Weekly Community Chat, July 19th @ 1pm PT - General Topics

[alan@ebay]

Hi Community, 

Please join us here for our weekly Community chat at 1 pm Pacific on Wednesday 7/19. There isn't a set topic this week so feel free to ask us your eBay buying & selling questions. 

Talk to you then!

[alan@ebay]

Thanks for joining us today - the thread is now open for replies! 

[gracieallen01]

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alan@ebay wrote:

Thanks for joining us today - the thread is now open for replies! 

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Replies?

[critter_mama_2007]

Since June 26, stock photos from ebays media catalog have not been able to be uploaded using turbo lister.  Does ebay plan to repair this or was it a planned disruption to encourage the disuse of turbo lister by sellers?  When I called customer service they said they had received many calls about this problem.

[dhbookds]

Relative to the Immediate Payment required by Ebay on items less than $1000.......has that rolled out completely now.......so we can remove our seller IPR to enable the cart "ask for invoice", if we want? 

[mendelsons]

So what is the deal with descriptions, why are we making listings with descriptions if ebay is just going to hide them and show other items to buy in the space that was occupied by the description field.

We do enough returns as it is and if your hiding desciptions not only on moble platform but pc platform as well -  this is going to get worse.

[gaugewireandcable]

Does eBay plan to get ahold of images that violate policy? I've reported the same seller for 5 years for images with borders and text like free shipping and images of American flag. I believe it's search and browse manipulation but no matter how many time I report it nothing happens so I'm hard pressed as to why I should follow the rules while my competition has an unfettered advantage? If you look in a category like cell phone covers you'll see every other listing with an image violation, they aren't hard to find. So does eBay have an active policy to find and stop this? Even when reported it takes a back seat to other seller violations so I'm just frustrated and hope you could shed some light on this. 

[timemachine777]

I believe it is long past due about having a major community discussion about revamping the Community Guidelines as they are very Draconian, and many of the individual rules are ambiguous and vague at the least. We as a community are affected by these rules that have little interpretation. And any appeal process is pretty well none exist.

So too protect members there should be checks and balances, or some measure of a stop gap, to prevent over reach and an abuse of power. These rules have shed the boards of many good members in the past, and just sends them to post on private forums about eBay issues and out of the reach of any retaliation due too their unwelcome views by a few.

Posting accounts should not be able to be severed due to minor back and forth squabbling, baiting into and argument, joking around, etc. They should be only for severe offenses. Like blatant none stop stalking of members, disgusting and filthy posts that are blatantly vile and vulgar in a more extreme context. An not from a basically tasteless and or contentious position.

Because, if the latter were truly the rule of thumb here, then I could cite close to a 1000 recent posts over the last couple of months that would qualify for removal, and board banning. It just seems that all is not equal when these ambiguous rules are applied or executed. There needs to some form of semblance.

Great examples of Ambiguity and Draconian measures:

4. Be respectful. Content that is harmful, hostile, threatening, abusive, baiting, vulgar, defamatory, harassing, or includes hate or racist speech, name calling or profanity will be edited or removed. Read more about our Profanity policy here; information on our Threats of Bodily Harm policy is available here.

7. No naming and shaming. We will not tolerate posting about listing or member violations. Item numbers, auction links, negative/neutral feedback scores, other members ID or contact information posted for the purpose of shaming another member will be edited or removed. Read more about this policy here. (Note: The wrong link is embedded here. The link is in relation to "contact info".) http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/identity-contact.html

10. Do not discuss or post about moderation actions. Discussion of moderation actions, reposting of deleted posts or discussion of suspended or no longer registered members. It is not permitted to discuss or repost removed content. It is inappropriate to talk about others who are suspended from the community or eBay.

These are the primary topics though the other rules have issues within their group also. I just wanted to highlight the ones that affect the most posts here. If all these rules were enforced equally on these boards. There wouldn't be any members left to post. We'd all be banned forever in less than a month, as the violations would stack up in a good day of posting here, or one good argument,which happens all the time.

There really is no definition as too how any of rules even apply to the context of a typical post. Nothing is defined. Example: Content that is baiting...Define baiting. Same with harmful, hostile, threatening, abusive, vulgar, defamatory, harassing.There are all levels of these examples from minor to extreme that are passed over in loads of posts, by both members and mods, without a care less. Is what defines which terms violate the rules and in what context?

We need to remove the draconian heavy handedness elements of these rules and the ambiguity surrounding the implementation rules and punishment and the terms themselves. I can't even find a reference as to the time frames for each ban in succession.

If a new member or one just not familiar with site gets banned they can't even access the guidelines in the link provided within the ban, nor the announcements pages, which everyone should have 24/7 access too, regardless of being currently banned from posting. The announcements can effect members business choices at the moment of release, and should have no connection with board usage.

[vrykalak]

My ISP is going to build a Facebook page for my e-commerce activities. They said they could link it to my eBay ID...Just needed a URL for that. What would that be?

[tyler@ebay]

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@mendelsons wrote:

So what is the deal with descriptions, why are we making listings with descriptions if ebay is just going to hide them and show other items to buy in the space that was occupied by the description field.

We do enough returns as it is and if your hiding desciptions not only on moble platform but pc platform as well -  this is going to get worse.

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Hi @mendelsons - the shortened description display is a test that is being run to look at buyer and seller experiences and how that corresponds to sales conversion. It is for a small portion of member accounts, and is not a permanent change. Thanks!

[bigmotormania]

Hello, Alan.

I have an inquiry in regards to the IPR thing.

Considering only one of my items is actually over $1000, I was curious since I haven't actually been able to ascertain exactly how this works.

So, if an item from a seller like myself (small seller) is less than $1000, then it's eBay that requires the IPR, yes? Meaning I cannot remove this IPR at all, period.

My reasoning for asking this is if I were to start doing lot sales of multiple types of small items (motorcycle parts; o-rings, specialized nuts and bolts, gaskets, piston rings etc) which are generally cheap, but I put them up for say, $15 for a lot of 20 items, for example, and then I get a buyer who wants to purchase for example, 10 lots, but they cannot combine them because eBay's IPR won't allow for them to request an invoice, then that certainly poses a problem, yes?

Basically what I am asking is, is this an absolute requirement, is this how it works, and if the answer to either of those questions is "yes" "for the most part" "pretty much" "something like that" "it can be summed up that way" "essentially" "indeed" "quite so" "basically" or any answer along those lines, is eBay doing anything to fix buyers not being able to use the cart to request an invoice for multitudes of these items?

Thanks.

[ittybitnot]

Just for your information, the link on Seller Central goes to last week's chat. 

[Anonymous]

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@critter_mama_2007 wrote:

Since June 26, stock photos from ebays media catalog have not been able to be uploaded using turbo lister.  Does ebay plan to repair this or was it a planned disruption to encourage the disuse of turbo lister by sellers?  When I called customer service they said they had received many calls about this problem.

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Hi @critter_mama_2007 - I just checked with our Advanced Apps team and they'd like to partner with you on this. Would you mind sending an email to turbodata@ebay.com with the details of the issue? They'll work with you on a workaround to resolve this. 

[mam98031]

I have a question relating to the Ebay catalog pics.  

There is a series of perfumes that I can't seem to carry on Ebay.  If I post them sometime in the near future I will get a Vero violation for my pics.  Granted they are stock photos provided by my supplier, but they are the SAME photos that MANY other sellers use, yet in the years that have followed this problem, they are all still using them and apparently not having any problems in doing so.

Now in Ebay's catalog are many of these same pics that I got in trouble for using.  How and why is this happening.  Why can Ebay and other sellers use the pics, but I'm not allowed.  It makes no sense to me.

This is all regarding to a line of perfumes produced by Bond No. 9.

[mendelsons]

@mendelsons wrote:

So what is the deal with descriptions, why are we making listings with descriptions if ebay is just going to hide them and show other items to buy in the space that was occupied by the description field.

We do enough returns as it is and if your hiding desciptions not only on moble platform but pc platform as well -  this is going to get worse.

Hi @mendelsons - the shortened description display is a test that is being run to look at buyer and seller experiences and how that corresponds to sales conversion. It is for a small portion of member accounts, and is not a permanent change. Thanks!

Is there a way to opt out of this "test" ?  I have noticed Amazon starting pushing their descriptions down farther on the page offering similar or like items, is this eBay attempt at something similar ?