Ep 281 || 1099-K Update & Selling Personal Property

[podcast_team]

Kevin Reeth of Seller Ledger gives us an update on the current status of 1099-K forms as well as some advice about accounting for the sale of personal property when filing taxes. Griff and Brian are joined by Kayomi Kayoshi to help answer questions about finding the charges for return labels, seeing all Offers Sent manually, and who does what when a parcel carrier delivers an eBay shipment to the wrong address.

Episode Links:
Recent change to Feedback
Improvements to Authenticity Guarantee
The eBay Merchandise Shop
Seller Ledger
Seller Ledger Blog
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
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eBay Events

Brian: I'm Brian.

Kayomi: I'm Kayomi.

Griff: And 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 grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 281. And you may have noticed there are three of us today.

Brian: There are.

Griff: Welcome Kayomi!

Kayomi: Thank you for having me.

Brian: Well welcome Kayomi.

Kayomi: Thank you. I have some big shoes to fill.

Brian: Maybe I'll send you my Ruby slippers.

Kayomi: You know, I did wear them when I was about three years old when I was Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ. So, I need a new pair.

Griff: Guess where you can buy them? If you didn't listen to last week's episode ....

Brian: All the way to the end of last week's episode.

Griff: Exactly. Maybe some people didn't stay on with the whole episode, so I thought we'd front load it. Brian, please let everyone know what's happening.

Brian: Well, March 1st will be my last day at eBay after almost 25 wonderful years. So I will miss our seller community, but time for kind of the next phase of life and whatever pastures they may bring me.

Griff: Oh, I know what it is. It's splitting your time between on the beach and on the golf course.

Kayomi: I was gonna say, I think more trips to Hawaii. Right?

Brian: That would be nice. That could get expensive though.

Griff: You know, on all those retirement big bucks, it shouldn't be an issue for you. So. Well, we're glad to have you here. Kayomi thank you very much for agreeing to be our third co-host for the week. Of course.

Kayomi: Happy to tune in and be here.

Brian: The one thing I do wanna say is this is the last second to last chance, I guess if you've got a question for me. You got this week and next week.

Griff: Yeah. Because after that you're stuck with me. And who knows, maybe Kayomi, right?

Brian: Yes. She's got a better voice than me.

Griff: So podcast@ebay.com. for all your questions. And as we do every week, we have three questions that we're saving for the end of the episode. So stick around for that.

Brian: Do we have a guest this week? Ref?

Griff: We do. And in fact, it's somebody we know. Kevin Reeth of Seller Ledger will be here to talk about the current status of the 1099 K forms for 2023 and 2024. You know, it kept changing, so it's a little confusing. And Kevin will also, of course talk about his most excellent bookkeeping app for sellers. It's called Seller Ledger. But first let's talk a little bit about what's in the news this week, Brian and Kayomi.

Brian: Well, sure. You may remember last week I mentioned a change to the eBay mobile app, displaying the term Verified Purchase on the feedback page. Well this new feedback feature is now launched on the mobile app and it will be launched on desktop in the next few weeks. There's been some discussion about why we added this text. Just to answer that. We've added this text to remove any doubt that the person leaving the feedback was involved in the transaction. Unlike eBay, other sites, which shall be nameless, allow anyone to leave feedback or ratings, not just those involved in a transaction. And in fact, surveys with eBay users showed that half of them didn't know that on eBay feedback can only be left by those involved in a purchase. So we are confident that this text will remove any doubt. And there's an update to our current street wear authentication process. So first, the Authenticity Guarantee or AG process involves two steps authentication and listing accuracy. In some cases, items may be authentic, but upon receipt, our experts discover a discrepancy between the item and what was described in the listing. When this happens, eBay communicates to the buyer what the discrepancy is and gives the buyer the opportunity to either proceed with the transaction or return the item back to the seller.

Griff: I've had that happen to me as a seller.

Brian: Couple times it happened to you, didn't it?

Griff: Yes. The second time it was a mistake, but the first time, the box got banged up on its way to the authenticity center and so they returned it back. The buyer wanted the item and said, Hey, why did they return it? And I said, well, the box was got dinged up. He said, I don't care about the box.

Brian: They wanted the item.

Griff: Sp I re-listed it and pictured the box as banged up. And it was as long as you show that the box was banged up. But this happened because I didn't ship it correctly. I shipped it in a poly bag and it got banged up by the carrier and now I don't because even sites like Amazon and other sites, they ship their shoe boxes in poly bags, but now I ship them inside another cardboard box to avoid that from happening.

Brian: Extra expense. In the new experience launching mid-February, both buyers and sellers will be alerted when a discrepancy is found with the details of the issue. For sellers you will start getting notification when a listing accuracy issue is found in Seller Hub and via email for buyers listing accuracy details will be sent to your email along with new notification in your purchase history and View Order Details pages asking you to provide a response from a new Inspection Details page.

Griff: That's good.

Brian: Yeah, it is. We launched this process with handbags US in September of 2023 and we'll continue ramping up to other categories and markets in the first half of this year. And one more news item if I may. Well actually more of a hint, a peak if you will. A tease.

Griff: What is that?

Brian: Well, if you're listening today, Tuesday, March 20th, you'll want to pay close attention to the Announcement Board. Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 21st.

Griff: Well, thanks for the news, Brian.

Kayomi: Oh wait, Griff, there's more. Before we meet this week's guest, I thought we might give the shout out to the folks at the eBay Merchandise Shop. eBay Sellers love eBay branded merchandise. And the eBay Merchandise Shop is the only official distributor of eBay branded swag. And the eBay Merchandise Shop has a big sale going on now through mid-March with amazing deals marked as low as 25% off original price. Everything from tech items, apparel, backpacks, Carhartt duffle bags, which is extremely popular amongst us, eBay employees.

Griff: I've seen this, this is like the Stanley mug right now.

Kayomi: I mean, we just talked about it in one of my last meetings, just organically. So yeah, very well loved. We also have drinkware, Roots knit scarves, beanies, and so much more. If you can believe it, if you're picking up some eBay swag for yourself, a gift giving opportunity or as a thank you to someone, they've got you covered. And who doesn't love eBay swag? Another thing to note their merchandise is mindfully sourced from bags made from recycled water bottles to notebooks made from recycled apple peels to locally sourced in minority owned businesses. They have you covered.

Brian: Apple peels? I don't think I've ever seen apple peels. Now I'm gonna go to the store.

Kayomi: I guess it can be done. If you're interested, check out their official eBay merchandise at their eBay store, eBay Merchandise Shop. That's ebay.com/store/ebaymerchandiseshop.

Griff: Thanks Kayomi. And as always, we'll put a link to the eBay Merchandise Shop store in the summary for this episode. Well thanks everyone. It's time for us to go meet Kevin.

Brian: Great!

Kayomi: Have fun.

Griff: The status of Form 1099-K, that's the form that the IRS sends to businesses who have processed a certain amount in a certain number of transactions during the previous calendar year. The status seems to keep changing month to month, and these changes have only increased seller confusion and anxiety. Well, today we're gonna do our best to allay that confusion. Kevin Reeth is the founder of Seller Ledger, that's an online accounting platform built with eBay sellers in mind. And Kevin is here with us this week to help shed some light on the current status of the 1099-K form and what changes have been made or will be made or are going to be made in the coming fiscal year and how they're going to impact you. Welcome Kevin.

Kevin: Thanks Griff. Great to be here.

Griff: Let's just start right off with, what is the 1099-K?

Kevin: The 1099-K? It's a form. It actually got introduced in 2012 and it's an informational form that basically payment providers and platforms send in. They report a copy to you into the IRS. It started out with anybody who sold more than $20,000 a year or more than 200 transactions. It would just report your total gross amount paid by the payment platforms. And it was a way for the IRS to kind of keep tabs on certain types of economic activity.

Brian: And they're still around today. They changed not so much the form, but who is going to get the form is what changes. So let's talk about that. What are the latest for the 1099-K reporting requirements and who can expect to get them for the previous year?

Kevin: Right now, the threshold, the, the fear that everybody had, uh, going back to the American Rescue Plan in 2021, was that the threshold was gonna drop from $20,000 to $600. And that was supposed to happen actually last year. And in mid-December of 2022, the IRS heard the feedback, people weren't ready for it and they said, no, we'll push it out a year. Okay, great. Well, fast forward to a few months ago, they've decided to push it out again. And I do know that eBay, through the eBay Main Street Advocacy Program was pretty vocal and very instrumental in, in helping getting this kind of raising the concern about this, they have pushed it back yet again. Everybody listening for 2023 taxes, there is no change in the threshold. $20,000 or 200 transactions you're fine for next year. They're now talking about lowering it to $5,000 with the goal of eventually getting it down to $600. That's the current status. We'll see what they do again next year.

Griff: Okay. So right now we're still at that $20,000 floor, which is if you made less than $20,000 in payments through a processor, you're not gonna get the 1099-K. Does this mean smaller sellers are off the hook for reporting their 2023 eBay income?

Kevin: No, it does not. And in fact they've never been off the hook. In fact, the rule is if you earn more than $400 in self-employment income in any way, shape or form, whether it's a side hustle, you could be driving for Uber or do DoorDash selling on eBay. If you generate that revenue, that income, you need to report it. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean you're paying a whole lot in taxes. And that's part of the confusion around these 1099-Ks.

Griff: Because they're all about the gross amount of payment that you received over the previous year. There's a reprieve for a year. And a lot of sellers are going to not get this, as you said, because they may not have reached that threshold, is if you're selling only on eBay and you're using eBay for those sales, then the only payment processor involved it's going to be eBay. And if you sold less than a gross amount of 20,000, you're not gonna get the 1099 K. But that doesn't mean you can just, as Kevin says, not worry about filing. All income as you said over $400 is reportable, but a lot depends on how you have your business structured about what you're gonna end up paying for taxes. And that's where you want specific advice about your business so that you can be taking every single expense and deduction that you are legally allowed to do so that you're lowering your tax liability. That's where the magic is right in that spot there. And it's not easy for a lot of people to do that with just a pen and paper or sitting on a spreadsheet. I'm gonna throw this back at you, Kevin, because as the founder and builder of Seller Ledger, I am pretty sure that you might have something to say about how your product can help when you're figuring out stuff like factoring in a 1099-K for example.

Kevin: Yes. In fact, that's, that's exactly where we come in handy. And if you don't mind, I'll throw some examples just from questions we've received from customers around the 1099-K because they can get a little wonky. One of the biggest things, and there's a lot of emotion around this when you hear people talking about all the governments going after the little people, and what about when I sell personal items and now I have to pay taxes and stuff like that? No, you don't. Again, this is an informational return, it's just to give the IRSA heads up. But let's take the case of selling personal items. A lot of small eBay sellers, if they're just doing this as a hobby, the IRS actually in their frequently asked questions, you can go Google like questions about the 1099-K . They give very specific examples. For example, they'll say, let's say you bought a refrigerator for a thousand dollars and then you sold it online or you sold it at a marketplace for $600. What do you do? The answer is you do, like, let's say you got a 1099 when they lower the threshold, you got a 1099-K for a bunch of personal sales. Okay? There's a form called Schedule one, it's part of the 1040. And they actually tell you on this line, I think it's line eight z under other income, you put down the money that shows up on your 1099-K , then you go down and you put down the exact same amount that you received under other adjustments and it creates no tax liability whatsoever.

Griff: Tah-Dah!

Kevin: Exactly. Where it gets interesting, especially for our customers, you know, the eBay sellers who are generating real income on eBay, but they might have some personal items that get sold. Well, what do you do then? You could choose to split it out, but then the amount that you're reporting for your business in your Schedule C, your business income and expenses and and profit and loss would look potentially quite a bit different than the 1099-K . But if you follow the IRS's guidance, and we actually have a feature, I know last time we talked I had previewed some of the stuff we're doing around inventory. We now have the ability for every item you sell on eBay to go click right next to it and add in the cost of that item. So for those personal items where the IRS has said, look, record the total amount you received and then write off the exact same amount as the expense, so there is no taxable event, you can just do that right in the software and all of the numbers will add up at the end of the year.

Griff: Oh, I like this. This is very cool. And I'm in that situation by the way because last year I sold, before I moved quite a bit of personal property, I kept a record of it. So I know what I sold it for, but I'll be able to account for it using that method in the schedule one and if I need help, I can just use Seller Ledger and it'll let me plug that in when I'm doing my taxes.

Kevin: That's exactly right.

Griff: What other ways, what other examples do you have, Kevin?

Kevin: Another one. This depends, this is more of a multi-channel problem, but one of the other challenges with the 1099 is, you know, Congress passed the law and said, okay, we need you to all to report it. But each platform can report slightly different numbers. For example, eBay will collect and remit the sales tax for you. They exclude the sales tax from the gross number. But other platforms who don't necessarily remit, they're going to report all of the money that you receive, including sales tax. Even when eBay reports the gross number, it's all of the money that you've made selling everything. If you had to refund a bunch of those items, you're gonna have to subtract those numbers out after the fact. And again, this gets to, you know, the IRS is seeing how much total money you got paid by a platform that does not necessarily mean how much money you made in profit.

Griff: Exactly.

Kevin: Yeah. And that's where the burden is on the seller to do some good bookkeeping, you know, stay organized so that they are on top of what their business actually made and profit. That's what you pay tax on. And that's really what our software focuses on by automatically connecting to eBay and other platforms, pulling the data in. And in fact, one thing that we've added since you and I last chatted is in our reporting functionality, you now have the ability to look at your profit and loss by sales channel. So if you are a multi-channel seller and you're gonna get multiple 1099-Ks, you can look at, okay, well let me look at my eBay data, let's compare that to the 1099-K I got. And oh! Here are all the refunds, the discounts, the shipping expenses, all of that stuff is automated. Another small thing that we did, just to make it easier as you're getting this data to really be able to, to look at it, to verify it. And then most importantly, because if you get multiple 1099-Ks, the IRS is gonna get them too. But you're only filing one tax return. That has to be a summary of all of it.

Griff: We should make it clear that the, the IRS is not going down to the last decimal point and looking for everything being in compliance. It's a rough idea. They'll know if, if even if you've been selling across multiple platforms and you add up all the 1099-Ks and say it comes to something like 35,000, but when you're filling out the Schedule C and you're putting in all your expenses, that still totals up to be a gross amount. And those two should be relatively balanced and equal, but not necessarily to the dollar penny.

Kevin: Right. And again, it's because each platform has slightly different ways of reporting it and a lot of it is driven by their business and their underlying accounting and how they have to do things. You can have payment platforms out there that don't have anywhere near as much knowledge about your actual transactions as eBay does with Managed Payments. eBay has very good data about everything about the sale, but there are other payment platforms where, well, they're just getting an amount that they need to process and that's what they're reporting to the IRS. The numbers should be pretty close. I'll be shocked if anybody's are spot on across the board. But again, as long as you keep track of the important information and more importantly don't try and hide things, you'll be fine.

Griff: The rare, rare case that you should be audited to the extent where you have to be visited by or go into an IRS office. I had to do this once in 1998. I just brought in a box of donuts and everything was fine. Now I'm not gonna say that's gonna always work, but I can tell you that the IRS auditor's eyes, they lit up when I walked into that room with Dunking Donuts and coffee.

Kevin: That is fantastic. Yeah, I've gotta imagine, you know, like I said before, these have been around for a decade and the rules keep changing. The backend reporting by each payment processor keeps changing. Yeah. So you've gotta believe that the agents on the other side at the IRS, they've seen it all. They know the examples and that's why they put out these, these frequently asked questions about very specific and you think, wow, that seems like a niche question about selling personal items. They must have heard it enough that they are addressing it.

Griff: Now we can lead people and we should directly to Seller Ledger. And I'm assuming that's sellerledger.com still?

Kevin: Yes.

Griff: Is it a subscription based product?

Kevin: It is a subscription, but we give everybody 30 days to play around with it completely free. You don't need a credit card. And we'll even put this in emails to people. We don't ask for money unless you're happy with the software. So if it doesn't work for you and you want to go use somebody else, go right ahead.

Griff: So that's sellerledger.com. Before we started recording, when we were just having a little conversation between us, you mentioned that you have a blog at a YouTube channel where you discuss in greater detail some of the specific examples of different situations that businesses might find themselves in, where they could use these examples to help illuminate their own situation

Kevin: Back right before, it actually happened right before they, they pushed out the, uh, threshold deadline again. We did a bunch of research and we posted on our blog. So if you go to seller ledger.com/blog, there are a few articles in there about some of these more interesting cases. As I mentioned about inconsistencies. One of the other ones that we dug deep into, in addition to the inconsistencies in personal, is what to do with consignment sales.

Griff: We've been covering that a lot on the show because there's a lot of people moving into that business model.

Kevin: Yeah. And it's a compelling business model and, but it creates a little bit of an interesting angle in terms of 1099-Ks because again, that 1099-K eBay doesn't know that you're selling something on consignment. Right. None of the payment platforms know that you're doing it, so they're just gonna report the total amount. But that's not what you keep. As a consignee you're only keeping the commission and you're remitting the rest of it back to the original consignor. Right. So that just creates a little bit of a bookkeeping hassle. And so our blog goes into a couple of different ways you can do that. And the same with kind of the personal expenses. And if you have co-mingled, personal and business sales and in the blog we, we do point to very specific language documents from the IRS that are frequently asked questions, their guidance, this isn't us making things up, this is really taking their language, their examples and saying, look, they're trying to be super helpful and say here's exactly how you handle it. And they also do a pretty good job of explaining the spirit of this. Right. Which is they just want to know that whatever activities you're engaged in, you are reporting them. And they know anybody who's receiving a 1099-K in e-commerce, they know cost of goods is gonna be the single biggest write off. Every reseller, anybody who's selling online, they know right off the bat and you know, they can look across millions of returns and they have a sense for okay, cost of goods in this ballpark. Yep. That makes sense. That's really what they're looking for. You know, they wanna make sure that you're not dodging.

Griff: You're not conducting a total gray or black market business.

Kevin: Yes.

Griff: Well Kevin, this has been great. I want to thank you for stopping by, uh, continued success with Seller Ledger. We'll put the links to seller ledger.com and your blog in the transcript for this episode so people can go and visit and maybe check out the free trial.

Kevin: Wonderful. Thanks so much for having me. It's always a pleasure chatting with you Griff, and look forward to staying in touch.

Griff: Kevin Reeth is the founder of Seller Ledger, an online accounting platform that was built with eBay sellers in mind, but of course is multi-platform. Check it out sellerledger.com.

Brian: You got questions?

Griff: We got answers. And we have three questions for three co-hosts this week. Kayomi, we're gonna start with Brian. Brian, would you read the first one?

Brian: Certainly. This is from the folks at Hayes Instrument Services, Jim and Ryan. And they ask the following, I'm looking for a report or a list of all the units I have sent offers to not going to each one and looking at them separately as it is very time consuming. Is there a way to see this info easily so I can see all of them together? For example, on Saturday, Jim sent some offers percentage discounts to potential customers out of our eBay store on the Send Offers Eligible section of our active listenings. How do we see the offers he sent? There should be a report or a screen view that shows all offers sent. The reason this is important to us is there are two people working out of the store and sometimes one is not in the office. It would be nice to see what offers he they sent without having to ask them. The only thing I can find is the Send Offers Sent section, but that section only shows the offers that eBay sent automatically to our potential customers based on the parameters we set up with that feature. I hope this makes sense. Thank you Jim and Ryan of Hayes Instrument Services Inc.

Griff: Yeah. Well thank you Jim and Ryan. And the reason why I've included you both is you both sent me separate emails because there was a little bit of misunderstanding. So I've compiled their emails into one. The first bad news, and you guys may know this already, is there isn't a report for offers sent or a view where it shows you just the offer sent by item and what the offer was. It's a great idea though.

Brian: It is.

Griff: So I've already sent it off to the Product Team.

Brian: Oh good. I wonder if they don't do it 'cause the offers expire. I, I can't think of why we wouldn't offer it.

Griff: Well it might be difficult to do a report function, but having a page that's updated dynamically would be a good idea. Because you know sellers, I don't know whether your conversations with sellers, the ones I talked to when they're sending offers, they're sending a lot of offers. So they want to be able to track them. It makes sense. But I think that Jim and or Ryan got something wrong when they said about the Send Offer Sent section only shows the ones that are sent automatically because it's not true. And I actually tested this myself with my own inventory. That utility that he's talking about is one of the options in the Active View page on Seller Hub. It's the quick filter feature. There's one there that says Offer Sent and that's on the Active Listings page. So it's Best Offers, Offers Sent. If you use that filter, it'll return all the listings where the seller has sent an offer manually. You still have to review each one. So it's gonna put 'em all in a filter on that active view page. But the only way to then check, you know how much and everything is, you have to look at the offer information for each of those. I admit that's not elegant.

Brian: No, especially if you do a lot of them.

Griff: Yeah. And I suspect they do. Now the other thing you could do is you could use the custom label field for an active listing because you can change those dynamically and you can type in the offer amount that you sent and the name of the person in your company who sent it. And then that'll make it easier with that quick filter view to see the amount and who sent it. But like I said before and I double tested this, that feature, that quick filter doesn't return those that are being sent automatically. There's another view on the page in the search section where you can filter a them by a search that says Offers Sent Automatically. And those are two different courses of different colors. So if you want to see the offers that are being sent automatically, you use that search function. If you want to see the offers that you sent manually offers sent, then you use the quick filter button on the Active View page. So does that make sense?

Brian: It does. I hope it makes sense to Jim and Ryan.

Kayomi: Yeah. It made sense to us. Great investigation.

Griff: Yeah. And I tested my own listenings. I sent some offer to see what would happen. One of them sold so Yay! Offers work. Our next question is from Amanda and Kayomi, I thought you might like to read it.

Kayomi: Sure. This like Griff said, is from our eBay seller Amanda who wrote the following to podcast@ebay.com. Hello, huge fan of your podcast. I'm a small seller compared to most, but I enjoy my hobby selling fun items and crafting items. I'm a Top Rated seller and offer free 30 day return policy as recommended by eBay. In January I had four returns, which was about triple my usual return rate. Two items were returned for reason, did not like. Two items were returned for item not as described. I never mailed out any labels but all four items were returned to me. My question is, where in eBay can I find how much I was charged for the return label? I regularly go to my eBay payments all transactions and review all charges there. But I never saw any of the four items that were returned to me. Show return label charges. Thanks for the help Amanda in her store is Sonic Treasure.

Griff: Sonic Treasure.

Brian: Well Amanda, the charges for return labels are shown in the Payments Tab in Seller Hub.

Griff: Yeah, she was looking in the right place.

Brian: She was.

Griff: So I, I don't have any returns so I couldn't use my own returns to figure this out but, or recent returns. I don't wanna make it sound like I'd ever get returns. I'm not a saint. I have got returns. So I talked to the Shipping Team and they found some information. Amanda, we had the Shipping Team check your account and they were looking on the payment page. They found one return recent in January one return label charge for you and you can see it if you look it's labeled return shipping label. So go back and look for that label return shipping label and I think you'll find it. And that takes care of one of the labels in questions. That's the one that you were charged for.

Brian: Now for the other three returns you mentioned, according to the Shipping Team there were two returns with buyer remorse. And that was the reason that you described as did not like. Your return policy for these two listings indicated that the buyer pays for return shipping. So you were not charged for those.

Griff: Yeah, so those weren't, apparently they weren't free returns. So they were based on the reason why and if it's buyer remorse then they were charged for the labels. And on the fourth you caught a break on this one because that one it turns out in for a deeper investigation was returned for item not as described. That's the one you were talking about. And the return details show that the buyer had the option to print an eBay label but the buyer shipped it back with their own label. So they didn't print a label and then you would've been charged for that. But they went and purchased their own label, which means they paid for return shipping. So you're off the hook for that. You weren't charged for the label. So out of all four of those you only paid for one label.

Brian: That was fortunate for her. So Amanda, you were looking in the right place. Just keep an eye out for any shown in the Payments Tab where it says return shipping label.

Griff: Yeah. Kayomi, in your travels on the Community Pages, do you see this topic come up at all?

Kayomi: We definitely do but I think like you all were saying, it's pretty easy to find and so I think as soon as they know where to look and where to find it, they don't have these problems anymore. I think it's just a matter of knowing where to look. Amanda, you were close. Hopefully this helps.

Griff: I think it might be a shortcoming on our part. Maybe we don't make that indication of what the transaction charge was. Clear enough.

Kayomi: Something to consider.

Griff: Exactly. So again, if you need to look for these charges, uh, you go to my eBay payments all transactions and you review the charges from there. Now I'll read our last question for this week and then we can all discuss it because it's a really interesting case and I think this comes up occasionally for sellers. It's from eBay seller Maximilian and he has an UPS issue and he says hello eBay for Business Podcast Don't have to worry about name order with that one. And Ka, you probably don't know this, but Brian and I have this ongoing little war to see whose name they use first. Like hello Brian and Griff.

Brian: I was a little sensitive early on in my podcast career and I kind of commented that Griff was always first and now we have a competition.

Griff: I wouldn't call it a competition, it's just a friendly wager.

Kayomi: Well, I'm excited to see how that turns out in the future. I'm looking forward to see the different name variations I get.

Griff: Yeah. Oh anyway, Maximilian says I sold an item and tracking shows that it was delivered. But the buyer said that they didn't receive it. I checked on the UPS tracking and they sent a picture of where they delivered. I shared that with the buyer and the buyer said that was not his porch. Oh dear. So I contacted eBay Support through chat and chat advised me to open a UPS claim. Strange advice, but okay. I was on the phone with UPS and they said that I could not make the claim and instead the third party channel account, which is eBay in this case, would need to open the claim. I then contacted eBay again and a different representative told me that they couldn't open a UPS claim that the buyer needed to reach out to eBay to do so. So the buyer reached out to eBay to open a claim and the eBay rep told the buyer that the seller needed to open the UPS claim.

Brian: Oh no. It's like a huge loop.

Griff: They also told the buyer not to worry that they had the money back protection. Okay. So anyway, max says the case is closed and the buyer doesn't have the package and is out the money and I don't have a good feeling about it. So Max's customer focused, that's clear. How would someone who purchases UPS shipping through eBay go about filing a claim? So I know a little bit about this 'cause it's come up before, but I suspect without denigrating any of our august and esteemed third parties that, you know, they don't want to pay out if they can avoid it. And in this case, they're relying on the fact that eBay is the actual agent and then eBay seems to be sending or some eBay reps sent the buyer back to say the seller has to file the claim.

Brian: I was gonna say, it sounded like in some of the responses there's a coaching opportunity for a couple of the agents.

Griff: Yeah. But you know, I wonder what the, what the information they should be telling is?

Brian: To the buyer they should say thank you for the report. We'll file that on your behalf.

Griff: See, I disagree. I think eBay should be saying here's the money out of our pocket.

Brian: Uh, that's true because we're the ones technically on your shipment.

Griff: Kayomi, do you run into this?

Kayomi: Not directly myself fortunately, but I know after working with our GCX folks who often help us many a times on the community, like Brian was saying, maybe this is a teachable moment and a coaching opportunity on what we tell our sellers and our buyers. But I think at least what we would recommend is that Maximilian contact Customer Support directly and ask for an escalation in this case.

Griff: Yeah. Obviously the buyer's the one that has to be made whole. And it does appear from what Maximilian tells us that this is a UPS at fault. They delivered to the wrong porch.

Brian: Yeah. And now I'm thinking a little bit more about this. You're right Griff. Like we should just cover it and take care of that buyer. In some ways, Maximilian's got the right focus. He's focused on this buyer. Yeah. We should be focused on that buyer as well.

Griff: I think that's actually the good lesson here. If this played out the way that Max is telling us, then UPS is it fault here? But good luck trying to get anything out of them maybe. Yeah. We should be the one focusing on the buyer and just making sure that their whole, in this case, if it was their porch and the item was taken, well now it's the buyer's responsibility to make sure they're providing a secure location for any drop off of parcels. And that's a different story altogether. But even then I heard of that happening where eBay will make it right for the buyer out of our pocket and not the sellers.

Brian: I do like Maximilian's Focus.

Griff: Yeah. He's customer focused. If you out there have any of those kind of stories to share, we'd love to hear them. So how did they happen and how did they play out When it's unclear where the fault was or if the faults with Carrier and it kind of got left in limbo, we'd love to hear it. So call us at (888) 723-4630. Or you can send an email as always to podcast@ebay.com. Kayomi, you're terrific! Thank you.

Kayomi: Thank you.

Griff: And that's all that we have for questions this week, Brian and Kayomi.

Brian: And if you'd like us to answer one of your questions, we're ready. All three of us are ready. Call it in on (888) 723-4630.

Griff: That's (888)723-4630. So we have the data that shows at this point in our podcast that some people start to tune out because it's just boilerplate. Stop. Don't tune out! There's some information coming. You can call that hotline anytime of the day or any day of the week. Leave a question or comment and we just might put it on the air.

Brian: And if you're not a call on the phone person, you can email us podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: And now Kayomi, you may not have heard this before, but it's time for what we'd call every week the Three Point Podcast Checklist.

Kayomi: Ooh. Okay. Let's get into it.

Brian: Check the Announcement Board at ebay.com/announcements for up-to-date seller news every day.

Griff: And speaking of the announcement board, you'll want to check it tomorrow or your email or both. That's Wednesday, March 21st for some very important updates of interest to all sellers. Mm-Hmm.

Brian: Mm-Hmm. I hear what you did there.

Griff: Was it obvious?

Brian: For those discerning ears? It was. Okay. 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 referenced during the episode.

Kayomi: On our next episode, we will have news of some important updates to the eBay mobile app where our good friend and seller advocate Chuck VanPelt returns with a list of those updates.

Brian: We'd like to again, thank our guests this week. Kevin Reeth of Seller Ledger and of course our colleague Kayomi Kayoshi for joining us this week. And hopefully we'll hear from her next week.

Kayomi: I guess they'll have to tune in and see.

Griff: Yes, it's always a suspense. This is a serial, tune in next week to see! The eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.