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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 25.01.23 @2pm
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.
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kat@ebay
Hi All,
Providing an update here regarding the VAT invoice for business buyers topic that was raised on our last two weekly chats.
Thank you,
Kat
seal-extrusions
·3 years agoFollowing on from a request about adding a button so we can send buyers a copy invoice with one click! As so many requests by accounts departments etc... Would also like to throw in a request that on multi listings could it not be added on a way to put weights and sizes for each item if required.
kat@ebay
Hi @seal-extrusions ,
Thank you for the suggestion. It is something we have shared in the past. I'll share your feedback as a point of improvement for future changes.
Thank you,
Kat
drakus-com
·3 years agohi 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.
dave@ebay
Hi @drakus-com
Ill have to reach out to the Payments Team to find out if this is possible. I'll come back to you directly once I have a response.
Thanks,
Dave
a45heaven
·3 years agoPAYOUTS -
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?
kat@ebay
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
iceblue_uk
·3 years agoI 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?
kat@ebay
Hi @iceblue_uk ,
As you have mentioned sellers setting high postage prices was an issue previously. Charging FVF on postage does stop sellers setting unrealistic postage prices and changing the sponsored listing fees to include postage helps to keep how eBay calculate fees in line with their overall policy.
Thank you,
Kat
iceblue_uk
·3 years agoI 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.
dave@ebay
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
iceblue_uk
·3 years agoThanks Dave, but surely in this case ebay is charging the seller for a service that they did not receive. I am concerned that if this is not overridable, ebay will just shrug shoulders and keep on charging for a service they are not providing. That would not be acceptable at all. Could we have some feedback on this from that team on what they propose to do or not do?
ak_craft_crazy
·3 years agoHi,
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.
dave@ebay
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
ak_craft_crazy
·3 years agoHi 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
dave@ebay
Hi @ak_craft_crazy
I totally understand your frustration with this, selling personalised items is not as straight forward as taking an item off the shelf and sending it. I'll link this thread with your feedback when I forward the suggestion to the Development Team.
Thanks,
Dave
e-breaker
·3 years agoHi 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
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
e-breaker
·3 years agoThank 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?
kat@ebay
Hi @e-breaker ,
If you want to send me an example of an order from one of these sellers and I'll review. Send it to me by private message.
Thank you,
Kat
iceblue_uk
·3 years agoHi 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.
simas-stuff
·3 years agoProof 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
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
focustoysuk
·3 years agoHello, 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
kat@ebay
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
iceblue_uk
·3 years agoWe 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.
kat@ebay
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