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eBay Seller Experience Chief-of-Staff Valeri Yee rejoins us this week so share the steps eBay takes to roll out new site features and how we handle the occasional code issue so that there is minimal impact on your business. Griff and Brian answer questions on how eBay calculates the shipping cost shown to your international buyers and how to best handle a sticky “wrong item received” situation.
Episode Links:
eBay International Shipping Rate Chart
Seller Protections
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events
Brian: I am Brian.
Griff: I'm Griff, and this is the eBay for Business Podcast. Your source for the information and inspiration that can help you start, manage and even grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 254. Wow. 254. It finally strikes me that's a lot of talking.
Brian: Some of our maybe older listeners, more experienced listeners age-wise would remember CAR 254. Wasn't that a television show back in the day?
Griff: Yeah, the two cops were Tutty and Maldoon that I remember.
Brian: Maybe one or two of our listeners remembers the show.
Griff: Hey, you know if you go to eBay, right? I wonder, let's go to eBay. I'm typing this in as we talk and I'm gonna type in CAR 54. It wasn't 54, I think it was Car 54.
Brian: Oh was it just Car 54?
Griff: Oh yeah. Look, there's tons of stuff. There's CDs, DVDs, there's a TV Guide.
Brian: So it was 54.
Griff: Yeah, it wasn't 254.
Brian: Which makes sense. You know, there weren't that many police back then.
Griff: Don't think that's true.
Brian: They only needed 54 cars, not 254.
Griff: Now with YouTube you can find clips of just about anything. So if you're, you don't know what we're talking about and but you're mildly intrigued and your interest has been kind of peaked, just search on YouTube for Car 54.
Brian: Or don't.
Griff: Or don't. Or get back to listing something and making productive choices in your life rather than running down YouTube rabbit holes.
Brian: Or think about the television show when you were a kid, or maybe it wasn't even a TV show, maybe it was a streaming show. And find an item that you know you could resell for that around that item. Because someone might wanna collect something.
Griff: I don't think there's any Boomers who remember streaming shows from their childhood.
Brian: Well we don't have just Boomers listening.
Griff: Let's hope not.
Brian: We better not.
Griff: Back in the day, we only had three options. We had ABC, NBC, CBS and some hokey local UHF. Actually
Brian: We also had AM radio.
Griff: . We had eight tracks. We used to have these vinyl records that you put on a little spinning disc. They're now hip again. And we liked it.
Brian: My daughter has some records because they became hip again.
Griff: Yeah. And of course, where can you find old vinyl? Always keeping it relevant.
Brian: On eBay.
Griff: There you go. Hey, do you know what record day is?
Brian: I don't.
Griff: Oh, you're gonna love this. Except Rob's really into this. So record stores across the country have something called Record Day. It's usually on a Saturday and it's where all these special released vinyls come out. And people line up, they call in or they, they get online and get a spot at their local record store and each store gets an allotment from the record companies and they get in line and they buy these things up is collector's items. And then the only other place you can get them after they're sold out is where?
Brian: eBay.
Griff: Thank you. Wow. Although, except Rob doesn't put any up on eBay. He's just storing them somewhere. There's a vault somewhere in that room of his where he is got like tons of vinyl.
Brian: So you're creating your own vault.
Griff: I can't complain. I have this huge, huge closet outside of my bedroom and you can't put anything in there because there is container after container of fragrances.
Brian: Ah, I was gonna say it Still containers of stuff that needs to get unpacked, but No, it's just, it's your inventory.
Griff: Yeah, it's inventory. And I have to start listing it. I have been listing a little bit, but I gotta ramp it up. And I straightened out a, a section of our garage here where I can have my light cubes set up and I have some shelves for storage and the boxes are underneath the work table and it's getting there. I don't feel a big sense of urgency for some reason. So I know this is gonna sound really trivial, but I've gone from zero to 30 listings. No, 32 today. I don't have as much as your daughter, which is embarrassing.
Brian: But I, my daughter is like cranked it up over the last month.
Griff: Good for her.
Brian: I''m excited.
Griff: Well we're too.
Brian: Because like she can do it for the rest of her life. She's only 22. Someday she'll be a school teacher. So it's a perfect thing to like create supplemental income during the summer. Well, Griff.
Griff: Yeah, Brian?
Brian: Who is our guest this week?
Griff: I thought you'd never ask. Our guest this week has been sitting in the Green Room for the last month. It's eBay. Seller Experience Chief of Staff, your friend of mine, Valeri Yee.
Brian: Valeri's great guest, super knowledgeable.
Griff: Valeri's here to pull back the curtain on how eBay releases new code to the site. New features and new enhancements. And she's also gonna talk a little bit about what eBay does when a bit of that code goes awry or sometimes when things don't work and how sellers can make them work. There's a whole lot of content there. So you're gonna wanna listen to that.
Brian: Would code goes awry be kind of a equivalent to like a glitch?
Griff: You could think that the dreaded G word, yes. Every website has this problem. We're not immune to it. We've got a lot of code that gets updated and released. And I, I have to say, given what I know about what goes on in that part of the eBay universe, it's amazing how everything goes. Right Most of the time. But sometimes things go a little wrong and it's interesting to know what eBay does to make sure that it doesn't impact the business of sellers. But before that, I suspect there's no pressing news this week, right Brian?
Brian: No news this week except for the upcoming eBay Open.
Griff: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Brian: So that will be at the end of September. It kicks off on September 26th. If you have not registered for one of the four in-person kickoff parties, Phoenix, Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia. I believe there is still room at those events.
Griff: Oh Really?
Brian: I believe so. I checked yesterday. I did not check today. Sign up. And if you can't make one of those, definitely register for the event and then I'll also encourage you to check ebay.com/seller meetings because sellers who are not close to those locations are hosting in-person events like in Akron, Ohio and Colorado Springs and other places like that.
Griff: Florida.
Brian: Florida, yeah. So check out those if you wanna connect with other sellers as a kickoff on the Tuesday before the three day seller eBay Open.
Griff: There you go. I'm surprised there's still spaces at the four events. Those usually sell out within a couple weeks. Well of course they've only been open since the beginning of this week. Right? So by the time you hear this.
Brian: Oh that's true.
Griff: They could be sold out.
Brian: I always forget that.
Griff: You snooze, you lose.
Brian: Yes. Well check it out just to make sure going in person's a lot of fun.
Griff: It's something to look forward to and we're gonna talk a lot about it. In fact, we have a segment coming up I believe in about a month where we talk a lot about eBay Open and what's going on. You'll hear us mentioning that a lot in the next five episodes or so. So stay tuned. But like Brian said, if you're in those four areas, go check out if there's any space left.
Brian: And if not, check out seller hosted kickoff parties as well.
Griff: Now Let's meet the Seller Experience Chief of Staff, Valeri Yee.
Griff: Every website, no matter where it is, how big, how small runs into the occasional code bug, it just happens. It's inevitable. Remember that most websites are dynamic. They don't get to shut the website down for six months while they build new code base. But it's not the inevitable bug that matters, it's how the website manages to deal with them and how quickly they deal with them. And that's what we're gonna talk about today and joining us to help us get some insight into this topic is Chief of Staff of Seller Experience here at eBay. Valeri Yee, welcome back Valeri.
Valeri: Hi Griff. Thanks for having me back again.
Griff: So Valeri, remind us, what's your background here at eBay?
Valeri: I have been at eBay almost 19 years, which is crazy to think about. I have watched the product evolve from when we didn't have native app.
Griff: Which is mobile.
Valeri: Yes, sorry, mobile. Yes. And we were on just a few countries. It was just much smaller. It was actually, it was fascinating. We had one huge code base and when we completed code it took us six weeks from code complete to live to site back then. And now we launch code like three days a week.
Griff: I didn't know it was six weeks back then.
Valeri: It was, Yeah. It was kind of crazy.
Griff: It used to be every six weeks. It's now three times a week. How does that work? How do we roll it out?
Valeri: So we actually are, we act as independent scrum teams. We practice the agile methodology. And so each scrum team, usually it's anywhere from six to 12 to 14 engineers and they work on a particular section of the code base and they're the subject matter experts in that piece. And there are many, many, many scrum teams across the organization and they all launch code on demand as they need to. So in certain areas, in in seller experience and the listing tool for example, they launch code three days a week. But some teams may launch code daily, just depends. Some have a a weekly schedule. It's up to the code actually it's up to the team. They get to decide.
Griff: Who coordinates all this. Is it you?
Valeri: No, heck no. No, no. So there are agile leads is what they call them. And so the agile leads ensure that the code is up to snuff, they do a ton of automated test cases, it's not done manually as much anymore. And uh, just make sure that it all gets through all of the test cases to make sure everything that all the standard stuff works as expected.
Griff: Sometimes sellers will tell us they're seeing different things. Like one group of sellers will say, I'm seeing this. Well I'm not seeing that I'm seeing this. Why does that happen?
Valeri: There's a couple different reasons. One is that we do a lot of testing, AB testing, we do a lot of ramping, especially in the search area is that they will be constantly running tests to see which algorithm works best to get you the most buyers for your products. That's why sometimes you'll, you know, you'll see something different than I see something and because I work here, I actually get access to secret beta stuff in advance too. So my stuff's even more different than what you see. But yeah it's a little tricky sometimes when you know, we're out there reading what customers are saying. It's hard to reproduce because we don't know what test that person may be in.
Griff: Yeah. I find the same thing, not just for myself but when I'm taking calls or questions from sellers and as you mentioned, going from six weeks to three or more times a week. So much change. And you've been here for 19 years. I've been here for going on well technically 27 years and yeah, things have changed a lot and we forget how different it was. One of the things that has changed is that eBay has become much bigger and much more robust and complex as a global platform for sellers and countries in different situations around the world. But also back 19 years ago when you started, there was hardly any competition.
Valeri: That's true.
Griff: If you were looking for marketplace platforms where you could buy and sell, you know, you could count them on less than on one hand. And now that's not the case. And doesn't this fact about competition help drive the fact that we gotta keep the site up to the competition and it means changes to our code base?
Valeri: I would say it's actually two factors. One is definitely competition and the second one is technology changes. There is always new stuff happening. Like whenever you update your iOS, like my favorite feature from a couple iOS updates ago is that you can copy text from a image. Like when you take a picture of something you can actually now take the text and copy that text. That's new! That's new technology that didn't exist two updates ago, right? So the fact is that there's new things we can take advantage of to make the product better and that's also why we have data rate fast as well.
Griff: We had a recent code issue for Memorial Day. It's known internally I guess as the Memorial Day code bug?
Valeri: Just, it happened, that was just the weekend it happened. Unfortunately on a holiday weekend.
Griff: Can you take us through the timeline of how it was discovered and then the solution?
Valeri: Yeah, sure. So it's just a little use case we wanted to share with you just to see a life in the day of an engineer and how things happen on the backend. And so we have a team that is part of the customer support organization and they monitor the intake of issues that reported by you, our customers as you call in or as you chat and they send issues to the appropriate engineering team to investigate. We have escalation paths that we have to keep up to date to make sure the names are always accurate. And so there's, and people get phone calls in the middle of the night sometimes or on holiday weekends. And so that's, that's the main avenue. In addition, many of our employees, including myself are members of many public seller Facebook groups. We also read the eBay community forums and we watch for trends. I read them on the weekends when I'm on Facebook and I will definitely send things to my, my team when I see things. But I look for trends. So.
Griff: We have internally I think a lot of our sellers may know what Slack is and Slack is our internal platform for communicating with other employees both as teams and individuals. And there is a Slack channel for employees who notice things that may need looking at. I now tend to check that every day in the morning. Just to see and it's mostly so that I'm more aware if a question comes in I may be able to answer it better based on the information I get there.
Valeri: We also use the product, right? I sell on eBay myself, I've sold over 1200 things and I use the product 'cause I wanna see what our sellers are experiencing on a day-to-day basis. And yeah there's a prod bugs channel in our slack world and there's definitely a lot of people reporting things in there and it's like, Hey, is this expected behavior? And the teams will jump on it and go look at it. It's kind of fun.
Griff: In the parlance, I believe it's called eating the dog food, right? So how is this bug solved?
Valeri: So for the specific advanced listing tool bug, there was an issue where for some of our users it was appearing blank on their browser. It was a very small subset of sellers and it was on Memorial Day weekend, of course the team was notified via customer support monitoring and they worked the holiday weekend, they reproduced the issue and immediately rolled back the changes that were made on the Friday. And it's standard procedure to roll back the previous version you had to ensure the minimal customer impact. And I just want to call out like I said earlier is that before any code is released to the public, we do run automated test cases to ensure that the standard use cases are successful but sometimes edge cases do exist, right? It is a very complex ecosystem. We're constantly changing. I said there's multiple scrum teams and they're working their own way and so it's like sometimes maybe they change something that didn't make in our test case that happens too. We try our best to make sure everything's running kosher as possible.
Griff: Beyond taking the reports and rolling back, is there anything the team does kind of proactively to see if they can figure out what's going on?
Valeri: So yeah, in this particular case actually what they did is then to find the root cause of the issue. 'cause we knew something was going on, the team added some additional troubleshooting tracking to the code. We don't do this for everything because the code would be super bloated and super slow. So this, there is tracking in the code by default to just check the basic things to make sure things are working appropriately. But they add additional stuff just because they wanna go dig into what happened. So for this specific case, they made four code changes on that Friday and that were made to Listing tool. So to find the culprit, the team relaunches one code at a time, they go okay, they closely monitor it, they with the additional tracking data to try to pinpoint that issue. And so of course it was the fourth one that had the issue. I watched them do it on Monday or sorry,. Monday's a holiday. So they did it on Tuesday and they did it on Wednesday. And then Thursday night I was in the office super late, it was like 10 o'clock at night, a bunch of us here still working on it and I'm in San Jose and they were, it was actually kind of fun for me, not fun for them, but I'm sitting there witnessing this whole process of watching them literally roll the code on one, you know, they're monitoring it on one monitor and then the second monitor is watching the like error codes. And so they're watching the error codes increase. I mean it went from like, you know, 99.9% to like 99.6% and I'm like, look, it's going down. They're like, it's okay, it's still 99.6. So and then what happens is then they can sit there and they can now know which accounts are achieving the the bug. They will then go look at that and figure out like what code's is calling. And because of this, eBay has a minimum standard as which web browsers we support. So in order to protect us, and I mean you as the customer and eBay as a company, the latest versions of browsers are always safer from a a security standpoint and also from a functionality standpoint. Like I mentioned, there's always new features being added to things. In this particular case, the code change and okay, I'm sorry, I'm gonna get a little technical for a minute. Hope you don't lose people. But in this particular case, the fourth culprit was a code change that was refactoring a portion of that code to utilize the latest technology for the web browser. And what this meant in reality was that the older browsers didn't understand what that new code command we were using was because that code command literally didn't exist when the browser version was created. And so it got to that code command and went, I dunno what this is and it went blank. Now in reality we should fail better. Like we should have a little banner at the top if you've ever noticed. I personally have like the original version of the iPad and I can no longer update my iOS. Apple has said no we no longer support this so sorry. So I know for a fact there's apps I just cannot use on my iPad. I need to get a new one. But you know, it's, it's convenient to just sit there and play my solitaire or whatever it is, surf the web. It still works for that but it doesn't have all the latest and greatest bells and whistles anymore. But it's an interesting thing is that we do it on some things but maybe in this case it just wasn't that big of a change that we felt it was a browser failure of like in terms of this browser's no longer supported. The reality is is that a small subset of customers were using an outdated browser and that they were the ones that were affected. Which goes back to your original thing of, how come sometimes people have issues and sometimes people don't? Partially it's 'cause of the testing we do. But the other thing too is if 95% of the people are using the latest and greatest browser, it works fine for them. And that's that 5% and I'm making up the numbers in this particular case by the way, it's that small percentage that didn't update that are having the issue. And so it's really frustrating for them obviously. And it's frustrating 'cause everyone else is going, I don't have this problem so I do not know how to help you. So that's the inside sort of scoop of what happened on the Memorial day when the Advanced Listing Tool went blank for a few users.
Griff: Well thanks for the insight. I didn't know any of this either. I should have been paying more attention. You know, the thing that you remind me of is the different levels of urgency that a system like iOS or even Android will do when there's a need for an update, whether it's security update or technology update as opposed to the browser. So Android or iOS on your iPhone and I know Windows and the Mac OS, they have big alerts saying it's time to upgrade to the latest one. And they don't let you just click away. They're gonna remind you and remind you.
Valeri: And they snooze, right? It'll say snooze till tomorrow and that's all you get. You're like, okay, I guess tomorrow I'm gonna remind it again. Right?
Griff: And I know at eBay, if you work at eBay and there's a system update, you don't have a choice, you get a warning screen that says in one hour your system's gonna shut down because we're updating it and we don't care what you think.
Valeri: You're about to record a podcast, it does not matter.
Griff: That's happened. I'm going to actually take that into account. But when I look at my Chrome browser and I happen to just look at it now, the only thing that's there in the little corner is a little oval that says update.
Valeri: Upper right hand corner. Exactly.
Griff: And the only urgency is it's in, it's in pink and red.
Valeri: It does. It actually goes from green to yellow, orange to red. So if you're using chrome, which is what I use, yeah, upper right hand corner, if you look for that, it'll say update and it gets redder and redder.
Griff: The call to action here is besides just updating your os, whatever it may be, whether it's on your mobile phone or your desktop, keep your browsers updated or you may find yourself in this little situation that some people did over Memorial Day.
Valeri: And then also know that we code to certain standards to the latest browsers. That's where it's supposed to work the best. It's funny, I was talking to sellers this weekend and I was asking for like an example of like a non-techie example of what this new tech that's created or something doesn't work, non-compatible things. And the example that we kind of came up with was, my car is old, it's very old and it doesn't have airplay or whatever. And so like if you buy a new car now there's no CD player, it's only airplay like that happens. Like there's things that just go away over time and you're like okay, you don't need a CD player anymore because no one has CDs anymore. Well in theory. They expect you to connect your phone to the car and all your music is on your phone now. Things change. You have to evolve.
Griff: And that may be the state of change at the moment, but if you've lived long enough to see trends come and go, like I never thought I'd see vinyl return. I'm not gonna say we'll never see CDs or even cassettes come back into cars because who knows?
Valeri: But probably not eight tracks. Probably not eight tracks. Those probably not coming back.
Griff: Who knows? Well eight tracks were problematic so we romanticized them, but those things broke all the time. Plus they had that annoying when they go between tracks, the music would stop because they could never time it with the tape at a break of a song. So you'd be in the middle of the song and it would stop while it moved to the next track. So maybe not eight tracks.
Valeri: I used to sell blank cassette tapes. Actually my husband had like a bunch and I just, they were, they were hot sellers on eBay actually. Old blank new cassette tapes sell well.
Griff: More so than I think any other website. Our sellers are really invested in helping to keep our site up as well. So when they see something that doesn't look right, they like to let us know. How can sellers report possible issues or bugs that they may notice?
Valeri: There are a couple different ways. Obviously if you're talking to customer support you can tell 'em about it. I would actually suggest first there is a known issue site. Just to go check if it's a known issue. We already know about it, we're working on it. It's on ebay.com/sts and Griff's gonna put all these in the notes as well. So if you miss out the links he can put that in the show notes. Notes. And so that's if you wanna see like, hey I'm experiencing this, like does eBay know about this already? Because we might, most likely we do. So you can check there first and if it's not there, then on the eBay Community Boards you can uh, submit a technical issue. I think you just search for report technical issues. Is that where you go?
Griff: Yeah. If you go to community.ebay.com and then you can search the menus in the top for technical issues. You can also search Google for community technical issues and it shows up as you mentioned. We'll put all these links as we do every week into the summary overview for the episode.
Valeri: And I would say another way but less likely on this one. But if you are using any of our feedback systems which says tell us what you think, I wouldn't really necessarily put a bug in there, but if it's something that's not urgent, like it's a sort of a nitpick thing that you'd like us to change in the product, you can also use the Tell Us What You Think and that will make it to the product team responsible for the page you're looking at actually. So depending on where you are, it actually changes who receives that information. So it is contextual. I would also say please try to be as detailed as possible, like if you have a specific use with an item id, some produced steps. 'cause I'll tell you, nothing is more disheartening on my side when or the product side when we get a report of an issue and we can't reproduce it.
Griff: Because you don't have the information.
Valeri: We don't have the information. So I would say the more you can tell us the exact steps you did to reproduce it, it's much more likely we can get it to the right hand than the right engineer to really take a look at and find that needle in the haystack.
Griff: We also have a page where you can go in Security Center and that link is at the bottom of any eBay page where once you've clicked it, look for the links for protect your information and there is a section there that will give a link to each one of the more popular browsers and the most up-to-date version. But you can also do that directly in your browser by going to, it's usually in the upper right hand corner, like in Chrome, clicking on the hamburger, the little three ellipses that are on their side. And then look for any update information. And then like for Chrome, it's right there, it says in red right now. Update! Update! And just make sure you're always using the most updated version of your browser.
Valeri: Yeah, and it's interesting 'cause that page actually doesn't have the browser versions we support and the reality is they update so fast that it'd be hard to keep that up to date. So the messaging says just make sure you have the latest version. That is sort of the punchline of this whole podcast here is it's a huge process to launch all this code. It's a very complex marketplace and I know Griff keeps saying the site, but we also support the native mobile apps as well and on the iOS and the Android side. So that is two more code bases that we have to work on. It's very complex. We are crossing 190, I think countries across the world that our buyers live in. It's definitely a lot of work. Our engineers work very hard and they wanna make sure that the product is as high quality as possible for you guys to be successful.
Griff: Well that's always good news. Valerie, thank you so much for taking time out. You just got back from Salt Lake, I know you were visiting sellers.
Valeri: Yes my flight landed about three hours ago.
Griff: Thank you for coming into the studio, talk with us. I, uh, hope we'll see you at eBay Open?
Valeri: You will. I'm gonna be in person at the launch event in Philadelphia. Shadi will be there as well. She will be the leader that is kicking off that one and so I'll be there. So hopefully I can see some people in Philadelphia.
Griff: If you've got questions or comments you'd like to present directly to an eBay employee like Valeri or Shadi, and you're in the Philadelphia area, make sure that on, I believe it's July 30th, the early signup, there's early signup that happens July 30 or 31st. I can't remember which.
Valeri: One of those two days. Yes.
Griff: Yeah. So, and we talk about the actual date. I'm sorry, my memory has failed me again. Sign up early so that you can grab a space because space is limited at the actual live events for eBay Open. So you wanna be first in line or you'll miss out.
Valeri: Yeah, it was really fun last year.
Griff: Yeah, it was. Yes, Valerie, thanks so much. It's always a pleasure.
Valeri: Thank you Griff. Thanks everybody!
Griff: Valeri Yee is Chief of Staff of Seller Experience at eBay. She's been here for 19 years. We were talking about and learning about what goes on inside eBay when an issue arises.
Brian: You got questions?
Griff: Oh Brother, do we have questions? But you know, the good thing is we got answers! But Brian this is an unusual week. We only have two questions.
Brian: Only two?
Griff: Only two. But one of them it's rather involved and it's actually kind of an account issue and I know we have in the past that said, we don't really get into specific account issues but I think there's some learnings here that might be helpful. So we're gonna do that one as well. Now the first one that we're gonna address is, it's actually a pretty easy one. It's from an eBay seller named Chris and he sent the following to podcast@ebay.com. Like always. Brian, would you read this one?
Brian: I'd be happy to. Hello. I really enjoy the podcast and hope that you can answer my question. I got back into reselling late last year and just recently started to sell internationally. Once I learned about the new eBay International Shipping Program, I received a message from a buyer in France inquiring about why my shipping was so expensive for a $15 ball cap. I believe he was quoted around $24. I could only respond that I charge $4 and 99 cents for domestic shipping and had no control on what international shipping would be. This got me to thinking how does eBay calculate international shipping? My listing contain no package dimensions or weights. I just charge a flat 4 99 because I can pretty much mail the hat in an 8 by 8 by 8 box at about 12 ounces anywhere in the lower 48 for that price. I have hundreds of other listings of various weights and sizes that are flat rate or free shipping and the listings don't contain weights or dimensions. Does eBay have a magic way of knowing what postage will be for every item? I worry that eBay may quote an international buyer a much higher rate than necessary, which could cause me to lose sales. Thanks for all the information and entertainment you give me. Sincerely, Chris Behan
Griff: Entertainment. Yay.
Brian: It's yes, once in a while.
Griff: Chris, before we get started, I gotta tell you, if you're not including the weights and dimensions, then eBay is making some estimations and that's why they're seeing higher prices. The first step is you have to put in for example, that eight by eight by eight box for dimensions and 12 ounces because it's important when eBay figures the rate that the buyer's gonna pay. And you can view the rate card for eBay International Shipping on Seller Center. Just go to the seller center page, select shipping from the top menu bar, hover over the option for choosing a carrier or service, and then select the menu option below that for International Shipping details. Yes, it's a long navigation but it's easier than us spelling out the URL.
Brian: Yeah and we'll also put that link in the summary overview for episode 254.
Griff: Right. eBay uses what's called a prediction model that helps us estimate the size of the package. We use either the actual weight of the item in our rate card or we use the volume metric weight, whichever is greater is what is quoted to the buyer. Now the problem is you haven't provided the weight in the and dimension so that we're gonna automatically go to what might be a higher charge.
Brian: That's right. In addition to the shipping costs, we also charge a percentage of the transaction which pays for insurance of the item. Then depending on the price of the item and where it is going to the buyer, we may pay taxes and duties at the time of checkout. The taxes and duties are determined based on the individual country stipulations.
Griff: Yeah. And they're different for every country. So don't forget those. Those taxes and duties which aren't apparent when you list the item can actually boost that price up in some cases. So you're probably wondering how we calculate this thing called volumetric weight. Well, it's not that complicated actually, Chris. It's pretty straightforward. The calculation is the package width times height, times length divided by 166 and we use the dimensions, the seller supplies with the listing. See why that's important? You gotta provide those dimensions. Once we have that figure, we then compare that to the weight the seller provided. The greater number is what will be assessed at checkout. So for example, let's say for a listing, the seller provides dimensions of 25 by 12 by 4 with a weight of three pounds. So that's our example.
Brian: Okay. So let's see. Sussing it out on paper. The formula for volumetric weight for the example is the package width of 25 inches times the length of 12 inches.
Griff: Yeah.
Brian: Times the height of four inches, which equals carry the one, that's a total of 1200 inches. So now I divide 1200 by 166?
Griff: Yep.
Brian: And the number reaches 7.5.
Griff: Yes.
Brian: So the volume metric weight of the parcel is seven and a half pounds.
Griff: Yeah, that's right.
Brian: That's a lot for a baseball cap. We
Griff: Didn't use the baseball cap as example, but we could. We could say what's eight by eight by eight. Right? Eight times eight is 64. Eight times 64 is 512. Right? And then you divide that by 166, it's three pounds. Yeah. So kind of the same thing we're talking here, but that would be the weight. Now you said?
Brian: I think he's said 12 ounces.
Griff: 12 ounces. Yeah. I think eight by eight by eight is a big box to put a hat in. You could stick that hat if it's just a cap, you could put that into a padded envelope and it's gonna be fine. It's not gonna break. Right? It's made out of cloth. You could save the buyer a lot of money for shipping if you make the package as small as possible without sacrificing the item safety in transit. But in this case, in the example we used with the 25 by 12 by 4, because the package is larger, we charge based on the volumetric weight and the buyer will be charged in this case for a 7.5 pound package if compared to the rate card and not the weighted weight of the parcel, which is three pounds.
Brian: And didn't we provide a tip in a recent episode for a seller who was curious as to what the shipping shows for an international buyer?
Griff: Oh Brian, you have such a good memory. We did do that. A seller can always go directly to an international eBay site, search for one of their items by item number. 'cause item number is the easiest. You can just copy that number before you go to the international eBay site. And then once you're on the listing page, you find it, you change the country shown in the shipping section to the same country as the eBay international site you're visiting. This will show you exactly what a buyer in that country sees for shipping costs through eBay International Shipping.
Brian: So Chris, the bottom line here is that the seller should always provide accurate package weight and dimensions and whenever possible provide the smallest shipping parcel as possible without sacrificing the safety of the item.
Griff: Yeah, that's really important. And I don't know why you'd put a cap in an eight by eight box, but that's just me. I mean if it was a fedora, that might get crushed, it's something different.
Brian: Yeah. I think if he does that also my assumption is the buyer's gonna see a lower rate for the international stuff.
Griff: Oh no, he will. I mean they will. If you were to take that cap, if it's a cloth cap, just stick it into a padded envelope, it's gonna be a lot less volumetric weight. Now on to the next question, which is the complicated one for this week. It was sent to podcasts@ebay.com by seller Liz. It's also in two parts. This is her first email. I recently sold an item and the buyer opened a claim saying I sent the wrong item. He included pictures of the item he received and it's the item he's going to return. The problem is that I shipped the correct item as described in my listing and have never seen the item he photographed. I don't resell professionally. Every item I sell is an item I have personally purchased. So I know I never owned the item in the photos. I also personally photograph and package and ship every item in the store. The item I sold him is gone from my inventory, further proof to me that I sold and sent the correct item. The item was a great deal for him at $110 because it new that item was $300 and I have no idea what he is sending back. I have all positive reviews and I'm afraid to complain or repeal because I don't want to jeopardize my seller rating. By the time you respond, I'm sure I will have lost this battle, but it's very upsetting to be out the item my money and risking a ding against me when I'm 100% the victim of fraud in this case. Hmm. There is a lot of disparate information out there about how to handle this type of situation. So I'm hoping to get direct and correct information from you. Oh dear. The pressure's on.
Brian: I think we can handle it.
Griff: Well. Let's see. I appreciate everything you do and I'm a devoted follower of your podcast. Thank you.
Brian: Well thank you Liz.
Griff: Yeah, thank you. We responded to Liz with the following, Liz. So my advice whenever this, this sort of thing is as follows, your first move is to assume that somebody made a mistake. Either the buyer or you, perhaps he purchased the mistaken item from another seller and is confusing you with that seller. That's happened to me. It does happen. I advise that you messaged the buyer with a link to the item he bought from you and ask him if he perhaps made a mistake about which seller sold him the item he he's wanting to return. Don't be accusatory, just ask. Wait for a response. If he responds telling you for example that, oh I guess I made a mistake, then ask him to close out the return request and consider opening one with the seller who sold him the item he disputes no consequences to your account. However, if the seller claims that no mistake was made, don't argue with them. Tell 'em to send the item back, then wait to receive the item. Sometimes the buyer never actually sends the item back. If that's the case, wait out the clock. After 30 days or so, eBay will close the return window. No consequences to your account. But if the buyer does return the item and the item you receive is not the item you sent, you may elect to dispute the return and ask eBay to step. In in the process be sure to provide all the necessary documentation requested. You have the photos the buyer sent you have a a message. And if they clearly show a different item, eBay may rule in your favor. However, we can't tell you with any certainty that they will. That's the whole thing about account issues and having them on the podcast. But your other option, if you're above standard in the listing in question, often free shipping for returns, you may elect to wait for the item to arrive back. And if the item is not the item you sent and you're above standard and offer free returns or you're Top Rated seller, you can withhold up to 50% of the buyer's refund without consequence to you. The buyer cannot appeal. Note this option by the way, is not available if you ask eBay to step in. So you have to think about this. Right. So that's where we were. And then Liz emailed me back after a few days and said, Hi guys, thank you on so many levels I appreciate you. I was a hundred percent wrong. So she stands corrected. I'm so ashamed and also so glad I sought and listened to your console, but this buyer is still a jerk and I can't wait for this to be over so I can block him. I took your advice and sent the buyer a clarifying email. He verified and assured me he had received the incorrect item. After another exhaustive search, I found the item he ordered. I had shipped the item based on the brand thinking I only had one item from that brand rather than inspecting it carefully against my photos. And I gotta tell you, I've done this more than once.
Brian: Yeah. Liz is not the first seller to have done this.
Griff: No, no don't feel bad. This is why a lot of sellers then go on to develop as fail safe of system as they can with identifying numbers and bin locations. Anyway, Liz says, my hubby who had assured me he did not recognize the item in the buyer's photos recanted. The hubby recanted after she presented this evidence. So feeling awful, I sent an apology and an offer to send the correct item with free shipping and a generous discount. Now that's a good seller. It's however the buyer then responded asking me to send the correct item and then he would compare the two and decide which if any, he would like to keep all at my expense of course. I declined thinking this is illegal per eBay guidelines and requested he return the incorrect item for a full refund, including shipping both ways. To date, he still has not returned the incorrect item. He also challenged the authenticity of both items. Liz goes on. Ultimately the incorrect item was $120. He only paid a hundred dollars. So it's more valuable than the item he purchased. The item he purchased was listed for a hundred. The only other thing I could find for this item was 140. So already pretty good deals and I offered him additional 20%. So $80. He wanted both items with the second shift outside of eBay protocol and I was done at that point. I'm guessing I have no recourses. This error was clearly my fault. I'm waiting to block him as a buyer until this is all resolved. Thoughts about that? I'm attending the eBay Open in Phoenix next month and I hope to improve my skills with the overwhelming platform that is what eBay has become signed. Liz, this is a long one.
Brian: It's, I have an opinion on a couple things.
Griff: Oh, please.
Brian: I made some notes on a couple things.
Griff: Okay.
Brian: Or I jotted down some notes on my notepad next to me here.
Griff: What did you jot?
Brian: I jotted down block because I wanna talk about that and then I jotted down the buyer fraud kind of thing at the very beginning in the first part of the email.
Griff: Your thoughts?
Brian: So first, well first off I'll address her question whether or not she should send the second item. She should never send the second item. Liz, if you haven't yet, do not ask eBay a step in.
Griff: Yeah, I wouldn't even ask eBay to step in at this point either.
Brian: And I'm pretty sure the buyer is not allowed to keep the first item and demand that you ship the second item. No. No seller is ever obliged to honor such a request.
Griff: Exactly. That would be a buyer trying to profit from the mistake of a seller. I'd simply ignore that request with a polite response saying that you'll refund him for the wrong item once you receive it and leave it at that. Remind the buyer how to open a return case, you know, be helpful and which response to select receive the wrong item. Also remind them that you will pay for return shipping. So they're not gonna have to purchase that label.
Brian: So Liz, if he asks eBay to get involved, they will see the situation and tell the buyer to ship the item back to you.
Griff: Yeah, I'm certain of that by the way. eBay is not gonna say no. You have to ship the other item and then take your chances.
Brian: Agreed.
Griff: Always read through eBay. Help pages for topics like this one. If you search on eBay help for seller protections, you're gonna find more information.
Brian: And another word about running a business. On eBay or anywhere else for that matter, you will run into difficult customers and you won't make a profit on every single sale. True. These are unavoidable facts of doing business. Don't focus on a single transaction, look at your sales and aggregate over a period of a quarter, half year or annually. That number is the only one that counts. Griff, what's your take on blocking buyers?
Griff: ? I think, you know.
Brian: I think I do.
Griff: I've relaxed my take a little bit. So in the past I was pretty strident in saying I would never block a buyer and I would never recommend that a seller block a buyer. I think it's okay. I mean if you've had a really unpleasant experience, go ahead, put them on your block list. There's nothing wrong there. You can't though put this buyer on the block list while there's a transaction in process. I think it can, but it's not gonna impact this particular transaction, because it's already happened. But my advice about blocking buyers is if you're going to do it based on your own experience, do not hang out on the scrolling boards of doom, looking for sellers complaining about buyers and then using their information to go and add that buyer to your blocked list. Agreed. There are two sides to every story as Liz now sees. So I think the buyer is still making an unreasonable demand, but the initial mistake was a seller mistake as unintentional and innocent as it was. This is tricky because of what the buyer's demanding. I might think about blocking him. I think in this case I would say, how do I turn this around? Making that request to send the item. If you look at it from the buyer's perspective, they may be thinking, what's up with you? Why did you send me the wrong item? And they just wanna make sure they're covered. I would reassure them, I wouldn't block them in this case. I wouldn't block this buyer. I'd say, Hey, my mistake, send the item back
Brian: And they'll get refunded.
Griff: They'll get refunded and then I'll relist this item to buy it or bid on or whatever the format is. And I'll make sure you get that one if you buy it or you're the winning bidder, I'm assuming it's Buy It Now. Yeah. Again, my return policy's pretty open. If you get it and you don't like it, you can ship it back. I'll pay for return shipping. My goal is to make you happy. I think that might go a longer way to making a sale than saying, and now you're blocked, you've been declined!
Brian: Yeah, I would agree with you on this one, Griffin. Like I, I think what started off the situation was, was a seller mistake. And they happen, I mean we're all human given that the buyer's trying to protect themselves too. And I think I would just reassure that buyer that with money back guarantee, eBay will refund them if they go through the process and return the item properly. You know, who knows, maybe they're not even aware of that. I would be disinclined to block the buyer in this scenario since the beginning of this turned out to be not a great experience for either the buyer or the seller. Started with the seller mistake.
Griff: Yeah. That that's our advice. Well I think you had a good take on it as well, Brian. So because this was a long one, that was the only questions we have this week.
Brian: Yeah, I'm glad you brought in an account specific one. I mean, it's generic. It's in a way that all of our sellers have these types of issues. Not exactly this scenario, but they run into return issues.
Griff: They do. I've had a few. I try to take my own advice because as you know, sometimes I'm not in the best mood. And I did get a question about one of my items or two of my items this week, and both of them kind of started to set me off. Because both questions were, you could read maybe that the subtext was, are you a legitimate seller? And my first reaction, the visceral one is to say, are you insinuating that I would sell inauthentic fragrances? Are you insinuating that the item that I said is brand new and for some reason this feature doesn't work? But I pushed those feelings down, realized these could be buyers that have had a bad experience in the past. And I said, yeah, of course these are authentic. And yes, that feature does work. It's a brand new battery, it's a brand new item, it's never been worn, it's still in the box. Everything works. And I didn't block them because I want them to buy the items.
Brian: Right. You know, sometimes I think when I see a seller on the boards who, you know, some of them are out there a lot, you kind of get a sense of their personalities. And there are a few few that they'll complain maybe, it's summertime, right? So we hear oftentimes, hey, my sales are down, it's summertime, or it's my sales are down. I think I wonder how many buyers they have on their block bidder list. And the reality is that's not gonna drive that metric.
Griff: No, I think if you've got 10, 20, even 50, it's not gonna probably. You know, where it gets me concerned is I've met sellers in the past that said, what's the limit for the number of people you can put on there? Yeah. And I've said, I believe it's like 10,000 or something. He said, well I'm getting there and I'm thinking you have almost 10,000 buyers on your blocked list. Boy!
Brian: That is a whole site.
Griff: That's paranoia. That's really bad.
Brian: And doing that many, it will likely have an impact because if you're a good seller and you have great inventory, you're gonna want to have repeat buyers.
Griff: Absolutely. That's our questions for this week.
Brian: And if you have a question like Liz and Chris that you'd like us to try and answer, why not call it in on (888) 723-4630.
Griff: Don't forget, we like email, but we love that call in line and no one's using it this summer. (888) 723-4630. We feel ignored and abandoned. Call that hotline anytime of the day and leave your question or comment and we might put it on the air.
Brian: If you're not a call on the phone person, you can email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: And now it's time for your Three Point Podcast Checklist.
Brian: Check the Announcement Board at ebay.com/announcements for UpToDate Seller News every day.
Griff: And though it's really hard sometimes to not do it, don't assume that the buyer is at fault. Gather all the information first and consider all possibilities, including an unintentional seller error. We all make them.
Brian: We all do need to review anything in this episode. It's easy. Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we reference during the episode .
Griff: On our next episode. And you're gonna love this because I know these two people are your favorite. We're gonna talk to eBay seller, Lori Belu about the fulfillment service she and her husband David provide. It's called E Bliss Fulfillment and it's open to all eBay sellers. I think you're gonna find this interesting.
Brian: And they are one of my favorites. I have lots of favorites.
Griff: Far be it from you to play favorites.
Brian: My children. I don't want you know, one to think I like 'em more than the others. I'll get in trouble. We'd like to again thank our guests this week. eBay Seller Experience Chief of Staff, Valeri Yee.
Griff: We'll see you next week, Brian.
Brian: Yes.
Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
eBay Seller Experience Chief-of-Staff Valeri Yee rejoins us this week so share the steps eBay takes to roll out new site features and how we handle the occasional code issue so that there is minimal impact on your business. Griff and Brian answer questions on how eBay calculates the shipping cost shown to your international buyers and how to best handle a sticky “wrong item received” situation.
Episode Links:
eBay International Shipping Rate Chart
Seller Protections
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events
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