💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 03.05.23 @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

[iceblue_uk]

Hi Team,

I'd to echo the issue about the change to print packing slips brought up in last weeks chat....

Due to the addition of the buyer's registered address, which no-one wants or needs, we also can no longer print packing slips on our A4 integrated label paper, which we have been using for 5 years and of which we have over 50 boxes in stock at around £20 a box.

I know you have forwarded this to the relevant team already, but we urgently need some feedback on this issue please. I

t seems such a simple change for ebay to make, after all ebay changed the format overnight with no prior notice or consultation with those whom it will affect, but we don't know if we are being ignored or if there are any plans to help us at some point.

If there are no plans to change it, can we have some dialog with that team please on how they expect business sellers to send out delivery note paperwork?

As far as I can see, out of the 30 or so different formats of integrated labels out there (all listed for sale on ebay by the way) the current invoice/packing slip format does not fit a single one of them (see pic1 attached).
We have considered buying a dedicated label printer, but the usual 4x6" label printer format doesn't seem to produce a format that will actually print ok on the 4x6" label (see pic2 attached).

So, if ebay will not change the format, are we expected to write out address labels by hand or is there some other way to print address labels that I'm not aware of?

Currently, we have to either manually cross out the extra information or cut it off the label; at busy times this means an extra hour of work per day for us and a butchered looking label, not very professional!

We can't continue like this, we ned a format that can print labels properly, please can something be done?

All they need to do is make the buyer's reg address an option, same as it is for the 'post-from' address, is that not a quick/easy change to make?

Thanks.

[iceblue_uk]

Sorry.... another issue with the invoice/packing slip format when printed on A4 label paper, or 4x6 labels...

Since ebay changed the invoice format last year, buyer's personal mobile phone number and email address details were added to the label space (see pic in previous post).

Since then we have received many complaints that we are displaying their personal contact details on the package for all to see. We queried this and were told that 'couriers may need this information, so there are no plans to change it'. However, realistically speaking, in this country, unless you are shipping something very large and heavy, no courier will EVER call the recipient, certainly not Royal Mail, Evri, DPD, Yodel etc who handle 99.9% of ebay deliveries, so having this info on the label is totally unnecessary.

Isn't this a breach of the customer's peronal information, i.e. data protection? If it is not changed, we will have to cross or cut it out manually because it is upsetting our customers and may be breaking the law, surely this is something that should not be necessary in this day and age.

We have tried all ways and means to remove those details from the print... zooming in, changing print sizes and paper formats etc, but nothing works.

Could these personal contact details be made a print option please?

Here's hoping we can get feedback on this as with the other issue, rather than the usual 'comments have been forwarded', it is that important and we need to know what the relevant team is thinking in order to plan for the absolute worst case, i.e no-one at ebay cares about it. I'm sorry to say that, but this is the impression we're too often getting when hundreds of complaints are made and no action is taken on ebay's side.

Thanks.

[redjames1234]

Recently bought an item from 2 sellers-tirned out to be the same seller and neither had the item in stock (they said they had lots). The seller issued a refund (yet to receive) and cancelled my order stating I had cancelled it. I can't leave feedback to warn others, as they've issued a refund. How do I do this? 

[kat@ebay]

---

@iceblue_uk wrote:

Hi Team,

I'd to echo the issue about the change to print packing slips brought up in last weeks chat....

Due to the addition of the buyer's registered address, which no-one wants or needs, we also can no longer print packing slips on our A4 integrated label paper, which we have been using for 5 years and of which we have over 50 boxes in stock at around £20 a box.

I know you have forwarded this to the relevant team already, but we urgently need some feedback on this issue please. I

t seems such a simple change for ebay to make, after all ebay changed the format overnight with no prior notice or consultation with those whom it will affect, but we don't know if we are being ignored or if there are any plans to help us at some point.

If there are no plans to change it, can we have some dialog with that team please on how they expect business sellers to send out delivery note paperwork?

As far as I can see, out of the 30 or so different formats of integrated labels out there (all listed for sale on ebay by the way) the current invoice/packing slip format does not fit a single one of them (see pic1 attached).
We have considered buying a dedicated label printer, but the usual 4x6" label printer format doesn't seem to produce a format that will actually print ok on the 4x6" label (see pic2 attached).

So, if ebay will not change the format, are we expected to write out address labels by hand or is there some other way to print address labels that I'm not aware of?

Currently, we have to either manually cross out the extra information or cut it off the label; at busy times this means an extra hour of work per day for us and a butchered looking label, not very professional!

We can't continue like this, we ned a format that can print labels properly, please can something be done?

All they need to do is make the buyer's reg address an option, same as it is for the 'post-from' address, is that not a quick/easy change to make?

Thanks.

---

Hi @iceblue_uk ,

We have sent on the feedback from last weeks chat to the relevant team and we will share your concerns with the change with them. We can not guarantee to hear back on changes but will continue to share your  insight and examples given.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

---

@iceblue_uk wrote:

Sorry.... another issue with the invoice/packing slip format when printed on A4 label paper, or 4x6 labels...

Since ebay changed the invoice format last year, buyer's personal mobile phone number and email address details were added to the label space (see pic in previous post).

Since then we have received many complaints that we are displaying their personal contact details on the package for all to see. We queried this and were told that 'couriers may need this information, so there are no plans to change it'. However, realistically speaking, in this country, unless you are shipping something very large and heavy, no courier will EVER call the recipient, certainly not Royal Mail, Evri, DPD, Yodel etc who handle 99.9% of ebay deliveries, so having this info on the label is totally unnecessary.

Isn't this a breach of the customer's peronal information, i.e. data protection? If it is not changed, we will have to cross or cut it out manually because it is upsetting our customers and may be breaking the law, surely this is something that should not be necessary in this day and age.

We have tried all ways and means to remove those details from the print... zooming in, changing print sizes and paper formats etc, but nothing works.

Could these personal contact details be made a print option please?

Here's hoping we can get feedback on this as with the other issue, rather than the usual 'comments have been forwarded', it is that important and we need to know what the relevant team is thinking in order to plan for the absolute worst case, i.e no-one at ebay cares about it. I'm sorry to say that, but this is the impression we're too often getting when hundreds of complaints are made and no action is taken on ebay's side.

Thanks.

---

Hi @iceblue_uk 

As you know these details are there for the courier, in some cases its required for the delivery. They are part of the transaction so there wouldn't be a breach of data protection. 

I'll send this back to the shipping team as a possible improvement for future updates but again I'm not aware of any plans to change this.

Thanks,

Dave

[katie@ebay]

---

@redjames1234 wrote:

Recently bought an item from 2 sellers-tirned out to be the same seller and neither had the item in stock (they said they had lots). The seller issued a refund (yet to receive) and cancelled my order stating I had cancelled it. I can't leave feedback to warn others, as they've issued a refund. How do I do this? 

---

Hi there, 

Thank you for your message.

I'm sorry to hear the seller has cancelled for the wrong reason. We are unable to take action here on the community in regards to feedback. The best step here would be to report the seller to our teams here.

The team can review the order and take any needed action.

Thanks,

Katie 

[rainbowtrax]

katie@ebay  Am I ok to add a further comment to that?

@redjames1234  as well as reporting the seller, if you follow this link (it's found at the bottom of your own feedback page): Leave Feedback (ebay.co.uk) then it should include any cancelled orders awaiting feedback and allow you to leave it.

[iceblue_uk]

Thanks Dave but, no matter how we obtained it, how is displaying a customer's phone number on a package, i.e making it public, not a breach of data protection? I know that technically we are printing this and putting it on the package, but ebay doesn't provide a packing slip that is printable on any of the widely available standard label formats, of which there are many. This results in extra unnecessary work to remove those details.

Also couriers have the buyer's number digitally from the booking details, they only use it to text the buyer regarding delivery, in my experience it's never required on the parcel itself and people do not like it, we know this because we were getting real complaints so now have to manually remove it.

Business sellers need to take action as soon as possible to deal with this kind of issue. It's great that you guys can pass our comments directly to the relevant teams, but with no hope of any feedback we are at a loss as to how to proceed. We could continue with manual processes whilst we wait for a change, but that could be weeks, months or never, an untenable position for any business.

If anyone has any suggestions for a solution to this, please post in the business seller forum. Maybe buying a 4x6" label printer is necessary, but the print preview doesn't look like it can work.

[redjames1234]

Thanks but the form won't work. It won't send, when completed. 

[katie@ebay]

---

@redjames1234 wrote:

Thanks but the form won't work. It won't send, when completed. 

---

Thank you for letting me know.

Are you seeing an error message? Send me over a screenshot if you are and I can take a look.

Thanks,

Katie 

[redjames1234]

Thank-as the report an issue with a seller form does not work, I'll try that.