Ep 279 || Consignment Selling and Community

[podcast_team]

Libby Broggi of Consignment Chats returns with an update on consignment business and the importance of community among sellers with shared interests. Kayomi Kayoshi from the eBay Community team joins us to talk about starting a seller meeting in your area. Question topics this week include: Sales by Category in the Transaction Report; how to facilitate partial returns; locating and using the Transaction Report for your business bookkeeping. Episode Links:

eBay Shipping Calculator
Seller Meetings on Community
Consignment Chats LinkTree
Seller Hub Transaction Reports
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'm Brian.

Griff: I'm Griff, and this is the eBay For Business podcast. Your favorite source for the information and inspiration to help you start, manage and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. Your favorite marketplace. And this is episode 279, and you know who's with us in the studio? Of course, it's Brian. Hi Brian.

Brian: Hi Griff. How are you? It's my favorite marketplace as well.

Griff: I should hope so.

Brian: I just wanna make sure our listeners know you said your favorite marketplace.

Griff: Yeah, And you know, I, I say that because I tried out a lot of marketplaces in the last year as a buyer and the experiences were all mm, hit or miss some not so great. And I never have a problem buying on eBay.

Brian: That's like me. I never have a problem buying on eBay.

Griff: And I buy a lot. I buy an awful lot too much. I buy too much on eBay.

Brian: I know. I just bought a book. eBay is such a great place to get books. Yeah, it's incredible.

Griff: And when you're done with them, you can resell them.

Griff: You can.

Brian: Well Griff. Who's our guest this week?

Griff: Well this week Brian, we actually have two guests. So first we're gonna talk to someone you know very well because she's on your team. Kayomi Kayoshi from the Community Team is gonna join us to talk about one of your favorite topics and that's Seller Meetings. And I know it sounds like we're really pushing them and the reason that it sounds like that is because we are, we want more sellers starting seller meetings and we want more sellers going to seller meetings. So she's gonna talk about that. And then another old friend of ours, Libby Broggi is with us from Consignment Chats and she's going to talk about two very hot trends right now. And it's something we have discussed on previous episodes and that's selling on consignment. And because she's so expert at this, she has great insights on how to set that up and how to do it. And also the importance in growing her business that came from participating in communities of shared interests with other consignment sellers. She has a really active community. But first, Brian, so tell us what's in the news this week.

Brian: This week the news is about UPS. UPS Air and Ground rates are increasing on February 4th, 2024. We recommend checking the rates on eBay labels for the impact to your packages based on the weights and zones. In addition to those rate increases, there are also changes scheduled for signature confirmation, declared value delivery area surcharges, and also additional handling surcharges. We urge you to visit the eBay shipping calculator for UpToDate pricing on shipping services. And that's UPS, FedEx, and USPS. Go to www.ebay.com/p/calculator.

Griff: Yeah. And we'll put that in the uh, transcript as we always do. So you can access it quickly.

Brian: Yes.

Griff: So before we go to Kayomi, I know Brian, that we usually hold seller email to the end of the podcast, but in keeping with the ongoing rate changes for all carriers, I just received this email a few minutes ago before we started recording. So I thought I'd read it. It starts off, Hey y'all. He says, just by the way, it's Steve who said this, just a heads up on the new USPS rates. The new rate system is very dimensional, weight sensitive. He says, as an example, a 13 pound box going from North Carolina to San Diego. The first time he packed it, it was a 12 by 12 by 12 inch box. It was $18 and 77 cents. I was able to get it in safely to a 12 by eight by six box and the rate was $11 and 22 cents.

Brian: Significant difference.

Griff: $6 and change at that level is a lot of money. And then he said, if I had selected Priority for these boxes, it would've been $50 for the 12 inch cube box and only $20 for the 12 by eight by six. Wow. Before the new rate changes says Steve USPS was the same rate on all domestic boxes, 12 by 12 by 12 or smaller. But that's no longer the case. Let your listeners know to measure those boxes and reduce the size when you can. My wife says I should do the same with my ego regards, Steve. And his store is Bar 27 Innovations and he's got two stores. I don't know how anyone handles two stores, BrokenSpoke-27. So, yeah Steve, thanks for that little message.

Brian: I almost feel like this is maybe one I should talk to the Shipping Team about. Do we make an announcement?

Griff: Maybe you should, but if we don't, at least you're smart duckies and you tuned into the podcast to get the latest and greatest from sellers, not us, from sellers who are paying attention to these things so they can share it with you. So there's another good reason to subscribe to the eBay for Business podcast now. Now let's go welcome Kayomi and talk a little bit about community and seller events.

Griff: Back in 1995, what set eBay apart? Well, besides being the first online marketplace of its kind and before you start sending me email that AOL was the first marketplace, it was nothing like eBay. So what set eBay apart and what caught my eye when I first showed up there in 1996 was its really vibrant and active community of sellers and buyers that were conversing on what was the first community platform on eBay. And it was just a scrolling chat board. Over time it grew as eBay grew and it is now the platform that we know today. There's no other place like it on any other marketplace. And joining me today is the current community program manager for the community platform. Welcome Kayomi Kayoshi. It's your first time on the podcast. Welcome.

Kayomi: Thank you. Yes it is. I'm looking forward to it.

Griff: Can you just give us an overview of your role?

Kayomi: Absolutely. I'm the Community Program Manager and what that entails is a ton of community work, as the title suggests. I think one of the main parts is managing the seller meetings program, which we'll talk about today, a lot in depth since that's ramped up this past year. The Community page in general, the forums working with sellers, so on and so forth. Anything revolving community, I usually have my hand in it somehow.

Griff: And I'm assuming you enjoy it?

Kayomi: Oh absolutely. I love it. Before this role, I think my involvement with working with communities was realized at a very young age from being part of different groups and I used to hula dance as a young girl and so just connecting with people with similar interests and realizing the value in that is what sparked my interests. And then that worked its way into high school clubs, college clubs, working with the international department at my college and becoming like an international peer mentor. I just really found that I love connecting people and connecting with people and making other people realize the value in connection and in community because it's such a strong resource.

Griff: So there's a lot of aspects of of the community platform I think when sellers first hear, but if even if they're not active participants, they think of discussions, people talking back and forth. But you mentioned the heart of the platform, which is really we've been really promoting and working on a lot over the last year and that's seller meeting events. Can you give us a little outline of what those are?

Kayomi: Absolutely. Seller meetings, I like to say they are events that are hosted by sellers and for sellers, like you mentioned, trying to sell on eBay. There are tons of layers to it. I think people should take advantage of other sellers on the platform because they are a wealth of knowledge. Even in my time here, I've learned a ton from my fellow counterparts at eBay but also from the sellers that I've had the opportunity to meet with. These events are hosted by sellers. They're in charge of choosing the topic, the location, everything that goes into an event. The only thing we provide them really is swag, which is a great benefit and a place to post their events, which is the seller events, ebay.com or you can find it at community.ebay.com and hit the little Events Tab and it'll take you straight to the site. You'll be able to view all the events there. And like I said, these are seller hosted events so every single location has something special to offer and you can never expect the same thing from the same meeting. So it's really nice.

Griff: It was a growing aspect of eBay prior to us actually having a page or an area on the platform. And then the pandemic hit.

Kayomi: Mm-Hmm . Oh yes.

Griff: How did that impact seller events?

Kayomi: When Covid hit, of course we transitioned events from in-person meetings to virtual meetings since there was a pandemic going on and we couldn't meet in person. And now I would say starting last year in 2023, we've started to make that shift where we're trying to host more meetings in person because we want that engagement. I know it's very accessible to meet people online and that's fantastic, the accessibility of it, but there's just something about connecting in person and being able to chat and have things come up on the fly and be there in person, handout swag in person, maybe bring items to list in person. We're really trying to lean into that and we're still hosting virtual events, but Covid really shifted things to a more virtual platform and now we're kind of shifting it again to a more in-person format.

Griff: I started going to seller events way back in 2005. I think that was the first event I went to and it was in the Chicago area and met many people who I'm still friends with today. So they're a great way to meet and socialize and to establish connections and relationships with other sellers, which can be quite valuable.

Kayomi: Absolutely. And I think it's easy to isolate yourself when you're selling and it becomes very redundant just doing the same thing every single day. Let me sit on my laptop, let me list these items, let me take photos. And so like you were saying, just meeting with people who share the same interests as you and being able to connect over that and building what sometimes turn out to be lifelong friendships and relationships is really amazing.

Griff: How did it impact you? Actually traveling around and meeting sellers?

Kayomi: I got to travel to my first event in the summertime and it was to Liz OKane's event. And she's very well loved and she was so kind with facilitating that, working with me to be able to go to her event and learned a ton. Met 20 plus sellers at her event, which is amazing. And they were all so kind, was able to have conversations with them, learned about some of their frustrations with eBay, talked them through that, what they're loving, what they're not loving. And it's actually really funny. Through Liz's event, we found two other seller meeting hosts along the way. So a couple months later someone reached out and was like, we met at Liz's event. I'm actually moving to New Mexico and I'd love to start one here. There was someone else who started one I think last month in Springfield, Illinois. And so yes, this need for community, it's palpable, you can feel it.

Griff: And these events are growing in number.

Kayomi: Absolutely. We've really been marketing this and pushing this. It's more visible and we sent out an email actually if you're registered as a seller, you should have received the email. It was introducing this program from that email alone, I think we got 15 plus applications to start up a meeting. If you look on the website and you don't see one in your area and you'd like to attend one, there should be more at least 15 popping up in this first quarter. And if you'd like to host one, feel free to apply on this site, sellerevents.ebay.com.

Griff: Are there requirements for starting a group and having one appear on our side on the community platform?

Kayomi: The only requirement that we have is that you are an eBay seller.

Griff: Yeah, that makes sense.

Kayomi: Yeah, just so you can help guide people and answer questions, that is one of the only things required. We really want this to be an inclusive environment for people and if you have this desire to host, that's all we're looking for. We just want that engagement from you and we'll take it from there and we'll help you as needed to get you started.

Griff: Kayomi, I wanted to ask you a question about you yourself, because I know when you started at eBay you had some limited experience with the platform. How have other sellers helped you better improve and increase your knowledge of selling on eBay?

Kayomi: So like you were saying, limited experience before I actually started working here and I have had experience with secondhand fashion and working with that and fashion has always been something that I've been interested in. And so I've actually started to list my own items and that process as a whole, I feel like sometimes the line gets blurred between who's the eBay staff and who's the seller. Because when I meet up with them, I'm like, any tips on listing like jewelry for example or things like that? And the tips that they give me are invaluable. I wouldn't know that from being a beginner who's only listed a handful of items. And it really comes with their decades of experience. And so like I said, sometimes I'm the master, they are the student, sometimes they're the master, I'm the student.

Griff: It's a never ending learning process. The learning never ends. It keeps you engaged and involved. So tell us, where can we go if we're interested in finding a seller meetup in our geographical area that we can attend or maybe starting one up?

Kayomi: If you're familiar with the community.ebay.com site, you can head there and there's an events tab at the top of the page, click that and it'll take you directly to the page to see all seller meetings in your area. If you wanna go directly to the page, that's going to be sellerevents.ebay.com. And that's where you will find every event that's listed as of now.

Griff: And you can create and register your scheduled events on that page. And it's a pretty easy process.

Kayomi: Yeah. And if you register to start your own events, we have a handbook that we give out. We have regular training sessions that we do with the website. A lot of different tools for you to get comfortable with it.

Griff: How exciting! Well I hope if you're considering going to an event or you're getting tired of being all alone in your basement listing items and selling them on eBay and shipping that you'll consider looking for a regular social event in your area where you can meet other sellers like yourself and have a little fun sharing your knowledge and expertise. And if you wanna start an event, we really encourage you to do so and you can do so at the same page that Komi just mentioned. Kayomi, I want to thank you so much. This has been a great pleasure. I hope you'll come back and visit with us again.

Kayomi: I'd love to come back if you'd have me back. Thanks Griff.

Griff: Kayomi Kayoshi is the Community Program Manager at community.ebay.com and we've been specifically focusing on the seller events portion of that platform. If you're looking to get engaged socially with other sellers, we recommend you check it out today.

Griff: There are two aspects to selling on eBay, which I have always found fascinating. One of them is the idea of consignment selling mostly because it's a great way to get inventory and run a business without having to actually invest in the inventory. And the second thing about selling on eBay is the idea of communities. And there's always been one big seller community starting at eBay way back in the beginning in 1995. And over time it's branched out not just on eBay itself, but into other social marketing channels and its sellers helping other sellers succeed in their business. And while I was mowing this over as a topic for one of the episodes, I thought, you know what we should do is go right back to the source, the font of all wisdom, if you will, when it comes to both consignment, business and community. And that's our good friend at Consignment Chats. Libby Broggi. Hi Libby.

Libby: Hi Griff. I'm so happy to be here again.

Griff: So what I wanted to talk about those two topics, but first I thought in case anyone missed the episode, which I believe was over a year and two ago that we did with you, is to give us a little rundown about your business and what you do and what you sell.

Libby: I've been selling on eBay for, I don't know, 25 years at this point. And full-time as a business for the past 11 and a half. My business is Conchi Consignment and I started in a brick and mortar and sold on eBay alongside that. And it was really just such an incredible experience to be able to like recycle goods and money back into your community and be there to see the difference it was making. I knew this is where I wanted to spend my life and this was the kind of business I wanted to have. It was very rewarding, hard but rewarding. So now I'm all online. I no longer have the brick and mortar and I sell everything. I love to sell everything. I love the variety of it. I love to learn a new niche and it's just a lot of fun. Alongside of that, as we were doing this, I would get, well actually since I opened, I would get questions from people. How do I sell on eBay? I've always wanted to run a consignment store. I've always wanted to sell consignment. How do I get started? And it didn't really make sense to do that in my consignment business. Another woman and I got together we're like, there's nothing out there in this space that really talks about consignment and helps consignment sellers. We decided to start a new business, which is Consignment Chats. We have a podcast YouTube channel, we provide coaching, we have a free private community on Facebook and we do all sorts of things and we help people get started.

Griff: And if you've listened to recent episodes, we are actively promoting other podcasts that have to do with eBay selling. So we will put a link to your podcast in the item transcript.

Libby: Yes. I mean I listen to a whole bunch of podcasts. I have my playlist, eBay for Business at the top of course.

Griff: Yay. Yay .

Libby: And that's what I do while I'm driving or listing.

Griff: And we've talked about how this is really helpful for people who otherwise spend all of their time kind of alone doing their eBay business and not really socializing at the same time and it's a great way to stay connected.

Libby: Absolutely. And our mission is to make sure every seller is consignment ready. It's not necessarily that you have to sell consignment, it's that every reseller should be consignment ready because the second you tell somebody you're a reseller, what's the first thing they usually come to you with?

Griff: I got this thing and I don't want it. Can you sell it for me?

Libby: Yeah. I mean we all get that question constantly. And what we were finding, um, people were kind of accidentally falling into consignment doing it as a favor, not doing it in a sustainable way, not taking the correct percentages. And all of a sudden they had this business going and they didn't lay the foundation. So we say every reseller should have some kind of agreement in their toolbox ready to go.

Griff: So what does that agreement look like? Do you guys help with formulating or or putting together that agreement for a new seller?

Libby: We absolutely do. We keep it very simple. It's kind of, I consider it almost like a handshake agreement. We have a free one that you can download on consignment chats.com, like a sample one and it just says what the terms of your consignment are and it's super helpful to say yes and it's super helpful to use it as a tool to say no, your things don't fit within the scope of what I do.

Griff: Is that a common mistake that a lot of sellers make is taking the wrong kind of items?

Libby: Yes. Or getting pressured into taking something that they're really not interested in or they know doesn't have great resale value or you just wanna be nice all the time and do somebody a favor. You know, my grandma has these dolls, she really wants to sell them. And what about the Beanie Baby collection?

Griff: Yeah, uh, no. Or I got these Gucci handbags that I found in a shop that in a little popup shop that was in the alley. Mm-Hmm. behind the, the station over by, you know, I guess you really do have to be a bit discerning and practice some discretion. Do you, for example, Libby, do you have a value floor below which you just won't take an item on consignment?

Libby: I generally do $20 and above, which is unusual. Most consignment sellers will do $50 and above, and I find that's the point at which they can recoup the money because of the community I started in that didn't serve my community well. So I am kind of the exception in my business to that, but that's the way we do things and I found a way to do that and do it profitably. So everybody's different.

Griff: What's something else that you tell a seller when you're advising them to be consignment ready? What's another concern beyond just selling your own inventory on eBay?

Libby: What we tell people is get the agreement, know what percent you would like, that's a biggie. And make sure you can sustain your business with that percentage. Know what you're gonna do when the items expire. Know what you're willing to take, what you're willing not to take. It's not that complicated. But the first thing I tell people to do is put yourself through the paces of consignment. Take your own items and put them through your process. Read yourself the agreement and see if there's any little flaws in how you're going to do things. A lot of people will use that consignment. Like we have one woman in our group that lives in a very rural area and she has a consignment account and she is putting money in that for her wifi because it is very expensive where she lives. So you can think about it like that, like use your consignment account to pay for something in your business and put yourself through the pieces first before you branch out.

Griff: That's good advice. What happens when you are selling items on consignment and one of those items is returned?

Libby: So when you're first starting, what I recommend is before you do your consignment payout, you wait until that return period has passed. But for experienced sellers and those that are doing a large volume, what we usually do, we just absorb the return as part of our business and it's just not worth it to be holding payouts once your volume increases like that.

Griff: So if you're doing a big enough volume of consignments and you have a certain percentage of returns, one of the options besides maybe waiting out the return period before you pay out is to just pay it out, take the item back, and then you sell it, it becomes your property.

Libby: Yeah, I mean I do have that happen. I don't know, maybe once, once a month, once every two months those items always sell. Somebody bought them once, they're gonna buy them again. Hopefully, I'm not jinxing myself now, but it's worked out well for us.

Griff: It's kind of what eBay does with eBay. International shipping, you know, with eBay, international shipping. Now if you get a return, eBay handles it, whatever the reason, and then eBay takes the merchandise if it's sent back. Sometimes they just say, don't bother, and then they'll liquidate it. So eBay's kind of doing that themselves.

Libby: Yeah, and I mean that's great for us that sell internationally. Love that.

Griff: In your group community chat, do you have an idea how big your audience is? If you don't mind?

Libby: Our private community is about 800 sellers at this point. That's great. Yeah, and we are, you know, we're not for everyone. I always say if you're not collaborative, if you're not interested in growing, you know, maybe we're not for you. But the people that are in there are just phenomenal. What a positive, uplifting, wonderful group it is just a joy to work with them all the time.

Griff: Does it cost something to join the group?

Libby: No, it, we have the free private Facebook community. We also offer Patreon where we do coaching and mastermind groups and things like that.

Griff: With Patreon, content creators can provide training or coaching and it's a low cost way of getting recompensed for your expertise and time.

Libby: Yeah, it's been wonderful to have that. So all of that, like we can talk numbers in there because not everybody wants to put their information out on, even in a private Facebook community. So it allows us to talk about our numbers and you know, not be recorded or just really be frank with each other.

Griff: Is there ever any drama?

Libby: Or sometimes call each other out? Yeah, , I love the Real Housewives. That is my guilty pleasure. However, my life is drama free and I keep it that way and our community stays that way as well.

Griff: Of course that's what we aspire to. I'm just, I'm only joking.

Libby: I really do need to mention, so it's not just me there, I have two co-hosts, Samantha Pratt and Molly Liska and we are a partnership. We are all consignment chats and we are equal partners. We run the community, we co-host the podcast and the YouTube channel, so I need to give them a shout out. They are two of the most wonderful women I have ever met and I just feel blessed to work with them.

Griff: Do any of your group members or subscribers ask you about starting their own podcast?

Libby: Occasionally we do get that question.

Griff: And what do you tell them?

Libby: It's a lot of work. I mean, we've actually coached people through starting YouTube channels and things like that and, but we're resellers, we're used to hard work. Like when somebody says it's a lot of work, like we know what that means. Yeah, we've definitely seen people launch podcasts, but a lot of people decide the other way.

Griff: If you look back, let's say two or three years you choose, what are the trends in consignment looking like when it comes to things like volume or categories of items? What have you noticed?

Libby: Oh my gosh, there have been so many cycles. The only cycle that I can say has stuck in the past 12 years is the fact that people buy furniture the day before a holiday. That's the only trend that has been remained standard throughout my time.

Griff: Really, that doesn't make any sense to me.

Libby: Yep. Day before Thanksgiving, day before Christmas day, like any big holiday Easter and all I can think is they're getting their house ready for guests and making it look nice, but also family is usually around to help you move the item.

Griff: Oh, that makes sense. Yeah.

Libby: This is just a theory that's, but that's the only trend I've really seen. Stick costume, jewelry has been very cyclical. Brands are cyclical. Dolls.

Griff: Dolls ?

Libby: Like, so we don't, we generally didn't do dolls because most of them didn't have resale value. However, in the past year, maybe a little less than a year, we've seen an uptick in the sale of dolls for whatever reason. I don't know. I love being an everything seller just for that reason. Like one category goes down, another goes up.

Griff: Beyond consignment and the stuff coming to you, are you still out there actively buying?

Libby: As a hobby I'll go to auctions. My son and I like to do auctions, uh, a lot. But there is so much coming in on consignment, it's a rarity that I would go out and source something or buy something.

Griff: Are you running the consignment business out of your house or do you have a separate location?

Libby: I just moved six months ago and I moved into a space that my whole bottom floor is Anna Packer's term. I love it. I'm going to use it. eBasement.

Griff: eBasement!

Libby: Yes. Whole bottom floor of my house. Same footprint as the top floor is my living area. Bottom floor is um, business. So it's been phenomenal.

Griff: The only thing about, uh, it's a clever word, but the only thing is it reminds me of Debasement.

Libby: What's Debasement?

Griff: So it's Debase, debasing yourself is to...

Libby: Debasement. Oh yeah, . I was picturing the letter D. Okay.

Griff: So debasement in eBasement.

Libby: No. Great. Now I have that association. I didn't need that. Okay. ,

Griff: My work here is almost done. Well Libby, I want to thank you. It's always a pleasure. I'm fascinated by this business model and I think I can confess to you that it's something I'm considering in the future should I end up retiring from eBay. I'm not going to, I'm not planning it, but it would be fun to have as much fun and success as you're having.

Libby: Well Griff, you know where to go. Consignmentchats.com, you can link into our community, we will help you through it and it is such a supportive, wonderful group that you will never look back. I'm telling you ..

Griff: Libby, it's a pleasure. Thanks again.

Libby: Thank you.

Griff: Libby Broggi, along with Samantha and Molly, they run the site Consignment Chat. If you're considering starting a consignment business or you have a consignment business now and you need some assistance in tuning it and making it work more efficiently, I don't think you could do any better than checking out Consignment Chat and see what those three gals have for you and the rest of their community that can get you started and get you successful. Running a consignment business on eBay will put all the links to the consignment chat pages in the transcript for episode 279.

Brian: You got questions? We've

Griff: We've got answers. Our first question out of three this week, well technically four because one of them is a two-parter. But our first question, it's a pretty easy one, Brian, but I thought it would be good to include it. So, uh, why don't you read it and then we'll talk about it.

Brian: This is from an email sent to podcast@ebay.com by seller, be more treasures. Hello. I've started experimenting with using a second category on some of my higher priced items. When I look at my performance report for sales, it shows sales by category. If an item had two categories, is this reporting the primary category for that item or the category where the buyer found it? Thanks BeMoreTreasures.

Griff: Well, that's a good question.

Brian: It is a good question. And the category shown on the Performance Report for sales or the Transaction Report is the category from which the buyer purchased the item.

Griff: It's not that you had a first or a second category, you could have two categories, but what will display in that Transaction Report is the category from which the buyer found and bought the item. And that's helpful information because if you have a particular line of products and you're using two categories, you can use that data over time to determine is it worth my while to list in that second category? Am I spending that little bit of incremental money every time I list something? Is it getting me results or is it just one category where everyone's buying from?

Brian: Right. We'll take your extra money if you want to give it to us, but if you find like as Griff just said, like if a hundred percent of the purchases are from the one category, don't give us the extra money.

Griff: I want to thank you. Be more treasures. Yes, Brian, our next question is a two-parter or as we said in Massachusetts, a two part sent to podcast@ebay.com by seller Luke who writes, hi Brian and Griff, that's plus one for Brian. He says,

Brian: Go Brian.

Griff: Curses! Foiled again! He goes on to say I sell multi quantity, buy it now items and occasionally have a buyer open a return for the full amount ordered quantity. But between the time they open the return and when they ship it back, they decide to keep some of the items, which is totally fine as far as I'm concerned. Except I don't know of a way to issue a partial refund without using the returns deduction tool. Now that I've never heard it called before, you know where you can send a partial refund up to 50%, right? Or you can withhold, which causes me to lose eBay fees. Is that true? By the way?

Brian: I would have to look into that.

Griff: Yeah, I mean I'm gonna assume that Luke knows more about this than I do, but yeah, I didn't know that. And he says and and it gets the buyer an abusive buyer strike. Mm, no it doesn't. No, I don't know where that came from. Anyway, a buyer made two purchases of two items and then initially decided to return all four. But when they went to send the items back, they changed their mind and decided to keep one of the four items. So they had only mailed back three items in total. They sent me an eBay message this morning and they've asked me to only issue them a refund for the three items they have sent back. He says, even if I take a 50% deduction, I'll end up paying eBay fees on this one $76 order. I don't think that's fair. I thought we refunded that percentage of fees.

Brian: I thought so too. 'cause there was no transaction. I would have to double check. .

Griff: Further, I see no reason why this buyer should be flagged as an abusive buyer. He won't be. A return request for any reason. Does not flag a buyer as an abusive buyer. What eBay does look for are buyers that have a a pattern, an established pattern of making tons of returns. In which case we may step in and say, Hey, you're returning a lot of items, but you know, a single return like this not gonna affect their status. They're not gonna get any note from eBay saying, Hey, you're an abusive buyer, I'm glad you're worrying about the buyer, but you don't have to worry about this one. So Luke goes on, he says, for what it's worth, this buyer has expressed gratitude multiple times for my help to the process and stated they plan to purchase again. We like that. Yes, I would hate to proceed incorrectly and have this experience end negatively. So my questions are how can I issue a refund in the amount which is fair to the buyer and me? And then I have another question number two, relating to this order. One of the two returns was just outside of the 30 day free returns window, I made an exception and accepted the buyer's fault return. However, did not see a way to accept the return but make the buyer pay for the return shipping. Is it possible to allow for re free returns up to 30 days and then after 30 days the buyer has to pay the shipping costs? Thank you Luke. So to answer your first question, Brian will take the second one. But to answer your first question, Luke, there is no mechanism or process currently on eBay that provides the option as a solution for this scenario that's for an adjusted refund based on the buyer keeping some of the items in the listing. And as far as I know, there's no plans currently to include such an option on the site.

Brian: Yeah, well in this scenario you could ask the buyer to return all the items and then relist the ones he wants as a new listing. Is it ideal? Absolutely not. But outside of just issuing a partial refund up to 50%, it's the only other option.

Griff: Yeah. It's just not built in. And I suspect the reason it isn't is because this particular scenario is definitely an outlier transaction. We don't really have it happen that often.

Brian: And to answer your second question, Luke, is it possible to allow free returns for 30 days and allow returns after 30 days if the buyer pays the shipping cost? And the answer to that is no, it's, it isn't possible. If a listing is posted with a free returns policy, it covers all reasons for the return, including buyer remorse. There's no way to edit that policy post transaction and that includes the post return window.

Griff: Yeah. So once you've used a policy that says free returns, it's free returns regardless, as long as it's tied to that transaction. So that if you, and it is possible sometimes to issue a return after the window closes. eBay allows for a grace period and you'll be alerted to that saying if the buyer doesn't respond at this particular date, the return will close. I just had one of those where somebody bought something, said they bought it by mistake, wanted to return it and they never did. And then the, the date passed and eBay says that we've closed it and once, once that return is closed, you can't do anything. But if the return window is closed but the return process is still open when you go to issue the return, it's not gonna change just because the window changed, the policy stays the same. Interesting questions, these are things I hadn't considered.

Brian: Yeah, kind of some edge cases but really interesting and I'm sure he's not the only seller that runs into this.

Griff: Yeah, let us know if you had this situation come up, give us some details. We'll definitely pass it along to our friends, Jonathan and Chuck who are the seller advocates and see what their take is and who knows if it could end up being a potential enhancement of the return process, Mazel Tov!

Brian: Yep. Our last question this week is from eBay seller John who writes, Hello. I'm a newer seller and I was hoping you guys might be able to help me download transactions from eBay selling center into Excel currently underpayment reports and taxes, I can only download financial statements as PDFs. I can't even find a report called Transaction Report. I can download tax invoices as CSV files, which can be imported into Excel, but they don't provide all the information that I need. I called seller support and the answer I got was to try to open the PDF with Excel, which doesn't work. I'm sorry he got that advice. Thanks John. Well Griff?

Griff: I'm so without comment. Just open a PDF with Excel. Yeah, try that sometime. John, I'm glad you sent this in and I think we can help you. But it also provides Brian and I the opportunity to talk in a little bit more detail about the transaction report. Because I got to tell you, as a seller, this is the single most important data set on eBay, especially when it comes time for doing taxes or for gauging the success of your business in previous months, quarters of the year. Now the download for transaction report is located on the page you found and that's a Seller Hub. Then the payments tab and then the reports page and you can see that link for reports on the left hand side. We scroll down that page to past what you found, which is financial statements. If you keep scrolling down, you'll reach financial documents and the first link under financial documents is for transaction reports. It's located directly below that. You click it and follow the instructions for setting the date window for the start and end date. And you can also customize which columns you wanna appear in the report. And then when you've got that set, like for example, I just generated last year's, I started with January 1st and ended December 30th for 2023 and downloaded all my sales for last year and I'm going to use that in the coming weeks to put together my Schedule C. This is a really important bit of information so I hope you've found it in the meantime, John. Because I know I responded to you with an email so that you could get to it. But for anyone who isn't familiar with this particular report, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised because basically you can do almost everything you need to do for filing your income tax for your business with the IRS and with the state based on the transaction report. When you open up that download, it is in a CSV file, so it'll open up an Excel or any spreadsheet program. Google Sheets is another one, but you're gonna have to manipulate the columns because they'll all be different widths and some of the columns you won't need. So you might want to go through and hide them. You may want to change the order, you know, move some columns around, but you'll find the most important ones that matter to you. And then you can use this data at the bottom of the important columns. With dollar amounts, you can just put the sum formula in and very quickly without having to do a lot of like sitting there at a calculator, you can get the figures you need for shipping expenses, eBay fees, total sales returns and refunds. There's a column for that, all that information so that it's really makes it a lot easier to fill out your Schedule C.

Brian: Makes sense.

Griff: Do you download that Brian? I don't. You don't sell enough, do you?

Brian: No, I do not.

Griff: You're too busy.

Brian: I am the classic what we internally call C to C or consumer to consumer seller. I'm not in the tens of thousands a year like you are.

Griff: I'm not that much higher. I think last year I did about, it's somewhere bet between 34 and 35,000 in gross sales on eBay.

Brian: That's substantial given you have a full-time job too.

Griff: Yeah, it it is.

Brian: It's like a full-time gig job for you. And you moved

Griff: And I moved. Geez, no wonder I'm tired. .

Brian: Exactly. You know, since John's a a newer seller, if he's got Seller Hub and I assume he's in Seller Hub, there's a tab of research called Terapeak that allows you to do research on product stuff. Get comfortable with that tool as well.

Griff: Yeah, that's good advice. Well, we love giving advice, that's for sure.

Brian: We do. And we love answering your questions. So send yours today. You can call it in at this phone number (888) 723-4630.

Griff: What was that number? I'll repeat it. (888) 723-4630. And you can call that number anytime of the day, any day of the week because it's a voice line. Leave your question or comment and we'll answer it if it's appropriate. And if it's really interesting, we actually might put it on the air

Brian: And what's that? You say what you don't like using the phone?

Griff: Hey dude.

Brian: Not to worry. You can always email your question to us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: Drum roll please. It's time for your three point podcast checklist for the week.

Brian: Check the Announcement Board at ebay.com/announcements for UpToDate Seller News every day.

Griff: Okay, we just talked about it, but it bears repeating. If you haven't done so yet, please go download your transaction report for 2023. It'll help you fill in your Schedule C for the tax year. That's My eBay. Then Selling, which is also Seller Hub. Then Payments on the Payments Tab and then Reports. Look for the Transaction Reports section directly under Financial Documents.

Brian: Need to review anything in this episode. Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and define the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: On our next episode, we'll check in with eBay, Kate Danielson. Kate is the Category Manager for the Fashion Team and next week we'll be talking during Fashion Week, which is a big week in New York. And she's gonna be sharing some top line apparel trends that her team notices on eBay so that you can maybe better source the right apparel.

Brian: We'd like to again, thank our guests this week. Libby Broggi of Consignment Chats and one of my favorite employees. Kayomi Kayoshi.

Griff: Yay! The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and PodCast411. See you next week, Brian.

Brian: We'll see you.