Community Chat, March 24 @ 1:00 pm PT - General Topics

[tyler@ebay]

Edit: Please read the FAQ about the new "All Selling" page here.

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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[tonyshull262]

EXACTLY-no totals for the month? Seroiusly? EVERY business online or brick and mortar has page for this.  How inept.

[dr.mia52]

This is to report a major grievance that immediately, negatively impacts my ability to continue selling on eBay. 

First, I've been a direct seller on eBay for Place For Cats, a 501(c)(3) rescue organization, for 16 years. Place For Cats, Inc. is a rescue-and-adoption organization that has operated out of NYC since 1990; the organization has had federal not-for-profit status since 1994 and is up to date in all its federal and state filings.

From 2005, since I first signed on in eBay as a direct seller, giving 100% of all sales proceeds to the rescue, Ebay charity's department (originally called Missionfish) has been in possession of the charity's official documentation including the organization's corporate papers, the IRS award letters and the organization's State ID number provided by the NYS Charities Bureau. In 16 years, there never was an issue with eBay or Paypal regarding the charity's status or my selling for the charity. That is to say there never was an issue until March 14th of this year when I was forced to switch to Managed Payments. I was informed that if I didn't switch, I wouldn't be able to continue to sell on eBay, so I made the switch.

Thereafter, eBay sent an email on March 14th acknowledging the switch, "Welcome to the new way to sell and get paid on eBay!" 

After the switch, I sold 5 items but to date, the charity has not received one cent. I ended up speaking to 6 customer service reps. Following are several of the interactions.

By March 19th, funds showed in "Payments" as "Available." But no funds were forthcoming to the charity. Worse, I received an email that stated:

"Place For Cats is grateful for your support. Your donation will either be automatically collected 21 days after the item's sold date or you will be invoiced on the 22nd of each month. We recommend setting your Charity Payment Method on the eBay website to PayPal to ensure automatic collection."

WHAT?????????????????????????????

What is eBay talking about?? Invoice me for what? I personally received ZERO from selling. Ebay implies that it will collect from the charity's Paypal account, then pay the funds back into the charity's checking account?? WHY DOESN'T EBAY SIMPLY PAY OUT THE FUNDS SITTING IN EBAY DIRECTLY INTO THE CHARITY'S CHECKING ACCOUNT?

I put in a request for assistance and "Matt" called me. He was very polite, spent an hour on the line with me, went over the switch to MP, said he would escalate the problem to eBay's Charity Team and someone would get back to me within 24 - 48 hours - BY EMAIL. No phone contact is available with the Charities Team, Matt said. For three days all I heard from eBay was crickets. The last 4 digits of that SR# are ...5885.

By March 21st, still no funds had been transferred to the charity, so I put in another request for assistance. Santiago from MP called me in response. The conversation was a near repeat of the conversation with Matt; again, I was caused to RE-ENTER the charity's bank information, not realizing that it was a delaying tactic. Apparently each time the bank info is re-entered it starts the clock for eBay to claim another wait of 24 - 48 hours "for security reasons." All the while, the charity's bank is THE SAME BANK THE CHARITY HAS USED FOR THIRTY (30) YEARS. After another hour wasted on the phone with Santiago, he said he would escalate my grievance and someone would contact me within 24 - 48 hours. The last 4 digits of that SR# are ....4016.

By March 23rd, still no funds had been transferred to the charity all the while the total funds due are showing as "Available" under Payments. I put in another request for assistance and this time David M called me in response. It was nearly the exact conversation and request to re-enter my bank information. The exchange was a virtual replication of the two before it and ended after an hour with David M assuring me that he escalated my grievance.

Today, March 24th, is 6 days after the first funds should have been transferred to the charity's checking account. To date, NO explanation from eBay as to why the delay. Contrary to the assurances of all agents I spoke to NO resolution to the issue has been forthcoming. That the agents were polite is of no moment. The point is: not one of them resolved the problem.

Obviously, I am not going to continue to send out merchandise to buyers knowing the charity isn't receiving the funds I am raising for it. I am a volunteer for the charity as are all others who volunteers who help the rescue. I get nothing from the painstaking hours I put in researching values, photographing items, composing descriptions, uploading data into the templates, monitoring the listings, and making sure buyers are satisfied.

When I am forced into a change that results in such an immediate, negative impact, and then when I am forced to waste the cumulative equivalent of one to two days trying to resolve it, whatever respect I might have had for eBay flies out the window.

Both the charity and I are being damaged by eBay's  failure to transfer the funds to the charity's checking account, and by the sloppy, shoddy ineffective system in place to address the problem.   A resolution is needed NOW so I can continue to sell uninterrupted for the charity.

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Edit: A reply to your post can be found here

[tyler@ebay]

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@arielrosemusic wrote:

BRING BACK THE CLASSIC SUMMARY PAGE FOR SELLERS NOW! 

We all want this page back immediately. It was the 'My Ebay' seller summary page that you used to be directed to when you were on the Seller Hub page, scrolled down to the 'Seller Tools' section and clicked on 'View My Ebay Selling' - it took you to a convenient overview of your selling, and it was working extremely well for many years. The new format is absolutely ridiculous and inadequate. You can't even see your selling total at the top (without taxes, shipping added to it) for your current month (not the past 31 days, which is no help at all if you are in the middle of the month and just want to see what you've made the past few weeks without having to total up every single thing you sold. 

I've been a seller on ebay over 20 years and I've never been more frustrated or ready to quit. If I could sell everything I have overnight and quit, I absolutely would. You have made our fees outrageously high, while increasingly making it difficult to be a top-rated seller, and also lowering our discounts to a measly 10%. You've done away with buyer incentives like the ebay bucks program and instead of using the money you take from hard-working sellers to launch ad campaigns or otherwise draw business to our stores, you pay some IT people to destroy the only functional seller tool page we had!

I keep seeing TV ads for Poshmark, going to check them out and see what their platform is like. It certainly can't be worse. 

Ebay always tells us they want to 'hear from sellers' about what we want/need. Well, do you really? What we need is a functional workspace, lower fees on our sales and to be listened to. After being on the community forums, I have seen thousands of posts from sellers like me, who are outraged at this recent change. YOU NEED TO FIX THIS EBAY. If you don't, you risk losing more excellent sellers and being completely out-of-touch and tone deaf to our needs. We are the reason you have a job or a company in the first place and it's tragic to see you making many of the same mistakes that have destroyed many other retail and etail businesses. The last place you should make cuts is to your sellers - if we're not happy, you won't be either.

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Hi @arielrosemusic - thank you for sharing your frustration about the changed page. While there aren't plans to revert it back I hope you'll take the time to share this input via the 'Comments?' link on the page itself so the development team can receive it and review for future enhancements.

[clarkphilatelics]

Perhaps a new developer team located in the United States would be a better answer.

[fern*wood]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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@alcoforever wrote:

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brian@ebay wrote:

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@mrstippie1 the classic All Selling page was deprecated because it was built on old code and was out of date. We have no plans to change this decision. Members feedback has been shared with the appropriate team. Thanks!

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Old code that works well and is thoroughly debugged is not a good reason to get rid of it.   As for being out of date, what specifically would make working code out of date?

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Hi @alcoforever - the specific information we were given is that the code was built on a legacy tech stack that needed to be deprecated. I'm not particularly technical when it comes to webdev, but that's the reason we have for it. Thanks!

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I know nothing about code, but I know it has to do with what is shown on a page.  So if the code is old and must be deprecated, reason tells me the information on the page should be recreated with new code.  Fixing the code should not have to change the information provided or how it is provided.

[brittanie@ebay]

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@fern*wood wrote:

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brian@ebay wrote:

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@gwjw wrote:

Please bring back the classic seller view, it was much easier to use than the seller hub. 

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@gwjw the classic All Selling page was deprecated because it was built on old code and was out of date. We have no plans to change this decision. We've seen members feedback and have passed it onto the appropriate team. Thanks!

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Please don't take this as a snarky response, but have the people on that team ever been sellers?  If not, could a couple sellers help this team?

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@fern*wood - Our development teams do include many people who also sell on the site, as well as incorporating seller feedback that we receive into what's created. 

[randomsl]

Great suggestion and long overdue. Many shipping companies rely on the USPS Address Matching System to verify valid mailing addresses in the United States. Address verification will improve the timely delivery of your mailings and reduce the number of returned mail.

[arielrosemusic]

I've already done it and they need to 'make plans' to bring it back, or I will be packing up all my inventory and taking it away from this greedy out of touch cabal asap.

[randomsl]

Does eBay ever plan to add "Request Total From Seller" to the phone app? This function is so far overdue and the lack of it continues to have sellers lose sales from buyers that cannot request combined shipping totals thru the app. 

[arielrosemusic]

Code can be re-written and you can format it in the style of a previous layout if you know what you're doing...obviously these people don't know what they're doing. 

[mr_lincoln]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

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@underhardcover wrote:

Please bring back CLASSIC VIEW Selling Page!

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Hi @underhardcover, welcome to the chat this week! There are currently no plans to bring back the All-Selling page. If you have specific feedback regarding the change please consider using the 'Tell us what you think' links in the corner of the page. That will go directly to the development team in charge of the page. Thanks!

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tyler@ebay   The link is "Comment" ...

[jack_bucks_ghost]

this is definitely a major problem...one-size-fits-all policies just don't always fit every size, and the return policy definitely doesn't fit the collectible card market right now

[lindamsarah]

I have already expressed my thoughts twice on tell us what you think page; does anyone really read that information or care?

[gwzcomps]

eBay only bothers with address verification once you get to a point where they have to. (Label creation)  They clearly have the tools to do it, they just don't care...

[cookiecookie55]

Hi all,

Another ebayer unhappy about being forced into Seller Hub from the Classic View.  

With the classic view I was able to see ON ONE PAGE: Active Listings, Scheduled Listings, Unsold Items,  Drafts, Items Ending Today, Sold Items,  Items that Need to Be Shipped, Selling Limits, Number of Sales this month, Feedback received and given, Saved sellers, Purchase history, Saved Searches and more. 

It takes at least four-six different pages plus a lot of scrolling to get the same information in an unacceptable format. 

Please bring back the My Ebay All Selling Page.   Simple, easy to use and all the information that's needed on one page.   I've been selling for over 10 years. This is by far the worst change to come to ebay in all of that time.     

cookie

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Edit: Reply to this post can be read here.