eBay

velvet@ebay · ‎01-12-2022

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.

Missed the chat? Send your questions to the podcast by calling 888-723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com and maybe your questions will make it on the air! Or listen to past episodes while you wait for next Wednesday!

Velvet,

coinslabz26 · ‎01-12-2022

Edit to remove wrong quote (sorry)

Also I am not asking about purchasing a shipping label. The label was purchased on ebay and acceptance scanned at a SSK or self service kiosk.

velvet@ebay

So you are saying that this is not a valid acceptance?

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

fab_finds4u · ‎01-12-2022

You were expecting 3 and got 1? Then I believe you need to return whatever you received in order to get your money back.

gwzcomps · ‎01-12-2022

@a_c_green wrote:
@gwzcomps wrote:
The only excuse I have gotten from eBay is some buyers have "legitimate" reasons on why they need to exceed the character limit the sellers have to deal with.
Another instance where this problem crops up is when an international buyer has prepaid the duty charges on the package, and the software then brings up the buyer's address with the necessary PAID codes added on the second address line. If the buyer is already using the second address line for something else, the big long PAID string gets hung on the end, such as this example (partially redacted) that I had for a sale last week:

123 Main Street ABN#64nnnnnnn81 Code:PAID

I had to do some manual rearranging in order to get everything to fit.

That is an interesting one. I don't think I have seen that before.

gwzcomps · ‎01-12-2022

So why have a missing parts and pieces option then? If I open an INR case I will automatically lose it since tracking shows delivery.

valueaddedresource · ‎01-12-2022

I was excited to see that Video In Listings is starting to roll out for access in the listing flow, but it looks like it's being done in phases.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Video-has-arrived/m-p/32611990/highlight/true#M1919079

Any idea of a timeframe for how long the phased roll out might take (days, a week....?)

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here

tyler@ebay · ‎01-12-2022

@glgenterprise wrote:

I know I come here with regular complaints about the shipping module – but here is yet another example of one of my issues. The buyer has once again used more than 40 characters in a single line. This has caused the shipping module to fail for years.

Since I do not necessarily open/look at the shipping information until I’m printing labels, I often do not get notice about this until I’m attempting to print labels. So, now I’m looking at attempting to get in contact with the buyer with little time before my next day shipping handling time is up or canceling the sale - which considering this is an eBay problem doesn't seem fair to my buyer (and leaves me out $0.60 on the transactions). Or hoping that CS will remove the late shipping ding for a eBay issue.

Why is eBay STILL allowing buyers to enter ship to addresses with too many characters???

Hi @glgenterprise - this is definitely a pain point that has been reported multiple times over the years. velvet@ebay and I have opened a new ticket with the label team to report these issues and provided the examples you and @a_c_green both provided (thank you!).

We'll keep you posted as we hear back.

Tyler,

mr_lincoln · ‎01-12-2022

@a_c_green Label flow dimension orientation ... I reported that issue a LONG TIME AGO when it first cropped up after they launched the new label flow AND it had issues with the flow (forget what the glitch was but the subsequent fix came with reverse L x W x H) ... I posted HERE on the Weekly Chat ... I used the Tell us what you think or Comments link more then once ... they NEVER fixed it (obviously) ...

And yes, I pointed out the total disconnect between the Listing form entry of L x W x H and the label flow reversing that ...

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

a_c_green · ‎01-12-2022

@coinslabz26 wrote:
velvet@ebay

So you are saying that this is not a valid acceptance?

My experience has been that while the USPS themselves consider this a provisional Acceptance, eBay counts it as a full Acceptance (which is good, especially for late weekday or weekend shipments).

The USPS kiosk shows this disclaimer:

...so they do not consider it actually Accepted for the purpose of tracking or (I assume) insurance until someone behind the scenes scans the package again, but I have seen in my own tracking that eBay shows it as actually Shipped/Accepted/Validated/whatever once the SSK scan shows up on-line, even before someone in the post office actually empties the drop box.

tyler@ebay · ‎01-12-2022

@a_c_green wrote:

Hello all,

I'd like to follow up on a reply by velvet@ebay in last week's Chat, concerning the USPS pricing changes for larger items:

>> @michigan_tactical wrote:
>> how is ebay going to handle the new USPS additional postage rates for larger items?
>
> Good question @michigan_tactical! Basically, how you list shouldn't really change.
> They'll work similarly to the holiday surcharges buyers just experienced. If you're
> using calculated shipping and everything is entered accurately in the listing
> (dimensions/weights), then the buyer should be charged the correct amount
> (including any qualifying surcharge) at the time of purchase.

Ref: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-Discussion-with-eBay/Community-Chat-January-5-1-00-pm-PT-Genera...

This might be a good time to bring up (again) the fact that the Shipping form is getting the dimensions wrong. A long-standing coding bug is bringing up the item's stored package dimensions in reverse order. The package Length is erroneously going into the Shipping form as its Height, and the package Height is going into the Shipping form as its Length.

When you upload your package dimensions in the listing form, the first field is stored as pkgLength, the second is pkgWidth and the third is pkgHeight. (You can see this coding in the Chrome browser by right-clicking your cursor in each field and selecting "Inspect" from the menu choices.) Easy-peasy.

However, when you've sold the item and go to print the Shipping label, the values come up backwards. The Shipping label form variable named dimensions.length is now showing the Height value, and dimensions.height is now showing the Length value. It looks like someone forgot that popping values off a stack in memory brings them up in Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) order, not First-In-First-Out (FIFO) order.

This is easy to see and should be equally easy to fix, though for the past two years or more, no one has bothered to do so despite constant reminders. This will have no effect on calculations of Volume that simply multiply everything together (L x W x H), but calculations of Girth (L + 2W + 2H) will come up wrong, as will any test that looks at the current value of, say, dimensions.length, and thinks that that's the package Length, which it isn't.

With the USPS not only raising prices but also applying surcharges under some conditions involving package size, it's long past time for someone to go into the Shipping code and get this properly fixed.

Hi @a_c_green - thanks for this very comprehensive breakdown of the issue. I'll make sure it is reported (again) to the label team!

Tyler,

clarkphilatelics · ‎01-12-2022

In response to velvet@ebay 01-05-2022

In response to clarkphilatelics

‎01-05-2022 05:34 PM

@clarkphilatelics wrote:

I have posted a several times about difficulties with capturing information from Managed Payments. I did not receive a reply to the most recent post. I have a simple request. If eBay would provide a summary for each payout showing sales, fees, postage, net amount paid, and additional categories, if necessary, into a simple summary with one line with total from individual items enumerated in the payout, all in US dollars. The suggestion that the Payouts report could be downloaded is a nonstarter. Each report requires time and some skill to import into Excel and nothing is totaled. Some entries may not be posted in US dollars. Why must eBay make everything so complicated? Please find someone who can respond substantively.

Hey @clarkphilatelics! When you click into a Payout ID from the Payouts link in the Payments tab, you can see a summary for the sales, fees, postage, net amount, and the total payment amount received.

The Reports we make available to download into Excel are so sellers can organize and use the numbers as they see fit. I'll include a few links below to help pages that discuss how to best utilize these reports though, and if you have a specific mock-up or detailed version of a report you'd like to provide us, we'd be more than happy to pass that on to the Payments team.

The table below shows the type of data I am asking for.

Category	Amount
eBay Sales Amount	$252.82
eBay Fees	-$34.73
eBay Postage	-$10.14

eBay Payment Total	$207.95

The objective is to capture sales and expenses from each payment. Sales minus fees plus or minus hold adjustments should add to the payment amount. Income on the 1099-K should be the sum of the eBay Sales Amounts for the year. The eBay Payment Totals should be consistent with deposits or withdrawals from the checking account.

The problem is that the payout report does not total eBay Sales Amounts or fees from orders. While it is possible to manually total the fees, the time involved increases at a minimum of n * log(n) where n is the number of orders. Sales and fees on foreign sites like eBay.de are reported in foreign currencies. The time required to convert and sum the amounts is error prone and unproductive.

The downloadable reports you mention are more suitable for capturing orders monthly, quarterly, or annually. The process of downloading, importing into Excel, cleaning up numeric and currency columns, and removing extraneous rows is too time consuming to do daily or even weekly. The report itself contains order summary rows, order rows, and combined order summary and order rows for payments containing only one row. Columns cannot be added unless the individual or summary multi-order rows are removed. Nothing is summed. The effort required to summarize one payment would be high compared to summing income and expenses unless the payment spans hundreds of orders.

Monthly summary reports are not useful because the reporting periods start and end mid-month.

What are the objectives? The first objective is to balance the checkbook. The total paid amount is sufficient for that purpose. The second objective is to capture and categorize income, expenses, payment holds and refunds. Providing totals for income and expenses with postage split out would be sufficient for my needs. I have not been paying insertion fees or processing many returns. It is likely to be useful for most users to add a line item for insertion fees and another for holds and returns.

Finally, some cleanup is needed. Postage is displayed in the wrong column. Postage paid to eBay is a fee. Presumably, sellers who charge separately for postage will find the amount added to the eBay sales amount. Sales tax collected by eBay is not needed to track income and expenses because it is not included in the 1099-K amount. Seller collected sales tax should be included in the eBay Sales amount.

With computing resources available to eBay, additional processing resources needed to produce totals in US dollars would be insignificant. Although manual addition, as described above, was required, the sum of the payout report eBay Sales Amounts matched the 1099-K amount exactly.

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Edit: A reply to your comments can be found here

coinslabz26 · ‎01-12-2022

@a_c_green wrote:
@coinslabz26 wrote:
velvet@ebay

So you are saying that this is not a valid acceptance?

My experience has been that while the USPS themselves consider this a provisional Acceptance, eBay counts it as a full Acceptance (which is good, especially for late weekday or weekend shipments).

The USPS kiosk shows this disclaimer:

...so they do not consider it actually Accepted for the purpose of tracking or (I assume) insurance until someone behind the scenes scans the package again, but I have seen in my own tracking that eBay shows it as actually Shipped/Accepted/Validated/whatever once the SSK scan shows up on-line, even before someone in the post office actually empties the drop box.

Right. I am only asking if ebay themselves count it as accepted at the 1:44am "USPS is in possession of item" as shipped on time. I how USPS considers it.

tyler@ebay · ‎01-12-2022

@coinslabz26 wrote:

How do I report or block a specific ebay'er that is spamming me in retaliation for not giving them a discount?

Example. There is a buyer with multiple different accounts and keeps going to the same item "Take $15" over and over and over and over. I know I can block all messages from all blocked bidders but I don't like to block those messages where some blocked bidders and I can find common ground and I can give them a second chance, so I don't want to block messages from all blocked bidders.

Hi @coinslabz26 - the most effective solution would be to use your preferences to not allow blocked bidders to contact you, but I can see why you'd prefer not to do that.

There is not a way to prevent a single user on your Blocked Bidder List from messaging you. Depending on how they are contacting you there may be some alternatives:

If they are sending Best Offers you could consider setting up 'auto-declines' for a certain dollar amount and below. That would automatically inform the member that their offer was declined
If they are sending you repeated messages over and over again with no real intent of completing a transaction you can work with CS to report the buyer ids and they can review and take administrative action on the accounts as appropriate.

I hope this helps!

Tyler,

gwzcomps · ‎01-12-2022

I opened the return for the two that were missing. Opening a return for 3 items missing when I got 1 of 3 would also be a false claim.

velvet@ebay · ‎01-12-2022

@coinslabz26 wrote:

Why is the error "There is an active offer for this buyer or limit of offers was reached." when trying to send offers still not fixed? What exactly did the respective team say are they ignoring the reports? Are they not going to fix it? I know from me personally I have lost $1000's of dollars in sales for no reason.

This is been posted with screen shots like 100 times in the tech support section. For a quick recap though this happens any time a buyer has received an offer to watcher that has expired and they ask to resend it, they decline but ask for a better price, or the first one timed out and it is a month later and they are ready to buy.

Hey @coinslabz26! I'm not familiar with this error. Are you saying you already sent an offer to a buyer and it expired or they denied it, and then a month later you try to send another but you get an error stating, "There is an active offer for this buyer or limit of offers was reached".

If so, I do know that there are some limits:

The buyer purchased the same item from the seller before the seller initiates the private offer.
The seller has exceeded the private offer limit (3 offers per buyer per item).
The seller has already sent a private offer to the buyer where the offer is still active.
Seller/buyer's account is suspended or is no longer registered on eBay.
Seller has blocked the buyer in settings.

It sounds like you're saying none of the above listed things have happened though. You've sent one offer, it was denied or expired, and then you're not unable to send another right?

Velvet,

gwzcomps · ‎01-12-2022

tyler@ebay Double checked the policy and INR is for not receiving your purchase altogether, not missing items based on my interpretation of the wording.

https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/returns-refunds/get-help-item-hasnt-arrived?id=4042

If your item hasn't arrived yet it may still be in transit, so the first thing to do is to check the delivery information. You can find your order's delivery information in your Purchase history - opens in new window or tab. You'll be able see the item's expected delivery date, and the address it's being shipped to.

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Edit: A reply to your comment can be found here