Weekly Community Chat, May 31st @ 1pm PT - General Topics

[alan@ebay]

Hi Community 👋

Please join the Community team at 1 pm Pacific today for our weekly chat. We do not have a set topic this week so feel free to ask us your buying or selling questions or share what's on your eBay mind. 

For the last couple of weeks, we've been sharing a link to a survey that we're currently conducting regarding the weekly chat format. If you haven't yet taken the survey, please do so via this link.

Talk to you at 1 pm!

[alan@ebay]

The thread is now open for replies. Thanks for joining us!

[upscale_shop]

Good afternoon, Alan

1) Considering that for the past six days eBay site has been experiencing several technical problems, is eBay going to do anything about prorating store subscription fees for affected sellers?

2) Over the weekend, I made a suggestion that eBay should release an announcement on its site to address the Purchase Protection Guarantee issue that is widely reported across the boards. A simple announcement when logging in would be sufficient to inform both buyers and sellers that the problem is being worked on, and reassure sellers buyers that their purchases are still covered under MBG.

Instead, as usual, sellers receive the standard answer on the boards – we are working on it. While this may be fine for the sellers visiting the boards, it does nothing to reassure buyers. Since eBay keeps claiming that every change in policy is to promote Buyers’ Confidence, why has the announcement not been done?

3) Since search placement is affected by historical track record of sales, the current glitches are going to have a snowball effect on future performance. With slow (or none at all) sales, conversion ratio changes, which results in the sellers’ items being displayed lower in best match search. Is there any plan to have the data adjusted after the present glitches are cleared?

I will give you an example – my sales conversion ratio has changed from 1.6% to 0.6% over the past 45 days. At the same time, my click-through ratio has increased from 0.8% to 1.3%. Historically, I would have had more sales with more click-throughs, but I’m not. Whether this is due to the MBG glitch, the TRS+ glitch, or anything else, is really irrelevant. Your algorithm will be less likely to display my items at top of the search based on this.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

[mr_lincoln]

FedEx Over charge issues

Good afternoon Alan and any other Ebay Team members present today,

I posted a lengthy issue on the Weekly Chat of April 20th, it was removed and sent elsewhere for Admin review. Would someone kindly be able to provide an update on the investigation into FedEx shipping costs, over charges and the possible simplification of the calculator so that both Buyer and Seller know what the real charges are at the time of purchase AND in setting up the listing and having costs displayed accurately?

Thank you,

Mr. L

[mam98031]

I was researching something when I ran across a very interesting article.  It states that Ebay is going to start removing our GTC listing that are a year old if they do not have a sale on the listing.  Ebay went on to say that the listing fee [if any] will not be credited to the seller if the listing violated policy.

That opens several questions for me.

Ebay is suppose to be a venue, what right does Ebay have to determine how long I may post a listing, any listing??

Does the word “remove” mean DELETE?  If so, that means we won’t even have access to revise the listing and repost it.  This will most certainly create a ton of unnecessary work for many sellers. 

What POLICY on Ebay would these listings be violating for the mere fact of their age?

Here is a link to the article I discovered on this subject.

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2017/5/1496088624.html/3/40#comments

[Anonymous]

Hello Community Team!

I have two questions today:

　

1.   When printing using eBay's bulk shipping tool, USPS Priority Mail Express labels cannot be printed with the bulk batch. I always have to remove USPS Express Mail shipments from the bulk batch and print the labels individually. Am I doing something wrong, or has there always been a technical issue preventing Express labels from being printed with a bulk batch?

2.   Last week my seller account was hit with a defect for a Paypal "case closed without seller resolution". This arose from a buyer who started a remorse retun in eBay (hassle-free, automated return) yet did not follow through with that return process and instead escalated the case by opening a Paypal dispute, which was then wrongly escalated before allowing the seller to respond. Paypal agreed to change the case decision to one of no-fault on the seller's part, and the defect has since been removed by eBay. My question is, does eBay have a policy in place to notify sellers as soon as a defect is recorded on the account?

The only reason I found out about the defect is because I happened to check my seller dashboard stats. I normally don't often check that section of my dashboard. I did not receive any email or notification from eBay or Paypal that a defect was recorded. It would be helpful to be notified, so I'm wondering if this should have been done. If not, please consider doing so.

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

---

@mr_lincoln wrote:

FedEx Over charge issues

Good afternoon Alan and any other Ebay Team members present today,

I posted a lengthy issue on the Weekly Chat of April 20th, it was removed and sent elsewhere for Admin review. Would someone kindly be able to provide an update on the investigation into FedEx shipping costs, over charges and the possible simplification of the calculator so that both Buyer and Seller know what the real charges are at the time of purchase AND in setting up the listing and having costs displayed accurately?

Thank you,

Mr. L

---

Hey Mr. L, we don't have an update to provide at the moment but I'll be sure to followup on this. I know this has been a pain point for sellers for some time now and while FedEx is ultimately responsible for any pricing changes they deem necessary (typically due to concerns with dimensional weight) I absolutely understand the desire for clear expectations to be set at the start. If I receive an update, I'll be sure to touch base, no problem.

[dazzlecity]

Hello - I was recently told by a c/s rep that any buyer can at any time leave any seller a negative just for being unhappy with their purchase regardless of wether or not they have made an attempt to contact the seller for a refund. Is this the new bloodsport with ebay? Are we all in peril?

[Anonymous]

---

@upscale_shop wrote:

Good afternoon, Alan

1) Considering that for the past six days eBay site has been experiencing several technical problems, is eBay going to do anything about prorating store subscription fees for affected sellers?

2) Over the weekend, I made a suggestion that eBay should release an announcement on its site to address the Purchase Protection Guarantee issue that is widely reported across the boards. A simple announcement when logging in would be sufficient to inform both buyers and sellers that the problem is being worked on, and reassure sellers buyers that their purchases are still covered under MBG.

Instead, as usual, sellers receive the standard answer on the boards – we are working on it. While this may be fine for the sellers visiting the boards, it does nothing to reassure buyers. Since eBay keeps claiming that every change in policy is to promote Buyers’ Confidence, why has the announcement not been done?

3) Since search placement is affected by historical track record of sales, the current glitches are going to have a snowball effect on future performance. With slow (or none at all) sales, conversion ratio changes, which results in the sellers’ items being displayed lower in best match search. Is there any plan to have the data adjusted after the present glitches are cleared?

I will give you an example – my sales conversion ratio has changed from 1.6% to 0.6% over the past 45 days. At the same time, my click-through ratio has increased from 0.8% to 1.3%. Historically, I would have had more sales with more click-throughs, but I’m not. Whether this is due to the MBG glitch, the TRS+ glitch, or anything else, is really irrelevant. Your algorithm will be less likely to display my items at top of the search based on this.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

---

Thanks for joining us, @upscale_shop!

1) Tech issues are never fun to run into and I'm so sorry for any inconvenience they've been causing. Issues do pop up from time to time with online marketplaces and while they can be frustrating, we aren't always able to offer forms of compensation. We don't currently have plans to prorate stores or offer credits of any kind but if that changes, you'll receive communication through eBay Messages. 

2) This is a great question and it's feedback we've gathered/sent on. Announcements are generally made when the majority of users are impacted and the issue is a work stoppage. That said, I think this is a great example on ways we can improve communication moving forward. 

3) With these issues affecting all users in the same way, ideally there won't be any issues once these are corrected. Placement will stay the same across the board.

[alan@ebay]

---

@mam98031 wrote:

I was researching something when I ran across a very interesting article.  It states that Ebay is going to start removing our GTC listing that are a year old if they do not have a sale on the listing.  Ebay went on to say that the listing fee [if any] will not be credited to the seller if the listing violated policy.

That opens several questions for me.

Ebay is suppose to be a venue, what right does Ebay have to determine how long I may post a listing, any listing??

Does the word “remove” mean DELETE?  If so, that means we won’t even have access to revise the listing and repost it.  This will most certainly create a ton of unnecessary work for many sellers. 

What POLICY on Ebay would these listings be violating for the mere fact of their age?

Here is a link to the article I discovered on this subject.

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2017/5/1496088624.html/3/40#comments

---

Hi @mam98031

Good questions! I am going to check in with a manager from our Trust & Safety team to get confirmation on these points. 

I'll update the thread as soon as I know more. 

Thanks. 

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hello Community Team!

I have two questions today:

　

1.   When printing using eBay's bulk shipping tool, USPS Priority Mail Express labels cannot be printed with the bulk batch. I always have to remove USPS Express Mail shipments from the bulk batch and print the labels individually. Am I doing something wrong, or has there always been a technical issue preventing Express labels from being printed with a bulk batch?

2.   Last week my seller account was hit with a defect for a Paypal "case closed without seller resolution". This arose from a buyer who started a remorse retun in eBay (hassle-free, automated return) yet did not follow through with that return process and instead escalated the case by opening a Paypal dispute, which was then wrongly escalated before allowing the seller to respond. Paypal agreed to change the case decision to one of no-fault on the seller's part, and the defect has since been removed by eBay. My question is, does eBay have a policy in place to notify sellers as soon as a defect is recorded on the account?

The only reason I found out about the defect is because I happened to check my seller dashboard stats. I normally don't often check that section of my dashboard. I did not receive any email or notification from eBay or Paypal that a defect was recorded. It would be helpful to be notified, so I'm wondering if this should have been done. If not, please consider doing so.

Thank you!

---

Hey @Anonymous, happy to address these concerns:

1. I can't think of anything you could be doing wrong with this info, but am happy to look into it with you. I'll email you to gather more details and test this out on my end. It may be a bug we can get reported to our tech teams.

2. While I don't know of any plans to send notifications for PayPal related defects, I can definitely pass this suggestion along to see what we can do about better informing our sellers of impacts to their account.

[vrykalak]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hello Community Team!

I have two questions today:

　

2.   Last week my seller account was hit with a defect for a Paypal "case closed without seller resolution". This arose from a buyer who started a remorse retun in eBay (hassle-free, automated return) yet did not follow through with that return process and instead escalated the case by opening a Paypal dispute, which was then wrongly escalated before allowing the seller to respond. Paypal agreed to change the case decision to one of no-fault on the seller's part, and the defect has since been removed by eBay. My question is, does eBay have a policy in place to notify sellers as soon as a defect is recorded on the account?

The only reason I found out about the defect is because I happened to check my seller dashboard stats. I normally don't often check that section of my dashboard. I did not receive any email or notification from eBay or Paypal that a defect was recorded. It would be helpful to be notified, so I'm wondering if this should have been done. If not, please consider doing so. 

---

No, eBay does not warn sellers of defects, and they should!

I found out about  a defect because a package got lost in the mail. The buyer and I corresponded about it, and I refunded the buyer, not knowing that he had opened a case about it. So I got a "closed without seller resolution" defect...AND eBay refunded the buyer AGAIN...that I didn't know about until it was already too late to do anything about it.

[upscale_shop]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

2) This is a great question and it's feedback we've gathered/sent on. Announcements are generally made when the majority of users are impacted and the issue is a work stoppage. That said, I think this is a great example on ways we can improve communication moving forward. 

---

@Anonymous

Nice to see you again. It's been a while.

As to #2 - the TRS+ and the MBG is affecting all sellers I have talked to, so uit is a wide-spread issue. In my opinion, since no buyers see these two crucial identifiers when logged in, it very likely qualifies as a candidate for a site-wide announcement.

Henry

[mam98031]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hello Community Team!

I have two questions today:

　

1.   When printing using eBay's bulk shipping tool, USPS Priority Mail Express labels cannot be printed with the bulk batch. I always have to remove USPS Express Mail shipments from the bulk batch and print the labels individually. Am I doing something wrong, or has there always been a technical issue preventing Express labels from being printed with a bulk batch?

2.   Last week my seller account was hit with a defect for a Paypal "case closed without seller resolution". This arose from a buyer who started a remorse retun in eBay (hassle-free, automated return) yet did not follow through with that return process and instead escalated the case by opening a Paypal dispute, which was then wrongly escalated before allowing the seller to respond. Paypal agreed to change the case decision to one of no-fault on the seller's part, and the defect has since been removed by eBay. My question is, does eBay have a policy in place to notify sellers as soon as a defect is recorded on the account?

The only reason I found out about the defect is because I happened to check my seller dashboard stats. I normally don't often check that section of my dashboard. I did not receive any email or notification from eBay or Paypal that a defect was recorded. It would be helpful to be notified, so I'm wondering if this should have been done. If not, please consider doing so.

Thank you!

---

Hey @Anonymous, happy to address these concerns:

1. I can't think of anything you could be doing wrong with this info, but am happy to look into it with you. I'll email you to gather more details and test this out on my end. It may be a bug we can get reported to our tech teams.

2. While I don't know of any plans to send notifications for PayPal related defects, I can definitely pass this suggestion along to see what we can do about better informing our sellers of impacts to their account.

---

I have another question regarding Violet's issue.  This buyer should be sanction for breaking what most sellers would see as a significant breach of Ebay rules.  Buyer's violate policy if they open a claim in Ebay and in PP for the same item.  Or has this changed?

[Anonymous]

---

@dazzlecity wrote:

Hello - I was recently told by a c/s rep that any buyer can at any time leave any seller a negative just for being unhappy with their purchase regardless of wether or not they have made an attempt to contact the seller for a refund. Is this the new bloodsport with ebay? Are we all in peril?

---

Hi @dazzlecity - While we always encourage buyers to contact sellers first, it has never been a requirement prior to leaving feedback. If it does happen, however, you can reach out to your buyer to discuss the issue and work toward resolving it. All sellers are given feedback revision requests they can utilize in situations like this but we only recommend offering that once the issue has been taken care of.