Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 06.11.24 @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. 

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

[nakedkeg]

Last week I raised a Late Delivery from my Service metrics that was clearly an error, but ebay wouldn’t remove it.

Dave replied saying he would flag it to the Shipping Team, and get back to me.

7 days on, it’s still there, I’ve heard nothing further, and I now have a second Late Delivery on my Service Metrics, clearly another error, order number 24-12250-54786

What’s going on?

I’m paying a subscription, ebay tells me I can expect certain seller protections, and have Service Metrics corrected if there is an error.

Why won’t ebay correct these obvious errors?

Thanks

@nakedkeg wrote:

Order number

11-12195-89571

I am the seller.

Dispatched via RM48 and tracking shows accepted at post office day after order placed.

Buyer then goes on line and asks RM to retain the item at their local delivery office for them to pick up, which they do 4 days later.

Why does ebay record that as a late delivery on my service metrics?

Why won’t ebay remove this?

Hi @nakedkeg 

Ive passed this on the shipping team to review.

I’ll reach out to you directly when I hear back from them to let you know what they have said.

Thanks

Dave

[j0hnnybi0nic]

Hello there!

I used to be able to offer two postage options, e.g. Evri (cheaper) or Royal Mail (faster). 

I can't find a way to do that with the new listing tool. I've had to put a message in my listing asking the buyer to request an invoice if they want a different delivery option.

Any suggestions? 

Thanks!

John

[custom-giftsuk]

I spoke with Kat last week in regards the Product Research section being broken. I had an email from eBay CS at the end of last week stating it had been fixed as I had reported it 2 weeks ago. So it seems to be back up and working. Yet it still is showing either no sales, random sales, defaulting to the US, or just nonsense data when doing a search. Is there any update on when or indeed if it is ever going to be fixed properly or should we just stop using Product Research?

[auctiongabble]

Hi, I have raised the below via letter but thought i would post here too and hopefully get some answers

No fee policy for private sellers

I am disgusted with this and this shows no thought or care for business sellers by eBay.

You have given private sellers free reign to sell and provide them with shops, Why do private sellers need shops?

Business sellers should have a qty of free listings the same as private sellers, including a shop and reduced fees.  The fees are horrendous for business sellers and now with private sellers paying nothing, they are in a greater position to undercut business sellers.

I questioned eBay’s change with the customer service and a complete waste of time, them saying well private sellers have had free listings reduced from 1000 to 300.....you still give them free listings and now no fees! CAN EBAY NOT SEE THE PROBLEM.....???

Business sellers dont get free listings as basic!

Business account: Fees to pay, shop to pay for, not able to sell to Europe due to GSPR, pay taxes due

Private account: no fees to pay, free listings, exempt from GSPR

EBay are going to see a major drop in international sales, less sales mean less money for eBay! Speaking to customer service, again pointless.  I was told, nothing we can do about it….

The free to sell for private sellers was only introduced as competitors to eBay have this in place on their platform, they also provide free to sell for business sellers on vented pro too!

The 1 to 1 support offered to sweeten the impact of private sellers not paying fees is NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

The business loans offered to business sellers is also not good enough!

The increase charges for global shipping is also had an impact on international sales, it is now too expensive for potential buyers to purchase items from eBay UK.  Again less sales, less income for eBay.

All we hear from customer services (people who have never even managed their own company) them telling us we need to pay for promoting…

EBay, you take commission from every sale, you should be promoting items anyway.

EBay is not the top selling platform it once was, eBay need to start reading the posts by dissatisfied members on their own forum.

Ebay UK site is flooded with oversea items being a priority on listing results, ebay need to make it default that if someone is searching for an item and based in UK, they only show items in UK as default.

Business sellers are now your only source of income, you need to start listening to the problems, improving and actioning them, improve the site for business sellers!

[pottsy62]

When viewing categoris in ebay, if I select 'Distance - Nearest First', in some categories it returns the results using my postcode, in other categories it shows as 'Postage to GBR' and not based on my postcode. How do I get the search to return results basd on my location for all categories?

[marco@ebay]

---

@j0hnnybi0nic wrote:

Hello there!

I used to be able to offer two postage options, e.g. Evri (cheaper) or Royal Mail (faster). 

I can't find a way to do that with the new listing tool. I've had to put a message in my listing asking the buyer to request an invoice if they want a different delivery option.

Any suggestions? 

Thanks!

John

---

Hi j0hnnybi0nic, thanks for your post.

You should still be able to do this. Can I just confirm if this is a case of the option not being there for you at all, or is it greyed out, or you get an error when you try to set it up?

Thank you,

Marco

[kat@ebay]

---

@custom-giftsuk wrote:

I spoke with Kat last week in regards the Product Research section being broken. I had an email from eBay CS at the end of last week stating it had been fixed as I had reported it 2 weeks ago. So it seems to be back up and working. Yet it still is showing either no sales, random sales, defaulting to the US, or just nonsense data when doing a search. Is there any update on when or indeed if it is ever going to be fixed properly or should we just stop using Product Research?

---

Hi @custom-giftsuk ,

They did advise it was working but also advised that at times there can be a two day delay with data. When there is a delay with the data updating this would be why you have no information showing for search.  With regard to the defaulting to the US if you have an example search for that I can have that looked into.

Thank you,

Kat

[marco@ebay]

---

@auctiongabble wrote:

Hi, I have raised the below via letter but thought i would post here too and hopefully get some answers

No fee policy for private sellers

I am disgusted with this and this shows no thought or care for business sellers by eBay.

You have given private sellers free reign to sell and provide them with shops, Why do private sellers need shops?

Business sellers should have a qty of free listings the same as private sellers, including a shop and reduced fees.  The fees are horrendous for business sellers and now with private sellers paying nothing, they are in a greater position to undercut business sellers.

I questioned eBay’s change with the customer service and a complete waste of time, them saying well private sellers have had free listings reduced from 1000 to 300.....you still give them free listings and now no fees! CAN EBAY NOT SEE THE PROBLEM.....???

Business sellers dont get free listings as basic!

Business account: Fees to pay, shop to pay for, not able to sell to Europe due to GSPR, pay taxes due

Private account: no fees to pay, free listings, exempt from GSPR

EBay are going to see a major drop in international sales, less sales mean less money for eBay! Speaking to customer service, again pointless.  I was told, nothing we can do about it….

The free to sell for private sellers was only introduced as competitors to eBay have this in place on their platform, they also provide free to sell for business sellers on vented pro too!

The 1 to 1 support offered to sweeten the impact of private sellers not paying fees is NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

The business loans offered to business sellers is also not good enough!

The increase charges for global shipping is also had an impact on international sales, it is now too expensive for potential buyers to purchase items from eBay UK.  Again less sales, less income for eBay.

All we hear from customer services (people who have never even managed their own company) them telling us we need to pay for promoting…

EBay, you take commission from every sale, you should be promoting items anyway.

EBay is not the top selling platform it once was, eBay need to start reading the posts by dissatisfied members on their own forum.

Ebay UK site is flooded with oversea items being a priority on listing results, ebay need to make it default that if someone is searching for an item and based in UK, they only show items in UK as default.

Business sellers are now your only source of income, you need to start listening to the problems, improving and actioning them, improve the site for business sellers!

---

Hi auctiongabble, thanks for your input.

We appreciate your feedback, and I can see where you are coming from. I will make sure to pass your feedback on, so this can be taken into consideration as feedback for the changes recently made on private and business selling.

Thank you,

Marco

[j0hnnybi0nic]

Hello Marco,

Thanks for your reply

When I create a listing, in the section "delivery details", there's a drop-down "Postage policy", from which I can select only one, e.g. "Flat: UK_myHermesDoorToDoorService £3.10". 

I can't work out how to add a second option (e.g. "Flat: UK_RoyalMailSecondClassStandard £3.75"). 

The new listing tool is very new, so maybe I'm missing something 🙂

Cheers, John

[kat@ebay]

---

@pottsy62 wrote:

When viewing categoris in ebay, if I select 'Distance - Nearest First', in some categories it returns the results using my postcode, in other categories it shows as 'Postage to GBR' and not based on my postcode. How do I get the search to return results basd on my location for all categories?

---

HI @pottsy62 ,

It may be that there is no results for closest to your postcode for those searches so its showing you closed to the UK. Can you give an example of a search that you are doing?

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

---

@nakedkeg wrote:

Last week I raised a Late Delivery from my Service metrics that was clearly an error, but ebay wouldn’t remove it.

Dave replied saying he would flag it to the Shipping Team, and get back to me.

7 days on, it’s still there, I’ve heard nothing further, and I now have a second Late Delivery on my Service Metrics, clearly another error, order number 24-12250-54786

What’s going on?

I’m paying a subscription, ebay tells me I can expect certain seller protections, and have Service Metrics corrected if there is an error.

Why won’t ebay correct these obvious errors?

Thanks

@nakedkeg wrote:

Order number

11-12195-89571

I am the seller.

Dispatched via RM48 and tracking shows accepted at post office day after order placed.

Buyer then goes on line and asks RM to retain the item at their local delivery office for them to pick up, which they do 4 days later.

Why does ebay record that as a late delivery on my service metrics?

Why won’t ebay remove this?

Hi @nakedkeg 

Ive passed this on the shipping team to review.

I’ll reach out to you directly when I hear back from them to let you know what they have said.

Thanks

Dave

---

Hi @nakedkeg 

I dont have an answer on this one yet, we dont have access to view the details of the transaction so I cant check it directly, we are not set up the same as the customer support teams. 

I messaged one of the shipping team this morning for an update and I will of course come back to you as soon as I have some more on it.

Thanks,

Dave

[darth_baggins]

We used to be able to look at our listings and sort them by something like 'over 'x' days without a sale'. There was also a report we could download for items without a recent sale over a certain length of time.

Both of these seem to have been quietly removed by eBay. Given that the advice from eBay is often to end 'stale' listings and relist/sell similar, it seems odd to no longer be able to use these useful tools.

Can you explain why they were removed? And is there any chance we can get them back?

[j0hnnybi0nic]

Hello again,

I think I've sussed out how to do it - it's always the way isn't it? Ask a question then find the answer out yourself 2 seconds later 🤣

I think I need to go into "Create postage policy", then "Add additional service"

I'll try that on my next listing and come back next week if I fail

Thanks again!

John

[marco@ebay]

---

@j0hnnybi0nic wrote:

Hello again,

I think I've sussed out how to do it - it's always the way isn't it? Ask a question then find the answer out yourself 2 seconds later 🤣

I think I need to go into "Create postage policy", then "Add additional service"

I'll try that on my next listing and come back next week if I fail

Thanks again!

John

---

Ah cool, thanks for letting us know j0hnnybi0nic! 😂

I was suspescting it was either a postage policy or simple delivery being enabled, but good to know it was sorted. Anything else, feel free to let us know. 👍

Have a good one,

Marco

[custom-giftsuk]

Sure. So I did a generic search for a lot of items. and it comes up with lots of items, all the data is false anyhow because I know how many items I sell in a week and none of that data matches anything like the Product Research data and when you do a search for that particular item it says zero sales and defaults to the US site 

You can see this from the image attached. So above the red line is a generic search for the category in question showing 53 sales in the last week for one particular item. When you do a search for a particular item number or listing title - it says zero sales and defaults to US dollars. 

[oakley_home_and_gifts]

How can item order on a Friday evening after 7pm reach a buyer on a Monday the same day it is being dispatched?  

When asking customer service this question the reply is the couier might collect and deliver the item the same day. 

We keep being told the system is working as designed. It might be time to either redesign the system or get a new designer as items don't get collected and delivered the same day based on any of my past tracking data with couriers like Evri, UPS and DPD. 

At what point are ebay taking the data from as this seems to be causing the issues. Is the data being calculated when a parcel is dropped into a main hub? As my local courier does not have a pick up scan that ebay can see and only see Evri scans when it is scanned at the main depot which can be late evening or evening early the next morning which is long after I have closed the door and finishing dispatching and we don't dispatch on a weekend. 

[pottsy62]

Good AFternoon Kat,

Thanks for your response.

In Home Garden > Garden & Patio > Landscaping and Garden Materials, when I select the sort order as Distance: Nearest first, it shows as 'Postage to GBR'.
In Home Garden > Garden & Patio > Garden Structures & Shade, when I select the sort order as Distance: Nearest first, it shows as 'Postage to M25'.
One category uses my postcode the other doesn't, the auctions it returns are in the UK but the sort isn't location based.

[nakedkeg]

Thanks for your reply Dave,

Having used the auto mated tool in seller hub, then reaching out to CS, and raising here, twice a week apart, please can you suggest any other route I can take to seek a resolution from ebay on this?

me sitting and waiting to see what happens coming into peak trade, while ebay is trashing my seller standards isn't an option for me.

What do you advise I do, to get eBay to resolve this ?

[marco@ebay]

---

@oakley_home_and_gifts wrote:

How can item order on a Friday evening after 7pm reach a buyer on a Monday the same day it is being dispatched?  

When asking customer service this question the reply is the couier might collect and deliver the item the same day. 

We keep being told the system is working as designed. It might be time to either redesign the system or get a new designer as items don't get collected and delivered the same day based on any of my past tracking data with couriers like Evri, UPS and DPD. 

At what point are ebay taking the data from as this seems to be causing the issues. Is the data being calculated when a parcel is dropped into a main hub? As my local courier does not have a pick up scan that ebay can see and only see Evri scans when it is scanned at the main depot which can be late evening or evening early the next morning which is long after I have closed the door and finishing dispatching and we don't dispatch on a weekend. 

---

Hi oakley_home_and_gifts, thanks for your question.

Do you have the item number for a transaction where this happened, so we can take a further look for you to see what's happening there?

Thank you,

Marco