wooden_flower Volunteer Community Mentor.
Best regards,
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
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!
@coinslabz26 wrote:
I have a question regarding the newly announced fees for coins and paper money for store sellers. The fees were listed this morning and all is good there.
But in all the listing promotions for store sellers including the free 500 auctions and 50,000 fixed price listing promotions ebay has always included coins and paper money in those categories.
Can you guys ask the managed payments team if coins and paper money will be included in those allotments in managed payments?
If you need to get back to me no problem. Thanks in advance!
Hi @coinslabz26 - I don't have that info but will definitely ask and update you here if I hear back!
@coffeebean832 wrote:
I’ve been trying to reach Payments CS for nearly a week and I keep getting the below message.
My issue is regarding a technical error with funds on one of my transactions. I’ve been in Payments for about 2 years now and I know the issue I’m experiencing is not how the system works. I also have a question about a transaction with no identifying information- also not the norm- so I have no idea what it’s for.
Please tell me-
- How can I get a Payments rep on the phone (for quickest resolution) or chat? I've been trying for nearly a week with zero luck.
- How does eBay expect sellers to run a business here when they can’t get help concerning their finances that eBay is controlling?
- What if this was a time-sensitive issue regarding a large dollar amount and there were circumstances that required CS assistance? What are sellers supposed to do?
Payments CS used to be great. Now that it's opened up to everyone, CS is non-existent. I know they’re overwhelmed with newbies to the program, but this is ridiculous that I can’t get any help for nearly a week.
@coffeebean832 I know the wait times and experience contacting payments support hasn't been ideal and we're working to address this. You are going through the right steps to contact that team. The payments team can definitely give you more details about the unknown transaction you mentioned. I've also seen several posts lately from sellers getting an unknown charge that ended up being a USPS short paid label. I don't know if that could be the scenario you're facing, but if you check this page then it'll let you know http://www.ebay.com/ship/lmng.
On the 'request your eBay data' selections - I do not see seller invoices.
Am I just missing it? Or does it still take a call to CS to get older invoices? I know the new invoice tab in payments goes back farther that the invoice list in your selling account, but sometimes you need back to the beginning of the previous calendar year.
thanks!
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edit: A reply to your question can be found here
@coffeebean832 wrote:
I'm having an issue with items in "Inventory" not updating when I make changes to business policies which is duplicating and triplicating all of my policies.
I think it might be an Inventory or possibly Seller Hub issue and not necessarily business policies, but I don't know for sure. I don't know where to go to report this. I can tell you from experience that general CS doesn't even know what the Inventory section is- or business policies, for that matter- and I'm not about to waste my & their time with phone calls that go nowhere.
@coffeebean832 - Hmmm... usually when we see business policies being duplicated, the policy is being changed from the listing level and because it's different from the existing policy this then creates a new business policy with the adjustments that were made. I haven't ever run this issue with inventory however.
I understand where you're coming from, but the best thing to do would be to provide examples to customer service to have them report it. You could contact our customer service team on social media team (on Twitter or Facebook) as you can then send screenshots of exactly what you're seeing to make things easier in diagnosing what's happening.
@mam98031 wrote:
@mr_lincoln wrote:Good afternoon eBay Support Team
Subject: eBay contributing to Tax Fraud
First pic below is from the IRS Schedule C form, Line 2 is where Sellers record refunds. The government expects Retailers to record ALL sales regardless if they result in a return or not, THAT would be Line 1.
Our State requires the SAME Gross total Sales dollars for State Tax ID holders AND we have to report as often as quarterly. So through the year I rely on the CSV file to total my Gross Sales for State reporting purposes.
eBay's recent changes to the CSV Transaction reports are contributing to Tax Fraud by creating NEW transaction types like "Claim" and "Hold" classifications and taking those values OUT of the Order's Gross total ... these two classifications are in addition to the three we had last year "Order", "Refund", "Shipping label". I had to change the "Hold" values to both Orders and Refunds to 1) satisfy the state's and ultimately the IRS requirement for Gross sales and 2) accurately reflect the sales that occurred.
However, in doing this the 1099k issued by eBay is NOT correct since it ONLY includes the Order amounts on the CSV and NOT the Hold amounts.
You CAN'T do what you are doing with Sales transactions because you are contributing to tax fraud. Below is a screen shot from the CSV before I fixed it ... NOTE that you also have the dates ALL WRONG for Holds ... YOU show dates as close as same or one day when the FACTS are weeks in some cases where an item is shipped and then returned and THEN refunded. This is really fraudulant information and you better get if fixed ASAP.
Speaking for myself only. How I remedied this for myself is took Column B and sorted it. I inserted three columns. One for Claims / holds, Shipping and Refunds. I moved the numbers appropriate for the columns to the new columns from the original column. Then resorted by date and did my total lines.
For those of us use to working with worksheet programs it doesn't take very long to do this. It would be nice if these items were split up by Ebay into their own columns, but absent that this is what I do.
@mam98031 eBay should have put the Hold and Claims amounts in additional columns if THEY need the info for some reason BUT leave the Sold amounts as Order transactions and refunded Hold amounts as Refunds via the original 3 transaction types they had last year ... if those Hold sales are ADDED to the Order totals then the 1099K does NOT match despite the fact that those Sales occurred ...
I've been working with spreadsheets longer then some of these programmers have been alive ... they have NO experience with Selling on online venues NOR any Tax experience ... THAT's pretty obvious.
brian@ebay wrote:
@coffeebean832 wrote:
I’ve been trying to reach Payments CS for nearly a week and I keep getting the below message.
My issue is regarding a technical error with funds on one of my transactions. I’ve been in Payments for about 2 years now and I know the issue I’m experiencing is not how the system works. I also have a question about a transaction with no identifying information- also not the norm- so I have no idea what it’s for.
Please tell me-
- How can I get a Payments rep on the phone (for quickest resolution) or chat? I've been trying for nearly a week with zero luck.
- How does eBay expect sellers to run a business here when they can’t get help concerning their finances that eBay is controlling?
- What if this was a time-sensitive issue regarding a large dollar amount and there were circumstances that required CS assistance? What are sellers supposed to do?
Payments CS used to be great. Now that it's opened up to everyone, CS is non-existent. I know they’re overwhelmed with newbies to the program, but this is ridiculous that I can’t get any help for nearly a week.
@coffeebean832 I know the wait times and experience contacting payments support hasn't been ideal and we're working to address this. You are going through the right steps to contact that team. The payments team can definitely give you more details about the unknown transaction you mentioned. I've also seen several posts lately from sellers getting an unknown charge that ended up being a USPS short paid label. I don't know if that could be the scenario you're facing, but if you check this page then it'll let you know http://www.ebay.com/ship/lmng.
No disrespect to you or any others on this Community Team but how long are we suppose to accept that reason exactly?
I started my journey of learning what I could about MP last March/April. The ability to get ahold of someone on the MP team via the customer Service phone number is about the same now as it was then.
_____
Edit: Reply to this post can be read here
@mam98031 wrote:
The Payments team has a bit of work to do informing sellers how the heck to use the 1099K recently released. It seems they have spun some rules in how they calculate the 1099K that no other site does and most sellers wouldn't even consider reasonable.
Now I'm sure they have their reasons for doing this but it is creating multiple ways for sellers having to keep their books in order to report their income properly if they sell on multiple sites or even use the auto downloads of information into a bookkeeping system.
Reconciling is being crippled for sellers because MP is not going by payment date but settlement date. The two dates are rarely the same and when you cross months or years, it is an issue.
Most sellers would be counting the sale when the buyer submits payment. Even Ebay has told us repeatedly that is when the sale happens. But now there is an exception created by MP for how this is reported on the 1099K and that is a HUGE issue.
My guess is this has something to do with the payment in the pending process. It isn't real money in our MP account during this time until the payment clears. So I can see why there is an issue, but we need a resolution to the differences here.
What makes MP different than other sites in how they fill out a 1099K?
I know the Community team can't really address this, but it is a serious issue that needs immediate attention for the Payments team.
@mam98031 - Thank you for the feedback on this. I will make sure that it is provided to the correct team.
brian@ebay wrote:
@coffeebean832 wrote:
I’ve been trying to reach Payments CS for nearly a week and I keep getting the below message.
My issue is regarding a technical error with funds on one of my transactions. I’ve been in Payments for about 2 years now and I know the issue I’m experiencing is not how the system works. I also have a question about a transaction with no identifying information- also not the norm- so I have no idea what it’s for.
Please tell me-
- How can I get a Payments rep on the phone (for quickest resolution) or chat? I've been trying for nearly a week with zero luck.
- How does eBay expect sellers to run a business here when they can’t get help concerning their finances that eBay is controlling?
- What if this was a time-sensitive issue regarding a large dollar amount and there were circumstances that required CS assistance? What are sellers supposed to do?
Payments CS used to be great. Now that it's opened up to everyone, CS is non-existent. I know they’re overwhelmed with newbies to the program, but this is ridiculous that I can’t get any help for nearly a week.
@coffeebean832 I know the wait times and experience contacting payments support hasn't been ideal and we're working to address this. You are going through the right steps to contact that team. The payments team can definitely give you more details about the unknown transaction you mentioned. I've also seen several posts lately from sellers getting an unknown charge that ended up being a USPS short paid label. I don't know if that could be the scenario you're facing, but if you check this page then it'll let you know http://www.ebay.com/ship/lmng.
No- the mystery transaction is a credit not shown on the page you linked and I don't know what it's for.
The technical error is for funds that say released in one area- but they're still on hold and missing from available payouts in another area. That's not normal.
I'm sorry to make your job difficult, but 'just keep trying' is not an acceptable answer. It's been a week of trying. How many weeks does eBay expect sellers to keep trying when it's a matter of accessing their funds?
_____
Edit: Reply to this post can be read here
@timelessauto wrote:
Hello
Sorry for the long post….
Is anyone addressing the long standing issue with the Ebay Shipping calculator error for items that have a standard additional handling surcharge when using UPS ( Never have any problems with Fedex) ? This results in excess charges when billed later for UPS shipping labels purchased through Ebay
We have had trouble getting the point across to Ebay customer service reps for months. We have several examples of UPS shipments where shipping charges were exactly $16.00 more than the Ebay shipping calculator estimated ( and what we paid for the estimated label ) These are all different items, weights, and sizes , and all were the same $16.00 extra charge on our UPS bill back from Ebay.
We do know other sellers who faced the same issue and Ebay customer support UPS dispute department responded to reference the UPS surcharge page related to one of the following;
Please provide the member this link that explains why the additional handling charge was added.
https://www.ups.com/us/en/help-center/billing-payment/avoid-charges.page
https://www.ups.com/assets/resources/media/en_US/package-accessorial-pricing-preview.pdf
Additional Handling can apply whenever:
- An item is not fully encased in corrugated cardboard.
- When a package weighs more than 50 pounds.
- If the package's longest side is longer than 48 inches, or if its second longest side is greater than 30 inches long.
- Any cylindrical-like item, such as a barrel, drum, pail, or tire, that is not fully encased in a corrugated cardboard shipping container.
Interestingly all of our examples would fall on point number 2 ( all weigh more than 50 pounds), and since it is exactly $16.00 for all examples, it would make sense it is a standard excess weight surcharge from UPS. We finally got a CS rep that understood what our issue was, replicated the issue on their end with a walkthrough with us, took a lot of notes and created an SR # on our behalf ( we assume with all the details we covered on the hour long call but we can’t see the SR). They said they would reach out to Ebay UPS dispute reps on this. We do not have an answer yet, but suspect something like the surcharge response above.
This issue really needs to go to your technical support team to fix the calculator to recognize set fees for additional handling charges and show the true amount that will be billed to us. Weight and Size surcharges at a minimum should be fixed as these are easily identified based on the customer input to the calculator, whereas irregular shapes or non-corrugated boxes fall on the seller to accept surcharges later.
While we now know to “ADD $16.00 to the estimater if over 50 pounds” it would be best to get accurate rates. It would also be better for the ebay community who may not know of the extra surcharges that are not being estimated at the time of shipment and are surprised later when billed.
It appears UPS is planning on April 11, 2021 to change the flat additional charges to a tier charge based on the zone, making this even more important to get accurate rates from the calculator for UPS up front.
@timelessauto thanks for this information. I'll pass it along to our shipping team!
