Community Chat, Oct 25th @ 1pm PT - General Topics

[alan@ebay]

Hi Community, 

Please join the Community team here at 1 pm PT on Oct 25th for our weekly chat. 

There isn't a set topic this week so feel free to ask us your eBay buying & selling questions. 

Thank you. 

[Anonymous]

Welcome to chat everyone! We are now open for discussion this afternoon. Looking forward to hearing what you have to share 

[vrykalak]

What is the point of requiring BIN price to be 99¢ or more? What supposed evil was that requirement supposed to fix? Does it benefit anyone? Certainly not me, or a potential buyer who wants the item but can't wait 7 or 10 days to buy it. If I want to sell an iten for 50¢, I should be allowed to.
I asked this 4 Oct, and the answer was:
1. seller can't make money selling for less than 99¢. Yes I can, and why doesn ebay care?
2. Sellers were selling for 1¢ and charging $40 for shipping. I didn't do that. Why punish everyone for a few bad apples?
3. Sellers sold low-cost items to pad their feedback. What's wrong with feedback from a delighted customer, regardless of the price? and why does ebay care?

[chrysylys]

If WE are not permitted to even hint at other selling sites, why are listings being populated with multiple off site ad links, including moving ads and videos? The Bidding/Buying and Selling boards have seen a number of threads this week complaining about them.

[a-creative-edge]

New markdown manager not working

I normally run markdown manager sales and weekly basis. Recently I was moved to the new version of markdown manager that's now a part of promotions. Since that move, markdown manager is no longer working for me. I can create a sale, everything goes fine but the items in the sale are not discounted or disappear from the sale. This seems to be an issue with those opted into strikethrough pricing.

This issue has been verified by eBay and I know several of us are experiencing the same issue. We have been in contact with eBay several times using different methods and so far have not received any response from them. Is there anything you can do to help get this resolved? This being the holiday season, it is very important to have markdown manager working correctly.

Thanks,
-Steve

[hobbyeverything]

Hi, I am seller who recently received negative feedback. I worked it out with my buyer but they are having problems contacting eBay. What should I have them try and do?  Thanks Rob

[human-i-t]

Hi,

Do you have any tips and strategies for communicating with eBay customers? Are there any unique ways you communicate with them?

Thank you.

[chrysylys]

Seeing more threads complaining about multi-variation listings such as this one:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/The-item-description-provides-a-price-front-and-center-...

Any update on last week's suggestion to limit them to a single price per listing?

[uk197]

Ebay have a live chat? Write and read good but I'm talking badly, support phone call is not a good option for me. Have a problem with the buyer, will be nice if support explain some details

[mcjbob]

I had a problem printing a shipping label through eBay and PayPal for a buyer in Hong Kong, two errors. Address was too long and there was an invalid city code. I tried both eBay and PayPal, and both were not able to print label due to these errors. I deleted part of the address by eliminating commas and reconfiguring the address lines. I did get past the line length error, voiding my seller protection as I changed the address, but the next error I could not get by, invalid postal code. Odd, Hong Kong does not use postal codes.

I then called eBay customer service, and I was told this is a known problem, no solution was offered. I was able to print label through USPS Click n Ship and did not have an issue with line length or city code. The problem is that it was much more time consuming than eBay labels and more expensive as I did not get my commercial discount I get through eBay.

I am out the $$ difference, and lots of time and aggravation dealing with an issue known to eBay. For now, I have blocked shipping to Hong Kong as I lose $$ on shipping, and time dealing with Click n Ship.

Any idea when this will be fixed? When fixed, how will I know so I can again offer shipping to Hong Kong?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

A few thoughts and questions about the new Sales Event + Markdown:

1. The set-up process gives me the option of choosing a picture to promote the sale. The picture only shows up in one place, which is the page that lists all the promos a seller is running. I am currently running only one promo. The photo on the page is a tiny thumbnail size. Is this a glitch, or is that by design? If it is a glitch, can we get that fixed? (Not trying to plug my store, but here's a link to that page, so you can see what I'm talking about):

https://www.ebay.com/sme/my-cottage-books-and-antiques/offers.html?_trksid=p2047675.m3793

2. The only evidence on my store home page that I'm running a sale is the little "On Sale" tab above my listings. I'd like to see something a little more attention-grabbing than that. Any chance the team could provide something more?

3. Once the sale event has started, I can see no way to add items to the sale during the course of the sale. Am I missing something? I thought we used to be able to do that with the old Markdown Manager?

4. ebay recommends using Sales Event along with Promoted Listings. Good idea. One thing I noticed in the Promoted Listings flow...if an item has been marked down, it shows the marked down price, but no strike through to indicate that it has been marked down. It would be nice if ebay showed me the strike through, so I knew for sure that an item was already marked down. (I might not want to both mark it down AND increase my FVF through Promoted Listing). In fact, it would also be nice if ebay created a filter in PL so that I could exclude or include all Sales Event items with one click. Any chance the team would consider that?

[vrykalak]

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@uk197 wrote:
Ebay have a live chat? Write and read good but I'm talking badly, support phone call is not a good option for me. Have a problem with the buyer, will be nice if support explain some details

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An important value of live chat is that the conversation is recorded, and you can save all the comments. This is really important when the person on the other end doesn't really speak English well, and might have trouble understanding what you are actually asking.

[sarahbru]

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@a-creative-edge wrote:

New markdown manager not working

I normally run markdown manager sales and weekly basis. Recently I was moved to the new version of markdown manager that's now a part of promotions. Since that move, markdown manager is no longer working for me. I can create a sale, everything goes fine but the items in the sale are not discounted or disappear from the sale. This seems to be an issue with those opted into strikethrough pricing.

This issue has been verified by eBay and I know several of us are experiencing the same issue. We have been in contact with eBay several times using different methods and so far have not received any response from them. Is there anything you can do to help get this resolved? This being the holiday season, it is very important to have markdown manager working correctly.

Thanks,
-Steve

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@a-creative-edge: Thanks for highlighting the issue - and agree that markdown manager needs to work. We will escalate this to the product team. Thanks! Sarah

[mam98031]

I need some advice on how to deal with a certain type of buyer.  This situation does not happen often, but when it does it can be very tricky for a seller.

I sold some high end fragrance to a gentleman.  A week or two after he received it he wrote me a simple email in M2M.  He said it’s a fake.  I wrote back to him and assured him that nothing I sell is fake and I apologized to him for any concerns he may have.  I then asked him to further explain whatever he felt the issue was.

I couple days later I got a response.  He said “I have been using this brand of cologne now for months. This cologn u sold me is fake. How can u spray it on a shirt, let it sit for half an hour and go back and smell the shirt, you won’t smell nothing. Again you sold me a fake cologne. And for what I paid is just too much for a fake cologne.”

I then wrote him and again apologized for any concerns this may have caused him and told him that if he would like to return the item I would process his return and give him a full refund upon the return of the item.  That was a few days ago and I have not heard anything from him.

Now it appears this isn’t the first time he has done this.  He has a negative FB he left for another seller complaining about the quality of the product.  The seller responded that he offered the buyer a full refund upon return, but the buyer did not return the item.

I think this buyer is fishing for a partial refund and when he doesn’t get it he retaliates against the seller.  However I know that one bad FB left by the buyer is not near enough evidence for Ebay that this buyer is abusing the system.  This kind of stuff happens all the time for sellers.  How the heck are we suppose to protect ourselves.  I am in no position to be refunding a buyer for a $200 item and allowing them to keep it too.  On top of that, clearly from his emails he has used the product, so there is no way he could ever return it in the condition he received it unless he isn’t telling the truth about his using it. 

If this buyer stays true to form, I’ll be hearing from him in the next day or two.  How does Ebay expect sellers to protect themselves from a buyer such as this?  Just telling us to refund and move on just isn’t good enough.

[tyler@ebay]

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@everythinghobby wrote:

Hi, I am seller who recently received negative feedback. I worked it out with my buyer but they are having problems contacting eBay. What should I have them try and do?  Thanks Rob

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Hi @hobbyeverything - glad to hear that you've worked it out with your buyer! If you have any feedback revisions left for the year you could send them one: https://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/feedback-disputes.html#can. They can go through and revise their feedback for you. Thanks!