topic Re: Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm in Chat with the eBay Community Team

Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm

community-team@ebay — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:43:21 GMT

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, marco@ebay and dave@ebay. Between us, we have knowledge in Buying, Selling, Fulfilment, 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. We understand that certain topics, such as concerns about businesses possibly using private accounts, can be frustrating and important to you. Please refrain from asking the same question repeatedly in our weekly live chats. We assure you that we carefully review all posts in the forum and ensure that your concerns are communicated to the relevant teams for appropriate action.
To maintain a constructive and community environment, posts that repeatedly breach this guideline may be removed. Continued violations could result in further action against your community account. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding in helping us keep our community focused and respectful.

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

Re: Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm

bulk_distribution — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:28:26 GMT

HI there, 2 or 3 issues:

===> ISSUE 1. It is not at all clear what happened with eBay-issued RM postage labels. I can no longer buy RM postage labels via eBay for the USA.

I am forced to buy via RM's own webisite. This then opens up new issues: e.g. a £0.50 handling surcharge, and as l later discovered, l have to pay extra "tax" on top. I only recently was informed (by people on eBay's boards) that the extra "tax" is NOT the tax the buyer paid via eBay (for the USA, that is the buyer's state's GST, Goods & Services Tax), the additional "tax" payable via the RM website is actually the Trump tariff.

If memory serves me, it's not just a USA problem.

So my point is:

1. Will eBay help us by tweaking the system which produces RM labels, to comply with the new Trump tariffs and £0.50 handling fee?

2. Will eBay also ensure it works with all other countries too?

3. Will eBay explain, whether they reinstate RM labels or not, what the new charges are? Because RM doesn't seem to have info, l had to find out via eBay's forums.

===> ISSUE 2: The Experienced Sellers board is a ghost town. eBay needs to invite more pro sellers in. I don't mean the users that have to comment on every post to debunk it, by saying "you're not registered as a biz seller" or "why don't you do this workaround instead, you idiot?" when l'm reporting a bug. I mean genuine elite forum users that want to share their experience.

Further, l think the Experienced Seller board membership should come with privileges e.g.:

- Access to the user interface design team.

- The ability to vote on user interface changes.

- Access to eBay's sterring team (if you have one) and / or the ability to vote on proposed general changes. Not that the votes will be binding but just so you can gauge the general feeling.

- Ehm ... shares in eBay? Small fee reduction? For those on the board only.

===> ISSUE 3:

- I feel eBay is using AI to make executive decisions. AI is an excellent slave, it can create amazing bespoke media in seconds. AI is a terrible master as the simplest customer service / order processing by a human user involves multiple value judgements and AI cannot make value judgements. If progress in AI accelerates then maybe in a century or two AI will be fit to make executive decisions.

Case in point, l recently had an eMail sent to a long deleted eMail address, telling me l had shared contact info with other users, and an eMail address for one user was given as an example. I checked the eMail address (an eBay-generated one) and it was for a recent order, but l had never EVER contacted that user. SO we have three issues: How did eBay retrieve that deleted contact address for me? And why did eBay write to it? And why did eBay say l had been sharing contact info with a buyer l had never spoken to?

Re: Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm

marco@ebay — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:40:41 GMT

@bulk_distribution wrote:

HI there, 2 or 3 issues:

===> ISSUE 1. It is not at all clear what happened with eBay-issued RM postage labels. I can no longer buy RM postage labels via eBay for the USA.

I am forced to buy via RM's own webisite. This then opens up new issues: e.g. a £0.50 handling surcharge, and as l later discovered, l have to pay extra "tax" on top. I only recently was informed (by people on eBay's boards) that the extra "tax" is NOT the tax the buyer paid via eBay (for the USA, that is the buyer's state's GST, Goods & Services Tax), the additional "tax" payable via the RM website is actually the Trump tariff.

If memory serves me, it's not just a USA problem.

So my point is:

1. Will eBay help us by tweaking the system which produces RM labels, to comply with the new Trump tariffs and £0.50 handling fee?

2. Will eBay also ensure it works with all other countries too?

3. Will eBay explain, whether they reinstate RM labels or not, what the new charges are? Because RM doesn't seem to have info, l had to find out via eBay's forums.

===> ISSUE 2: The Experienced Sellers board is a ghost town. eBay needs to invite more pro sellers in. I don't mean the users that have to comment on every post to debunk it, by saying "you're not registered as a biz seller" or "why don't you do this workaround instead, you idiot?" when l'm reporting a bug. I mean genuine elite forum users that want to share their experience.

Further, l think the Experienced Seller board membership should come with privileges e.g.:

- Access to the user interface design team.

- The ability to vote on user interface changes.

- Access to eBay's sterring team (if you have one) and / or the ability to vote on proposed general changes. Not that the votes will be binding but just so you can gauge the general feeling.

- Ehm ... shares in eBay? Small fee reduction? For those on the board only.

===> ISSUE 3:

- I feel eBay is using AI to make executive decisions. AI is an excellent slave, it can create amazing bespoke media in seconds. AI is a terrible master as the simplest customer service / order processing by a human user involves multiple value judgements and AI cannot make value judgements. If progress in AI accelerates then maybe in a century or two AI will be fit to make executive decisions.

Case in point, l recently had an eMail sent to a long deleted eMail address, telling me l had shared contact info with other users, and an eMail address for one user was given as an example. I checked the eMail address (an eBay-generated one) and it was for a recent order, but l had never EVER contacted that user. SO we have three issues: How did eBay retrieve that deleted contact address for me? And why did eBay write to it? And why did eBay say l had been sharing contact info with a buyer l had never spoken to?

Hi bulk_distribution, thanks for your question.

Regarding the US labels, this is impacted by tariffs. This issue is constantly changing, and being updated, and unfortunately, this is out of control for us, we just adapt as best as we can to deal with these kind of situations. However, you can use GSP for these orders, and you should be able to issue a label to our hub, and then we'll take it from there.

If you have an example, for another country, let me know then, and I'd be happy to take a look for you.

Regarding the experienced sellers board, I will pass on your feedback. However, to set up the right expectation, I doubt these ideas would be onboarded, but again, I will pass this on, so it can be taken into consideration.

If you confirm the item number of the email you're referring to, I can report that no problem, so it can be prevented from happening again in the future.

Thank you,

Marco

Re: Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm

bulk_distribution — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:52:08 GMT

Hi Marco, Re: Issue #3 (hallucnatory seemingly AI accusing me of sharing contact info) l'll try to speak to CS again on the phone. I tried also via text console but the guy froze on me.

Email reference ID: [#86180955361942279df8e05bddcb6aa9]

It's related to another eBay account

Btw this board seems empty today. I'm also not getting all sales notifications, l think. I'm unsure. Things don't make much sense on eBay right now, l guess it's just one of them weeks 🙂

Re: Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm

pegr-834437 — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:52:48 GMT

Hi,

When you say you will pass feedback or issues onto certain departments or relevant teams is here any chance you can tell us which team? As these are only weekly and only for a single hour many cant be online and updates take weeks if they ever come, so we are forced to contact CS ourselves and when we say this has been raised and passed to the relevant team they ask who that team were and we look like fools or liars as we are never told so the reporting starts again at step 1.

I don't see how its anything but a positive to tell us who or even just the department you pass this onto whereas (relevant) department doesnt help anyone.

Re: Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm

marco@ebay — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:55:08 GMT

@bulk_distribution wrote:

Hi Marco, Re: Issue #3 l'll try to speak to CS again on the phone. I tried also via text console but the guy froze on me.

Email reference ID: [#86180955361942279df8e05bddcb6aa9]

It's related to another eBay account

Btw this board seems empty today. I'm also not getting all sales notifications, l think. I'm unsue. This don't make much sense on eBay right now, l guess it's just one of them weeks 🙂

Thanks for your reply, bulk_distribution.

We would need the item number, not the email reference. However, we can only check accounts you're posting from, if the issue is from a different account, you can try contacting customer service again, or asking your question from the affected account.

Yes, fairly quiet chat today, must be the sunny weather. 🙂

For the notifications, you can give examples with item numbers of the ones you are not receiving, and we will be happy to report it.

Thank you,

Marco

Re: Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team - 04.03.26 @2pm

dave@ebay — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:05:56 GMT

@pegr-834437 wrote:

Hi,

When you say you will pass feedback or issues onto certain departments or relevant teams is here any chance you can tell us which team? As these are only weekly and only for a single hour many cant be online and updates take weeks if they ever come, so we are forced to contact CS ourselves and when we say this has been raised and passed to the relevant team they ask who that team were and we look like fools or liars as we are never told so the reporting starts again at step 1.

I don't see how its anything but a positive to tell us who or even just the department you pass this onto whereas (relevant) department doesnt help anyone.

Hi @pegr-834437

Usually when we pass something back to one of other teams or departments, we will usually find the issue owner and bypass the usual CS channels. A lot of the departments here have different team designations that are internal references. So, if we say we are sending something to the trainer authentication team for example, we could be sending it to the person or related team that handles the specific issue.

We don't name staff members who handle certain issues, usually they are not public facing, so we cant share their names on a public forum.

Thanks,

Dave