Community Team Community Chat, Nov 29th @ 1pm PT - General Topics

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone! 

Come join tyler@ebay, brian@ebay, doug@ebay and myself this afternoon for the weekly chat. No specific topic is planned for today, so feel free to bring your general buying & selling questions 

[doug@ebay]

Chat is now open! Looking forward to your questions!

[vrykalak]

I relisted about 40 items yesterday, and somewhere around #30, I noticed that it had a fixed shipping cost of $2 (less than the cost of ONE OUNCE at First Class rates).
I never use fixed cost shipping, even if it's likely to be First Class or Media Mail.
How/why did this change happen?
Is there any way to find/fix the problem with the bulk editor?

[chrysylys]

Post on the Selling board claims CS told them the no watermark policy has been rescinded:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Great-News-eBay-listened-they-will-not-make-us-remove-watermar...

Confirm? Refute?

[sodelight]

Someone posted on the DBs that ebay has back peddled on their upcoming Watermarks ban. Is this true?

Never mind, I see the post above asked same questions by a few seconds!

[chrysylys]

Seeing a lot more of these threads where Sellers are abusing 'buyer requested cancel':

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/Sellers-lying-about-cancellation-reason-quot-The-buyer-...

How are these Sellers held accountable for doing this?

[mr_lincoln]

brian@ebay

Good afternoon Brian,

Two Chats ago (11/15) you were going to look into the Local Paick up questions I had and email me with some feedback,  if you sent an email I did not see it. Here's the fer from 11/15 for your convenience.

mr_lincoln wrote:

Local Pick up questions:

1. I recently had a local pick up sale and messaged the Buyer to ask if my address comes up for them to find me ... they said no and then included their cell phone number in the message.  Fortunately, we have not received any messages about sharing personal info, selling off the site or account closures or restirctions.  BUT, this begs the question, is it okay once a Local Pick up order has been placed for the Seller to 1) message the Buyer with personal contact info as well as the address, 2) mention Seller will send a letter in the mail with the contact info, etc.. 

1. On a non-Local Pickup sale the Buyer's email address is available in PayPal but on this recent one for me the Buyer's email did not appear in the PayPal transaction ... is that normal?

1. Paying cash:  okay, a while ago I asked that when a Local Pick up order is placed that payment through paypal be blocked forcing cash at pick up ... since eBay has not effected that change (yet) is it permissible to cancel the PP order, refund the $4 and wait for pick up for the cashola?  That is what I have read here in The Community that others recommend ... is that right and acceptable?

Hi @mr_lincoln, I'm going to get more clarification about questions 1 and 3. I'll send you an email when I have more details.

I believe PayPal is no longer providing contact information within PayPal transactions. You'll want to contact PayPal for a definitive answer, however. 

[alcoforever]

In last weeks' Community Chat, post #41, brian denied a seller's request for relief from a buyer
circumventing a buyer block on the grounds that there was no clear evidence to ebay that the buyer was trying to disrupt the seller's business. 

So, isn't the seller the sole judge of whether a buyer is disruptive? Ebay would have no knowledge of that buyer's past interactions with that seller, e.g. things such as unreasonable demands, fishing for a partial refund etc.

The policy clearly states that using a different id to circumvent a buyer block is a policy violation.

If ebay won't back a seller when a buyer circumvents a buyer block, then the whole BBL program might as well be scrapped.

[vrykalak]

Problems last night uploading pictures and submitting listings.

I was trying to post 100 listings by midnight (for a promotion), and the delays cost me several.

One item said "submitting" for well over half an hour, and when I looked at it again in the morning, it was just sitting there, never posted.

Another item took several minutes to upload a photo.
Yet another one gave me an error message--somthing about special symbols being in the file--the first two times I tried to upload it, but worked smoothly on the third attempt.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Most of my items are older and don't have UPC codes, etc. But when an item does have one, I use it. Because I want to appear on the "product page"

So I'm mystified here. I have this item:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/162778647978

Note I created custom IS for UPC , Brand and MPN....so all the info is there. At the very top of my listing is a link to the product page, which is indeed for my product. But my product does not appear there. (It has been listed for a while, so this isn't a matter of just waiting an hour or so.)

Is it because I don't show the box as my gallery picture?

Is it because mine is used, and the Product page currently only includes "new"?

Is it because I created custom ISs? (there weren't any otherwise).

(Originally, I had this listed in two ebay categories. I re-listed it in only one category because I thought that might be the problem, but that didn't solve anything either.)

I know my price is on the higher side, and I don't expect to be at the top of the Product page. But I DO expect to be ON the product page.

Any help would be appreciated.

[mr_lincoln]

Good afternoon eBay Team,

PO Box Delivery Confirmation Questions

1. If an item is shipped to a PO Box does Delivery Confirmation show delivered when the item is scanned at the Post Office where the PO Box resides? If the package is too big for the PO Box I understand from our local Post Office that a note will be placed in the PO Box and the package will sit in the Post Office waiting for the PO Box owner.
2. If Signature Confirmation is required on a PO Box address, does Delivery Confirmation occur ONLY when the Buyer signs for the item AND if it takes them a week or longer to get to the Post Office can an INR be processed prior to them signing for the package?

[coinslabz26]

Hello,

I think by now it is pretty clear the catalog team is completely unwilling to fix the coin catalog. Can you someone please contact the team that oversees them and make sure they are aware of the problems?

Its been months and many items still defaulting to the error coin category and other coins not coming up in the catalog at all. The search feature is also not working well either for example if I type in 1955 I get 1985 (not real numbers but you get the idea).

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

"If ebay won't back a seller when a buyer circumvents a buyer block, then the whole BBL program might as well be scrapped."

Be careful what you wish for....

[vrykalak]

---

@chrysylys wrote:

Seeing a lot more of these threads where Sellers are abusing 'buyer requested cancel':

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/Sellers-lying-about-cancellation-reason-quot-The-buyer-...

How are these Sellers held accountable for doing this?

---

Shouldn't eBay check email traffic when a seller makes this claim?
That seems a very logical precaution to me.

[mam98031]

@Anonymous

Trinton,

Back in early March 2017 I reported a problem regarding UPCs and variations listings.  You have been assisting me with this issue off thread.  But now we are 8+ months after the initial reporting and nothing has changed.  So what is happening, why hasn't Ebay fixed this,it is extremely time consuming for some of your sellers??

Just in recap for those that may not remember my original posting, I said the following back in March.

When I have an item on existing variation listings go out of stock or I damage it or for some other reason become unavailable, I go and update my variation listing so no one can purchase that item.  If the item needed a quantity adjustment has had a sale on it and I bring the quantity to zero on a particular size or item in a variation listing, in the drop down menu that buyers see, it is in light grey and notes it is OOS [out of stock] and it retains the UPC.  I like that as it shows the buyer I normally carry it, but for now it is OOS.  And when it becomes available again I can put in a quantity, adjust pricing if needed and the UPC code remains there.  When this happens it also shows on the listing form under Variation combinations.  Again, that makes it very easy to add back to stock.

BUT if when I do the same thing to adjust a quantity to zero, for whatever reason I may have and it DROPS off the menu list that buyers see it does NOT retain the UPC when I go back at some point to add it back to stock.  It also drops out of the area call Variation Combinations on the listing form.  To bring it back into stock I need to do Add Combination which is the button just above Variation Combinations on the right side.  It of course is still in the Attributes & Options section of the listing form, but when I have to bring it back down to the Variation Combinations FROM the Attributes section, it drops the UPC.

Clear as mud !!  Sorry if I didn't word this very well, but if I've confused you ask me anything as I'm certainly looking for a solution to this annoying problem.  It creates extra work for seller that is just not necessary.  Ebay can retain the information if they just program it to do so.