Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 04.12.24 @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, 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

[555njp]

Thank you.

[555njp]

Sure, thank you.

[marco@ebay]

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@ak_craft_crazy wrote:

marco@ebay  thank you but this is not the only one and as you and dave@ebay will be aware i have repeatedly raised this concern with EDD for over 2 years now and nothing is being done. I have even spoken to the shipping team via email but every time it just falls on deaf ears. I have already emailed them about this on Monday.

The item number is 154998235286

---

Hi ak_craft_crazy, thanks for your reply.

I will flag this with them anyway if that's ok with you, and as soon as they get back to me, I will post back here to let you know.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

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@custom-giftsuk wrote:

Would it be possible for one of the moderators (kat@ebay, marco@ebay and dave@ebay) to drop me a personal message in regards a subject that would be better off in private please

---

Hi @custom-giftsuk 

We don't offer one to one support with issues so you may need to reach out to CS for support. If you want to PM I'm happy to have a look and see if it's something I can help with though. 

Thanks,

Dave

[kempseykate]

Re. the recent email about updates to Payments Terms and usage, and holding of funds for private sellers. The info here Changes to funds availability | eBay.co.uk states:

To get your funds faster, we recommend using Simple Delivery or other eBay postage labels, which include tracking, and sending your order as soon as possible after the buyer pays. 

However in a quote from a transcript between various ebay bigwigs, it seems to suggest that it will be compulsory for UK private sellers to use Simple Delivery.

I appreciate that you may not have an instant answer to this, but I would be obliged if you could find out ASAP and add the info to this thread, please.

This is something that needs to be addressed with a clear announcement - not just the waffly legalese document that the link in the email linked to. I think many private sellers will find being forced into Simple Delivery a step to far, not to mention a wait of up to 2 weeks for their money.

[kat@ebay]

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@ak_craft_crazy wrote:

Also whilst im hear, I have raised this on a couple of occasions over the last 6 months or so. When a buyer purchases a personalised item and does not leave the full details for that item please can you allow sellers to change the dispatch time and inform the buyer of this?

We always have a number of buyers who do not leave sufficient details for the personalised item, so we message them asking to confirm. Most reply a day or so later which means we have missed the dispatch timeframe. We then dispatch the item as soon as possible once we have the full details but as it is passed the dispatch timeframe it goes against us as a seller which affects our seller rating. This is something that is not our fault and should not be counted against us.

---

Hi @ak_craft_crazy ,

That is a fair point to raise and I will share it as feedback with our shipping team.

Thank  you,

Kat

[ak_craft_crazy]

kat@ebay 

Thank you, please can you suggest they allow personalised items dispatch by dates to be changed. The buyer can be made aware if it is changed of course. A number of other selling sites do this and it works perfectly.

As of now we have 9 orders waiting for confirmation from the buyer some of which have been waiting 3 or 4 days for them to come back to us. All of these once dispatched will then go against us.

Yes we could cancel the order and tell them to re order with the full details but in past experience they do not re order which leads to a loss of income for not just us but yourselves aswell.

[dave@ebay]

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@kempseykate wrote:

Re. the recent email about updates to Payments Terms and usage, and holding of funds for private sellers. The info here Changes to funds availability | eBay.co.uk states:

To get your funds faster, we recommend using Simple Delivery or other eBay postage labels, which include tracking, and sending your order as soon as possible after the buyer pays. 

However in a quote from a transcript between various ebay bigwigs, it seems to suggest that it will be compulsory for UK private sellers to use Simple Delivery.

I appreciate that you may not have an instant answer to this, but I would be obliged if you could find out ASAP and add the info to this thread, please.

This is something that needs to be addressed with a clear announcement - not just the waffly legalese document that the link in the email linked to. I think many private sellers will find being forced into Simple Delivery a step to far, not to mention a wait of up to 2 weeks for their money.

---

Hi @kempseykate 

I haven't seen any official comms to say Simple Delivery will become mandatory, but I will raise the question with the policy team. Once I have more on it, I'll post an update.

Thanks,

Dave

[guymafo]

Hello Community Team

Glad the issue with .com site opening from the community boards has been sorted.

When searching from .co.uk please can we have a default location setting for UK, I don’t want to see China or USA unless I filter for them. 

Given the UK site is making changes in the coming months I’m sure UK businesses would appreciate the bump. 

GM

[555njp]

Just one more question as it’s relatively quiet this week.
Why have the ‘have us call you’ and ‘live chat (talk to an agent)’ options been removed from help?
Are they coming back?

Thanks,

Neil.

[marco@ebay]

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@guymafo wrote:

Hello Community Team

Glad the issue with .com site opening from the community boards has been sorted.

When searching from .co.uk please can we have a default location setting for UK, I don’t want to see China or USA unless I filter for them. 

Given the UK site is making changes in the coming months I’m sure UK businesses would appreciate the bump. 

GM

---

Hi guymafo, thanks for your post.

That's no problem, we can definitely pass that on as a suggestion. Anything else, please feel free to let us know and we will be happy to pass on your feedback.

Thank you,

Marco

[kat@ebay]

---

@ak_craft_crazy wrote:

kat@ebay 

Thank you, please can you suggest they allow personalised items dispatch by dates to be changed. The buyer can be made aware if it is changed of course. A number of other selling sites do this and it works perfectly.

As of now we have 9 orders waiting for confirmation from the buyer some of which have been waiting 3 or 4 days for them to come back to us. All of these once dispatched will then go against us.

Yes we could cancel the order and tell them to re order with the full details but in past experience they do not re order which leads to a loss of income for not just us but yourselves aswell.

---

Hi @ak_craft_crazy ,

Yes, cancelling them would be a work around but does create more work on the buyers side to order again. The functionality for something like this would require a big change but I will raise your point. 

Thank you,

Kat

[cobwebcottage]

Hi Dave,

You asked me to send you a  private message last week. Just checking, did you receive it?

[custom-giftsuk]

I've tried to send a private message but all I get is a "you have reached your limit on private messages" 

[kat@ebay]

---

@555njp wrote:

Just one more question as it’s relatively quiet this week.
Why have the ‘have us call you’ and ‘live chat (talk to an agent)’ options been removed from help?
Are they coming back?

Thanks,

Neil.

---

Hi @555njp,

Its not that they have been removed,  depending on the volume that is being handled at the time some options might not be available. Right now as it is peak season eBay would be handling very high volumes so those options may not show as available during very busy times.

Thank you,

Kat

[555njp]

Ok Kat, thank you for answering, that makes sense.

[dave@ebay]

---

@cobwebcottage wrote:

Hi Dave,

You asked me to send you a  private message last week. Just checking, did you receive it?

---

Hi @cobwebcottage 

Apologies, I did get the message. I sent off the report and I didn't hear back. Ill chase it down after the chat and I'll come back to you ASAP. 

Thanks,

Dave

[valueaddedresource]

---

dave@ebay wrote:

---

@kempseykate wrote:

Re. the recent email about updates to Payments Terms and usage, and holding of funds for private sellers. The info here Changes to funds availability | eBay.co.uk states:

To get your funds faster, we recommend using Simple Delivery or other eBay postage labels, which include tracking, and sending your order as soon as possible after the buyer pays. 

However in a quote from a transcript between various ebay bigwigs, it seems to suggest that it will be compulsory for UK private sellers to use Simple Delivery.

I appreciate that you may not have an instant answer to this, but I would be obliged if you could find out ASAP and add the info to this thread, please.

This is something that needs to be addressed with a clear announcement - not just the waffly legalese document that the link in the email linked to. I think many private sellers will find being forced into Simple Delivery a step to far, not to mention a wait of up to 2 weeks for their money.

---

Hi @kempseykate 

I haven't seen any official comms to say Simple Delivery will become mandatory, but I will raise the question with the policy team. Once I have more on it, I'll post an update.

Thanks,

Dave

---

dave@ebay  I'm relatively sure that both investors and the US Securities and Exchange commission would consider statements made by the CEO of a publicly traded company during a quarterly earnings presentation as "official comms." 😉

And to be clear, there was no question at all about the fact that Simple Delivery (AKA Managed Shipping) will be mandatory for eligible items sold by private sellers in Q1 2025 - it was stated very clearly and directly.

Here's what was said by CEO Jamie Iannone on the Q3 2024 earnings call:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4731184-ebay-inc-ebay-q3-2024-earnings-call-transcript 

With managed shipping, we are completely overhauling our shipping experience for C2C sellers in the UK in two phases. The first phase completed in early October, extended the simplified shipping experience we first rolled out in pre-owned apparel to all categories. Within the new native listing flow, UK C2C sellers now see a consolidated list of shipping options based on the estimated package size and weight. And since implementing this change, we have observed a significant reduction in time spent on shipping in a listing flow.

The second phase of managed shipping; radically simplifies the experience and creates a new revenue stream for eBay. Similar to managed payments and eBay international shipping, Managed shipping leverages our scale and expertise to create a better experience for customers while generating incremental revenue and operating income dollars. When listing eligible products sellers simply confirm the pre-selected package size and eBay handles the rest.

Buyers received competitive shipping rates and sellers are fully protected against loss or damage. Managed shipping is currently live for C2C pre-owned apparel listing in the UK. In Q4, we plan to expand managed shipping horizontally on an opt-out basis, before mandating the program for eligible items listed by C2C sellers during Q1 of 2025.

The only question seems to be what are eligible items (I would assume at least to start it would go by the current eligibility criteria listed here) and an exact date in Q1 that the mandate will go into effect - if you could find that out, I'm sure sellers here would be very appreciative. 🙂

[custom-giftsuk]

Sorry managed to get a PM to Kat@ebay

[krafty-kreations]

Can you also pass on my feedback re personalised products, I had 5 orders in one day where no personalisation details were added or someone sent way too much text when it was supposed to be a name,

I have had to cancel one order already due to no response.

Yes, cancelling them would be a work around but does create more work on the buyers side to order again

Not to mention more work for the seller having to keep chasing this up.