Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 09.07.25 @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 dave@ebay and marco@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

[thealuminiumshop]

Further to the last 4 weeks. Multi variation listings. I have 250 variations on certain listings. 

Will the new attribution change mean all 250 variations will be charged at a promoted rate?

"The person who knows is out of the office" for 4 weeks is really not good enough and we expect more from eBay.

[krafty-kreations]

Good morning eBay team, I hope you're well.

1st Question

I'm trying to delete two duplicate postage policies from my account.

They both show as having 0 listings associated, but when I attempt to delete them, I receive the error message: "We're not able to delete these policies because they're associated with active listings. Please move your listings to another policy to delete them."

When I click on reassign listings, it then says: "Please select at least one policy with listings in order to reassign policies," which makes sense as there are no listings linked.

Why can I not delete them?

[equinox-electronics]

Hi 

There is currently a glitch when searching sold items

The pictures don't match up to the said item. Are you currently aware of this? 

Thanks 

[krafty-kreations]

2nd Question

I want to edit the answers to the FAQs I have set up but it seems I cannot edit them or delete them

As I sell time-sensitive products, I’d really like to highlight in as many places as I can to my buyers that eBay’s estimated delivery dates shouldn't be relied upon, as they often don't reflect real postal timelines. 

Why can they not be edited?

[jjambadger27]

Now that Simple Delivery has kicked in for me with no more custom postage option, are vinyl records still on the excluded list re being covered for loss & damage en route to the buyer? 

It's also concerning to read some people on the community board saying how the item they've sold has been delivered by Evri despite deselecting that company and there being no delivery area issues. 

[bojangled]

@krafty-kreations 

I’ve had this issue with a postage policy, try changing a value in the policy, like a cost or day value, save it then try deleting. 
Jo

[kat@ebay]

---

@krafty-kreations wrote:

Good morning eBay team, I hope you're well.

1st Question

I'm trying to delete two duplicate postage policies from my account.

They both show as having 0 listings associated, but when I attempt to delete them, I receive the error message: "We're not able to delete these policies because they're associated with active listings. Please move your listings to another policy to delete them."

When I click on reassign listings, it then says: "Please select at least one policy with listings in order to reassign policies," which makes sense as there are no listings linked.

Why can I not delete them?

---

Hi @krafty-kreations ,

Sounds like it might be a possible technical issue. Can you share the names of your postage policies and we can report it.

Thank you,

Kat

[dantwocats]

Afternoon We now see we have the postage option of a free collection with simple delivery. but i have booked this two days in a row and no collection and no notice that i have ever booked a collection, and i see on the postage labels section of my hub it says drop off ,Customer services just said its royal mails problem  but surly we should have some notice on our seller hubs that a collection has been book ? and notice that its going to be picked up instead of being left in the dark with postage overdo notices ,please look in to this as been another poor experience thanks

[marco@ebay]

---

@equinox-electronics wrote:

Hi 

There is currently a glitch when searching sold items

The pictures don't match up to the said item. Are you currently aware of this? 

Thanks 

---

Hi equinox-electronics, thanks for your question.

I haven't seen any reports internally suggesting there is an issue with this, could you please try clearing the caches and cookies of your browser and try again? If that doesn't work, please let me know and I will take a further look.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

---

@thealuminiumshop wrote:

Further to the last 4 weeks. Multi variation listings. I have 250 variations on certain listings. 

Will the new attribution change mean all 250 variations will be charged at a promoted rate?

"The person who knows is out of the office" for 4 weeks is really not good enough and we expect more from eBay.

---

Hi @thealuminiumshop 

I spoke to one of the Ads team and they confirmed rate is based on the item number. So, if any of the variations are clicked, it will then apply to all the sales for each variation sales on that item. 

Thanks,

Dave

[return-to-natural]

Hello Team,

Our business model on eBay requires that our listings are best presented using dropdown/variation format. 

What we have been struggling with since the seller hub changed drastically about two years ago in terms of layout, is managing our stock levels. 

With the old layout, we could zip through variations and update their quantities via bulk editor. Now, we have to go to each individual listing in bulk editor, go to the back end of the listing then go to their variations. With almost 200 listings in variation format, it can take 4 hours to properly go through them all. What is worse is that lines are sometimes on zero stock for a variation with plenty of stock in the warehouse but we are not aware, which also tanks our sales overall.  

Please advise. 

Thanks

Yanike 

[dave@ebay]

---

@dantwocats wrote:

Afternoon We now see we have the postage option of a free collection with simple delivery. but i have booked this two days in a row and no collection and no notice that i have ever booked a collection, and i see on the postage labels section of my hub it says drop off ,Customer services just said its royal mails problem  but surly we should have some notice on our seller hubs that a collection has been book ? and notice that its going to be picked up instead of being left in the dark with postage overdo notices ,please look in to this as been another poor experience thanks

---

Hi @dantwocats 

I'll ask the shipping team to have a look to see if there are any issues on this side. If you can PM the transaction IDs for the bookings that weren't collected I'll pass them on the guys to have a look.

Thanks,

Dave

[krafty-kreations]

Thank you, didn't work.

[krafty-kreations]

Thanks Kat

Free Shipping Policy Copy (2)

Free Shipping Policy Copy (3)

Not even sure where they have come from, I didn't make them 

[equinox-electronics]

Im searching on the app. Just tried clearing cache and no difference 

[kat@ebay]

---

@jjambadger27 wrote:

Now that Simple Delivery has kicked in for me with no more custom postage option, are vinyl records still on the excluded list re being covered for loss & damage en route to the buyer? 

It's also concerning to read some people on the community board saying how the item they've sold

Hi @jjambadger27 ,

If the item is sent with Simple Delivery postage then eBay offers protection. Please see the below 

Items are protected against loss or damage from the moment they are scanned into the courier’s delivery network until they are marked as delivered by the courier. There’s also no need to call the courier or customer support. In the event that a buyer raises a claim for an issue that occurs during transit, you won’t be held responsible. 

A postage preference for either Evri or Royal Mail can be selected  but there may be cases where eBay are unable to honour the courier selection, for example because of the weight of your item. If this happens, we may provide a label for a courier you've excluded.

Thank you,

Kat

[clocla-0]

Good afternoon!

The picture shows 2 items listed in the Crafts category, both 18g (under 100g with packaging), and both listed for £2.25. Both are just a folded piece of paper with instructions on it.

The one on the left is a knitting pattern, and quite rightly, I have the opportunity to opt out of SD and list it with £1.55 postage - all that is needed for me to send it with a stamp.
However, the one on the right is a pattern chart for a rug design - there is no option to opt out in this sub category, so I had to list with SD and  £2.70 postage (making it unlikely to sell). 

They are both in the same main category, so why no option to opt out? I would imagine that a paper pattern/instructions, would be an option in EVERY sub category in the Crafts category, so there really should be an opt out in each sub category.

[thealuminiumshop]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply — but to be perfectly honest, this update is extremely disheartening.

We've worked hard to scale multi-variation listings with up to 250 variations, carefully managing our bidding and performance on a variation level. With the new attribution changes, it appears any promoted click on a single variation now locks all 250 variations into the promoted fee — regardless of whether those variations had impressions, visibility, or sales influenced by the ad.

This fundamentally breaks fair attribution and penalises sellers who use eBay's own listing tools to offer choice and efficiency to buyers.

A few urgent questions I need answered:

1. Where is the transparency?
Why hasn’t eBay officially communicated this in a detailed way, especially given how significantly it impacts high-variation sellers? A few lines in a community thread is not adequate.

2. Where is the data?
Can the Ads team provide evidence that multiple variation listings receive truly shared visibility from a single promoted click? Or are we simply being charged promoted fees across the board without actual ad delivery?

3. How does this benefit sellers — at all?
Sellers are now incentivised to break out variations into dozens of single-item listings, which clutters the marketplace and creates a worse experience for buyers. Is this really the direction eBay wants?

4. Will we get control back?
Will there be a future feature allowing variation-level ad attribution and bidding — especially for large catalogues where margin varies dramatically by variation?

5. Who advocates for high-volume sellers when these changes are made?
We can't escalate while "the person who knows is out of office" for 4 weeks. That’s not a system. We need accountability, not silence.

To say this is frustrating is an understatement. We need real answers and representation before more sellers abandon multi-variation listings or reduce promoted listings entirely.

Looking forward to a proper response — not vague assurances.

[funkybunnie-direct]

I ask a question on a subject that has had many questions asked within the community chat but has been very quiet recently – the question of ‘Business seller’ trading as ‘Private sellers’.

I personally don’t have any issue with the genuine ‘Private seller’, just those that are pretty obviously ‘Business sellers’ who are breaking ebay’s own rules which state

Business sellers are required to follow all government regulations, including registering as a business on eBay, and providing contact information and a return policy.

An eBay seller must register as a business if, for example, they sell items they have bought to resell, they make items in order to sell them, or if they buy items for their business.

But also breaking the terms the DMCC Act, and UK commercial law.

I have been following a seller who is registered as a ‘Private seller’. They presently have just over 300 items listed, all brand new, mostly within the range £30 to £100. In the week 7th to 13th June they sold 64 items with a value of approx. £3500. And quite a number of those that sold were duplicates.

Now it doesn’t take too much to work out that they MUST be a business seller according to ebays rules and UK commercial law.

I could give an example of a search which when you look at the completed nearly every one is from a ‘Private seller’ who has multiple copies of brand new items.

Can we assume that ebay isn’t really bothered about these sellers who not only are breaking UK law and ebay’s terms of trading?

These sellers will obviously be able to undercut genuine sellers (who provide a huge amount of income to ebay)