Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 09.08.23 @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 and dave@ebay . Between us, we have knowledge in Buying, Selling, ProTrader, Fulfilment, Parts & Accessories, 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

[pg_kicks]

Hi,

Just wondering, dave@ebay if you ever heard back from the team with regards to the possible beta test which negatively effected the impressions as its been radio silence all week unless I have missed something.

Any feedback on what they were doing or thought would happen would be great.

Ps reporting is still well and truly broke, doesn't matter how many times or how ling ago you report a seller, nothing happens. 

Thanks

[patrickbegood]

Hi, my issue is with Ebay auto-correcting a search term in the URL from the second page of results onwards.

Eg, within a seller's store, search term "tandorio," a Chinese brandname, delivers the first page of results correctly but then it self-corrects to "tandoori" in the URL when I click the next page of search results. I have posted about this including links and screencaps in Community https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Ebay-autocorrecting-brand-names-in-URL-which-breaks...

It's also been reported before, changing "tuck" to "truck" for this user https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Unable-to-search-page-2-of-a-sellers-store-items-as...

I manually edited my search's URL in Notepad to view further items but smartphone app users are unlikely to do that. Asking users to add quotation marks to brandnames is also counter-intuitive on a site where brandnames are an extremely common form of search term, and where the site happily delivers on them for the first page of results.

I don't know what problem this was intended to solve, intervening at URL level in someone's existing search after the first page, but it seems likely to harm sellers, so please reconsider! 🙂

[lord_and_lady_m]

Hi, I want this removed from my account.

I  raised it with CS last week and again over the weekend. I was told i'd get a response and still nothing.

Please can you remove this from my account so I can sell higher value items without being charged a fortune?

[cobwebcottage]

Hi All,

A post came up on the boards this week highlighting non business sellers selling food products. It does seem to be a huge problem as allergens, ingredients and seller details are all absent. Does Ebay have a duty of care to buyers of these products when sellers do not comply with Natashas Law and other food regulations? 

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

Are there any updates as to what is happening on site?  There is a real issue with sales dropping, impressions, views etc affecting so many sellers but we are not being kept i the loop?

[marco@ebay]

---

@patrickbegood wrote:

Hi, my issue is with Ebay auto-correcting a search term in the URL from the second page of results onwards.

Eg, within a seller's store, search term "tandorio," a Chinese brandname, delivers the first page of results correctly but then it self-corrects to "tandoori" in the URL when I click the next page of search results. I have posted about this including links and screencaps in Community https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Ebay-autocorrecting-brand-names-in-URL-which-breaks...

It's also been reported before, changing "tuck" to "truck" for this user https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Technical-Issues/Unable-to-search-page-2-of-a-sellers-store-items-as...

I manually edited my search's URL in Notepad to view further items but smartphone app users are unlikely to do that. Asking users to add quotation marks to brandnames is also counter-intuitive on a site where brandnames are an extremely common form of search term, and where the site happily delivers on them for the first page of results.

I don't know what problem this was intended to solve, intervening at URL level in someone's existing search after the first page, but it seems likely to harm sellers, so please reconsider! 🙂

---

Hi patrickbegood, thanks for your post.

I will reach out to the devoloping team to, so this can be looked into. Once I have an update, I will post back here to let you know.

Thank you,

Marco

[lord_and_lady_m]

Hi Dave

As this impressions issue was caused by ebay and having read through the t&c's, where do we go to ask for compensation?

[dave@ebay]

---

@pg_kicks wrote:

Hi,

Just wondering, dave@ebay if you ever heard back from the team with regards to the possible beta test which negatively effected the impressions as its been radio silence all week unless I have missed something.

Any feedback on what they were doing or thought would happen would be great.

Ps reporting is still well and truly broke, doesn't matter how many times or how ling ago you report a seller, nothing happens. 

Thanks

---

Hi @pg_kicks,

Ive had confirmation from the promoted listings team that there was a test with affected impressions. The test took place between 18th and 28th July and during this time some of our members had a different experience. 

This has completely stopped and how impressions are handled should now be back to normal. 

Thanks,

Dave

[oceanartsnorthdevon]

Just as an update to my question above, you mention about the testing on site between 17th July to 29th July and this has now stopped, it is now the 9/8/23 but nothing seems to have changed  for a lot of sellers regarding these issues?

[ducatimondo]

There is a glitch in the search results where chaotically it will show you the items have postage costs, when there is a default free delivery choice.

I have seen this for a little while, but the first time mentioning it.

Looks like these below, that both have a fee delivery option.

These are merely 2 random listings that I have seen this morning when looking for other things, just browsing eBay really, just how buyers would do.

This is obviously affecting sales on these listings, as it looks like the lowest postage cost is paid for extra, so would deter buyers from clicking the listing to find out the lowest shipping is actually free.

This will be affecting my listings as we have a free delivery option on all of our items, but will likely also be affecting countless other sellers.

Can you fix it please.

Ta

Russ

[marco@ebay]

---

@cobwebcottage wrote:

Hi All,

A post came up on the boards this week highlighting non business sellers selling food products. It does seem to be a huge problem as allergens, ingredients and seller details are all absent. Does Ebay have a duty of care to buyers of these products when sellers do not comply with Natashas Law and other food regulations? 

---

Hi cobwebcottage, thanks for your post.

We are constantly reviewing that all sellers have listed correctly all of their items, including the ones you are referring to. For further information, you can visit our food policy here.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

---

@lord_and_lady_m wrote:

Hi, I want this removed from my account.

I  raised it with CS last week and again over the weekend. I was told i'd get a response and still nothing.

Please can you remove this from my account so I can sell higher value items without being charged a fortune?

---

Hi @lord_and_lady_m 

I'll escalate this now, I'm not aware of a way to opt out of promotion once its active so I'll have to reach out to the promotions team for an answer. 

Ill reply to you directly once I have an answer.

Thanks,

Dave

[ducatimondo]

Have been more frequently seeing other glitches on the eBay platform on the PC where pages just do not load or only partially load.

Like this one below:

Surely there is something seriously wrong with the platform if the page doesn't even load.

Is anyone working on fixing this, as it really is a poor state of affairs when the menu bars that are a constant part of eBay search results don't even load.

Ta

Russ

[goingfishing]

---

dave@ebay wrote:

---

The test took place between 18th and 28th July and during this time some of our members had a different experience. 

This has completely stopped and how impressions are handled should now be back to normal. 

---

Hi, can it be explained why if this is the case that sales/impressions etc continue to nose dive?  Is there yet another issue causing the continued problems?  If this test was finished on the 28th July why are things actually not 'back to normal' as you state.  In fact the evidence in front of me states quite the opposite, it's getting worse.

If this was finished on the 28th why was a member of eBay's staff not reporting back to the main thread stating such test had finished, consider how many people were/are affected and continued to be so?  Why the lack of respect for those concerned?  Sorry but this whole episode has been terribly handled from day one.

[lord_and_lady_m]

Thanks Dave. It states in the terms to contact CS

[marco@ebay]

---

@oceanartsnorthdevon wrote:

Are there any updates as to what is happening on site?  There is a real issue with sales dropping, impressions, views etc affecting so many sellers but we are not being kept i the loop?

---

Hi  oceanartsnorthdevon, thanks for your post.

We got confirmation from the promoted listings team that there was a test with affected impressions. The test took place between 18th and 28th July and during this time some of our members had a different experience. However, this has completely stopped and how impressions are now be back to normal.

Thank you,

Marco

[oakley_home_and_gifts]

Recently went on holiday last month and put store on holiday mode on the 17th July till the 27th of July yet ebay were showing potential buyers estimated delivery of 26th of July to 1st Aug. 

Why are ebay displaying a estimated delivery date before the seller is even back? It would mean I would of had to dispatch items around the 24th for it to get there on the 26th before I was even back off holiday. 

On my other store I changed the dispatch days to 10 days, obviously with this the date keeps moving the closer to the end of the holidays. Customers are less likely to order due to the longer delivery estimate. 

Which ever way a seller chooses it is not accurate or reflects the expected delivery times which ebay keep telling sellers to match in regards to dispatch and chosen delivery mothod. It seems the more ebay keep trying to manage everything the more complicated they make it and the more things go wrong. 

[keelinge]

Is there going to be a way to revert back to 3 columns in the seller hub. 2 just means lots of scrolling. 

[qualitycardsandgifts]

Can you please advise what happened to my account at the end of last year.   Sales were pretty consistent, but suddenly went into free fall to the point where my sales were down by 80%.   No bad feedback, top rated.