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.
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@itscalledapostingid wrote:
I am seeing a lot of chatter on Ebay Community and all around the internet about buyers not being able to complete their purchases...various shopping cart errors, payment method failed, try again later, seller not accepting payments, multiple credit cards denied etc. These problems may be scaring buyers away from Ebay.
Is anyone looking into these issues? There are new posts on the Community everyday and I never see any solutions.
Hi @itscalledapostingid - our tech team works hard to keep the site running around the clock. Since there can be a myriad of reasons for checkout issues (the kinds of errors you describe) to occur, we'd usually recommend members contact Customer Support for assistance and troubleshooting.
Thanks!
@donsdetour wrote:
"Good afternoon eBay Support team, (excuse errors, I'm on a schedule and trying to get out the door)
I will be at appointments today when the Chat goes off so wanted to get this situation to you on a transaction. Here it is in bullet points
-Relatively new Buyer receives item and over a two week period they decide to return it, I had advised them during that time I offer Free Returns so they would not have to pay return shipping.
-Yesterday (3-9-21)I get a message they shipped the item back in the original box and will want a refund.
-I explain that eBay has official return tools for processing returns that among other things allow sellers to recover their Selling Fees, I included the fact that Sellers also can not refund more than the original total purchase price, shipping, etc.
-After explaining how returns through eBay work (but not to file one right now since they already shipped the item) the Buyer filed a return then cancelled it. This caused the item cost to be placed on Hold in Managed Payments (1st pic below). But when I click the blue hold link for details there is NO record of the return (2nd pic)
Questions and comments on this situation:
1. The return claim was closed within an hour of it being opened by the customer
2. Why are my funds still on hold when the Return claim was cancelled over 14 hours ago?
3. I plan tor refund the Buyer when the item is returned and providing there is not damaged and i can resell it.
4. If I simply Refund the Buyer through MP for part of all of their original purchase will i get my Selling Fees back?
5. In a situation where the Buyer sends an item back outside eBay's return process AND upon Seller's request they supply the tracking number what are the exact steps the Seller needs to take to:
- process a refund and recover their Selling fees from eBay?
- have less than Positive Feedback removed in the event it occurs?
- avoid any kind of a defect because of the way the Buyer chose to return the item and the Sellers refunds a large of complete refund?
The way I see it now, I may get the item back as early as tomorrow (Thurs). The earliest I would refund is when the funds are taken OFF Hold in MP. No offense but I don't trust eBay's MP programming to take funds off hold if I refund the transaction before that happens."
From this post this morn....
@donsdetour I'm sorry that this transaction didn't go as smoothly as hoped. I know it's tough when there's a bypass of the return flow making it harder to resolve things.
As I'm not trained in payments, I can't go into much detail about the holds or how fee credits are handled when outside of an eBay process, such as a cancellation or return. I would recommend contacting the managed payments team directly by accessing any of the Help Pages related to payments and using the 'Have us call you' feature at the bottom of the page to verify your next steps, especially your questions about feedback and defects for this particular situation, as they'll be able to see more details on this particular item/return request to verify what options exist.
@nuclearomen wrote:
brian@ebay
Couple weeks I wrote about not getting shipping label receipts for label purchases for Media Mail, started Feb 18th, I've reported it 6x to Customer Service now for tech support - still nothing has been done, and now it's also for priority mail not just media mail. How long does it take for ebay to fix this? really, kinda ridiculous that ebay can't fix this by now, sellers need the receipts. Top it off, you cannot download a report for ONLY shipping labels purchases in Managed Payments. Another thing that needs to be done and accessible to sellers.
Second, Bulk Editor is also major messed up again, nothing but errors, "payment method for instant payment missing" - I'm in Managed Payments, this error shouldn't exist. "The Volume Discount Create or Update Failed For (insert # here) Listings" - and you cannot complete bulk edit, which in turn messes up your listings, then I have to call and have ebay reset.
@nuclearomen I don't have an update on the shipping label receipt issue just yet, but I'll keep looking into it.
I'm not familiar with this Bulk Editor issue, but it's something we can get reported if it hasn't already been done by customer service. Feel free to tag me in a thread with more information and a screenshot showing the errors. Thanks!
@joadc73 wrote:
I made an offer to a seller on an item, i waited till the next day and at that point i just wanted to go ahead and buy the item because i also had another seller accept an offer on a different item and i just wanted to check them both out at the same time. After i made the purchase a few seconds later the seller accepted the original offer i had sent earlier, So now i have ebay trying to make me purchase the same item i already bought. I sent a request to cancel the first order and i also have sent the seller 2 messages asking them if they can cancel one of the orders. I told them i don't care which one they cancel i'll even pay for the more expensive one. I just don't want to purchase this item twice. I have heard nothing back from the seller and i'm afraid i'm going to get penalized soon for not paying for the 2nd order yet.
@joadc73 - You've taken the correct steps to cancel the transaction by working with the seller, only they can cancel a transaction once the item is purchased. You'd want to keep working with them on this to see what you can work out. Go here for more information on cancellations and our policies on committing to buy items.
@ferritale wrote:
I see a lot of ways to find where item specifics are blank but I can not find any way to know which item specifics have changed and my original selection is no longer are a dropdown choice to be used in buyer navigation. Some are petite sizes at some point changed to have a P included in the size number, tunic shirt has changed, etc. Is there a way to find out which of my item specifics are "free hand" and not a standard selection so I can change them to a dropdown choice instead?
I have way too many listings to go and click into each item and each item specific to catch these.
Oooooooh this is a super reasonable question @ferritale and I'm sorry to say you have me totally stumped! I've sent this one up the flagpole and will update this chat with the answer when I hear back.
Thanks!
Thanks for joining the chat! It is now closed but we will continue to work through to ensure that questions that remain receive a reply.
Have a great day!
@donsdetour wrote:
brittanie@ebay wrote:
@joadc73 wrote:
I made an offer to a seller on an item, i waited till the next day and at that point i just wanted to go ahead and buy the item because i also had another seller accept an offer on a different item and i just wanted to check them both out at the same time. After i made the purchase a few seconds later the seller accepted the original offer i had sent earlier, So now i have ebay trying to make me purchase the same item i already bought. I sent a request to cancel the first order and i also have sent the seller 2 messages asking them if they can cancel one of the orders. I told them i don't care which one they cancel i'll even pay for the more expensive one. I just don't want to purchase this item twice. I have heard nothing back from the seller and i'm afraid i'm going to get penalized soon for not paying for the 2nd order yet.
@joadc73 - You've taken the correct steps to cancel the transaction by working with the seller, only they can cancel a transaction once the item is purchased. You'd want to keep working with them on this to see what you can work out. Go here for more information on cancellations and our policies on committing to buy items.
Since this should be impossible and set up purchaser to be scammed: is this a glitch or a problem that need to be addressed???
@donsdetour - If I'm understanding this situation correctly, the member sent a Best Offer and then purchased the same item through Buy it Now and is now trying to cancel the original Best Offer that was accepted. This wouldn't be a glitch, because the buyer made an offer and also purchased the item outside of the Best Offer, creating two purchases of the same item.
@itscalledapostingid wrote:
Will there ever be any effort to clean up the account pages like "site preferences" & "shipping preferences" to make them current and stable? Examples:
-Most of the account pages take forever to load and usually dump you out into my ebay or watch list after you change a preference. Then I have to go all the way back through the pages to find the setting again to see if it actually updated. It makes all of this hard to use and does not instill much confidence in the whole process.
-Shipping Preferences has stuff about Guaranteed Delivery, it's Handling Time Guarantee option and encouraging users to sign up by 2018.
-Site preferences>Promoting Similar Items on eBay Pages and Emails
"These preferences have been moved to Marketing Tools."(the Marketing tools links just sends you to some old weird looking version of the Watch list. It's been like that for years.)
@itscalledapostingid we are in the process of transitioning the site preferences to a new page called seller preferences (see screenshot below. Keep in mind this is an older screenshot so some options may change or appear differently now). This should be complete for all sellers within the coming weeks.
Shipping preferences have been moved here and you should have access to that.
@itscalledapostingid wrote:
The announcements about the rollout of Standard Envelope specifically said "in an envelope with tracking included" so I guess that is why everyone expects it to have tracking?
Hi @itscalledapostingid - eBay Standard Envelope does come with tracking and those shipments can be tracked through https://www.trackmyshipment.co. This is just a little different from standard USPS tracking on their site, but it's still trackable.
tyler@ebay wrote:
@ferritale wrote:
I see a lot of ways to find where item specifics are blank but I can not find any way to know which item specifics have changed and my original selection is no longer are a dropdown choice to be used in buyer navigation. Some are petite sizes at some point changed to have a P included in the size number, tunic shirt has changed, etc. Is there a way to find out which of my item specifics are "free hand" and not a standard selection so I can change them to a dropdown choice instead?
I have way too many listings to go and click into each item and each item specific to catch these.
Oooooooh this is a super reasonable question @ferritale and I'm sorry to say you have me totally stumped! I've sent this one up the flagpole and will update this chat with the answer when I hear back.
Thanks!
Hi @ferritale - I got an update on this! The short answer is that there is no tool available that shows which specifics now have drop down options yet didn't before. They did request a screenshot (if possible) of what you're seeing to help them better understand so they can review for a potential enhancement in the future!
