Ep 282 || What’s New For The eBay Mobile App

[podcast_team]

From the Seller Advocacy Team, Chuck Van Pelt returns to highlight some of the recent and coming mobile app enhancements for sellers. Griff, Brian, and Kayomi talk about what the Buyer Exemption List covers and seller Shari Smith dials in with a tip for filing claims with UPS.

Episode Links:
2024 Winter Seller Update
Seller Update Forum
March 7 2024 Spring Seller Check-In
Shari Smith’s eBay Store
The Selling On eBay Radio Show
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.

Kayomi: I'm Kayomi.

Griff: And I'm Griff. And this is 60 Minutes. No, no, no. This is the eBay For Business Podcast, your source for the information and inspiration to help you start and manage and then grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 282, and as you know, there's three of us right now. So welcome back, Kayomi and Brian. Hi guys.

Brian: Hey Griff.

Kayomi: Hey.

Brian: Hey Kayomi.

Kayomi: Glad to be here.

Brian: How are you?

Kayomi: Doing good. Busy week.

Griff: So this was going to be our regular segment. Brian and I never got around to it. And now it's time for, we were busy this week. I'm busy because I got on a plane and flew here. I'm actually in the studio with Brian.

Brian: This is like old times. Guest on, me looking at Griff through a window.

Kayomi: And I'm looking at you two looking at each other, through Zoom.

Griff: Some people wanna know, how do you guys record this? We use a tool called Riverside and it's really, really good if you're a podcaster and though I don't get paid a penny to promote them, go to Riverside and look them up on Google and they have a free version of their tool. If you're an aspiring podcaster, you might enjoy using their features. It's pretty cool. We use them and I really like them. So anyway.

Brian: But if you start a podcast, there's just one thing you can't do.

Griff: What?

Brian: You can't call it the eBay for Business podcast.

Griff: Well obviously.

Brian: Otherwise go for it.

Griff: Except that we've got some news coming up. We're looking at a rebrand of the entire eBay for Business property. So moving forward, we're gonna change the name of the podcast.

Brian: Cool.

Kayomi: Yeah. Exciting.

Griff: Yeah, so you get used to, it'll happen over the next few months. It's gonna be called...

Brian: Keep it a Secret.

Griff: I was just told not to keep it a secret.

Brian: Really?

Griff: Yeah.

Kayomi: Well I'm curious now.

Griff: So it's gonna be called eBay for Sellers. A little more inclusive.

Brian: It is. Broader reach.

Griff: Yeah. I'm very excited about this. So look for that in the coming months, but in the meantime, we're still eBay for Business, so anyway.

Brian: Well I assume we have a guest this week as well, Griff?

Griff: You assume, right as always, Brian. Our guest this week is someone we know very well. He's been on the show in the past. He's our seller advocate, Chuck Van Pelt from the Seller Advocacy Team. And Chuck's here talk about some of the recent enhancements to the selling side of the mobile app.

Kayomi: And Chuck is more than qualified to speak on this topic. I've met him in person a handful of times and he's wonderful.

Griff: Oh yeah, he's great. Yeah.

Kayomi: And the Mobile Team is adding more selling specific features to the mobile app.

Brian: That is good news. The app's great, but we hear from sellers all the time that they want more of the desktop features in the app.

Griff: Yeah. And I'm one of those sellers, I'm glad to see we're heading in that direction. Before we have check Brian and Kayomi is there any news this week?

Brian: The big news this week was the 2024 Winter Seller Update was released last week on February 21st. The update contains lots of information for sellers, as always, with improved tools to help you grow your business and run it more efficiently like the new sell it faster recommendation and easier access to sales events.

Griff: So what are some of the details?

Kayomi: There are some improvements to reduce unpaid items extended to seller initiated offers and security enhancements added for multi-user account access to assign and share at the day-to-day work and messaging and setting up advertising and promotions.

Griff: Oh!

Brian: And lastly, there is an adjustment to the per order fee for orders over $10. The fee currently is 30 cents. It will be increased by 10 cents. So the new fee going forward will be 40 cents.

Kayomi: If you'd like to read more about our 2024 Winter Seller Update, you can read all of the details on Seller Center under the Resource tab. Look there for the link for updates. And as we do for every update, you can post questions and comments about the update on the community forum for that update. You can find that forum by going to community.ebay.com and hovering over the Seller News tab. There you'll find the link for 2024 Winter Seller Update.

Griff: Yeah, I just took a peek at it. There's a lot of activity going on on those pages and different teams will answer questions as they come up.

Brian: Yes, they will.

Griff: What's been the reactions you've been seeing?

Brian: As you can imagine, a little bit of consternation about any kind of fee increase will always do that. One thing that surprised me a little bit was with Seller Initiated Offer, we've reduced the ability for buyers not to pay. But that has actually created another issue from a seller standpoint where some sellers like to be able to have buyers buy a lot of items and then bundle it all together. And with now Seller Initiated Offer, if they push out the offer and the buyer accepts it, they're charged for it and then the item comes off the site. And some sellers want the ability for their buyers not to do that. The flip side is it reduces unpaid item, which is a big concern for sellers.

Griff: Yeah. And I think it's hard to, to make a tool that, or a feature that's gonna work for every type of transaction. And in the future, we'll talk about this because you and I were speaking about this yesterday and we thought what we should do is provide some guidance about when it's appropriate to use a Seller Initiated Offer feature and when it probably is better to use another tool to increase the sales. So we'll get into this in more detail in a future episode.

Kayomi: Like Brian was saying, I think we've noticed surprisingly that that seller initiated offer topic was I think our most popular and active topic last week and we thought it would be the fee increase, but sellers have been surprisingly understanding, which we of course appreciate. So yeah, that was surprising for us.

Griff: One of the things that keeps the job interesting is we're always surprised by seller reactions.

Kayomi: Absolutely.

Brian: Exactly.

Griff: Well, okay, I think it's time to move to Chuck.

Kayomi: Hey guys, before you introduce this week's guest, I have an announcement.

Griff: Excellent. So Kayomi, what do you got?

Kayomi: This goes out to all the sellers of all types. I want to invite you to join us at 11:00 AM Pacific time on Thursday, March 7th for our next Spring Seller Check-In. The two hour virtual event will focus on ways to make your eBay Business more efficient with product announcements, feature updates, Terapeak product research support from Tax Act and much more. Plus, the Fashion team will be there to discuss trends and pre loved fashion items for 2024. And so make sure to register by visiting sellerevents.ebay.com or just by clicking the link in the episode overview. This one is not to be missed, so mark your calendars.

Griff: Yeah, those are great. Use of two hours. If you've never been to a Spring Seller or any of the seller check-ins, not , not dependent on the specific season. There are lots of useful information, so don't miss that.

Brian: And interactive as you're attending it. And you, you've got questions for the people that are presenting. You can ask them questions as the event goes on.

Griff: Yeah, that's another great feature. You know what it's like, it's like a mini eBay Open. It is. Kind of like an eBay Open-let, if you will. Well, thanks Brian. Thanks Kayomi. Now it's time to go meet Chuck.

Griff: If you're like me and you sell on eBay, you started relying more and more on the mobile app and the team that works on the mobile app, they're making a lot of changes and enhancements to that product. And to help us understand where we are right now with the mobile app and any updates and changes from the Seller Advocate Team, please welcome back. Chuck Van Pelt. Chuck, welcome back to the podcast.

Chuck: Hi Griff. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Griff: Now we've talked about this in the past and I know you are happy to talk about it, but you're also like me a seller on the site as well.

Chuck: I am. Yep. I sell quite a bit.

Griff: So I haven't talked to you since, uh, the holiday season. Uh, how was that for you? Oh,

Chuck: It was great. I mean, I think macro economically, it's been tough for everyone, but I had a very successful season. I spent some time early in the quarter preparing, so I was ready for the rush and I think that really helped me out.

Griff: That's great. Let's talk about some of the things eBay's doing right now to help sellers drive more and faster sales using the mobile app.

Chuck: Some of your listeners may remember, I was back in November on the podcast and we talked about how important it is to sellers to be able to run their eBay business from their mobile devices. I hear this all the time from sellers. I'm out in the field or sourcing, or I'm running some other part of my business or just running my life and it would be really helpful to be able to do some of the activities that seller needs to do from my phone. Now I shared the launch of a new Bulk Offers Feature that lets you send up to 50 offers at a time to buyers who have shown interest in your listings. And at that time I mentioned that we're really committed to delivering even more of these mobile features for our sellers. So, with this in mind, we're rolling out a couple of great new mobile features during Q1 and leading into Q2 of 2024. We're designed to help sellers understand what they can do to drive sales and to take actions on their account right from their phones.

Griff: Oh yeah, I love that. Let's talk about updates. What are the updates that you're really excited about?

Chuck: Well, the one that I'm the most excited about has to do with sale events or also called markdown sales. I think most sellers who have a store subscription understand the value of a sale event, being able to promote their items and generate more sales, increase sell through with these events. And in the past you could do that from your web browser. And that was it. Now we're rolling out the capability to start a sale event right from your phone. I do want to qualify this by pointing out that you do have to be a store subscriber to use sale events.

Griff: Another good reason to have a store.

Chuck: Exactly. I would recommend, uh, if you're not a store subscriber, at least take a look and see what subscription level may work well for you. But this is one of the benefits you get.

Griff: With this new feature. How would I using the app start a markdown sale?

Chuck: It's pretty easy actually. If you go to the app, you tap on the Sell Tab and then on Active Listings and then you tap on the Action Button, there'll be a little Action Button up top left and select Create Sale Event. From there you can um, scroll through all your listings, you can use the existing sort and refinement tools and there'll be a little checkbox next to each item in the list.

Griff: Yeah, so for example, if I wanted to just see only items from one category that I was gonna put in a markdown sale using the app, I just would use that sort feature on the app to get started.

Chuck: Yeah, I'm not sure category is currently in the sort, it's a little more limited I'll say than the filtering capabilities you have on the web. But really, I mean from a mobile device, what we're trying to do is create the most efficient pathway for users because they're out and using a small screen and they may not have as much time, but you can do all the sorting capabilities are there and the refinement capabilities are there that have existed already on that list.

Griff: Oh yeah, I'm on the app right now and I see, uh, you can refine by a lot of things, but not by category.

Chuck: Correct for now. But if that's a, a feature that sellers want and I'll plug again our shake to provide feedback feature on your phone. If you shake it, it will give you that opportunity to provide feedback. And we do read that.

Griff: I just shook my phone and well it's it um, alright.

Chuck: You may have to enable it.

Griff: Oh, I have to enable it. Okay, I'll do that later. Yeah. But I see everything else. I've gone to my Active List, I can click on Actions and I see that there's now Create Sales Event. That's fantastic!

Chuck: Exactly. You can add up to 200 items to a sale event from your mobile phone. And once you pick all the things you want, you check the box next to it, then you tap the Create Sale Event Button. From there you'll select the percentage of discount that you wanna offer, the start end dates of the sale, and then you'll put a title in there for the sale. And then if you hit the Review Sale Event Button, it'll confirm the details. Okay, here's everything you entered and it'll show you the discounted price even for each item. Which that's kind of helpful for me. I like to see, okay, if I put a 20% discount, now I'm seeing that this $20 item is now $16.

Griff: Yeah. That's really important. Yeah, you and I know this, I sometimes think the Product Team overlooks that, but that's an important feature if you're gonna do any sort of discounting on single listings or in batch, like with a sales event.

Chuck: Exactly. Yeah. It's just another way to confirm that you've put in the thing that you want, that you're getting the discount that you expected at that point. You just start the sale. It's that simple.

Griff: In your view, why is it valuable to run sales events or other promotions? I mean, can't the items just sell on their own?

Chuck: Yeah, that's a great question and I know most people's experience with sale events probably are looking at listing pages and seeing that discount kind of right up there in the upper left corner. But they are also shown to buyers in many other places on the eBay marketplace now we're continually expanding these promotional tools like coupons and sale events and volume discounts to highlight these signals. We call them signals, like ways that we're trying to tell buyers that there's an opportunity available to them here. Ultimately we want to improve price transparency for buyers. So that's a fancy way of saying we want buyers to understand exactly what benefit they're going to get, what price they're gonna pay when they pick up the item beyond search results. The Search Results Page might be a place where you see these sales or the View Item Pages, the the actual listing page itself. We're extending the signals to Google search results. We're extending them to automated emails to interested buyers that eBay will send out.

Griff: That's the one I like. I make purchases based on those emails all the time.

Chuck: I get them too. If you watch an item or if you frequently visit a particular item, you may find that you get an email and in that email there may be an opportunity to save 20% or some other amount.

Griff: Exactly. And remember, it's not how much you spend, it's how much you save!

Chuck: Exactly. That's the way I feel about it. You know, these changes have been shown to drive improved sell-through rates for promoted items. So showing these sales in more places throughout the site is a way that we can highlight these items without requiring any additional effort from our sellers. Now, long-term, the tools will help sellers increase their customer base really by driving repeat purchases and better kind of selling efficiency. So you're getting more items out there offering more deals and you're doing less work to do it to make those sales.

Griff: Right. And there's nothing more valuable in any business than repeat customers because you don't have to work hard or spend money to get them.

Chuck: Exactly.

Griff: That's a great update. That's really exciting. I think our audience will be very happy with that. What other updates do you have, Chuck?

Chuck: Well, I do have a couple more things. You know, we often get feedback from sellers that they struggle to understand what kind of things they can do to give their items to the best opportunity to sell. So coming soon sellers may start seeing recommendations on their active listing screen with suggestions to sell it faster for each item. So what eBay's going to do is analyze all of your listings and we're gonna make determinations about what would have the highest likelihood of improving your sell through. And then we will offer those things to you. We will provide links and advice to you on all of these items. Now this is all course at your discretion. There's nothing forced on you. You'll never be required to do any of these things, but it's just another way that we are trying to use the power of, I hate to say AI, but there is some kind of algorithm at play that looks at your items and does analysis and you'll benefit from that advice.

Griff: I'm looking at my active listings on the app right now and I think I may be seeing this already. On top of each of my listings. It says promote it, boost your item to help sell faster. Another one says send offer, get it sold by sending an offer to interested buyers.

Chuck: Absolutely. And those are great recommendations. Certainly Promoted Listings may be part of the recommendations and making offers will be as well.

Griff: But what you're talking about is something beyond this.

Chuck: It is, it's, yeah. Oh definitely go deeper. I can't go into too much detail, um, because I think a lot of the things are still being kinda worked out in how the algorithm will work. But I would say it's more a holistic view of your listings and things you can do. Not necessarily promoting listings or spending money, but things you can do for no cost other than your time to go in and and improve those items.

Griff: And you say these are coming soon.

Chuck: Coming soon. Yeah. I can't give any more definitive uh, timeline than that. But I would say, um, Q1 is certainly our target. We are trying to be as transparent and forthright as possible because we want sellers to know about these things and that we're working on them.

Griff: I can't wait to see those. And of course one of the other things that we hear a lot from sellers who use the app is the ability to use the app for seller initiated offers. That's a huge topic right now and lots of sellers are sending those offers. I hear there may be some changes to the app and seller initiated offers. Is that true?

Chuck: That is true. Positive changes, I love seller initiated offer myself. For those unfamiliar, most people know what that is by now. But a Seller Initiated Offer sometimes also called an Offer To buyers is when a seller sends an offer to interested buyers. And that usually means buyers who have watched your items or visited your listing several times, one of the things we're doing to improve them is around the reduction of unpaid items. Now I know this is a hot button issue, it's been bubbling for a long time and there are many different vectors in the eBay ecosystem. Where unpaid items come into play.

Griff: 20 years plus it's been bubbling.

Chuck: Absolutely. Well, seller initiated offer is gonna benefit from these efforts now. And so when a buyer accepts an offer, the buyer will have to check out and complete the payment when they accept the offer. This will reduce any opportunity for an unpaid item, of course.

Griff: I've already been subjected to this as a buyer and it was quite an easy experience. So I accepted an offer that a seller sent and I had to check out, which I was happy to do. I knew immediately from the buyer perspective and my perspective as a seller that wait, the item is not going to close as sold until I pay for it. This is really great news.

Chuck: Exactly. Yep. Yeah, the transaction will complete right at the time of acceptance. If the payment is not successfully completed, the great thing is the item will continue to be available for purchase in the marketplace.

Griff: I love that. Yeah, that's a great thing. I must be part of a group during this rollout where my user ID was part of that because I'm seeing it already as a, as a buyer.

Chuck: Yeah. Well that's very observant and you're one of the lucky 50% currently. So some sellers may have noticed a recent change which is rolled out at 50% right now. You've probably heard this before. We don't always roll things out at a hundred percent. We like to do it gradually and make sure everything's going smooth. We like to compare before and after. Currently items with offers under consideration will still be available for purchase until a payment is received from a buyer. So basically that means in the past, offers under consideration would take an item out of the marketplace and that's not gonna be the case anymore.

Griff: Do we tell buyers that? Do we say, Hey, if you don't pay for this, it can get snatched out from under you?

Chuck: We do. And I think that you're gonna see more messaging along those lines. The idea is we want to create urgency to finalize a deal. Right. We want buyers to understand that there are other interested parties and they may come in and get that item out from under you.

Griff: It's a time proven marketing strategy that works, which is, hey, it's okay if you don't want this. There's 10 people standing behind you who have money in their hands so you know, make your decision.

Chuck: Exactly. And as an avid garage seller and flea market guy, I love how it really is analogous to that experience where there's other fish in the sea, there are other buyers, everyone has money. So quick action often gets you the the reward.

Griff: I'll find something on eBay for resale and I know it's a really good price and I immediately start the purchasing. But during that entire process, I'm a nervous wreck because I think if I don't get this quickly, somebody else is gonna see it and buy it off from under me. So that sense of urgency is really important in keeping that money flywheel going for your sales.

Chuck: It is for sure. And I've had that experience also. I enjoy the psychology of when I list an item with a best offer, but I've underpriced it and boy you see people trip over themselves to pay full price. They couldn't make me an offer, but they understand that I've underpriced the item and so they're tripping over themselves to give me that full price so they can get the item.

Griff: And as a seller, and I know people listening know exactly what this feels like where you have something priced and you know it's fair or below, significantly below market value so that it is appealing. Somebody sends you an offer and you decline it and in the meantime it sells and they come back and say, well what about oh, oh it's already sold. Well that's not right. Well you know, you snooze, you lose.

Chuck: Yeah. I mean we've all been there and I've had buyers try to convince me with paragraphs of rationale in a message about why I should take X for the item. And then before they've even said it, it's sold to somebody else.

Griff: Well you know, I can't blame them for trying, but I don't get pleasure at the misfortune of others that much. Although sometimes I do. I'm only human. But in that case, yeah, I think, hmm, I'm so sorry that you missed out on that.

Chuck: Yeah, I think of them as teaching moments and we all can learn from the the experience.

Griff: Exactly. Is there anything else that you're really excited about that's coming up with the mobile app?

Chuck: One of the things that I've been pushing for and and very excited to see some progress on is some changes to our, I guess I would call it our picking flow. When you are a seller and you need to pick items out of your inventory to ship, we've made some improvements to how that flow works. Now, historically we've had the web and then we had the mobile device. And the mobile device of course is to me it's the perfect tool. If you have a large amount of inventory, you need to walk around and carrying that device is a great way to do it. I heard from a lot of sellers the same that they use their mobile devices and one of the points I heard a lot of is they need to be able to see an enlarged view of their items, images when they're pulling items to ship. Now a good example is I sell a lot of remote controls for devices and I'm maybe have a bin that's got a hundred of them in it. To be able to pull up a picture of a button layout and make sure I'm pulling the right one is very important. Because if you ship the wrong one to somebody now you've actually messed up multiple transactions potentially as you swap the item. So what have we done here? It used to be that it took, and I counted this, you're on the screen, that's where your items are paid and ready to ship nine taps to get to a zoomable item image on the mobile device.

Griff: Yikes.

Chuck: I know it's like nine taps in and then nine taps back too. And then you get back to the original screen and now it's at the top of the screen. You have to scroll down again. It's one of the things that frustrated me the most as a seller and fortunately as an eBay employee, I've also been able to influence and share the need from sellers that this is something we needed to address. So the good news is currently, at least on iOS and on the web, you should see when you go to the screen that lists all your items to be shipped a small icon in the upper right corner of the thumbnail image for each item. Now one tap on that icon will get you to a quick view of the enlarged image gallery along with the quantity of the items sold and the custom SKU all clearly displayed. And then the image, you can swipe through all the images for that listing. You swipe left and right, you can see them all. You can also tap and zoom in and see a closer view if you want. Now from there you can just dismiss the whole view just with one tap and then you're back to the exact same place on the listing screen that you were before.

Griff: Oh, that's cool. Now you said this is available on the web and is it available for all mobile devices?

Chuck: I believe currently it's iOS only, only because we're working on it still on Android, but it should be out.

Griff: Well that's great news. A couple weeks ago I had to ship something and I had to go through those nine taps and I didn't realize how many there were because I wasn't counting them, but I remember thinking, I just wanna make sure this is the right one because there's two or three of these and these had different batch numbers on 'em. They were different bottles of the same cologne and I wanted to make sure I got the right one. So I had to do this very same thing. So it would've been a lot easier if I had done it this way.

Chuck: Before this change. I would walk around with my phone in my left hand and then my right hand is used to pull the items out of the bin. So you know, if you think about that, okay, now I'm on a one hand operation, so I'm holding with my hand and tapping with my thumb and these buttons to click through. The nine clicks are not all in the same place. They're all over the screens. When I'm doing this like contortion thing with my thumb to try to tap on everything, I will say that the mobile platform has been added onto and added onto. And so it wasn't like an intentional flow, it just sort of happened organically. But this is an example of one of the things that your feedback as a seller, and I'm talking to the audience here, if you will do the shake to provide feedback or go to the link to provide feedback or email us or go to the eBay seller forums and provide this feedback when you have these experiences, an action that takes you 10 seconds and it should take two. These are the things we want to hear about and we really care and we want to make them better.

Griff: Well Chuck, this is all great news. Anything that keeps me on the mobile device more than the desktop is a helpful thing. So I, I'll be using all of these and I assume I think I can safely assume or we can safely assume that a lot of our audience will be using them as as well. So I want to thank you for that work and getting some of these changes pushed through.

Chuck: It is my pleasure. I'm happy to be here.

Griff: Chuck Van Pelt is one of the eBay Seller Advocates on the eBay Seller Advocate Team. They take feedback back from you and they bring it to the Product Team and the Product Team uses that input to help make changes and actually build new products. So thank you very much for your input and I think you'll see some great changes coming as well as we move through 2024.

Brian: You got questions.

Kayomi: And we got answers.

Griff: Oy-Vey! Do we get answers already and this week as opposed to past weeks where we always have three questions, we only have two questions this week. You'll see why in a minute. I think one might go a little long, but this first one was sent to us in an email, of course, that's podcast@ebay.com. And Brian, as always, would you like to do the honors and read it?

Brian: I'd be happy to Griff. Hi guys. I was very sad to hear Brian is leaving. But wish him success at whatever new path he is traveling. It will be strange listening to the podcast and not hearing his voice. Well thank you for that Paul. I have a question about the buyer exemption list. It states basically that it exempts buyers added to the list from the usual requirements set in the seller's settings. Would this apply also to the unpaid item day setting? Often I see sellers in Facebook groups ask about a customer wanting a few extra days to pay and could the seller hold off the item for the buyer even after the buyer has purchased but not yet paid? The question often brings up lots of debate and suggestions ranging from Sure, help them out to block their butts, they are trouble . I have seen both of those.

Griff: Yes, Me too.

Brian: Much of the discussion involves just how to do so if the seller is willing, for example, the seller has four days auto cancel, but the buyer requests an extra two days until payday. Could the seller add that buyer to the exemption list and prevent the auto cancel upon the four day limit? If so, if the buyer is removed from the list and assuming they don't pay by the agreed date, would the seller then be able to cancel the sale or would it auto cancel on its own? I hope this makes sense. Thanks so much Paul Giore.

Griff: Okay.

Kayomi: Okay, noted. Well, hello Paul. Thanks for that question. Hopefully my voice is a decent substitute to Brian's , so you won't be missing his too much.

Griff: It'll be a hard transition, but I think it'll eventually go very smoothly Kayomi.

Brian: I agree it will.

Kayomi: Paul, I had to research this one, but I was able to find the answer on the Buyer Management Page. And for those of you not sure what that is, you can find the page for buyer requirements by going to my eBay, then head to the Account tab, then the Selling Preferences link. You'll find the section for managing buyers on that page.

Brian: Or you can click the link for the page on this week's episode notes.

Griff: Exactly. So Kayomi, in your research, what did you discover?

Kayomi: The buyer exemption list covers only the buyer requirements section of buyer management. That means that adding a user ID to the exemption list exempts that buyer from your buyer requirements only. That buyer exemption list has no impact on unpaid item settings, which are separate from the buyer requirements. So Paul, the answer is, adding a buyer to the exemption list will not give that buyer more time to pay.

Griff: I just want to mention that our advice for those sellers who still allow buyers to purchase without paying is to set up the Unpaid Item Assistant and then leave everything to that feature to automatically take care of buyers who haven't paid. This gives all buyers the same amount of time to pay. And you know, I was thinking about this. I can't speak for all sellers, I don't use this. I require immediate payment even for my one-off items and people can put the items in the shopping cart and if I'm running a promotion, they can take advantage of that. But I have myself very strong feelings about, look, the marketplace is a place to buy things. It's not a layaway marketplace. And I think a lot of buyers are taking advantage of that fact. And can you wait till payday? My response would be no, but you know, you can always use a credit card.

Brian: Right? And if it's a really high priced item, oftentimes there's the option to do layaway or not layaway, but to take a loan to buy the item.

Griff: Yeah, I know PayPal credit has it. I think eBay has it.

Brian: Yep. And you can see it in the view item page oftentimes.

Griff: I understand buyers who want to do this, but I push back with sellers and say, I don't think you want to be taken advantage of that way. I mean, it's not your responsibility for a buyer to help them with the payment. What places can you do that?

Brian: The other thing is by setting it to automatic, it's efficient for the seller. The seller doesn't have to go back and think about, okay, what day is it? Do I have to send another reminder email? It just all happens automatically. And this is especially true for like auctions where you can't set up immediate pay. They don't have to worry. We'll send the reminder if the buyer doesn't pay in the right amount of time, boom, it's done. The buyer gets a strike, which is helpful to the system. We then know is the buyer abusive or is it this a one-off and then the sellers can relist the item and be on their way.

Griff: Kayomi, do you have any thoughts about this?

Kayomi: I think what Brian just said was a really good point. I mean, all of us have access to the backend, so getting that mark on their account, having that be visible to us, if any future occurrences like this happen is just really useful. Just supporting that.

Griff: The long and short of it is that it's not a seller's responsibility to support a buyer's addiction about not being able to pay for the ride. And I know I'm gonna get email about this, bring it on. It's fine. I just think it's not a very efficient way to do commerce. I want to talk about our second question and we have some additional information folks about a question that was asked last week regarding filing a claim with UPS. Just to summarize, it was somebody who shipped an item, it didn't arrive, and I believe they had shipped it by UPS. The buyer says it was delivered to the wrong address according to the pictures of the UPS delivery guy plainly it wasn't delivered to their porch, but the item is now gone and because it shows it's delivered, the seller's off the hook. But this seller was concerned for the buyer and said, how do either of us file a claim? And it turns out it's not easy because many things. But I got an email from someone who said, I heard your answer to this and you may want to talk to Sherry Smith. You all know Sherry Smith? She's our seller in Colorado. She's a longtime podcast guest. So I called her earlier this week and I talked to her and I thought we could play that bit of tape.

Kayomi: Yeah, let's go for it.

Griff: Welcome Sherry Smith. How are you?

Guest Caller- Shari: Good, how are you? I'm so happy to be here.

Griff: Well anyway, Sherry, we had this question come in from a seller who's shipped a parcel by UPS and it was delivered allegedly, you know, the, the buyer said it was not his or her porch. There was a photograph showing the delivery and it was not their location. It was some strange location, of course it shows as delivered. So the seller's kind of off the hook, but the seller, if you remember, was concerned about the buyer's experience and wanted to know if there was anything that she or he could do to make the situation better for the buyer. And of course I've been on that situation before and there really doesn't seem to be any way for anyone to file anything. So we kind of left it at that and said, you know what eBay should do is make the buyer whole. But then we got this email from Chris, which I just read and they said we should talk to you because you've been in this situation before. Would you mind sharing with us your experiences with UPS and how that worked out, filing a claim?

Guest Caller- Shari: I would be happy to. And it's a little different and in the email from Chris, what I said was a little bit different than that. So I just, I also want to clarify because I know I said a lot about it. What happened with me was I sold an item that sold internationally and I shipped it. So of course it goes to eBay's International Shipping Hub in Illinois. And I figured, oh well there's not gonna be an issue because eBay handles everything, but it's my responsibility to get it to the shipping hub successfully. Now, when they opened it at the International Shipping Hub, the box was empty.

Griff: Oh!

Guest Caller- Shari: I know. Crazy. What I needed to do was file a claim with UPS that because I'm not, I'm not protected for International Shipping until the hub actually gets your item. You do need to get it to them successfully. I had to file a claim with UPS, just filing a claim on their website was seeming impossible because it was saying the action failed or it's not possible. So I called eBay because I called UPS and they said, oh, you can't do it. eBay has to do it because you created the label through eBay.

Griff: Right. Same kind of thing that the original seller from last week was talking about.

Guest Caller- Shari: Okay, well good, because I figured out how to file this claim. Oh good. Yes, because when I talked to eBay, they really can't open the claim for you, so that can't be done. I went on UPS's site and really this is the banging your head against the wall method that worked because I kept clicking one thing after another. You don't click, I shipped it through another channel like you would think maybe you would do that won't work, but you click that you're the shipper. Then when you do that, there is an option that pops up that does say, did you do it through a third party or another channel? And then you click yes you did.

Griff: Ah, and that makes all the difference?

Guest Caller- Shari: It does. Then I said something like, I don't know if I said it was damaged because the thing was missing inside of it and mine was denied because if it's lost you have to say it was lost and, and in this case, because there was nothing in the box, it counts as lost. And I think for Chris or the the person, it was a lost thing because it didn't arrive to the actual buyer. It was shipped to somebody else.

Griff: Right. So you would say the item was lost.

Guest Caller- Shari: Yes. And that'll go through a different channel. But anyway, just to get a claim open on UPS, you just say you're the shipper, but then click that other box that says you shipped through another channel.

Griff: Whatever happened to that claim?

Guest Caller- Shari: Actually after a lot of trauma with UPS and banging my head against the wall, they sent me a check for a hundred dollars, which is what's included with an item because I didn't purchase additional insurance.

Griff: I see. So you get some redress.

Guest Caller- Shari: I did. So that was quite satisfying and amazing.

Griff: The secret here in this situation, and I'll email this back to the original poster or the questioner, is to file the claim on UPS site. But when it comes to selecting how the item was shipped, make sure that you indicate that you are the shipper and then you'll be able to check a box that says I shipped it to a third party and then the claim will go through.

Guest Caller- Shari: Exactly.

Griff: Well Sherry, this is great information. I'm sorry we had to utilize your trauma with UPS to get the right answer though, .

Guest Caller- Shari: Oh, but you made it meaningful. Now you know, all of us have to suffer in life, but if it can be for the greater good, then it has meaning you gave my suffering meaning.

Griff: Go my child, go in peace and sell and prosper.

Guest Caller- Shari: Yes. I will. I will.

Griff: Shari tell people where you sell on eBay or what Id,

Guest Caller- Shari: My seller on ID on eBay is Shari-sells. So it's S-H-A-R-I- underscore S-E-L-L-S.

Griff: And you have a podcast?

Guest Caller- Shari: I do. I co-host with Philip Jackson. It's called the Selling on eBay Radio Show. And you can find that by also going to selsellsell.online. And also it's on all the places.

Griff: And we'll make sure we put a link to that so people can find it. Shari, thank you so much.

Guest Caller- Shari: Thank you so much,Griff.

Griff: When did you think about Sherri's suggestion, Kayomi?

Kayomi: I mean, what a call. We got a great workaround to the issue. We had like a Buddhist teaching life is suffering kind of at the end of it. And then we learned a little about Sheri's trauma that was solved thankfully. But yeah, a lot packed in that message.

Griff: Brian?

Brian: Shari is always wonderful. Every time I hear her voice I learn something new and not disappointed this time as well. It also speaks to all of these systems, including eBay system, have some complexity to them. Oftentimes it's tough to figure out everything on your own. And so it's oftentimes good whether you're listening to a podcast like ours or Shari's or Shari hosts a meetup. Pick the brains of people who've gone before you.

Griff: Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. That's very important. Well guys, that's all that we have for this week. Remember, we love your questions, so please send them in.

Kayomi: Yes we do. If you have a question for us here at the eBay for Business Podcast, call us at (888) 723-4630.

Brian: Again, that number (888) 723-4630. We love to get calls. You can call that hotline anytime of the day at your convenience. Leave a question or comment, who knows? You might just end up on the air and you'll be a star.

Griff: And 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, even though we see our listenership dip every time we do it, we're not gonna stop your Three Point Podcast Checklist.

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

Griff: Don't let it get by you. Check out the details for the Winter Seller Update today. Go to Seller Center. The link is on the bottom of most eBay pages. Hover over the Resource Tab and then click Updates

Brian: Or go to Seller News in Community and check for the Winter update post. That's ebay.com/announcements.

Kayomi: Need to review anything in this episode? It's easy. Check the transcript for this in all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: And speaking of our next episode on episode 283, we're gonna talk to Rob and Melissa Stevenson from the Flea Market Flipper. We're gonna talk about their business and also how they've built their business by building a social media following and they've done so quite successfully, so you don't wanna miss that.

Brian: We'd like to, again, thank our guest this week, Chuck Van Pelt. And just a reminder, the next episode will be my last one, so please don't miss it. I'll have more to say then. I should also say thanks to all of those who've, uh, given me well wishes. I I read 'em and appreciate them.

Griff: They've been a lot. So one more week. Don't miss Brian on his last show.

Kayomi: It’ll be a good one. The eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.