Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us for the Weekly Chat with eBay Staff. We don't have a specific topic this week, so feel free to share any general buying or selling questions you may have!
The chat thread will remain open until 2 PM PT at which point we'll close it from additional responses. After that time, we'll continue to work on responding to any queries that might still be unanswered.
To post your question, click Reply in the lower right corner of this post, type your question, and hit submit between 1-2 PM Pacific Time. The format of our chat mirrors the format of our Community Discussion Boards, where each post will appear in the thread chronologically. The Community Team will review each question as it comes in, and will quote the original question in our reply. This quote and the reply will appear later in the thread, so just keep scrolling down to see our answers.
Missed the chat? Send your questions to the podcast by calling 888-723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com and maybe your questions will make it on the air! Or listen to past episodes while you wait for next Wednesday!
@carolynnq wrote:
Regarding variation listings...I can't find anywhere on eBay pages what is NOT allowed. If it is legal, I would like to set up a variation listing for jazz CDs (all in Very Good condition), where buyers can choose from a list of CDs that are all $2 each. Is this permitted? There are a lot of sellers who do this, but I know that doesn't make it okay. I tried asking Help last night, but I don't think the CSR understood the intent of my question - she directed me to eBay's page about Variations (which I had already read) and was just trying to tell me how to set up a variation listing. If it's not legal, it would be helpful to have examples of things Variations can't be used for on that info page (just like there are examples of what can and can't be done on the Prohibited Items page).
@carolynnq variations should be for items that are the same with minor difference, such as color, size, scent, etc. If the CDs are for different artists/albums then they should be listed in individual listings.
@gwzcomps wrote:
Also on a side note, eBay's shipping system has been broken for nearly two weeks now. I finally had to shut my store down because of it. My understanding is this is a known high priority bug. I know it is a tech issue so not much the board staff can do. I find it very frustrating that a critical part of the site has been allowed to be broken for this long though.
Thanks for letting us know you were impacted by this tech issue @gwzcomps. It's still being worked on by the teams involved, but I hope we see a resolution quickly!
@shhboom wrote:
How come a seller can block a buyer for any reason including race, religion, gender, LGBTQ, etc. but it's against eBay Policies for the blocked buyer to have a neighbor buy the item for him using the neighbor's eBay account?
Hi @shhboom - we allow sellers to choose with whom they do business. If a seller has added you to their blocked list and you arrange to circumvent this to purchase the item anyway it is considered a violation of policy.
If a seller has refused to do business with you for one of the statuses you mentioned above I strongly encourage you to report this to CS so they can review the seller's account appropriately. Thanks!
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
Brian, Would you do me the favor of double checking with the app team? Pretty please?
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques I took some time to verify this with the mobile app team and they confirmed that we aren't changing sellers shipping to be free automatically.
I suggest sellers always check the 'Shipping cost' section before listing an item, as this may default to 'Free shipping' if we don't have a shipping recommendation for the item being listed. However, once it's listed we will not change the shipping cost, this is in the sellers control.
@carolynnq wrote:
Yes, they would have to have auto decline and auto accept both activated. And I guess I hadn't thought it through - there couldn't be any middle ground. I always do something like accept offers 14.99 and above and decline offers $14.98 and below. But if a seller said accept offers 14.99 and above and decline offers $10.99 and below, buyers offering between $11 and $14.98 would still have to wait for a response, so maybe this isn't such a good idea.
Hi @carolynnq - I think there's a good idea if we can get the kinks worked out. Ponder on it and if you can sort something out let me know so I can get it passed on!
@wooden_flower wrote:
Hi there,
Easy one today - I set up a marketing email a couple of days ago, and it is stuck in 'pending'. Can someone force it to fail so I can try again?
Thanks!
Sue
Hi @wooden_flower - let me see what I can do, thanks!
@coffeebean832 wrote:
@pburn wrote:
brian@ebay wrote:
@sniperwolves I actually just replied to your other post here. You'll need to follow the step I provided in that thread to speak with the payments them. They'll be able to help you out 🙂
Just FYI, I get an "Access Denied" warning when I click on your link, brian@ebay.
It's the Power Seller board so only sellers logged in to selling accounts with Power Seller status can access it.
@pburn this is the reason you are getting an access denied message. But just so it's visible to everyone, I advised @sniperwolves to use the 'have us call you' feature to speak with the payments team for help.
@stuphy wrote:
Brian,
Since your customer service department is not helpful....I am trying to reach out to someone that could answer a question.
What is ebay doing to support the sellers and buyers with the current shipping problems by USPS? I am a seller who has sold items. But a lot of items are taking very long got get to their buyers. 3 months to Australia, 3 weeks for a USPS priority box to go from Florida to Los Angeles. I have a few buyers that want refunds. If I issue a refund and then the items gets delivered late, then I have lost out on the item and the refunded dollars. It would be great if ebay was recalculating the arrival dates of packages so buyers are **bleep** off that their items hasn't gotten to them. In addition, it would be nice if ebay was telling buyers about the postal delays. I have searched for USPS service delays in your forum and can't find a thing about it. Am I the only seller with this problem?
Thanks
@stuphy I understand the concerns and I want to assure you that we are taking steps to help sellers. We've made the below announcements with information about what we're doing to help.
@go-bad-chicken wrote:
eBay's Global Shipping Program and eBay's Managed Payments Program question
In post 1059 of another thread located within the payments board Charles indicated that sellers who use eBay's Global Shipping Program and who are also enrolled eBay's new Managed Payments program will now be required to pay their newly assigned category based final value fee plus the 1.65% International Fee on a foreign buyers taxes and or customs collected by Pitney Bowes through eBay's Global Shipping program.
Is this accurate Information?
I ask as I am a media seller. So that means I could possibly be paying a total of 16% on a European buyer's 20% + in taxes which is collected by Pitney Bowes.
(MP Media Category Rate 14.35 + 1.65% International Transaction Fee = 16%)
"I greatly apologize for the delayed reply. I managed to get the answer about GSP fees and shared it in a different thread, but had trouble finding your post to reply to.
Here's what I found:
For non-GSP sellers the structure is: FVF plus International fee is charged on anything the buyer purchases (i.e. item, shipping/handling, any taxes, recycling)
For GSP sellers the FVF plus international fee is charged on: Item, shipping/handling (lowest stated domestic shipping cost), taxes, recycling. The FVF is not charged on GSP shipping charges, international leg cost, and insurance."
Hi @go-bad-chicken - required disclaimers first:
As someone who is not an expert on managed payments I may not be able to address your question in its entirety. If you have been notified to register for managed payments you are able to request a call back from a payments-trained teammate by accessing any of the Help Pages related to payments and using the 'Have us call you' feature at the bottom of the page.
The information provided is accurate as of today's date (August 26 2020) but may become outdated in the future. If you are reading this at a later date please consider checking the Help Pages or request a call back from a managed payments teammate who can provide the most up to date information.
Information about managed payments fees can be found here, but I cannot speak to specifics in how they break down. The best course of action for you to get information on this is to request a call from a payments trained teammate so they can review it in detail with you.
Thanks!
@coffeebean832 wrote:
On the app it doesn't cut off a buyer when they reach the 80 character feedback limit. Instead it lets buyers keep typing and it changes the tiny number on the bottom right corner to negative- showing how many characters need to be removed.
When a buyer is over 80 characters and attempts to post the feedback won't go through but there's no error message telling them why.
Within eBay messages it will cut you off when you hit the character limit. eBay should apply that same coding to the app where feedback is concerned.
If it helps I can e-mail you a screenshot my buyer sent me from her experience with leaving feedback on the app- I can't post it publicly for buyer privacy reasons.
@coffeebean832 I can send this over to the mobile team. Screenshots would help for sure! Feel free to send an email 🙂
brian@ebay wrote:
@carolynnq wrote:
Regarding variation listings...I can't find anywhere on eBay pages what is NOT allowed. If it is legal, I would like to set up a variation listing for jazz CDs (all in Very Good condition), where buyers can choose from a list of CDs that are all $2 each. Is this permitted? There are a lot of sellers who do this, but I know that doesn't make it okay. I tried asking Help last night, but I don't think the CSR understood the intent of my question - she directed me to eBay's page about Variations (which I had already read) and was just trying to tell me how to set up a variation listing. If it's not legal, it would be helpful to have examples of things Variations can't be used for on that info page (just like there are examples of what can and can't be done on the Prohibited Items page).
@carolynnq variations should be for items that are the same with minor difference, such as color, size, scent, etc. If the CDs are for different artists/albums then they should be listed in individual listings.
@coffeebean832 For 3rd parties like shipping carriers and PayPal the alias email address won't be an option. In regard to blocked emails, we may or may not notify the sender, it just depends on the reason the email was blocked.
brian@ebay wrote:
@creativecrisis wrote:
A major hurricane making landfall later tonight along the northwestern Gulf Coast will cause severe disruptions in the region. I haven't seen any announcements from eBay about seller protection for folks down here. Is eBay planning to address this?
@creativecrisis we haven't made any announcements regarding this, but we typically offer protections for major natural disasters that negatively impact sellers ability to ship items. In these situations eBay automatically removes defects that occur before the monthly seller standards evaluation.
@creativecrisis we just made an announcement about this. You can read it here .
@alcoforever wrote:
Post 37 from last week's chat was never answered, at least not in a form that the rest of us could read. Below is a cut & paste of the topic:
Hi. In the extensive database of past sales that are searchable by EBay sellers and buyers, EBay's price data does not appear to capture the price reductions when a lower offer is accepted by the seller (with respect to a "Best Offer" listing). In this way, the "Sold for" prices are arguably artificially inflated, misleading, and suggest that items have a higher value than they actually do in the EBay marketplace. I am a subscriber to EBay's Terapeak research service, and the problem exists there as well. I was only able to figure this out after comparing my own transactions with the database. I would be happy to be proven wrong or corrected. EBay staff, am I missing something? Do you see this as a problem? Thanks, Ryan
@alcoforever I received an answer to this question from the Terapeak team 🙂 While the price shown on sold listings isn't currently taking into account Best Offers (this appears to be a site issue that is being looked into), Terapeak does take it into account. Terapeak captures the actual transaction price at the time of a sale, so it should be showing correct data.
If you are seeing results in Terapeak that suggest otherwise then the team would love to investigate! Please tag me in a thread with more details / examples and I'll pass that info. over to them 🙂
