Episode 131 || Spring Seller Update

[podcast_team]

Overview, Transcript and Links

Justin Johnson from eBay’s Global Seller Update team joins us to go over the recently-announced Spring Seller Update. Griff and Brian answer your questions about immediate payment for Best Offers, and more. contacting a buyer post transaction, and searching by UPC or ISBN codes.

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Guests: Justin Johnson (eBay staff)  Hosts: Griff, Brian Burke

Transcript

Brian: This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

Justin Johnson: "And then the other thing I'm really excited about is the ability to automate promoted listings campaigns. So if you set up promoted listings campaigns, you can set up rules to bring in inventory as it's listed, as opposed to manually having to go and add that inventory into the campaign.":

Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: And I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start and run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 131. Hey, welcome back to the co-host desk, Brian.:

Brian: Thanks Griff. It's great to be back and a lot going on this week.

Griff: Actually it was the week before, but of course the discussions never end every time we have a Seller Update.

Brian: Exactly. I've read a lot of posts on the community site since Wednesday, but all in all, it seemed like a good one.

Griff: Episode 131. This is our rare one topic episode. It's all about Seller Update this week. And to that end, the Senior Manager of global seller update, Justin Johnson returns to fill us in with the details and maybe answer some of the most commonly asked questions since the update was announced last week. But before we get to that, is there anything in the news?

Brian: Well, this is not an eBay news item per se, but it is a hot topic in the community discussion boards, as well as on social media. And it's last week's announcement by Dr. Seuss enterprises. The business that oversees the estate of the children's author and illustrator decided to end publication and licensing of six books by Theodor Seuss, Geisel. The titles include his first book writing under the pen name, Dr. Seuss. And To Think That I Saw it On Mulberry Street from 1937. And if I Ran The Zoo from 1950. I've seen this in the news. These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong. Dr. Seuss enterprises said in the statement, the business said the decision came after working with a panel of experts, including educators and reviewing its catalog of titles. The other books that will no longer be published are McElligot's Pool, On Beyond Zebra, Scrambled Eggs Super, and The Cats Quizzer.

Griff: I have never heard of any of those.

Brian: You haven't heard of any of them?

Griff: Well, not those.

Brian: I have read probably three or four. McElligot's Pool, I remember.

Griff: The cat in the hat was all I remember, but, but I think I see where this is going.

Brian: I believe you do. As part of eBay's offensive materials policy eBay has prohibited the listing of the same six books and we'll start removing existing listings for any of the six books mentioned. What does the community have to say about this? Some of our community members are comparing it to a form of censorship or a manifestation of so-called cancel culture. Some are citing the first amendment.

Griff: Which none of which apply here eBay does have the right as a private company to prohibit any materials from being listed on the site as they see fit.

Brian: And that is definitely true, but it doesn't mean our decisions. Don't generate some pretty strong opinions, especially from sellers in those categories. We've seen this in the past when we've made decisions to prohibit other types of materials.

Griff: Yeah, I think there may be some sellers who see an opportunity to profit from the predicted scarcity of the six books now, that most marketplaces, eBay's not the only one have prohibited them. And of course, no one wants to limit a seller's ability to make a profit, but we have the interest of all types of eBay members to consider. And though we don't make these decisions lightly. We do reserve the right to make them when we have to.

Brian: Well, I suppose there will be a hot market for these items in other venues like social marketplaces.

Griff: You have any questions about this or any other eBay policy regarding prohibited items. We encourage you to send them to our customer service team.

Brian: Good advice. And I'll be back later to help answer seller questions sent to the podcast. But first let's talk about Seller Update. The week of March 1st, eBay released the annual Spring Seller Update. Seller Updates are when changes to selling related features, as well as the new features and services that we produce for sellers, it's when they're all announced. Here to go over the main topics of the Spring Seller Update and to answer well, the most popular questions that came in, the ones that you asked is eBay Global Seller Update Senior Manager, Justin Johnson. Welcome Justin.

Justin Johnson: Thanks Griff. It's great to be here.

Griff: I thought, what we could start off with, it to just go over the four main areas of this Spring Seller Update for 2021.

Justin Johnson: So we take a look at all of the different submissions that come in from our product teams and then put these into a format that is hopefully digestible and consumable for sellers. So we have some themes that we roll out for Seller Update and this Seller Update for 2021, Listing And Promoting, Fees and Financials also is one of the themes that we came out with. Running your business and then user agreement update. For listing and promoting there's several changes that we made, updates that will cascade to the site over the next couple of months. The category changes, which are something that we do a couple of times a year, are very important and helps buyers find items, helps international buyers find items, aligns us a little bit more with our international sites. And there's a lot of SEO benefit from having an updated category structure. New item specifics. Always going to be something on item specifics over the next several updates, I'm sure as we roll out more requirements and soon to be required, item specifics. We also rolled out or talked about the high unified listing experience. We communicated this already to sellers and more sellers are going to have the opportunity to try out this new listing tool. We encourage them to give it a shot, take a look, send some feedback through the tool and let us know and we'll improve that tool over time. There's a couple of new features launching in Terapeak as well as in the performance tab in Seller Hub. So with Terapeak there's sourcing guidance, that's become available to anybody that subscribes to Terapeak or that has an eBay store. That is a great way to understand what items could help your sales over time and see where there are some gaps where you can fill with inventory and on the performance tab side, there's a couple of great things. There's a listing quality report that's available for store subscribers, as well as some updated traffic reporting. To help you give insights, to understand your business and make the best decisions for your business. A couple of things that I'm really excited about in listing and promoting though, coded coupons. A lot of sellers are really excited about this. This is a new promotion type that's going to help sellers bring return buyers back to them as well as just increase velocity for new buyers. We will talk a little bit more about coded coupons as we get through the show, but this is one of the most exciting things I think we've rolled out in a while. And then the other thing I'm really excited about is the ability to automate promoted listings campaigns. So if you set up promoted listings campaigns, you can set up rules to bring in inventory as it's listed, as opposed to manually having to go and add that inventory into the campaign.

Griff: What is a coded coupon exactly?

Brian: Coded coupons is a new promotion type within Promotions Manager or the Marketing tab in Seller Hub. Coded coupon will let you to set up a campaign and say, Hey look, either private or public. And public will mean that they will actually show on some of the areas of the eBay site if you set it up as public. Private means you could actually set up a campaign and then send it to buyers that you want to use that coupon to encourage them to make that purchase decision. You'll be able to set up, you know, the minimum spend that buyers have to go through as well as the max times, they can use the coupon, the max budget that you have for the coupon, all sorts of other things. So there's a great campaign manager that goes along with it.

Griff: That sounds like it's got a lot of detail to it?

Justin Johnson: It does. It does. And I would encourage everybody to read through it first because those coupons won't go away until the coded coupons comes into place. So the coded coupons are effectively replacing code less coupons. If you have a code less coupon campaign, that's already running, it won't expire until the date that you've set, but you won't be able to set up any new code less coupon campaigns after the coded coupons take effect.

Griff: And it looks like hopefully towards the end of March, that'll roll out?

Justin Johnson: I think so. Yeah. So it's a staggered roll out across the globe. It's not just the U S where this is rolling out. Lots of other regions, but the US I believe is toward the end of March, beginning of April.

Griff: By the way, are shipping promotions an options for coded coupons?

Justin Johnson: They are not no. So shipping promotions are not something that you can use in coded coupons. There's lots of other customization and other features that you can use to target and tailor your campaigns, but shipping options is not. So there will still be the other promotion types available, and you can use those to set up some type of shipping promotion if you want. In the future, it's possible but right now it's not a function of coded coupons.

Griff: What I would use a coded coupon for, I would have a campaign for returns. Whenever somebody has to return something to me, I feel it's an inconvenience on their part, regardless of the reason. And I like to give them in the past a code less coupon that gave them a percentage off on their next purchase. Will I be able to do that with the new coded coupons?

Justin Johnson: You will. Yes. And that's one great thing is you'll actually be able to print off a coupon to put into your shipping items, or you'll be able to send a buyer that coupon via email. You can share it on social media. If you set up a public or a private coupon, lots of great ways to share this, to get buyers, to take advantage

Griff: What are some of the changes that we're making to the unpaid item process for those sellers that either have auctions where the high bidder doesn't pay, or when they send an offer. And the buyer who they've sent an offer agrees, but then never pays. How is that process changing?

Justin Johnson: So we're rolling out some updates to the unpaid item process overall, throughout the course of this year. The first thing that we're rolling out is a new cancel function for unpaid items. As it sits today, if you have the unpaid item assistant set up, you can have it file a claim after two days. And then that claim has to be up in four days. So for a total of six days before you can actually close the claim, get your fees back and be on your way. In this new cancellation function, if the buyer doesn't pay after five days, you can send a cancellation. So it shortens the window by one day. It's not a huge amount of time, but it is one day that it shortens the window. eBay will also send buyers a payment reminder. I think 24 and 48 hours after the purchase if they haven't paid. That takes some of the onus off of sellers to remind buyers about paying for an item. eBay will reach out to the buyer, send them a note, let them know it hasn't been paid for. And then as a seller, when you have an item that is eligible for cancellation, you can select cancel if the buyer hasn't paid and then you can opt to relist or not relist the item. You can also set this up to automate the feature to an extent. Today, I think we have the unpaid item preferences, in the future it will be preferences for items awaiting payment.

Griff: When a seller cancels an item under these circumstances, the buyer then does not have the option to pay.

Justin Johnson: That's exactly right. Yeah. So they wouldn't be able to pay. If they still wanted the item, they could go repurchase it and work with the seller. Some of the questions that we've seen coming in through the community and Customer Support teams is that do the buyers still get unpaid item strikes? I think the verbiage for those strikes may change, but yes, they still will get a strike for not paying for the item. And sellers will still have the option of blocking buyers. If they have more than two unpaid items strikes.

Griff: A lot of sellers are curious about what are the consequences on the eBay side for a buyer that has a lot of strikes?

Justin Johnson: Yeah. I'm not 100% sure to be honest, I can definitely find out from our Trust teams and find out what we can share, but there are consequences for buyers if they do continue to not pay for items that they commit to buying, and then they don't pay for the item, there will be consequences.

Griff: There's also been a change to some of the automation when it comes to returns and partial refunds. I found it a little bit confusing. I think I understand it, but can you explain it to us in layman's terms?

Justin Johnson: Yeah, you bet. So this is another one of those topics in the running your business section of Seller Update. And that's the enablement of partial refund offers on auto accepted returns. As a seller, If I have a buyer who wants to file a return, maybe the wrong size, or there was some other issue with the item, if I have it set up so that that return can be auto accepted that really just closes the return as of today. In the near future, when this rolls out for Managed Payment sellers only. So this is an encouragement to get sellers into Manage Payments, buyer files that return it's auto accepted. Before the buyer sends it back, me as a seller, I will actually see an option for refund options in the returns flow. I can click that button, choose to send the buyer an offer for a partial refund, with the assumption or with the idea that they will keep the item and take that partial refund. That way as a seller, I can save money on that item being shipped back to me and having to pay out of pocket for that return shipping cost.

Griff: What would be the best practice here for the seller? I would assume that you'd want to make sure that you've negotiated this with the buyer prior to selecting that option.

Justin Johnson: It would be best as a seller, you had contact before. A lot of times we know buyers will just come in and file that return and not contact the seller to let them know that there was an issue with the item. As a seller. If you get a note that the buyer is interested in returning the item, you can work out a partial refund upfront. So this new feature actually enables it for all of those auto accepted returns that were just as a seller, kind of frustrating because the system just accepted the return and you didn't have a chance to work with the buyer on it. We're trying to give the sellers that opportunity to work with buyers, to either take a partial refund and not return the item, or if there's something else the buyer wants, it'll lead to contact between buyer and seller.

Griff: This is part of the return process. So if you've opted in for this and you offered a partial refund and the buyer has accepted it to be clear here, do I have to take that item back?

Justin Johnson: No, I think the idea would be, Hey sellers, let's save you that money on shipping. If you can offer a partial refund for $5 and it was going to cost you 10 to ship it back and then have to process that item and have to put it back into inventory, you could save that money. Offer that buyer, a partial refund, if they accept great. The buyer can keep the item and take that partial refund and you won't be out quite as much as you may have been.

Griff: The point in the returns flow, where the seller makes this decision is again, where?

Justin Johnson: Because it's auto accepted, the seller may not have notification of that return. Once they see that notification that comes in, that there's been a return, they'll see an option for refund options in the return itself.

Griff: If I sell a CD and really, I mean, I sold it for $5, it costs 2.50, media mail to ship it back. I'm going to say, I don't want you to send it back. Can I issue a full refund? Is that one of the options as well?

Justin Johnson: I think the functionality would allow you to issue a full refund if you want it to. I think it gives you an opportunity to select the dollar amount that you want to offer. I think the idea behind this was to give sellers more options when it comes to returns so that they can hopefully save a little bit of money on those return shipping items.

Griff: Let's go back to promoted listings for a minute because this is new. Promoted listings have been around for awhile, but now we're adding some automation.

Justin Johnson: We are. So this is really exciting. For a lot of sellers I think this will be a great way to run your promoted listings campaigns. As it sits today when you set up a campaign to bring new items into that campaign, you have to manually bring them into the campaign. If I set up a campaign today and then list a hundred items tomorrow, I would have to go through and decide which of those hundred I wanted to put in that campaign. With this new automated campaigns with promoted listings, you actually can set up rules to manage how you want the campaigns to run. You could use a set up using filters. So I think it's price and category to start off and there'll probably be other filters that are enabled in the future. You can set and automate the ad rates as well. So it can follow the daily suggested ad rate for each listing, varied by category. And this is one of the great things about this. If you're comfortable with the ad rates that eBay suggests, I would encourage you to set up automated campaigns and just follow that ad rate as the amount changes subtly day by day, based on the number of other sellers in that category Promoted Listings and all those other factors that go into it.

Griff: And when we're talking about following the ad rate automatically, can you put limits top and bottom limits?

Justin Johnson: You can. Yes. So you can set an ad rate cap. So your ad rates never exceed a certain amount. If you're comfortable following the ad rate up to a certain percentage, you can do that. And then I think you can also set the ability above or below the suggested ad rate so that it will follow that suggested ad rate, but either, maybe just a couple of points below or a couple of points above.

Griff: Every time we have a Seller Update that mentions the word fee sellers get a little concerned. Can you talk a little bit about the changes to the rate cards and the fees?

Justin Johnson: There's a few things that are happening here. Bear with me for a minute as we talk through these. Number one, zero insertion fee allotment, increasing for store sellers. If you're a store subscriber and you are also enrolled in eBay Managed Payments, there's a big, big change for zero insertion fee allotments that you'll get on a monthly basis. We made some changes in August to give sellers a lot more free listings in select categories. Like with this change, we're actually jumping up the number of zero insertion fees that sellers will have for basic, premium and anchor stores by a lot. And when I say a lot, I do mean a lot. For basic stores it goes from today, 350 fixed price listings per month, up to 1000 fixed price listings as of April 1st. It's a nice increase. Premium, even bigger increase. It goes from 1000 today to 10,000 on April 1st. And then anchor, it's also a pretty good increase from 10,000 today to 25,000 in the future. And the message that we want sellers to get here is please take a look at your store subscription, understand what is the best store level for you and the number of listings you have and what you're trying to achieve on the platform.

Griff: And again, these are for fixed price listing.

Justin Johnson: That is.

Griff: Has there been any changes at all to auction format listings? I've seen that question come up.

Justin Johnson: As of April 1st for non-store Starter and Basic, they'll have 250 auction style listings per month for free. For Premium it's 500, Anchor is a thousand and Enterprises, 2,500.

Griff: That's a lot of auction listings.

Justin Johnson: It is.

Griff: The other request that's coming in is sellers want to see a side by side comparison before and after the Seller Update for all of the fees. Is that something we're offering?

Justin Johnson: We don't have a side by side. This is really complex for us to display the data in a very, in a digestible and consumable way. What we've done and we got some feedback when we rolled out Seller Update, this was a little bit unclear to sellers. And so we've added some clarifying statements. One of the things we're not trying to hide is there is a final value fee increase in select categories. That increase is what I would call relatively small. It's 0.2% and it's in select categories only. I would encourage everybody to go look through the Seller Update pages. There's a link on the fees and financials page to go to a page with a bunch of fee tables that break this down a little bit more on a category level. To complicate things a little bit, we also have to look at it for sellers that have a store versus sellers that don't have a store. And then both of those have to be looked at for sellers that are in Managed Payments and not in Managed Payments. This is part of the reason we didn't do a side-by-side because it was just going to be extremely complex and not something that was probably going to be understood by even us internally, much less those externally that we were trying to help understand.

Griff: Seems to me though, if I'm a business, I know pretty much where I stand right now, at least if I'm paying attention and managing my business as I should. I know what the percentages are and what I'm paying, and I can do my own side-by-side comparison.

Justin Johnson: That's exactly right. And to put it in context, 0.2% is the final value fee increased in those select categories. That amount is it's not insignificant, but if in $10,000 of sales, that's another $20.

Griff: I just, and I have to admit, I was a little confused about something myself, because I think I might've read this wrong. I know that we talked about internally and now we've announced it that the promoted listings quarterly credit is being retired for Top Rated sellers, but it seems there's some confusion that we were also retiring the Top Rated Plus discount, which I didn't think was happening.

Justin Johnson: It's not, no, you're exactly right. I think the way that the verbiage that we use for the discount and for the Top Rated Plus discount versus the Top Rated seller quarterly credit, it's very confusing. And I think it has confused some people. The reality is, we're not getting rid of the Top Rated Plus discount whatsoever that 10% discount for sellers or listings that are eligible. That is going nowhere as of now and I don't think it's going anywhere in the future. What is going away is the promoted listings quarterly Top Rated seller and anchor and enterprise store credits. If you had an anchor store and enterprise store and you were aTop Rated Seller, you were eligible for $55 per quarter of promoted listings of a credit. That credit was really meant to get people to adopt promoted listings over time, promoted listings have grown and seen great adoption. That credit is no longer necessary for us to drive a good experience with promoted listings. The way I would look at it is that the automated campaigns, some of the coded coupons, things like that will help you make up more than that $55 on a quarterly basis.

Griff: Yeah. And remember, you only pay for promoted listings when they sell. So you can bake that into the price. That's what you should be doing. And also you should be using promoted listings properly. I still see a lot of sellers who are promoting listings, where the price is a considerable amount over what the average price of identical items in that category. And in those cases, buyers are pretty savvy and they're going to pass by your promoted listing looking for the best price. I really recommend that if you're using promoted listings, that you keep that in mind. It's not going to override the fact that buyers look for the best price some of the time so don't promote your highest price listings in comparison to identical listings from other sellers.

Justin Johnson: That's exactly right.

Griff: Now, the one point of Seller Update, which we were very upfront about this on the podcast, is that we actually avoid talking about changes to the user agreement and I need to explain why. A user agreement is a long page of legal ease and neither Justin myself or anyone else on the Podcast Team is qualified to interpret or talk about the actual terms of these, any changes to the user agreement. But you can always send questions about the user directly to customer support and there they can route them to someone in our Legal And Contracts Team that can actually answer them for you.

Justin Johnson: And I think the only thing I would say about the user agreement changes is there's, there's a few bullet points. If anybody wants the quick version of what's changing in the user agreement. So check, go to the Seller Update page and the URL is pretty easy, straightforward. It's ebay.com/sellerupdate.

Griff: Justin, before I let you go, let me take the opportunity to congratulate you and the rest of the team. This is a very successful Seller Update. The sentiment has been pretty positive and I think a lot of sellers who are business minded had picked up on the important points of this update, which are really focused on making business on eBay for sellers, a lot faster and a lot more profitable.

Justin Johnson: That's so true and so well said, and you're exactly right. This is a huge team effort internally at eBay. A lot of teams focused on making sure the sellers have the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, and that we're keeping the customer experience top of mind through the whole process.

Griff: Now if a seller has another specific question is there still a place where they can go to get an answer quickly?

Justin Johnson: There are. So the community boards are a great spot and there are some Seller Updates specific community boards. You can go there. Those will eventually be archived so that sellers can come in and see the answers there. Always have the opportunity to post on a new board or create a new board, et cetera. But there's a lot of information that's been there. A lot of questions that have been answered already and the community has a new look and feel. So I would say, go take a look. Try it out.

Griff: If you do have a question and you'd like us at the podcast to address it, you can always send it to podcast@ebay.com or you can always call it in at 888-723-4630. Justin, thanks again. It's always a pleasure and we'll look forward to talking to you when it's Seller Update time again, probably in the fall.

Justin Johnson: Sounds great. Thank you so much.

Griff: Justin Johnson is the Senior Manager of Global Seller Update, and you can read the details of the recently announced Spring Seller Update on the seller news section of eBay community. There are links from the announcement right into the specific sections of the update. We'll put those links for the update in the transcript for episode 131.

Brian: You've got questions?

Griff: Well, we have answers! Mostly.

Brian: Mostly? Did we get any questions about Seller Update Griff?

Griff: Well, not yet Brian, but remember we record the podcast the week before it's released so I suspect we may get update questions for the next week. In the meantime, we have three questions this week, the first is more of a request for a new feature, but it's, I got to tell you it's one that many sellers would love to see implemented including myself.

Brian: Can I read the first question?

Griff: Sure. Go ahead.

Brian: So eBay seller Tammy writes "Hi eBay For Business Podcast. Thanks for all you do. I've been a seller and a buyer on the platform since 2001 with more aggressive selling and a store over the past four years. Recently, I've noticed a large uptick in people who send offers and then do not pay. Pride myself on being willing to haggle and frequently accept offers. It seems very much in the spirit of the old eBay, but this behavior has become very frustrating When this occurs. My item is off the market for four days as we move through the non-payment process. Plus, my portal is littered with canceled orders. This has been brought up for years by community members. Best offer needs to have an option where payment is automatically taken when an offer is accepted. This would not only save your seller's time and frustration, but also reduce refunds on final value fees and dings on new buyers. I hope you will either explain why this has not been done or send the recommendation along. It has long been a point of frustration in multiple seller communities that I'm part of. Thanks so much, Tammy." And thank you Tammy, for that request and indeed, that is something that we hear. It's definitely one of the top 10 requests from sellers.

Griff: Myself included. Tammy that was well-written by the way. Yeah, it's really frustrating. I don't know if you were listening to the Seller Update news and if you read Seller Update, there's actually a little bit of relief in the update when it comes to what we call unpaid items and the cancellation process. So we've eliminated some of the wait time with that, but yeah, you're right. I mean, the ultimate solution is to have, when somebody wins an auction or somebody accepts an offer that the acceptance is a trigger that pulls the money out of their little tight little wallet and sends it to the seller. Yeah, I agree. That's like the best solution. Harry Temkin by the way, was actually on a few episodes ago and we talked about this shortcoming of the offer feature and he told us then that although there is really nothing concrete, he can announce today. He assured us that his team is currently looking at this solution. It's a top priority. And that there's probably going to be more news to come later in this year about a potential solution.

Brian: You know, it's interesting. Auctions used to be the problem with unpaid items and over the time with immediate pay and more sellers moving to fixed price and using immediate pay, that's gone down as a percentage. But then when we introduced offers, it was interesting. This same issue came up and I think Tammy kind of hit the nail on the head on the type of solution. And it's great that Harry and his team are looking at it.

Griff: Without getting into details because they are really complex. But a lot of it had to do with the fact that we weren't actually managing the payment end of it, even though, you know, PayPal was a part of the eBay team that was a separate process and there were limitations about what we could do in the transaction end of that. Now that we're managing payments, it kind of opens up the Avenue for a product and tool solution to this. And we're painfully aware of it as a company. I'm painfully aware of it as a seller, it's a terrible experience. And you just want to pull your hair out saying, why does this happen? It's not unknown. And we thank you for your patience.

Brian: You know, it sounds like also another benefit eventually of Managed Payments.

Griff: Exactly. So Brian, our next question is about transactions with a buyer after a listing has been refunded and it's from longtime eBay seller, Carl Swain. Carl writes to us and says, "I refunded a customer for an item not received. I had shipped the item two before. Being customer oriented, I refunded his money immediately. (Good work, Carl). It was a low dollar item, $13 total that was mailed without tracking. Two days after I refunded the money, I received an email message from him, thanking me for the refund, but stating that he had received it, he asked me to send him a PayPal invoice so he could pay me back. Since I'm on managed payments. I love it. Except for this transaction. I don't have his email to invoice him. (That's because we took the emails out of the order details.) My question is why with all the problems with items not received and then refunds made where it ends up that the customer eventually receives their items. Why is there not a simplified procedure to reimburse a customer for that item? Customer Service said for me to request his email address so I could invoice him. I thought this was against eBay policy. And she said, no, not if it was not to make a sale outside of eBay, she kind of got that half, right? And then he said, laugh out loud to be truthful, requesting money for an item that the transaction has been canceled and eBay lost their money on the transaction. So technically it is an outside of the eBay sale. There should be a place to find the item, click on it and request that the refund be reversed." And that's from Carl Swain and his ID on eBay is carlswain. One word. Thanks Carl.

Brian: Well, Carl, I think we can clear this up once and for all. It's indeed okay for a seller and buyer to exchange email addresses after a transaction has ended for any reason, including the scenario you outlined.

Griff: Yeah. And you can do this through my messages, it's pre pre-transaction exchange of information that we prohibit only because it opens up the possibility of taking that transaction that hasn't happened yet and conducting that off eBay. But if you're contacting a buyer or seller that you just had a transaction with in a situation, any situation including this one, you can exchange email addresses and phone numbers thru my messages.

Brian: We don't normally see that request with a $13 item. They tend to be like larger or higher ASP or average selling price items where there's a need to communicate after the sale.

Griff: Yeah. We would hope that our various mail carriers would have, would, you know, they're never going to have that issue again, that they've had for the last few months during the Holidays where service levels really dropped and items seem to get really stuck in transit, but actually you're right Carl. It'd be great to have a smoother solution to this and we're taking it back to Harry and the team to see if it's something they can work on. But in the meantime, in a situation like this with a buyer who's already had a transaction with you, you can ask them to send you their email address through my messages and it's perfectly okay. And finally, our third and last question for the week was a call in from eBay seller, Naples Jack of Treasures and Pleasures, let's listen.

Guest Caller: Hello Griff. This is Jack from Treasures And Pleasures. I sell mostly media. DVDs, books. My problem is when I create a listing and enter in the ISBN or UPC code when creating a new listing, most of the time I get no answers. However, when I then open up a new window and go to the eBay website and enter the same ISBN or UPC code, I will then get several responses for the product that I'm looking for. My question is that I don't quite understand why we create a new listing, doesn't show the same responses as the eBay website does hope you can figure this out for me. Thank you.

Griff: Thanks Jack. Yeah, that's a good question, Brian. I bet you understand what's going on here.

Brian: Especially with media, anything with like a UPC code or ISBN over the years, I mean, we've developed a catalog, but as you can imagine, the catalog doesn't extend to every single item that's out there.

Griff: Yes, especially older, older items, older DVDs or books.

Brian: Yeah, definitely. I mean, newer stuff, more likely that you'll get it or it will be in the catalog. We obviously want the inventory. So we want to enable the sellers to be able to list that and include the ISBN because we know buyers use that sometimes to search for a very specific item. The sellers can create the listing using the ISPN or the UPC code, in the item specifics. Exactly. So it's kind of why sometimes you might not see it in catalog, but you can then create that listing over time. If that's a listing that other people also leverage it can get into the catalog, but it's not always automatically there.

Griff: And by having the UPC or ISBM number in one of the items, specific fields, including the one on the top of the listing, where it asks for a UPC or ISBM number for that particular category. Even if we don't have it in the product catalog that then assigns that number to the listing so that if somebody uses that number to search for inventory on eBay, your item is going to show up. That's why it's really important to include it.

Brian: And it really is important for things like certain versions of like a movie or one, maybe with extra trailers and stuff. It might have a different ISBN than the original release of the movie. Things like that.

Griff: In fact, I just bought a DVD a couple of months ago, it's an old DVD of a silent movie and it had a code on it.

Brian: Oh, I was going to ask, did it have a code? Cause I know like the UPC and stuff didn't really come about till like 1974. And it was meant for grocery items. It's a DVD of an old item, but the DVD obviously came from the nineties and there is a code, but it's not in the catalog. And there were a few examples of it where the sellers didn't bother to put the ISBN or actually UPC code. When I searched by UPC, their items didn't show up. It really helps better guarantee that your media item is going to show up for those of us who searched by those codes to make sure we're seeing all the possible listings on eBay and not seeing some left out. So sometimes just the title of the listing is not enough.

Brian: Good advice for any seller out there selling media or any other item with an ISBN or UPC code.

Griff: Well, Jack, I hope that answered your question. Call us back if it didn't and of course we love it when people call. Don't we Brian?

Brian: We do. And if you have a question or request, speak up and call us at (888) 723-4630.

Griff: That's (888) 723-4630. You can call at any time of the day, any day of the week, leave a question or comment on the machine and if it's appropriate, we just might put it on the air.

Brian: And if you're not a call on the phone person. You can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com. I've always wondered what you mean by appropriate.

Griff: Well, there are some questions we cannot address on the podcast. Those would be questions about an account action, such as possibly an account restriction or suspension or any request or inquiry regarding action that was taken by eBay's Trust Team. For privacy reasons, those questions or emails or calls, they have to go directly to eBay Customer Support.

Brian: That makes sense. So kind of, we aren't, aren't able to really provide, you know, a seller's private account details over the podcast, but if they can generalize their question, it might help other sellers.

Griff: Exactly. But besides that, what we can provide you with, even if it's inappropriate is your weekly podcast to do list.

Brian: This is becoming very old hat. Don't be in the dark check, the announcement board for up-to-date seller news.

Griff: Every day, every week, every month. Number two, how's that thermal printer working out for you, life changing, isn't it?

Brian: They are life-changing. I have to admit that you've gotten some comments about thermal printing and people like the fact that you emphasize it every single week. I've seen it posted both on social media and in our community.

Griff: Yes. I'm a man with a mission and I don't take any commissions from printer companies.

Brian: I still think we should get someone to sponsor the podcast, a thermal printer maker.

Griff: That's questionable, but maybe we can give one a way on the show. I'm thinking I've got extras around here.

Brian: We should do that.

Griff: I've got an extra one. I think I'll put it up as we will have a contest or something.

Brian: Yeah, let's do that. That's a great idea. And third check out the transcript for this and all episodes for followup on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode. By the way, we've recently upgraded the podcast pages on community.ebay.com. And we think you'll like the way it looks. Go to www.ebay.com/podcast and let us know what you think. And you can also comment on specific episodes.

Griff: Yeah, it's really cool. I love the new look. On our next episode. Episode 132, we'll meet eBay seller, Victor Rivera, who was also selected for an Up And Running Grant. And he has an interesting seller story to tell us.

Brian: The eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

Episode 131 Links

Seller Update Discussion Board
Spring Seller Update Announcement
Spring Seller Update Pages
Seller Update Discussion Board

Recurring Links:

eBay for Business Podcast	eBay for Business Podcast Discussion Group
The eBay Community	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