Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 08.11.23 @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 marco@ebay, katie@ebay and anita@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

[darth_baggins]

Can you explain why there's no formatting in messages in the item not received process?

For example, If I type something like this;

"Hello.

I'm sorry you've not received your order yet. I can confirm it was posted on October 27th by Royal Mail 48 to the following address;

NAME
ADDRESS
POSTCODE

It's unusual for items to go missing in the post so it's possibly still on the way. If your order still hasn't arrived by Monday please let me know."

In the INR message box it comes out a mess like this;

"Hello.I'm sorry you've not received your order yet.I can confirm it was posted on October 27th by Royal Mail 48 to the following address;NAMEADDRESSPOSTCODE.It's unusual for items to go missing in the post so it's possibly still on the way.If your order still hasn't arrived by Monday please let me know."

This needs to be changed so that pressing enter actually makes a line break. It looks so unprofessional.

[marco@ebay]

---

@darth_baggins wrote:

Can you explain why there's no formatting in messages in the item not received process?

For example, If I type something like this;

"Hello.

I'm sorry you've not received your order yet. I can confirm it was posted on October 27th by Royal Mail 48 to the following address;

NAME
ADDRESS
POSTCODE

It's unusual for items to go missing in the post so it's possibly still on the way. If your order still hasn't arrived by Monday please let me know."

In the INR message box it comes out a mess like this;

"Hello.I'm sorry you've not received your order yet.I can confirm it was posted on October 27th by Royal Mail 48 to the following address;NAMEADDRESSPOSTCODE.It's unusual for items to go missing in the post so it's possibly still on the way.If your order still hasn't arrived by Monday please let me know."

This needs to be changed so that pressing enter actually makes a line break. It looks so unprofessional.

---

Hi darth_baggins, thanks for your question.

Could you please share a screenshot with us, so we can get this reported for you?

Thank you,

Marco

[ducatimondo]

How long is the backlog from when we report items to when they are looked at?

I ask, as I am trying to judge how long I have to wait to see if it is still worth reporting these millions of duplicates or not.

When a generic item like a motorcycle cover is listed more than 3000 times by the same seller, then it is blantantly a duplicate. 

I have to ask, as you get the dross that any action taken on the account cannot be shared with me for privacy reasons, but then the items are still there months or even years later and you know that means no action whatsoever has been taken.

If I report stuff like that, how long is the backlog, so I know whether eBay are doing anything about it or just ignoring it.

Cheers
Russ

[anita@ebay]

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

How long is the backlog from when we report items to when they are looked at?

I ask, as I am trying to judge how long I have to wait to see if it is still worth reporting these millions of duplicates or not.

When a generic item like a motorcycle cover is listed more than 3000 times by the same seller, then it is blantantly a duplicate. 

I have to ask, as you get the dross that any action taken on the account cannot be shared with me for privacy reasons, but then the items are still there months or even years later and you know that means no action whatsoever has been taken.

If I report stuff like that, how long is the backlog, so I know whether eBay are doing anything about it or just ignoring it.

Cheers
Russ

---

Hi @ducatimondo, thanks for your post.

The time-frame may change from time to time and may also depend on the type of report.

Please note, that some actions we take may not be visible to other members, however if the item does violate the policy, our team is taking appropriate action.

Thanks,

Anita

[ducatimondo]

Bay have broken something with the item description templates, as they do not show correctly.

We are using the same formatted templates that we have used for years.

The tempplate shows okay before you list it, so when you are in th eedit listing view or actually creating a new listing.

The items that are listed are stretched, so everything is longer / taller if you will than how the template should look.

This is how it looks on eBay now

This is how it is supposed to look, though you can't see if that well as whomever made the list item thing didn't consider it important to make the box the description goes in big enough to really see the template or also not allow you to make that tiny letter box any bigger

This is something that I think is quite recent

Thanks
Russ

[marco@ebay]

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

Bay have broken something with the item description templates, as they do not show correctly.

We are using the same formatted templates that we have used for years.

The tempplate shows okay before you list it, so when you are in th eedit listing view or actually creating a new listing.

The items that are listed are stretched, so everything is longer / taller if you will than how the template should look.

This is how it looks on eBay now

This is how it is supposed to look, though you can't see if that well as whomever made the list item thing didn't consider it important to make the box the description goes in big enough to really see the template or also not allow you to make that tiny letter box any bigger

This is something that I think is quite recent

Thanks
Russ

---

Hi ducatimondo, thanks for your post.

I will send that for review for you now, and I will post back here to update on this as soon as I hear back from the tech team.

Thank you,

Marco

[pg_kicks]

Sorry to hijack another users question, but if every report looked at by a human or are they first screened by AI?

I am following the exact procedure that a member of staff told me to do when reporting but nothing ever gets done when the listing is 100% violating eBays policy, I know this as when I actually spoke to management about another account doing the exact same theres was removed within 24 hours (shock that) but when I report this account over 100 times nothing has ever happened? Surely eBay cant have that many agents who miss something so obvious?

[darth_baggins]

marco@ebay 

Not really, without sending a message to a buyer. The formatting is stripped out only when you press send, but I always amend it to at least put spaces in. It's been like this for years though.

I can upload a previous message (redacted) but it doesn't fully highlight the issue as I wouldn't dream of sending a message to a buyer in the format that eBay puts it in. In this message though there was line spacing but eBay just strips it out. It's not a browser issue nor is it anything to do with clearing cache or cookies.

[anita@ebay]

---

@pg_kicks wrote:

Sorry to hijack another users question, but if every report looked at by a human or are they first screened by AI?

I am following the exact procedure that a member of staff told me to do when reporting but nothing ever gets done when the listing is 100% violating eBays policy, I know this as when I actually spoke to management about another account doing the exact same theres was removed within 24 hours (shock that) but when I report this account over 100 times nothing has ever happened? Surely eBay cant have that many agents who miss something so obvious?

---

Hi @pg_kicks, thanks for your post.

It may depend on the category/type of the report as some violations are more serious and will be reviewed by an agent, while some reports may be actioned automatically.

Please also ensure to select correct reporting reason to ensure the action is taken. Also, as mentioned above, some actions we take may not be visible to other members.

Thanks,

Anita

[marco@ebay]

---

@darth_baggins wrote:

marco@ebay 

Not really, without sending a message to a buyer. The formatting is stripped out only when you press send, but I always amend it to at least put spaces in. It's been like this for years though.

I can upload a previous message (redacted) but it doesn't fully highlight the issue as I wouldn't dream of sending a message to a buyer in the format that eBay puts it in. In this message though there was line spacing but eBay just strips it out. It's not a browser issue nor is it anything to do with clearing cache or cookies.

---

Lovely, thanks for that darth_baggins.

I will report it with that, and we will take it from there. Once I have an update on this, I will post back here to let you know.

Thank you,

Marco

[pg_kicks]

Thanks for the reply.

As you can see in the message I mentioned I follow the exact procedure/reason that was given to me by a community team member, so I know for a fact I'm 100% doing the correct reporting reason. As a valued member (as Im told every single time I need to contact eBay) could you possibly ask the team on my behalf what they deem as serious? Just I deem item not authentic or a business operating on a private account as very serious but I'd like to know if eBay deem these as serious enough for a human to check or if eBay think they are not very serious and left to AI?

I dont need to know the outcome, but if I'm reporting sellers for selling fake sneakers, they are 25% of the reselling price and they have marked them as customised to bypass authentication I'm sure even the person who started today could see that this is a serious violation of policy and should be removed? I only ask as when I brought this up with both the manager in AGS and the pro trader team member an account had all listings removed in under 24 hours but others I have reported are still up 4 or 5 months later. To me this seems like there is a major flaw in the reporting or that eBay dont care that fakes are being sold on their site. You may have different opinion on that though.

[goingfishinguk]

Hi team

The business buyers forums are littered with threads and posts regarding huge drops in sales.  We have all watched the videos and listened to customer support and nothing seems to be working.  I again ask what is the 'real' reason for this?  'We' the posters believe it's due to eBay hiding at least 95% of listings, tests have been done to prove this, however we still keep getting the same replies from eBay told to jump through the same hoops.

Can I please stress none of this works.  We have tried it all over and over again.  So please can we know officially why are people losing so many sales recently?  Is it the search functionality?

Thank you.

[marco@ebay]

---

@goingfishinguk wrote:

Hi team

The business buyers forums are littered with threads and posts regarding huge drops in sales.  We have all watched the videos and listened to customer support and nothing seems to be working.  I again ask what is the 'real' reason for this?  'We' the posters believe it's due to eBay hiding at least 95% of listings, tests have been done to prove this, however we still keep getting the same replies from eBay told to jump through the same hoops.

Can I please stress none of this works.  We have tried it all over and over again.  So please can we know officially why are people losing so many sales recently?  Is it the search functionality?

Thank you.

---

Hi , thanks for your post.

We've addressed this different times now, and there are no issues causing a drop in sales or anything similar like that. 

Thank you,

Marco

[anita@ebay]

---

@pg_kicks wrote:

Thanks for the reply.

As you can see in the message I mentioned I follow the exact procedure/reason that was given to me by a community team member, so I know for a fact I'm 100% doing the correct reporting reason. As a valued member (as Im told every single time I need to contact eBay) could you possibly ask the team on my behalf what they deem as serious? Just I deem item not authentic or a business operating on a private account as very serious but I'd like to know if eBay deem these as serious enough for a human to check or if eBay think they are not very serious and left to AI?

I dont need to know the outcome, but if I'm reporting sellers for selling fake sneakers, they are 25% of the reselling price and they have marked them as customised to bypass authentication I'm sure even the person who started today could see that this is a serious violation of policy and should be removed? I only ask as when I brought this up with both the manager in AGS and the pro trader team member an account had all listings removed in under 24 hours but others I have reported are still up 4 or 5 months later. To me this seems like there is a major flaw in the reporting or that eBay dont care that fakes are being sold on their site. You may have different opinion on that though.

---

@pg_kicks., thanks for your reply.

I appreciate your feedback. eBay takes reports seriously and we do work as many reports as possible. I will send your experience to the teams as we want to ensure violating listings are actioned accordingly.

In the meantime, if you feel that the right action hasn’t been taken, you can also report it by selecting Contact us options here at the bottom of the page.

Thanks,

Anita

[kempseykate]

I too would like to know the order of seriousness for reporting.

I have repeatedly reported a buyer for being an unreg business seller (200 identical new items).

They also say the money goes to charity, but don't use the ebay charity ribbon.

Neither of these have been acted on (they are still unreg) and they still say the money goes to charity (but don't have the ribbon).

They also used to offer digital download - that seemed to be acted on when reported. So that is a very strange order of importance:

Digital delivery (ebay losing out on postage cost fee) - most important.

Seller breaking the law re business registration - not important.

Seller possibly conning people about money going to charity - not important.

[darth_baggins]

Regarding the ongoing 'awaiting dispatch' bug. I have RM click and drop to mark orders as dispatched. I've done today's orders and three of them are not marked as dispatched. Notably they are all my orders that have more than one of the same item.

Order numbers;

25-10751-21243
03-10762-45774
23-10746-47202

[pg_kicks]

I'm not sure if you ever sell or even purchase on eBay but if you dont please just read the forum and you will son find out that by using the contact us options there at the bottom of the page is as much use as buying my nana a chocolate teapot, we are told they will pass the information back to the team but nothing ever gets done.

I have brought this up numerous times with both the weekly chat and customer services and are constantly told that the reporting function is working fine, we have proof that it is not working fine and sadly my feedback is not really appreciated otherwise something would be done about it.  It seems to be that ebay are more than happy to allow fake items and unregistered accounts, amongst many other policy violations as long as they get fees.

Just for the record my nana passed many years ago and never drank tea just in case anyone was wondering how much of a use said teapot would be.

anita@ebay if you could give us the contact details of the team and I will happily send an indepth report to them showing how the reporting feature is broken or set up not to actually stop policy violations that would probably me helpful to the valued ebay members and ebay. Also would save the community team time so you didnt need to give us vague answers each time we ask.

[marco@ebay]

---

@darth_baggins wrote:

Regarding the ongoing 'awaiting dispatch' bug. I have RM click and drop to mark orders as dispatched. I've done today's orders and three of them are not marked as dispatched. Notably they are all my orders that have more than one of the same item.

Order numbers;

25-10751-21243
03-10762-45774
23-10746-47202

---

Hi darth_baggins, thanks for flagging this with us.

This is an issue from our end, and I've just reported your examples, so they can be reviewed. Once I have an update, I will post back here to let you know.

Thank you,

Marco

[hall12mark]

Hi I'm having a very frustrating time trying to list an item. I have chosen a 10 day auction scheduled for tomoroow at 19.00 hours. Yet the preview shows a start time tomorrow at 00.00 hours. It won't let me alter to the time I require to 19.00 hours. Also I have tried to save my listing for later so I can amend it but it won't let me do that either.

Please can you help?

Regards, Robin