Episode 91 || Summer Success: Seller Check In and Shipping Updates

[podcast_team]

This week, we check-in with eBay Senior Vice President Jordan Sweetnam. Jordan shares his perspective on the selling environment on eBay. Griff interviews eBay seller Mickey Ross, posterpro on eBay, about moving a large business and inventory from New York to Florida during the pandemic. eBay Senior Director of Shipping Stuart Reichenbach gives updates on the current status for delivery times and international shipping options. Plus Brian Burke and Griff answer your called and mailed-in questions.

To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com. To give us feedback, please take our podcast listener survey at https://connect.ebay.com/srv/survey/a/sellerops.podcast

Episode 91 Links
Mickey Ross of Posterpro
Advising you about shipping during Covid-19
International Standard Delivery
Global Shipping Program
International Standard Delivery
Shipping Delays by Service and Country
USPS Pick Up
Seller Help Page
managed payments

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Hosts:
Griff, Brian Burke

Guests:
Jordan Sweetnam (eBay Staff), Mickey Ross (eBay Seller Guest), Stuart Reichenbach (eBay Staff)

Transcript:

This week on the eBay for Business Podcast:

"People are at home and are shopping their passion and if there's one thing that you made is so well, it's helped people share their passion by selling and shop, they're passionate. I think with all these buyers showing up, discovering eBay for the first time or rediscovering eBay for the first time in many years, I think that will give us momentum into the rest of the year and ultimately that momentum helps us do all the other things we want to get done much faster."

"So we've probably increased our exposure on eBay by close to 20% in the last month. And in addition, for the items that we do have on eBay, which currently run about 800 unique items, we have tweaked our listings. All those little jobs and those little things that you say, well, when I get a chance I'm going to do it. Well, we've had the chance and we're pretty well done”

"We've been working with the carriers daily to understand changes so that we can make appropriate changes to the estimated delivery dates we show your buyers. That's a really important exercise that's fluid and that we do every day.”

I'm Brian Burke.

I'm Griff. And this is the eBay for Business Podcast. Your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 91. Hello Brian. Welcome back to the co-host chair.

Thanks Griff. It's great to be back again.

Great to have you. How's your week going?

It's going well except for, I'm still stuck in my house, but so is everyone else.

Yeah. So, okay. We're all stuck in our houses. I'm getting used to it. I actually kind of enjoy it. I'm getting some work done. You know what I did this week?

What'd you do? I listed 23, count them 23 shirts on eBay.

Wow. I should have you come over because I have six items with tags ready to be listed and I just haven't listed them.

What,You don't have the time? I found the time.

I'm trying to get my 19 year old daughter to do it, but she's pushing back so far.

It's a good reason to have kids so they can do work for you on eBay. I think. I don't have kids. I've just dogs and I can't train them to do anything.

I'm trying but I'm failing in getting her to do it. But that's okay.

Lots going on at eBay this week. I assume you're paying attention?

There is, we had some announcements this week. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on.

Yeah. And a lot of buzz about things like managed payments and shipping and to that end, especially on the shipping end, we're going to talk about that today. So, uh, lots to talk about.

And speaking of that, who will be on this week?

First up we'll hear from eBay, Senior Vice President of eBay, North America, Jordan Sweetnam.

We all know Jordan Jordan's back to chat about what's new, what's on his mind and what the immediate future holds for eBay sellers.

And then we'll hear from Mickey Ross of Poster Art on eBay. Mickey just moved a major business from New York city to Florida during the height of the pandemic.

And you may remember our conversation a few months ago with the head of eBay shipping, Stuart Reichenbach. Well, we're going to revisit Stuart. He's got some important updates to the current shipping situation with delays in some parts of the country. So you're gonna want to stay tuned to hear that. And of course, as always, even more so without any further ado, Brian, I'll let you go for a few minutes and we're going to start with my chat with Jordan Sweetnam.

Sounds great. Thanks Griff.

I think it's been a while since we had the pleasure of checking in with Senior Vice President of eBay, U S Jordan Sweetnam. So I thought maybe I'll give him a call. He was eager to come on and welcome Jordan.

Thanks Griff. It's great to be back. I hope you're doing well.

I'm doing okay. How are you doing?

I'm doing well. I think, obviously a lot of adjustments. For me most of the personal victories day to day come from trying to keep my kids off their screens all day long. Our school system has some classes on Zoom and that keeps them busy for, you know, three to four hours a day, but trying to keep them distracted and then in all candor, for me personally, I really miss being able to get out and go from early morning bike rides. The probability that I'll somehow hurt myself is small, but a year ago one of the trails going on, someone went off and had to get airlifted out. On the tiny chance I do something foolish, now feels like not the time to do things that I could get injured. I'm not a good inside person, so I miss being outside.

Are you settled in then for working from home? I know I've talked to some of my colleagues and most people are fairly happy with working from home. How you doing? I mean you've got a big team you have to manage.

It's gone way better than I expected. Like the first week there was the honeymoon and everyone's like, Oh, we're working from home and people are changing the Zoom backgrounds all the time. I think it is like the full reality of we're home and we're working, but it's not really working from home is that kind of settled in. There's been a lot of adjustment. For the most part things I think have been going really well and seeing different kinds of collaboration. Though I will tell you the one thing I miss is the impromptu passing someone in the hallway and just grab it and say, Hey, do you have 10 minutes? And just standing at a whiteboard and be able to brainstorm. And if you know what you want to get done, Zooms almost at times more efficient because you don't need to book the big meeting and you can just sort of quickly connect with someone. But I really miss the hallway ideation. So it's not, you don't feel strongly enough about it to grab someone for 30 minutes, but it's just a quick brainstorm. And there's some things I think actually are more slowly done when remote because you sort of feel an activation energy to justify booking time with someone versus just walking by their desk and quickly bouncing an idea or two.

Has working from home presented you with any personal unexpected challenges or benefits?

Other than the one I just shared with you around why I was two minutes late for our Zoom call. Our neighbor is doing some construction, well they actually knocked down their house and rebuilding and their contractor just broke their main water line so I was out in the brush showing them how to turn off the main feed that sort of goes to our three houses. It's definitely different to be home all the time. Like some of the things I'm buying on eBay are actually now so much easier cause anything that required signature confirmation I used to stress about before, Oh how am I going to be home in time and try to guess when the FedEx driver is going to show up. Now it doesn't really matter cause things just show up all day long and I'm here. It just works out perfectly.

Yeah, it's, it is a different sort of time management. You've been back for some time now, has your outlook on the selling environment on eBay changed at all? Especially with the impact of the pandemic?

Yes and no. I think, you know, nothing around what I originally saw when I came back has changed around the areas that we need to focus on as a company to make the experience better for our sellers. Addressing the policy issues, things like returns. How do we better differentiate how we treat different kinds of inventory by category, by whether it's new inbox versus you know, used high end collectibles. All of those things fundamentally we need to work on. One of the things that's definitely changed my look at selling has been, obviously everything's unfolded in the last, I don't even know what it is now, three months? Like time has been measured a bit differently. But it's been amazing to see the seller base and how they've responded and adjusted. There are definitely people in parts of the country where USPS and the other carriers have really struggled to keep on time. And so I wouldn't want someone on this podcast to think, Oh my goodness, you know, Jordan doesn't understand what's happening in my area. Like I know there's some parts of the country that are really hard hit by the virus directly or by fulfillment, but as a whole collective other than the first two weeks of uncertainty where that adjustment was happening in some businesses categories almost ground to a halt. We've seen our business bounce back so quickly and as Scott and as he handed over to Jamie talked about on earnings at the end of Q1, we saw very strong entry to April. And I know I hear from many of the sellers on our boards and on Facebook talking about, you know, it's like black Friday every day kind of thing. And it's been really interesting to see how our diversified seller network across the country, across so many categories has been able to adjust so quickly to the changing consumer demands across all these different categories. As we've seen, the normal seasonal trends happen as people go from inside to outside and buy pools. But then all of the staying at home trends. Seeing things like beekeeping and candle making and all these really interesting categories unfold. The nature of the eBay business model is it really isn't awesome if you're trying to get something shipped same day, next day, cause we don't have it forward deployed to thousands of nodes across the country. But what we do have is basically every main street in the country on our platform, whatever anybody could want, it's on eBay. You can see these pockets of inventory just doing these crazy trends over the last one or two months. And it's been just for me personally, fun to dig in and see those trends and then a little bit of like lament because in a normal world, the first thing I would love to do is jump on a plane and go and visit that main street and understand that business model better. And obviously right now that that isn't quite an option.

Do you think the current situation with the strength and the business provides us with an opportunity?

For example, for even stronger differentiation of our brand growing all those verticals or that group of verticals to which we committed at the end of last year at a more rapid pace. Is this providing us a platform to really take off and keep growing?

The answer is yes. I just haven't figured out all the ways that that is true yet. The one thing that is clear to me is for reasons we never could have predicted this has helped eBay be discovered by a whole generation of shoppers who previously hadn't really engaged with our brand. They may not have come here for reasons I would have expected to buy sewing machines or desks for working at home, webcams. I mean, I dunno, I sold a web cam on eBay in 2004 and to see webcam sales up 3000% now it was kind of funny.

All the manufacturers are sold out.

Exactly. All of these customers who are showing up, they're not buying things only from the bucket of inventory that Amazon, Walmart, Target are out of stock on. They're not buying things only because main street retail isn't open right now. Or home Depot is an open right now. They're actually discovering, Hey, wow, that comic book store that I shop from locally, they're on eBay. That's really cool. I think we're actually helping a whole generation of customers discover what is the magic of eBay and why we're not Walmart. We're not Amazon like we are who we are. And for some shoppers that's great. That's not, you know why to come to eBay. But for many people they're showing up and they're discovering the full range of our assortment. And you know, the deeper we get into this, it isn't just people buying the small appliances for the kitchen, the hobby categories are picking up. Model trains, model planes, three D printing, like so many of the craft categories. And obviously those are things we just do so well. I've had, you know, I've posted the hot inventory trends on Facebook two weeks ago and a seller who was quick to jump in and say, Hey, well, you know, why didn't you include antiques? Antique sales are up and their specific sales were a little bit better than the category average. But people are at home and are shopping their passion, and if there's one thing that eBay does so well, it's help people share their passion by selling and shop their passion. I think with all these buyers showing up, discovering eBay for the first time or rediscovering eBay for the first time in many years. I think that will give us momentum into the rest of the year. And ultimately that momentum helps us do all the other things we want to get done much faster.

One of the other things that we want to get done pretty fast is managed payments. I don't think there's a seller out there who hasn't heard about it. Most of the sellers I talked to understand pretty clearly where we're headed and the reasons why. But there are some sellers out there that are still a bit hesitant about the change. It's a big change. It's how they get paid and it's how they get their money. What would you say to those sellers who are um, have questions about what we're doing in our little hesitant about this change that we're about to complete, I think within a year?

I'd probably start by saying thank you. It doesn't matter how rational, the reasons I could share with you on why someone will be better off in payments. It still requires effort. I receive feedback that I can be a little bit stubborn at times and so when someone's asking me to do something that I don't really want to do, that doesn't really give me a lot of energy and I'd have to start by just saying thank you. Even if payments makes a ton of sense for all the reasons I can share, it still requires an effort from sellers. They've got to fill out some forms. They may want to open a new bank account, they don't need to go another their bank, they can open online, but they may need to open a new bank account to keep their funds separate. And that takes time and time has value. Whether you're running your eBay business or want to sit outside and you know, just listen to the birds, like time has value. And so just the first thing I'd say is thank you. The why are we doing it? PayPal is an amazing company. My first purchase on eBay when I was in Canada predated the PayPal integration and I had to go to Canada Post and get a postal money order, which I didn't understand what it was. And then it was a cross border postal money order. I was afraid the seller wouldn't even accept the payment. And so there's a reason why Meg bought PayPal and everybody was cheering when that happened. And you know to say these two companies, their success was inseparable. That's totally accurate. But having said that, PayPal is an amazing company and they are much larger than the sum of just what eBay has and what we would want to customize our category isn't the same thing as what is a priority for PayPal. When we looked at adding more payment options, Apple pay, Google pay, I have heard from a lot of customers who are selling, you know, high end watches and coins and so things like high dollar wire transfer and EFT payments where you actually don't need to pay 2.7% you should be paying, you know, 50 to 70 basis points for larger movement of funds. There's just a long list of these things where what would be a priority for us in payments. It just isn't in the top list of things that PayPal wants to go after. And so by moving to our own payment solution, with adding it in the backend, we're able to build on top of a foundation from an extremely large global payments provider. Adyen actually processes more payments globally than PayPal does and build a front end that lets us do some of these things that are, will allow us to attract more customers to the platform. And so just like I want to acknowledge that there is effort required from sellers to make the transition and there's no doubt about that. But this will ultimately give us a capability to create a better experience for buyers. And the team has been iterating quickly on making sure that sellers have what they need for launch more flexibility around how often to get funds. I would sort of ask and suggest, please keep the feedback coming cause the team really wants you to feel that this is a better solution ultimately than what you have today. And so, um, they, they do take that feedback to heart.

Jordan, before I let you go, do you have any thoughts for sellers at the moment?

Doing what you're doing. Having had the opportunity to do a call it TV, It was by Zoom, but I'd never done a TV interview before. As a lifetime introvert that was outside my comfort zone. And one of the first questions was, you know, what advice would you give to sellers who want to get started selling online? And the answer is, well, I don't know. I grew up in a family business. So what drove my dad to work the crazy hours he worked? What do I see come through in all of our sellers to navigate this uncertainty? And the one common thread is just passion. If you're selling something because you think you can make some money, you'll probably be successful. But things will be really frustrating. And yet when I see the people that have the passion to endure the uncertainty and the ups and downs and do all that while having a lot of fun, it's because they're selling the things that are passionate about. And so 90% of the sellers that I hear from, it's that passion topic that keeps them going. And so just as long as you're doing what you're passionate about, then have fun. And thank you. You know, we are obviously here as an enabler, but it's all the efforts of all of your listeners and the hundreds of thousands of other sellers that really keep this business going. So just a thank you and have fun.

Jordan, I couldn't have put it better myself. Thanks again for agreeing to stop by. I know even though you're working from home, you're still busy. You have got a large team to manage, so we really appreciate it and we'll check in with you again in a couple months?

That sounds great. Thanks Griff and thank you everybody, all you listeners.

We've been speaking with Jordan Sweetnam and he's the Senior Vice President of eBay, US and that also includes Canada. You don't want to leave them out.

Every week we check in with sellers of all types who sell on eBay and have businesses that range from mom and pop to well businesses with lots of employees and lots of sales. This week we're talking with Mickey Ross, the owner of the Ross Art Group inc and he sells on eBay under the user ID posterpro. Mickey, welcome to our podcast.

Thanks Griff. Nice to be with you. Now you're located in New York city, if I remember correctly.

Well, we actually moved in the past two weeks to Boca Raton, Florida.

Oh my. That's a big move.

It's a huge move and it was planned back in February, early February, and while I hesitated to not go through with it for the obvious reasons of what we're dealing with these days, I did decide to go ahead and physically made the move two weeks ago.

How did the move go? Was it a challenge or did it go smoothly?

It was the biggest challenge I've faced in many, many years. Primarily because New York had sheltering in place requirements and I couldn't call in all my staff to do all the proper preparation of all of our merchandise and labeling things and getting things done in the fashion that we're accustomed to. Fortunately, I was working with a wonderful moving company and they brought in a crew to work with me because moving is considered an essential service, so we weren't doing anything that was against whatever the guidelines were in the city of New York. But with the best of intentions, the moving company doesn't label things quite the way we do. So I'm now dealing with a modified form of needle in the haystack.

So you had to move your entire inventory. Give us an idea if you would, based on maybe truckload, how big that inventory was that you moved from New York to Florida?

It was a 50 foot, 53 foot truck, but in fairness before you get too carried away with that, it did include my automobile, which they managed to load on that same truck.

That's still, that's a huge truck. I think it's the biggest truck that you can get, if I remember correctly.

Yes, as far as I know, yeah.

Managing on the business end right now, how's the pandemic impacting your business?

Our business had a component that's very strong on the internet, both through eBay as well as our own website, but we did have an actual full-scale retail gallery in New York. We do have a full scale gallery in Boca Raton which is for one thing, because of the move not been completely set up, but over and above that there virtually is no face-to-face business because of Covid virus. I'm not welcoming anybody into the gallery, so we're relying on the internet. Both things like eBay and eBay is a very important facet of what we do. But in addition to that, since my staff is working remotely, we are utilizing the internet to the best of our ability to do outreach email blasts. We have made some modifications on many of our listings when you're not having to deal with the public component walking through a gallery space, it gives you the time to do a lot of those things to clean up certain listings on eBay. We also made many efforts to add listings to eBay, so we've probably increased our exposure on eBay by close to 20% in the last month. And in addition for the items that we do have on eBay, which currently run about 800 unique items, we have tweaked our listings, all those little jobs and those little things that you say, well when I get a chance I'm going to do it. Well we've had the chance and we've pretty well done it.

What is the inventory that you sell on eBay and in your website?

We have a somewhat unusual product in that we sell original vintage posters. And that term can be every so slightly misleading. So if I may, I'll try and clarify. What we sell are original posters that were intended for advertising and specifically the pieces that we sell are from the original print runs. I have pieces that go back as old as 1860, 160 years ago and they are not reproduced, recreated or restruck in any fashion. They are the original documents. The lions portion of what we offer on eBay are pieces that will range in time from about the 1890s up through and including the early 1960s they are certainly antiques at the very least. And in many cases you're dealing with pieces that are over a century old. It's a unique niche market. It's a market where people find our pieces of considerable value both for collecting purposes as well as for decorative purposes. And furthermore, my particular background is in the printing world and as a result I have a very trained eye that spots damages and flaws in printed material of whatever sword. So as it relates to my posters, we specialize in excellent condition posters only, which essentially means that you're not going to find any significant flaws, damages, fading or any of those various issues that might affect the value of the piece.

And some of these posters are rather big, if I remember correctly from my days years ago in the antique business, some of these are six feet tall by four feet wide and they take up a whole, they can be, the focus of an entire room.

They can, but you know, the other side of it is that so many homes today have 20 foot ceilings and those ceilings in certain rooms are crying out for artwork and the original vintage poster, even though it's of some considerable costs, it does provide an awful lot of wall coverage at a reasonably affordable price. We have items in that roughly four foot by five foot area that can be anywhere from a low point of $400 to a high point in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Yes, I'm looking at your posters right now. They're incredible. They range in price from anywhere from around a hundred bucks up to 85,000 for a, an original cover by a Toulouse-Lautrec, which is extraordinary. These are beautiful posters.

Thank you.

So if you're interested in learning more about this particular field, again, the user ID on eBay is posterpro. You should look these up only so you can learn something. I see some stuff I want to buy. (laughter) Have you had to make any adaptations besides just having to move? I mean, which was a challenge enough. Have you made other adaptations to your business as a whole? Not just on eBay, during the pandemic, I know that you say your employees are working remotely, that can be a challenge. Are there other adaptations that you've had to make?

Just trying to operate the business remotely has been a major adaptation prior to the onset of the virus and the need for sheltering in place, all of my employees worked on premises. So in terms of our business, that dramatically changed the whole functionality. And after having endured this and I'm using the word endured it rather than lived through it. There's a learning curve involved and I'm not saying that we've ironed out all the kinks, but we pretty much have a handle on how best to function, how best to interact. For example, we never used Zoom video, which is now virtually commonplace. We have also given the fact that the world is pretty much functioning through the internet and very little, if any, through face to face visits. We have started to do some online extra work as far as acquiring some greater skills and how to utilize some of the tools of the internet. We've done some eBay tutorials, we've done Instagram tutorials and Facebook tutorials so that we can better utilize the tools that are available to us. Furthermore, we've changed the context of our email outreach to clients. We've tried to soften the commercial tone of our emails and make it a little bit more friendly and more encouraging of people to just stay in touch with us. Think of us sending out things that just might help the mood of the day with our clients. We've also, in terms of our business, there is a part of our business where people come to us looking for items. That has increased somewhat as well and our focus on that has increased somewhat as well because that's a whole other aspect. So that's in a nutshell is pretty much the changesin our conversations with other sellers who've had to make changes a lot of them have said that the changes they're making will probably be permanent because they're finding that it's actually benefiting their business.

Uh, yes, it's benefited our business. The changes I do think are likely to stay. There's no reason for them not to. I also think that the biggest unsolved or unanswered question is what is the new normal going to be and the obvious, of when is that going to be? So I'm on the side of not expecting the current situation to change all that dramatically vis-a-vis my business. As far as I'm concerned we're easily setting our minds to operating in this manner for the next 90 days and we're reevaluating it. I would say every two to four weeks at this point.

Most businesses have a business plan. They plan ahead. Given the current situation, have you been able to plan your business for the rest of the year and if so, what does that plan look like?

I have not focused on it all that significantly. Primarily because of the move. My personal attention has just been so totally focused on getting ready, getting it done. Now I find myself in my new and spacious and exciting gallery staring at somewhere upwards of 150 boxes of tubes and posters and paraphernalia and computers and printers and so on. So while it would be nice to have the luxury of time to do that meaningful planning, the sole priority of virtually every day is getting those boxes unpacked and getting things sorted out. And again, in this time when you can't safely call in a crew of hands to assist you the major part of that work is just on my shoulders right now and in my hands right now.

It sounds like you're doing most of the work yourself Mickey?

Not entirely. Fortunately, I have a helper. But yeah, there's a lions portion. I mean, you know, like so many other people, the plans that we had are adapted to the needs of today.

Well Mickey I want to thank you so much again for taking time out of your day to speak with us. We really appreciate it and I know our seller audience will too. Hopefully we'll be able to check in with you again in a few months and see how things are going after the move and, and once you're settled check in how the business is going.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Mickey Ross is the owner of the Ross Art Group incorporated. They sell under the user ID posterpro.

That's one on eBay posterpro.

Hi, this is Griff and today I'm joined with Stuart Reichenbach. He's the Senior Director of Shipping here at eBay. And to be expected, we are receiving a lot of questions from our seller community about shipping during the pandemic. We've done a check in a few weeks ago with Stuart, but as things are evolving quickly, we want to make sure that our sellers have the latest and greatest information and updates. Thanks for joining us today Stuart.

Hey Griff. Good to see you. And great to be back.

Things must be busy for you and your team right now. I know we're all working from home. How's that working out for you?

Griff, like you mentioned we talked a couple of weeks ago, maybe a bit longer and really it's more of the same. We're all finding that every one of us finding that right balance right between taking care of everything that has to happen with the office and work and our personal lives and certainly the interesting times of Covid and shipping are our top priority. It's a daily focus for our team, a daily exercise to understand, you know, changes in the carrier networks, what's happening with volumes on time percentages and so we're talking with the carriers every day. We look at our own internal data and we pull it all together and really on a daily basis we're then making recommendations up to Jordan and our leadership team on, on things that have to change as we think about delivery to our buyers. And of course we're still working on all the other things we've got to work on, initiatives to keep the machine rolling into the future. But for sure it's a busy time.

What are the biggest changes Stuart that occurred during the pandemic when it comes to shipping?

I think I mentioned last time, you know the carriers were all deemed carriers, UPS, FedEx, USPS and others were all deemed essential services. And so that's been a really important thing and they've been working really hard. Of course the landscape has changed and it's challenged for sure. Covid related issues like restrictions in hotspots in specific areas of the country that we've all heard about. The carriers focus on employee safety, absenteeism that's obviously occurred are making consistent on time delivery more and more difficult. And I think on top of this, even more so than when we talked last time, there's been an incredible continuing surge in e-commerce overall and involve that is now really above peak levels for all three carriers. And really a lot of that is being delivered into the home delivery network and so there's a real challenge for the carriers to have dropped resources to deal with that type of volume and the challenges I mentioned. Early on, FedEx and UPS both removed their guaranteed service, which they did so that they could have more flexibility to serve the overall marketplace. USPS maybe about a month ago now announced changes to their service standards, adding a day to most First Class packages and Priority mail transit times. So certainly a lot of changes there. From our perspective, you know, we've urged sellers to really think about using the free home pickup service through USPS so you don't need to leave your home, right? Make it more convenient for yourself. It's available to about 98% of the zip codes across the country. There's no limit on the number of packages that can be picked up, really convenient to print a prepaid eBay label to make that service happen. And then FedEx and UPS offer really great convenient mix of both branded stores and third party drop off locations. So think about those networks, check out their sites for the full list and both UPS and FedEx, if you've got a business account, they'll do pickup for you at home as well. And then on our end, Griff, as I've mentioned, we've been working with the carriers daily to understand changes so that we can make appropriate changes to the estimated delivery dates we show your buyers. That's a really important exercise that's fluid that we do every day.

Some international routes have been closed as well. I know that I've heard from sellers who say that they've had their exclusion lists added to. How has this impacted the eBay service provision?

Absolutely. The international space and landscape, I think is even more challenged than the domestic space and continues to be. Early on the amount of airline capacity that's used to carry packages across the world to destination countries was greatly reduced. That's still in place and many post offices around the world closed and or just place restrictions on their operations. And so all of this has led to lane closures and delays. Today we've suspended U S exports to 140 countries. So that's a lot. A lot of countries. And when we say we've suspended, we're actually blocking buyers from completing transactions when the buyers in one of those impacted countries and the item is here in the U S. Now it's a lot of countries but I also say they're smaller countries and they make up a very small percentage of our sellers exports. So let's keep that in mind. Most major corridors are still open and from the very beginning we've had been adjusting and adding days to our estimated delivery dates that the buyer sees to reflect the delays in air capacity and postal operations that I mentioned earlier. Our global shipping program, GSP that many of our sellers use is still fully operational. Great to continue using that. And if you're not a GSP in the GSP program, but you ship directly, which a lot of our sellers do, many sellers and you typically use the USPS service, we really suggest that sellers take a look at our eBay International Standard Delivery shipping option instead. It's a great program we introduced earlier this year and the reliability of that program is really strong. So take a look at that.

What can sellers do to reassure buyers if their package is a little late? The reason why and you know it will get there. Are there things that sellers can do?

Yes, and I'll answer that, but let me go a little broader with us. So absolutely there's disruption and delays in all the carrier networks. We know we're going to see it. USPS is experiencing delays primarily in some of the more heavily impacted areas by Covid 19, those hotspots. And as a result, as I said, we've been changing the estimated delivery dates that buyers see throughout this time period. As a seller though, the most important thing that you can do is ship the item out on time. Whatever you've specified, make that happen. And again, to our point earlier, use that USPS pickup service. If you use USPS and you do what you guys need to do from that perspective. Now we know your challenge getting the package into the system isn't the only challenge out there. And so I said we've been adjusting EDD's, we are aware of some packages though are in transit, are well beyond the expected delivery dates. We also know it's a very small percentage of overall shipments and it can still be a challenge. So in addition to the changes there we've made, we're also protecting sellers against defects and holding our INRs open for 10 full days after the delivery date. So I think a combination of all those things, let's handle on time, we'll continue to adjust the delivery day estimates and then we've got a 10 day window that INR to resolve itself. You know on top of that, one of the great things that sellers do is communicate with buyers, continue to do that. If sellers are seeing something different.

Will Guaranteed Delivery be removed on listings during the pandemic? So you know, we guarantee that packages will arrive during a specific amount of time. Sellers are wondering if we'll remove that.

Guaranteed on time. The majority of our items that are boxed today are still arriving within the timeframe that we've specified to buyers. We're going to continue to use the eBay Guaranteed Delivery logo because we want to show buyers where we absolutely know that can happen. With that said, based on the changes that are taking place for the networks, and as we work closely with the carriers, we're going to restrict the number of items that see Guaranteed Delivery. So it'll still be out there, but at this point, the frequency at which buyers will see it will be reduced.

Should sellers be worried about being protected during this period of time? For example, for INRs, items never received or which get filed even if the item is still in transit sometimes, but late. All this due to the Covid 19 pandemic all these shipping delays, do we protect sellers against these in the way of defects or cases?

Absolutely. I think that's been announced early on that we were protecting sellers on defects for 90 days, so any missteps here in this space will be wiped away. They're not held against the sellers and I believe just yesterday we we announced and communicated that those same protections would be extended through July 20th.

Stuart, one last initiative we most definitely should touch on here because it's brand new and a lot of sellers have question about it is the eBay International Standard Delivery Program, which we announced just recently. How has this new program been going through the pandemic and why isn't this program impacted by the country closures that the other carriers are experiencing?

So eBay International Standard Delivery is a service that we launched in the beginning of this year. It's a cost competitive, reliable international service that works with a really simplified rate structure and offers our sellers even additional protections compared to what they get when they ship with USPS or some of the other international shipping options on site. The program has been growing daily since we launched earlier this year. Increasing number of sellers are using it every week on a really short period of time we're north of 50,000 sellers using the program, we're shipping to 170 countries and today to more than 180,000 buyers. So the program has been really, really well received. And you know, I should say it's, Oh I don't want to call it a program, I want to call it a service. It's a transportation delivery service that eBay has launched. It's been great. We're going to continue to work on refining the program to make the most competitive, reliable delivery service our sellers have seen. You asked about how it's performed during Covid. It's no different than some of the other services. We still use planes and we still use delivery companies in destination countries. So we've had a slow down, we've had to extend some of our delivery dates, but it's performed far more reliably than anything else out there. And again, we stand behind and back through protections what we say we're going to do. So we really encourage our sellers to take a hard look at it now, particularly during Covid if you might be experiencing challenges in some of your other options.

One of the questions that I get since the introduction of the International Delivery option is, well, which one should I use? International Delivery or the Global Shipping Program? Which one is going to work better for me? Especially during this unusual time? What should we tell sellers?

So the programs are fundamentally different. I would say they're the same in that we both, both of them shipped packages to an international buyer. The Global Shipping Program is really what we call a delivered duty paid solution where the buyers are going to pay for duty and taxes upfront. It's really a full service solution. The eBay International Standard Delivery, the typical USPS product that people use is a delivered duty unpaid solution. Take a look at both of them, but again, we'd encourage folks to look at our eBay International Standard Delivery if they're not using GSP today. If they're using something else, not GSP, take a look at eBay International Standard Delivery as an alternative. It's a really great service.

And if you're using GSP and you're using it successfully, keep using that.

Keep doing it and it and it may apply and you may be a seller that says, Hey, there's application for both here. Absolutely.

Well Stuart, I want to thank you. I know even though we're working from home, it's still a really busy time and especially for the Shipping Team with all that's going on. So we really appreciate you taking time today to address these questions from sellers. Thanks again Stuart.

Griff, thank you and thanks to all our sellers.

Stuart Reichenbach is the Senior Director of Shipping at eBay and he's been helping to address of the questions you have about shipping during the pandemic.

Did we get any good questions this week Griff ?

Oh Brian, We did. We received a few really excellent questions and we're going to do our best to answer both of them. The first question is from a caller who called our hotline at (888) 723-4630, so let's listen.

So I'm a seller and I just want to know if you have any idea when actually the customer service for sellers will be up and someone will actually answer the phone. Thank you.

Okay. Brian, there's the question.

That's a really good question and my assumption is a lot of our sellers probably had that question on their mind.

Yeah, I've seen it discussed a few places on the Facebook and on the interweb. I've jumped in a few places to give the answer. Most people are pretty understanding. Few people when they hear the answer they take us to task for not being technically adept, but Hey, it is what it is. And the reason why there's no phones right now for Customer Service is all of our phones are internal to the campuses where the Customer Support Reps usually work both in Draper and and different places around the world and all of those campuses are shut. So CS reps don't have access to these phone systems and they're rather elaborate because the phone systems at eBay with the phone tree triage questions to different teams. All those reps as, you know, as I've said, they're all working from home just like you and I and they don't have access to those phone systems. So during this time what they do have access to is the email system we have and they're answering customers through email. I also believe there's a chat, right Brian?

There is, I've heard a number of sellers that I've spoken to who kind of raved about the chat and actually have liked how quick the responses have been and how easy it was for them to get their questions answered.

I don't know about you, but I've gotten very used to dealing with companies through their chat, customer support, you know, like my bank and different places that have that. And the last place I think I used it was a company where I wanted to buy something as an accessory to a webcam I have. I couldn't find it on their website. And I went to chat and the very nice woman on the other end, we chatted and she got me all straightened up pretty quick. And I actually think that works better for me than a phone call. But that's just my personal taste.

Yeah. In some ways it's almost like back to the future. I remember like a lot of commerce when internet started up at least when I started really getting involved in internet companies back in 1999 and so a lot of them did stuff via email and chat and it wasn't until later that they ended up doing phones.

Do you remember the history of eBay with email and phones?

I came at the very end as we just after we started to transition to phone.

Just a little bit of transition at the beginning. I remember cause when I first started at eBay it was email and it was deliberately email only and we had a really interesting email system called Kona that had all the answers in there that you could pick for the most standard questions. And we were actually proud of the fact that we managed our customer base through email. And of course as you said, over time that changed to phones. As soon as the, the worst of the pandemic is over and those campuses start to open up again we'll have the phones back up. And you'll see that when you click on the help and contact link, but we don't know when that is. The virus has a mind of its own if it has a mind at all. So stay tuned, look for updates and if you need help directly with Customer Service, don't discount the quality help you will get through email or chat if you just follow the links from a help and contact at the top of any eBay page. So that's the answer to that question I hope.

Great answer, great advice.

I hope the caller is going to be okay with that. Want to read the second question?

I do. And this one's about managed payments and was sent into podcast@ebay.com from a seller, Ryan. And his question is, I just heard that the new managed payments option, that there will be restrictions to items available to sell that are not currently restricted under the PayPal option of payment. One of the items being money coin bullion. Is that true? If so, will there be another option to sell these items later or is this a permanent change? Thank you for your help regarding this matter and I love the podcast. Cheers Ryan. It's great to hear those last words.

I knew you'd like that part. Well, great question. As Ryan has noticed, there are some categories of items that cannot be processed thru Manage Payments currently, correct?

Correct. Yep. There's a list on the site.

Yeah, and we're going to publish that URL to those particular items, which currently cannot be processed to Manage Payments. We'll put the URL in the transcript.

And he is right that coins and bullion are on that list currently.

Yeah. As well as a few other items. The managed payment Team is working on including as many of these restricted items to Manage Payments as they can in the future. So we're just going to have to all stay tuned to news and updates as they're released. But Brian, I think you have some good news about the current invitations that are going out.

Yes. We, we started in first for all of our listeners out there, um, we started inviting tens of thousands of new sellers into managed payments a week over the last couple of weeks. And the good thing is if you're currently a seller and you're primarily selling these restricted items, you'll likely not get an invitation for the, for the registration period up through July because the team continues, as Griff said, continues to look through and incorporate additional items to be able to be sold under managed payments. So if you're selling coins right now, you probably aren't going to get an invitation to join Manage Payments and we would just ask you to go back to that page and check in whether it's Seller News or here on the Podcast for updates.

Just stay tuned to all the news as managed payment as it comes out. Those usually are published in the announcement board or on their splash page for managed payments in the FAQ section, which they add to over time on Seller Center. And again, we say this all the time, you want to be watching Seller Center. So that's the two questions we got for this week.

Two great questions. That's all the questions we have this week. But remember if you have a question for us here at the eBay for Business Podcast, call us on (888) 723-4630.

Yes, that phone number is working (888) 723-4630 and you can call it any day of the week. Any time of the day. Just leave a question or comment or request. And if it's appropriate we might just put it on the air.

That's right. As much as we would love to assist, there are some questions we cannot answer on the Podcast.

Because discussing it on the Podcast could end up revealing private information about your account, which we do not want to put in jeopardy. So those specific account questions are always best addressed by our Customer Support Team. And these are things like, you know, my listings were ended, my account was restricted. We can't really assist in those anyway. Something like that, you really want to do talk to Customer Support.

But other than those, we're happy to attempt to answer any other eBay questions. Not everyone is likes to call on the phone, so you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

it's time for your daily podcast to do list Brian.

Number one, check the Announcement Board for up to date seller news and there's been quite a bit of seller news in the last few weeks and there's seller news this week, so definitely pay attention.

Number two, check your email for any notifications or special offers from eBay. That's really important.

It is. And number three, check out the transcript for this and all episodes for followup on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode.

Brian and I'd like to thank our guests for this week, eBay Senior Vice President of North America Markets, Jordan Sweetnam, eBay seller, Mickey Ross of Poster Art and eBay Senior Director of Shipping, Stuart Reichenbach. Join us next week for another thrilling episode of the eBay for Business Podcast. The eBay for business podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.