💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 25.01.23 @2pm

[community-team@ebay]

Hi everybody!

The Community Chat will open at 2pm and will remain open until 3pm on Wednesday. After that it will be closed for further questions. Of course, we will continue to take care of answering any questions that may still be unanswered—We’ll get to everything as quickly as possible. 

Please ask your questions in the thread below. In order to be able to answer your questions as quickly as possible, we ask you to have one question per post. Of course, you can make as many posts as you like in the Chat- the more the merrier!

Our eBay Community Team is made up of kat@ebay , dave@ebay  and katie@ebay . Between us, we have knowledge in Buying, Selling, ProTrader, Fulfilment, Parts & Accessories, Payments, and the Community itself. Anything we aren’t sure on we’ll know the people who will be! Please ask us any questions you may have and we’ll do all we can to support. 

To ask your question, click Reply in the lower-right corner of this post, type your question, and click Reply between 2pm and 3pm. The community team will answer each incoming question in chronological order, and will quote the original question in each answer. 

Please note that any reply without a question to the community team or discussion replies may be removed from the chat. We want to keep on track to get through as many questions as possible. We welcome all discussion to be moved to the discussion boards. 

If you missed the weekly chat time, please ask your question in the community boards and tag us or we will be back next week with another chat! 

Many thanks,

Your eBay Community Team

[focustoysuk]

Hello, until a couple of weeks ago, I did all my buying on eBay via searches running off RSS feeds. eBay seemed to have stopped this and I have found no fix or workaround for it. eBay email search alerts are not quick enough. So I have been unable to buy anything for 2 weeks. Any ideas on when it might be fixed? Thanks, Lee

[simas-stuff]

Proof of Posting slip

When we are appealing a late delivery defect why do ebay not accept a proof of posting as evidence that we have posted the item on time? 

It literally states on it that the item 'has been accepted here today' It has the time & date and the barcode number. So why do ebay not accept this as proof? 
I cannot make a claim for a lost item with Royal Mail without one but ebay do not accept them as evidence that I posted on time. 
A ridiculous situation

[e-breaker]

Hi Team, What are the chances of eBay making some changes to the current system not providing printable invoices from our purchase history section that include VAT information where applicable. It is a right royal pain having to request them direct from sellers who may or not respond, and it is also time consuming sending them out as a sleer when we get asked for one. I honestly don't see how it's been without such info for so long, and if things don't change then I will certainly have to start sourcing many of my supplies and miscellaneous purchases elsewhere. 

[kat@ebay]

---

@focustoysuk wrote:

Hello, until a couple of weeks ago, I did all my buying on eBay via searches running off RSS feeds. eBay seemed to have stopped this and I have found no fix or workaround for it. eBay email search alerts are not quick enough. So I have been unable to buy anything for 2 weeks. Any ideas on when it might be fixed? Thanks, Lee

---

Hi @focustoysuk ,

I  have linked in with our tech department on this. The function for RSS feeds is no longer in operation on eBay. There was an RSS api that was used as a workaround but I have now also confirmed that this is also no longer in operation.

Thank you,

Kat

[ak_craft_crazy]

Hi,

I offer personlaised items with clear instruction, my processing time is set to 1 day. However some people fail to compelte all the personalisation details so i have to message them, most of the time they get back to me the day after at which point i have missed the dispatch time for their order.

I then get punished for this when dispatching my items as it goes against me as a seller for dispatching items "Late" even though this is the buyers fault not mine.

When will you catch up with the times and let sellers alter the dispatch date if there is an issue which also notifies the buyer, so this will help sellers who are awatiting information from the buyers.

[iceblue_uk]

We often have regular business customers who come back every week or every month to order more of the same item that they regularly use, yet we are billed the sponsored listings % on every order, ad infinitum, because the buyer is using search results to find our listing again and repeat buy.

Many buyers do not use purchase history or shops to order, maybe because it's far simpler to use search results and spot our listing from there, but I don't think that it's appropriate for us to ask customers to change the way they usually do things, i.e to tell them to order from the shop or to use purchase history to order, in order to benefit us.

I understand that for 30 days following viewing of a sponsored listing ebay has the right to charge a 'finders' fee on all orders received, but is it really right and appropriate to continue to charge a percentage of every repeat sale from that buyer, for years to come, when you already take the standard fees on those sales? Surely that is not the intention or the purpose of sponsored listings?

It's simply not affordable to continue to pay double the usual ebay fees on all orders received from your best customers, for years.

Could this policy be looked at with a view to waiving sponsored fees once a customer has ordered the same item several times over several months?
Surely it would benefit ebay in the long run because I am quite sure that the current system only encourages sellers to start dealing directly with these regular buyers, thereby cutting ebay out altogether.

[dave@ebay]

Hi @simas-stuff 

At the moment our system can only check tracking as its integrated into the site. I will pass this back to the development as an ask for future update. 

Thanks,

Dave  

[iceblue_uk]

I have another issue regarding sponsored listing standard...
Buyers often ask if we sell a particular product and the usual practice is to direct them to the correct listing by providing the listing number (many buyers don't know how to access shops and some don't trust URL links or know how to use them, so directing them to a certain listing number to enter into search is the easiest and most efficient option).

When the buyer searches the provided listing number they see only that listing, so why are they shown the sponsored listing and not the organic???

As it stands, ebay is charging us a 'finders fee' on an order for which you did not provide any sponsored advertising benefit and in fact had no involvement in whatsoever.

I hope that this is an error, if not then I think it's an extremely underhand way of taking extra money from the sale that you are not entitled to.

[kat@ebay]

---

@e-breaker wrote:

Hi Team, What are the chances of eBay making some changes to the current system not providing printable invoices from our purchase history section that include VAT information where applicable. It is a right royal pain having to request them direct from sellers who may or not respond, and it is also time consuming sending them out as a sleer when we get asked for one. I honestly don't see how it's been without such info for so long, and if things don't change then I will certainly have to start sourcing many of my supplies and miscellaneous purchases elsewhere. 

---

Hi @e-breaker ,

There is an option to print these showing the VAT information on orders. If you go to your purchase history and click on one of your orders " view order details". On this page there is a " printer- friendly page" icon on the top right. Click into this and it opens up the order information showing VAT details if it was applied. Then click on the printer icon on the top right of that page and it will show all the information in one page ready to print. You can print it or save it as a PDF.

Thank you,

Kat

[iceblue_uk]

I assume that ebay started charging FVF on postage because, years ago, some unscrupulous sellers would try to reduce their FVF's by offering a £10 product for sale at £1 with £9 postage. Probably not the best solution for sellers or buyers, but it certainly resulted in millions of pounds of extra profit for ebay.
Now FVF on postage is one thing, but why is ebay now charging the sponsored listing fees on postage on top of the FVF?
Sellers generally don't make profit on postage because buyers are aware of postage costs and will simply go elsewhere if sellers overcharge. Unfortunately, we already have to inflate postage costs by up to 15% to account for the FVF's that ebay are charging on them. Now, on some sponsored listings, we have to charge £2-£3 more that the actual postage cost just to break even on it after ebay take all the fees off!
I doubt that buyers would be impressed if it was common knowledge that of the money they just paid for a guaranteed next day service, ebay were taking £2 - £3 of it for themselves with no benefit to anyone else.
Is there a valid reason for this policy change other than increasing ebay revenue?

[a45heaven]

PAYOUTS -

HAVE YOU STOPPED WITH ADYEN NOW AS QUOTED BY EBAY EMPLOYEE?

WHY DID I GET A PAYOUT LAST SUNDAY ?

AND WITH A EBAY PREFIX ON BANK INFO - ADYEN PREFIX GONE NOW

WHY WAS YESTERDAYS PAYOUT BEFORE 6.00AM , THEN NO PAYOUT TODAY?

[drakus-com]

hi we sell vat and non vatable items. how can i get a breakdown on my payouts of what propoprtion of the payout is from vat and zero vated items. 

[kat@ebay]

---

@iceblue_uk wrote:

We often have regular business customers who come back every week or every month to order more of the same item that they regularly use, yet we are billed the sponsored listings % on every order, ad infinitum, because the buyer is using search results to find our listing again and repeat buy.

Many buyers do not use purchase history or shops to order, maybe because it's far simpler to use search results and spot our listing from there, but I don't think that it's appropriate for us to ask customers to change the way they usually do things, i.e to tell them to order from the shop or to use purchase history to order, in order to benefit us.

I understand that for 30 days following viewing of a sponsored listing ebay has the right to charge a 'finders' fee on all orders received, but is it really right and appropriate to continue to charge a percentage of every repeat sale from that buyer, for years to come, when you already take the standard fees on those sales? Surely that is not the intention or the purpose of sponsored listings?

It's simply not affordable to continue to pay double the usual ebay fees on all orders received from your best customers, for years.

Could this policy be looked at with a view to waiving sponsored fees once a customer has ordered the same item several times over several months?
Surely it would benefit ebay in the long run because I am quite sure that the current system only encourages sellers to start dealing directly with these regular buyers, thereby cutting ebay out altogether.

---

Hi @iceblue_uk ,

I can understand what your advising of with regards to repeat buyers.  I'll share this insight with the relevant team for the policy to be reviewed.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

---

@ak_craft_crazy wrote:

Hi,

I offer personlaised items with clear instruction, my processing time is set to 1 day. However some people fail to compelte all the personalisation details so i have to message them, most of the time they get back to me the day after at which point i have missed the dispatch time for their order.

I then get punished for this when dispatching my items as it goes against me as a seller for dispatching items "Late" even though this is the buyers fault not mine.

When will you catch up with the times and let sellers alter the dispatch date if there is an issue which also notifies the buyer, so this will help sellers who are awatiting information from the buyers.

---

Hi @ak_craft_crazy 

The dispatch time is locked into the transaction at of purchase to set the delivery date. I understand personalised items have a number of factors that can affect the delivery and dispatch time. I don't know if it would be possible to have an option to extend the dispatch time once the purchase is made but I will definitely push this back to the development team to look into. 

Thanks,

Dave

[e-breaker]

Thank You, however i can give you many examples of sellers who display a VAT number on their listing and yet the method you have just outlined does not show any VAT on the printable invoice? 

[iceblue_uk]

Hi Kat,

I was excited there for a moment, but what you directed the OP to is not a legal invoice and would not be accepted by business customers or HMRC. We really need this functionality, either for buyers to download a proper VAT invoice, or a button for sellers to send one. As it stands it is a time intensive process to find the order and bring up the invoice, then we have to either print it to pdf and send it via email (assuming the email address is still viewable which it often isn't), or take a screenshot and save it then attach it to an eBay message since ebay messaging doesn't support pdf's.

[kat@ebay]

---

@a45heaven wrote:

PAYOUTS -

HAVE YOU STOPPED WITH ADYEN NOW AS QUOTED BY EBAY EMPLOYEE?

WHY DID I GET A PAYOUT LAST SUNDAY ?

AND WITH A EBAY PREFIX ON BANK INFO - ADYEN PREFIX GONE NOW

WHY WAS YESTERDAYS PAYOUT BEFORE 6.00AM , THEN NO PAYOUT TODAY?

---

Hi @a45heaven ,

We are currently meeting with the payments team to get clarification and once we have that I will come back and update here and the other payout thread.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

---

@iceblue_uk wrote:

I have another issue regarding sponsored listing standard...
Buyers often ask if we sell a particular product and the usual practice is to direct them to the correct listing by providing the listing number (many buyers don't know how to access shops and some don't trust URL links or know how to use them, so directing them to a certain listing number to enter into search is the easiest and most efficient option).

When the buyer searches the provided listing number they see only that listing, so why are they shown the sponsored listing and not the organic???

As it stands, ebay is charging us a 'finders fee' on an order for which you did not provide any sponsored advertising benefit and in fact had no involvement in whatsoever.

I hope that this is an error, if not then I think it's an extremely underhand way of taking extra money from the sale that you are not entitled to.

---

Hi @iceblue_uk 

When there's an active campaign on any listings the sponsored item is pushed on site. The organic item doesn't show to avoid it duplicating in the results.  It may not be possible to override this for direct searches but I'll share your concerns with the Promoted Listings Team.

Thanks,

Dave

[ak_craft_crazy]

Hi Dave,

Thank you for your response, other platforms allow the buyer to change the dispatch date with a reason and message the buyer at the same time so they are aware. Having i this way will allow genuine reasons for "late" dispatch and put those who arent genuine off from using it as you have to explain to the buyer.

At the moment it just seems unfair to punish sellers for "late" dispatch through no fault of there own