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

[marco@ebay]

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@krafty-kreations wrote:

I totally see where you are coming from, but like you said above, it is within our best interest as a company to make sure that sellers a correctly registered, with one of the reasons being that, for example in this case, it could cost us profit in fees, so that with other reasons, makes us definitely review and actions these reports accordingly. However, we are unable to share the outcomes of these reviews for the reasons I've mentioned above. So, we can only encourage users to keep reporting anything that they believe might be against policy.

We can see what happens, absolutely nothing happens!!

One seller in my category. well over 1000 hand made products, reported many times, still happily selling on a private account. 

So if you make to sell is that a business or not a business? 

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Thanks for your reply, krafty-kreations. 

Users wouldn't have a full view of the account, you could only presume from there. However, you wouldn't really know what's the full account status, so while I see where you are coming from, please let the full review and outcome be done by us.

Thank you,

Marco

[edwardian-dreams]

When you try and list Lego building blocks custom shipping doesn’t appear , only SD

these are specifically on the exempt list - toys & games/lego @building 

and under 100g/£10

[vinylscot]

Marco, that's utter nonsense, and you know it is.

[kat@ebay]

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@a45heaven wrote:

kat@ebay 

View counts are usually based on rolling periods which can cause increases and decreases in the numbers.

These are always on seven day auctions , so im not sure how what you said applies. I can see VIEWS rising until the item ends, but decreasing? 

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Hi @a45heaven ,

 eBay do remove bot traffic from view which is mostly done in real-time. However there is a secondary filtering process that performs a deeper analysis that removes bot traffic that may not have been caught by the real-time filtering, so it's possible that this can cause your auction views to decrease.

Thank  you,

Kat

[kat@ebay]

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@clocla-0 wrote:

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kat@ebay wrote:

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@clocla-0 wrote:

Thanks kat@ebay 

Item numbers:

277256418507 - knitting pattern with opt out

277256397030 - rug pattern, no opt out

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Hi @clocla-0 ,

Thank you for the examples.  I will share these with the shipping team.  If possible in the meantime can you try listing the 2nd item from scratch without using sell similar and see if doing it that way gives the custom postage option.

Thank you,

Kat

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I tried every which way to list it the other day, and it wasn't allowing opt out on any.  I have just tried again (create listing from scratch), using the various sub-sub categories in rug making - no opt out.

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Hi @clocla-0 ,

Thank you for trying and confirming it didn't work. I'll share this along with your examples.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

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@lamppostelectrical wrote:

I tried adding a courier's tracking details to a sale this morning.  The courier is APC.  I get a message saying that another seller has already used that tracking number so I'm unable to add it.  APC (and perhaps others) do re-use consignment numbers.  How can I add this to my sale to ensure I am compliant ?

I contacted customer services and was told that I need to contact the courier so they can "unlock" the tracking number.  This doesn't sound right to me.

Please advise.

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Hi @lamppostelectrical 

Some carriers do recycle their tracking numbers. It's not something we have any control over. It could be a case that the number was already used on our site or when our system contacts the courier site it shows as already used. 

As the tracking is generated by the courier you would definitely need to reach out to them to see if they can reissue or update the number so it doesn't flag as already delivered. 

Thanks,

Dave

[marco@ebay]

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@vinylscot wrote:

Please Marco, we're not daft. We don't need you to share the outcomes of reviews. If we report an account, we keep a note, and check in periodically to see if eBay has done as it should. It is painfully obvious, far too often, that eBay has not even looked at the account in question.

eBay is simply not doing enough to address this issue.

Please stop gaslighting us.

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Thanks for your reply, vinylscot.

But just like I said in my previous reply to a different member, users don't have a full picture of the account, you could only presume from there. Other users wouldn't really know what's the full account status, so while I understand what you mean, please let the full review and outcome be done by us.

Thanks,

Marco

[kat@ebay]

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@suelel1968 wrote:

Im still confused about the 100g £10 SD opt out. Is it by certain category only now? I have some things that can go large letter, on custom delivery and some things like small drill bits which cannot and now cost almost double to post. 

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Hi @suelel1968 ,

Simple Delivery is optional for items priced £10 and under, letter-sized, and in certain categories. These are listed in the FAQ section - Which listings aren't required to use Simple Delivery? This can be found here

Thank you,

Kat

[marco@ebay]

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@funkybunnie-direct wrote:

Thanks Marco. I have reported so many, but only a very small number any action has been taken, and these go back to October last year. I have to presume that ebay is just happy with the current situation of abuse of their rules and UK law. 

Why is ebay not taking action themselves (it shouldn't need sellers to report these sellers - and most of the time it appears our reports are just ignored anyway)?

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Thanks for your reply, funkybunnie-direct. 

Maybe there was a reason to not action the account in question. Like I said in my previous replies, users do not have a full view of other sellers account, you could only presume from there, but only us could do a full review, and actions are taken accordingly. As advised before, the outcomes are not to be shared with other, but it is all reviewed and actioned accordingly. Just because the outcome you were expecting wasn't taken, doesn't mean that that's wrong or that there is something necessarily wrong with the account in question.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

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@funkybunnie-direct wrote:

Why is a in an auction is a bidder from my blocked list of countries allowed to bid (and win) an item?

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Hi @funkybunnie-direct 

They obviously shouldn't be able to if you have the country blocked. PM me the item number for the transaction and I'll have a look and see if I can figure out what happened. 

Thanks,

Dave

[kat@ebay]

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@a45heaven wrote:

kat@ebay 

No Option to block ?

As a buyer, can you see who has blocked you then, i mean without getting into the bidding section - again wasting time ?

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Hi @a45heaven ,

There has never been an option to block sellers on eBay. Buyers cannot see if they are blocked. That only shows on the sellers account in their preferences and not the buyers.

Thank you,

Kat

[kat@ebay]

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@edwardian-dreams wrote:

When you try and list Lego building blocks custom shipping doesn’t appear , only SD

these are specifically on the exempt list - toys & games/lego @building 

and under 100g/£10

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Hi @edwardian-dreams ,

Yes it is on the list of categories that should have the option for custom postage as long as its £10 and under and under 100g. I had another member today with the same issue for the craft category so I will include this in reporting it to the shipping team.

Thank you,

Kat

[marco@ebay]

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@krafty-kreations wrote:

Thanks Marco 

When I click on contact seller using my private ID I can see my FAQS

My question is why can I not edit them, none of the clicky links work in settings, communicating with buyers and FAQS

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Thanks for your reply, krafty-kreations.

Yes, you should be able to edit, remove and add. If you go to your settings here, you should be able to do it from there. I've just added a screenshot here for better visibility as well.

If that's not working for you, please feel free to contact customer support since the chat is closed now. They will be able to get it reported and fixed for you.

Thank you,

Marco

[marco@ebay]

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@irt303 wrote:

Hi, I’d be grateful if you could clarify what would happen in the following scenario:

A Simple Delivery-eligible item sells (listed with the ‘Seller pays postage’ option selected). For reasons of their own, the seller does not use the SD shipping label, and sends the item via their own choice of courier and service, but does NOT use a tracked service. Within 14 days of the item selling, the seller requests a refund of the unused SD label fee.

The refund request page lists four conditions that must be met, the fourth one being that the item was sent using a tracked service. Given that the seller does not have their own tracking number to ‘over-write’ the one generated automatically by eBay (but does fulfil the other three conditions):

- Would the refund request be rejected on the basis that no tracked service was used?

- Can the seller even complete the refund request form in the first place if they have no ‘new’ tracking number, or does the system prevent the seller from proceeding to the end of the request form?

- Or is it the case that the seller WILL get the refund, but will – obviously – have to wait longer for their sale proceeds (due to the item not being sent tracked)?

I know that’s a lot of questions, but they’re all permutations of what might feasibly happen (in the absence of any hard concrete information such as other member’s experiences to go on).

Boiling it down, in the situation described in the first paragraph, will eBay refund the unused SD label fee or not?

Also, sorry if I should be asking in a separate post, but I have a related question. Another member mentioned the possibility of using Royal Mail 1st/2nd Class Signed For. Apparently, with this service, the buyer of the postage is given some kind of reference number or code (I’m sorry to be vague about this, but the member who mentioned it was also, by their own admission, not clear on the matter). According to Royal Mail’s website, these two services offer online delivery confirmation. This presumably involves some kind of scan at the point of delivery.

My question here is, in the same scenario as above, would the system accept the Signed For number/code in the ‘Tracking number’ field of the refund request form? Or is this a big no-no, as Signed For is not a fully tracked service?

I appreciate that this last question is a bit obscure (and maybe there is as yet no precedent to go by), so I’m happy to wait if you need to check this (and maybe some of the other questions) with the Shipping Team.

I hope that I’ve worded this in an easy to understand way, but do please let me know if you need me to clarify anything – I’d much rather that than receive answers based on a misunderstanding of what I’m asking.

Many thanks.

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Hi irt303, thanks for your question.

Based on that scenario, if you don't send the item with a tracked service, you will probably not get a refund for the Simple Delivery label as per the refund policies. Same answer would apply for both questions in this case.

Thank you,

Marco

[kat@ebay]

Hi @krafty-kreations ,

Just an update from yesterdays query.  There is already an open ticket with tech for the issue where sellers cannot delete  business/postage policies when no listings are associated with it. Your account has been added to the ticket and once there an update on the fix I will follow up with you.

Thank you,

Kat