tax perspectives. And what are your suggestions on how to remedy those mistakes? You must have a list of mistakes. That's a hundred sheets long.

Cliff Ennico: First of all, not paying taxes. Let's just put that right away. Back in the early days of eBay and I'm going back now, 20 years, a lot of people treated their eBay selling as a hobby and they just assumed, Oh, it's a hobby. I don't have to really, you know, do anything tax wise. It's just found money. And that is not the case. The IRS does tax hobby income. If you have a coin collection and you sell it online and you make 50,000, over what you paid for it, even though it's a hobby, you're not a coin dealer. You just did this as a one-off thing. You still have to pay income taxes on that. Federal and state if you have a state income tax. Don't assume that if you're a casual seller, that you're not making money, keep track of your income. And if you see that you're making income, talk to somebody and find out about what you have to do. Cause you'll probably have to do something. The second thing, and this is really the big thing and not just for eBay sellers, but for a lot of folks who are self-employed is underestimating income. An IRS person actually told me this years ago, there's really only two ways that you can screw up on your tax return. One is to under-report your income, not report everything that you made. And the second thing is to be too aggressive on your deductions. You know, taking deductions that you're not really entitled to. Getting a little too creative there, I'll never forget what he told me. He said, if you have to choose between one of those two things, overstate your deductions because the IRS is fairly forgiving about that. You know, they realize the tax code is incredibly complicated and even professionals, even CPAs make mistakes. So if they catch you on something like that, you know, being a little too aggressive in like your meal deductions or something, they're not going kill you. They'll slap you on the risk. And they'll say, okay, you and get you a few hundred bucks, but you know, they'll let you live. When they see you under reporting income though, that's when they get nasty because they figure a grown adult should know how to add and subtract. Okay. That's something you've learned in grade school. Okay. If you made a hundred thousand a year and you only reported 70,000 on your tax return, they do not see that as an innocent mistake. They see that as fraud. And that's when the baseball bats come out and life gets brutal.

Griff: Yikes! Baseball bats.

Cliff Ennico: I know. So I always tell people whatever you do, always report every penny that you make. If you want to get a little creative on deductions, that's okay, you know, within limits, but don't let the IRS catch you, especially if you under-report your income by more than 20%, that is criminal tax fraud. You may be looking at an orange jumpsuit at some point in your future. No business is worth taking that kind of risk. At least not in my opinion. And then the last thing I would say is having just said that you shouldn't overstate your deductions. Most people I know who sell online and who have businesses of their own make the mistake of not being aware of all the deductions that they can take. I have people telling me to this day I am afraid to take the home office deduction because it's an audit trigger. That has not been the case for over 10 years. It used to be back in the nineties and early two thousands. The IRS did look at the home office deduction as an audit trigger, but in the early two thousands, the Supreme court came down with a few cases and cleared up some of the issues there. And it is absolutely not an audit trigger. There's some very good books out there on like 500 small business deductions that you can take buy one of these and flip through it every once in a while and say, wait a minute, I could depreciate that computer that I just bought. You know, so, and don't be afraid I mean, if you have a Rottweiler in your home and your Rottweiler sleeps in the basement next to your inventory, you might be able to deduct that as a guard dog! Might not. If you are a little afraid of the dog yourself, that's probably a good sign that, you know, that he qualifies. So just to summarize, be aware of what's going on in the world. That's number one, cause things are going to, this is going to be a very dynamic year when it comes to tax policy at the federal level, especially. Make sure that you report every penny of income that you make. And don't be afraid to be a little bit more aggressive in taking deductions that you legitimately qualify for. Learn what some of these are and if you're not sure, ask a local accountant, you know, I do give, you know about 15, 20 bucks in the collection plate. Can I take that as a deduction for a thousand dollars a year? You might be able to.

Griff: Cliff you're also an author, can you tell us a little bit before we close about your recent publications?

Cliff Ennico: A number of years ago, as you know, I wrote a book called the eBay Sellers Tax And Legal Answer Book. I also did a companion one called the eBay Sellers Business Answer Book. They're both pretty good. That legal and tax book is a wee bit out of date, but I would say that 80% of the information in there is still good. I am in the process by the way of updating that book. My most recent book is a book on crowdfunding, which I don't think is something that most eBay sellers would be interested in. But here's something that they could benefit from. I have a YouTube channel now. If you go to youtube.com and you search for a cliff Ennico, E N N I C O cliff, as in Clifford, you will see about 40 videos. Each of which is about an hour long on various aspects of running a small business, on selling online on a building a world-class e-commerce business. I actually have a video on how to sell just about anything to just about anybody. And I've got over almost 300,000 views on that video Griff. I cannot believe that there are 300,000 people out there who are taking sales advice from a lawyer. That shows you people on social media will listen to anything! If you needed proof of that, there's my exhibit A. It's always been a pleasure in the previous years and again, it's been a pleasure today. I'm so glad we could reconnect. I love dealing with the eBay community. I love the eBay sellers. They are among my favorite people in this world. And one of my big things is I'm really hoping that in the next year, I'll be able to travel around the country to some of the meetup groups like I used to do and actually meet and greet these people. Because I love what the eBay community does. They are my heroes in, in, in, in a lot of ways and anything that I can do to support them Griff. I'm happy to do.

Griff: We share that sentiment. I'm going to put all the links to your website, to the YouTube channel and our transcripts go to www.ebay.com/slashpodcast. Look for the episode, this will be episode 124, click on the link, click on the transcripts, scroll down, you'll find them, and you can see the entire discussion that we've had for that entire episode in the transcript. Cliff. Thanks so much again.

Cliff Ennico: Always a pleasure Griffin and Happy New Year to everybody.

Griff: Happy New Year to you. Cliff Ennico is a small business attorney and columnist. We've been talking about some of the tax concerns that you should have top of mind. As we move into 2021.

Rebecca: You've got questions?

Griff: We've got answers. This week's Q and A is going to be a little bit long. We're trying to clean out the inbox and the call box.

Rebecca: So with that in mind, our first question was called into 888-723-4630 and it's about a topic we sort of touched on in our last episode. Let's listen in.

Guest Caller: "Hi there. My eBay username is serendipity*sales. And my question is regarding eBay monthly invoices. I would like to request or ask why the format can not be made to appropriate fields in an Excel spreadsheet. For example, the first column is date. Yet you use that as general format, and I cannot change the date and adjust the date. I have to have the date , the time, the year and it's this long field. And if I change the form, I can't change the format to just date. So somebody who's knowledgeable in Excel needs to look at how these invoices are formatted for the final customer review."

Rebecca: Thanks for the question serendipity*sales and, you know, sorry that you find it difficult, but hopefully we'll be able to help at least some. So roll up your sleeves. We're going to get a little technical here. A CSV or comma separated value file is a type of text file. The values in a CSV file are separated by commas. So the text in a file can be displayed in a spreadsheet application like Excel or Google sheets or numbers if you're on a Mac.

Griff: And on eBay, Rebecca and serendipity, like all other websites that offer downloadable information, we use comma separated value files for data and PDF files for text and images. And that's because both of those formats are easily readable by a number of applications and almost all web browsers. That way we can make sure that whoever's using that data can use it across applications. And that's mostly because a lot of people don't have Excel. They don't have Office.

Rebecca: That's right. So we want to make it easy for as many people as possible to use. Now, the thing is, it's not possible to embed formatting into a CSV file. These files are really basic and really just contain raw data and the formatting is a function of the spreadsheet app.

Griff: Most spreadsheet applications share all the basic formatting commands one would apply to data in a spreadsheet. But a user will always have to apply that formatting themselves. And this is for any CSV file once it's opened in that user's spreadsheet application.

Rebecca: Right and the benefit to the seller to the user is that you can then manipulate the data the way that you like. And another seller can manipulate the data the way that makes sense for them and their business. There are some quick shortcuts for formatting spreadsheet data.

Griff: And most applications will have instructions on how to apply formatting quickly and their help or support links. And I suspect that serendipity knows this, she's been using Excel for awhile, but I hope that actually goes some distance in explaining why when you're downloading a CSV file with metrics and data that you do for any report on eBay and most, any other website that you will have to apply the formatting to make columns wider or to change from just general text formatting to a currency or a date, you'll have to do that yourself.

Rebecca: Yeah. And again, that's so that it works for absolutely everybody out there, even if it does mean a little more work on the front end for sellers.

Griff: Yeah. Our next question that came in Rebecca is an email. It's a short one. I'll read it. And then we can talk about the answers. Gary writes. "Hi Griffin, Rebecca, Gary Lee here on the coast of Maine. I'm a TRS that means Top Rated Seller, and have been selling mostly antiques and collectibles on eBay since around 2000. My store is Southern Cross Treasures, and I have two questions. The first on the very exciting news about the option for shipping trading cards, with tracking for under a dollar. It looks like this rolls out on the 20th, but eBay Customer Support did not have maximum size requirements. Is this something I need to sign up for? The other question is about Managed Payments and Global Shipping I've signed up, but have concerns about accepting credit cards for international sales. What kind of protection does eBay offer for accepting credit cards with GSP on international orders? Thank you both. It's great show Gary Lee of Southern Cross Treasures." Well, thanks Gary.

Rebecca: Thanks Gary. Let's tackle the first question first. Yeah. So that is about the shipping of trading cards with tracking for under a dollar. We haven't released the details yet, and that includes the size and weight limitations. There will be limits on which categories have the shipping option and trading cards is going to be one of the categories. Gary stay tuned to the podcast or the seller news page for more details as they are announced. .

Griff: And I suspect it's going to be probably, you know, envelopes of a particular size and probably 16 ounces or lower, but I'm just speculating. The actual details will come out when the product is released.

Rebecca: Absolutely. But I know that the Shipping Team is thinking about the nuances of what's most often shipped. What are sellers selling the most, those sorts of things as they make this decision.

Griff: Yeah, exactly. Then the second question that Gary had was with Managed Payments and protection for payments made with credit cards. So Gary, with Managed Payments, the seller doesn't need to worry about the form of payment a buyer uses to pay for their purchase. Whether it's a credit card, Apple pay debit card, PayPal, all of these, you as the seller will never see this on your end. All you'll see is the money coming into your account and your bank account. eBay handles everything from that end. You don't actually have to worry about the form of payment, including credit card and protections for credit card. We've got you covered on that end.

Rebecca: And even international on that Griff. Yeah. It's for all sales.

Rebecca: Great. Good to know this next one is a call. So let's listen in.

Guest Caller: Hello. eBay Podcast. I have a question about authenticity of sports cards. I buy sports cards. I've bought them off of eBay for years, and now I'm getting into ones with autographs and collectibles like that. But I recently found out that there's a policy with eBay that if something comes back fraudulent, it can't be returned after a 30 day window. The issue with that is if you buy cards with signatures or autographs or other memorabilia for any matter of the same that have autographs or signatures, by the time you send them off to a company to have them authenticated, it's going to take much longer than the 30 day window that eBay has. Am I correct about this policy? If so, what can be done about it so that you don't buy collectibles and find out later that you've received a fraudulent items? Thank you".

Griff: Caller did not leave their name, but sorry to hear about this. You are mostly correct about how the return policy works, but there's a few little nuances you have to keep in mind.

Rebecca: So the first thing is that it's the seller who sets the window for their return policy. It can be 14 days, 30 days or even 60 days.

Griff: And as you noticed, the buyer cannot open a return request. Once the sellers return policy window has closed, whether that's 14,30 or so.

Rebecca: So Griff, how do we avoid this problem in the future?

Griff: I gave this a lot of thought and I do have some advice. So in the future eBays authentication service, which you may have read about in the Seller News will most likely be expanded to a category like high value trading cards in the future, of course. But in the meantime, my advice is you should look for sellers and buy from sellers whose item descriptions and feedback indicates happy customers. And that also indicate that they guarantee the authenticity of their merchandise. And I would look for sellers who offer 60 day returns. And if you have a question about the authenticity to email them first.

Rebecca: I think it's probably also a good idea to establish relationships. If you're going to be buying a lot of this. Established relationships with third-party authenticators who can provide their services quickly. So you don't have to worry so much about that return window. If you know that you're going to get your item back, definitely within that 60 days.

Griff: Yeah. I believe that there's some third-party authenticators who might be able to provide for a fee, a service where they can look at the listing before you purchase it and give you an idea of whether or not that item is authentic or not. I don't know this for certain. I'm not sure if it's an absolute value, but again, that's worth pursuing. If you're trying to put a collection together of authentic trading cards with authentic signatures, it pays to do the footwork before you purchase.

Rebecca: And this is once again, one of those moments where if it seems too good to be true, probably it is.

Griff: That's a lesson that I need to learn occasionally.

Rebecca: Oh Griff. I think we have one more. Is that right?

Griff: I believe. Let me look here on our list. I think, No, no. There's two more. Believe it or not.

Rebecca: Oh, wow. Let's keep going!

Griff: Yeah. All right. Let's keep going. All right. So this next one is an email that came in and I had to laugh when I saw this one. Again, it's from someone who did not sign their email. So we're just going to say angry user and he wrote, in sometimes full caps. "How long does it take the web team to fix a broken capture script? Or does anyone actually have any concern that your platform front door does not work!! In December, 2020, it was broken. And in 2021 January, it's still broken! Almost 10 days now and no access to my user validated account. Thank you for reading and responding to my " irate inquiry".

Rebecca: It's actually a great question. And gosh, I'm glad that this seller is trying so hard to get on the platform. There's actually a pretty easy answer for this one. I think yeah.

Griff: The most common reason for a caption not working is when a user has a pop-up blocker set in their web browser.

Rebecca: Right? As many people probably already know, captcha is one of those security features that many, if not all websites have. And eBay uses a popup window in the captcha where the user has to do something in to continue signing in. Captcha Is that thing that's like, are you a robot? No, we're not robots.

Griff: And the thing that we ask you to do a robot era bot could not do so it's not just checking the box that says, yeah, I'm not a bot. It's actually, you have to do something. And that do something shows up in a pop-up. So if you have the pop-up blocker on your web browser, you'll never see it. And then you'll be stuck there. And you'll think I can't sign in ! Like this irate user.

Rebecca: And we only say Irate because the, they named themselves that. But listen, if, um, if you're not using a web browser, but instead you're on the app or something else, call back right back again and we'll try and continue troubleshooting this particular issue for you.

Griff: Yeah. But in most cases, it's going to be the web blocker and you have to turn that off in your web browser.

Rebecca: Yep. It should be pretty easy. All right. One more.

Griff: You like to read this one? Cause it's a long one. Do you want to take turns reading it Rebecca?

Rebecca: I'm happy to read the whole thing.

Griff: Okay, good. I'll go get some coffee. I'll be back in a minute.

Rebecca: Okay. Sounds good. "Dear podcast team, thank you for your continued outreach to and communication with the seller community. It goes on. I remain troubled that eBay gauges seller ratings in part on how soon USPS scans at point of origin when ample evidence and reporting exists, that USPS is intentionally choosing not to scan mail in at the point of origin . For e-commerce sellers this places the responsibility for USPS delays on sellers, which is deeply unfair and erodes, goodwill and brand confidence in both USPS and eBay. For instance, USPS is scanning five days after drop off that my packages were "received" at the point of origin in Alexandria, Virginia. And then just an hour later, the package is magically shown to be scanned in at a process facility in North Carolina. Given this as a seller, I find it deeply unfair that sellers are penalized for failing to have timely scans when USBs is so clearly failing to scan in the first place. I'm on the verge of leaving eBay over this issue. I just wanted to continue to bring this to your attention and I'm happy to share more. And thank you for your work, James Miquel Hatton". Well, first of all, James, thank you for selling on eBay. And I'm really sorry to hear about the loss of your Top Rated Seller status. So Griff, what can we tell James?

Griff: Well, unfortunately it's not good news because the special protections for shipping delays put in place during November and December of last year only covered delays in transit, but it assumed an initial tracking scan indicating the shipment was shipped within the seller stated handling time. And that requirement was not exempted in those protections. Brian and I talked about this last week, Rebecca on the podcast. Although you may not have heard it, I'm pretty sure if you listen every week, James, you may have heard it already.

Rebecca: So I think what you said there Griff is if the carrier is not scanning items that are dropped off, you'll need to make sure that they actually do by bringing them right up to the desk or for a clerk to scan while you watch them.

Griff: Yeah, that's correct. And I know that's kind of a hassle, but it's the only way to do it. Or you could, by the way, be scheduling pickups with USPS and you can meet the driver at your door and hand them the packages or a scan sheet so they can scan them in front of you. And then, you know, that the initial scan is in there. It pays to use that scan sheet option when printing multiple labels. We talked about this last week.

Rebecca: With a scan sheet, you can create a single barcode for up to 50 individual shipments. And the option to print a scan sheet is available during the print label flow on eBay. Well, I hope James that that's helpful.

Griff: And I hope you get your Top Rated Seller status back as soon as possible.

Rebecca: We should acknowledge that. One of the topics we discussed last week during our, you got questions segment resulted in kind of a lot of commentary, both on and off eBay. It was the advice that we gave about the removal of negative feedback.

Griff: I remember it.

Rebecca: Just to reiterate eBay will remove feedback in certain really specific instances, for example, returned items where the package was refused or shipping delays. Speaking of the previous question, shipping delays due to the carrier shipping or the carriers problems, or when a feedback comment contains vulgar language demands for products or services.

Griff: The services that were beyond what was offered in the listing.

Rebecca: Exactly. Exactly. So there are cases that that feedback will be removed. I definitely heard pushback that people didn't really agree with the idea that feedback doesn't have to be true, but the upshot is it's not expected to be objective. Feedback is opinion-based and eBay never has. And really won't remove feedback just based on whether a seller and a buyer agree on that.

Griff: Yeah, it's opinion-based it always will be. And the opinion itself, it does not subject the feedback comment to removal. That's the end of the discussion for this subject for now, although I'm sure we'll get more pushback.

Rebecca: It's okay. You know what? We can take it. Negative feedback.

Griff: After all these years, I suppose we could.

Rebecca: This has been a really fun episode. And if anyone out there wants to join the fun with us here on eBay For Business, please call us on 888-723-4630.

Griff: It's 888-723-4630. We encourage you to call. And the best part of calling is you can do that anytime of day, any day of the week. When you call, you'll get a voice line where you can leave a question or comment, make sure you leave your name and your user ID. Also your email address too. We'll cut that out. If we play it on the air, but in case we need to contact you right away, it helps. And if your question is a good one, we might put it on.

Rebecca: And if you're not a call on the phone, kind of a person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: Now it's that time of the week. We all know and love your daily podcast to do list.

Rebecca: Check the announcement board for up-to-date seller news. Especially this week, so that you can read about the new listing page update and when you might expect to have the option to try it out.

Griff: Yeah. And you know, for our second one, I wonder how many of our listeners Rebecca have purchased a thermal printer at this point? I wonder?

Rebecca: Griff, still? You have a track mind, right? And finally, did you know that there are complete transcripts of each and every podcast and that each transcript has all of the links that we mentioned in an episode. It's true! You can see the transcript for this and all past episodes by going to ebay.com/podcast and click on the link for this specific episode, and then click on the transcript link.

Griff: Next episode, we're going to talk about reviewing listing practices to find areas in your listings that might benefit from either a redo or a complete renovation.

Rebecca: Also as part of our review and reflect month, we'll discuss ways of using the sales data from 2020 to help mitigate business costs in 2021.

Griff: I love mitigating costs.

Rebecca: And finally, we'd like to, again, thank our guests this week. Tax attorney, Cliff Ennico and eBay Listing Tool Manager, Vivian Geldhill.

eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.