Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 11.12.24 @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. 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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@lincolnshiremarine wrote:

Marco,

Will I have to log back on this weekly chat to see your reply, if you manage to find out?

Best wishes

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Thanks for your reply, lincolnshiremarine. 

I will reply back here with the final update, yes. You won't be able to reply after the chat ends, but you will still be able to see my reply. Also, you'd get a notification as soon as I update you here.

Should you have follow up question after my update, please feel free to create a thread and tag me on it.

Thank you,

Marco

[ak_craft_crazy]

Hi,

I raised an issue last week regarding personalised items and the buyer not fully completing the details. So us having to message and then wait for them to respond which would lead to late dispatch marks against us. Even more so with tracked items are there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop this automatic mark, which would lead to it affecting our seller rating.

Well today on checking our seller rating will go from Top-rated seller to above standard. This is purely down to late dispatch where we have had to wait for buyers to let us know the personalisation details for their order. This is through no fault of our own but the buyers for not leaving the full details or any details or even ebay not being able to process them.

What can we do about this? Please can you advise?

[kempseykate]

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kat@ebay wrote:

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@bojangled wrote:

Hello Team!

Asking with my private seller hat on.

I don’t if you’ve got your heads round this forthcoming feature Simple Delivery  but the Help/FAQ page states

How is the label provided to me chosen?

‘We’ll take into account the buyer’s location, the item location, your distance to a convenient drop off point, the appropriate delivery service for the item you're posting, and whether the buyer has selected a standard or express delivery service at checkout, amongst a number of other factors.’

The criteria seems a little presumptive, how can eBay know what drop off point sellers have available to them, particularly in a small rural area, or physical access/transport to get there ? What is deemed ‘convenient’ to eBay may be inaccessible to the seller.
Jo

---

Hi @bojangled ,

It would base it off the sellers location and what drop off points eBay is aware of that are around that location.  That's a fair point regarding physical access/transport to get there. It is a new process so it will be evaluated on how it is working for further improvements. I'll share the point as feedback.

Thank you,

Kat

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So can we take it, from your response, then that Simple Delivery WILL be compulsory for private sellers from early next year?

[kat@ebay]

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@funkybunnie-direct wrote:

Again I appreciate that action isn't always visible. However, I have been 'following' around 40 sellers since October who are (in the eyes of UK law) trading illegally as 'private' seller, and all 40 are still selling as 'private' . Cold you please provide some information as to exactly what ebay are doing to address this situation? Or are ebay happy to allow 1000s of seller on their site to break UK law?

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Hi @funkybunnie-direct ,

The internal reviews and action taken cannot be shared as I have mentioned. There are alot of accounts that have been asked to upgrade to businesses and when they have not done the ability to continue selling has been removed. New measures have been introduced for private sellers, changes to holding of funds and access to discount tools will be removed from January 2025.  

Ebay are continuing to review current policies for these accounts and once we are aware of any further changes and measures we will share.

Thank you,

Kat

[marco@ebay]

---

@ak_craft_crazy wrote:

Hi,

I raised an issue last week regarding personalised items and the buyer not fully completing the details. So us having to message and then wait for them to respond which would lead to late dispatch marks against us. Even more so with tracked items are there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop this automatic mark, which would lead to it affecting our seller rating.

Well today on checking our seller rating will go from Top-rated seller to above standard. This is purely down to late dispatch where we have had to wait for buyers to let us know the personalisation details for their order. This is through no fault of our own but the buyers for not leaving the full details or any details or even ebay not being able to process them.

What can we do about this? Please can you advise?

---

Hi ak_craft_crazy, thanks for your post.

Yes, I remember your query from last week, and this has been shared already with the relevant team. However, we are unable to take further actions for the moment. Since this is the way the system works, we cannot really offer a workaround, you could try contacting customer services to see if there is any further actions they could take from their end in order to help.

Thank you,

Marco

[kat@ebay]

---

@kempseykate wrote:

---

kat@ebay wrote:

---

@bojangled wrote:

Hello Team!

Asking with my private seller hat on.

I don’t if you’ve got your heads round this forthcoming feature Simple Delivery  but the Help/FAQ page states

How is the label provided to me chosen?

‘We’ll take into account the buyer’s location, the item location, your distance to a convenient drop off point, the appropriate delivery service for the item you're posting, and whether the buyer has selected a standard or express delivery service at checkout, amongst a number of other factors.’

The criteria seems a little presumptive, how can eBay know what drop off point sellers have available to them, particularly in a small rural area, or physical access/transport to get there ? What is deemed ‘convenient’ to eBay may be inaccessible to the seller.
Jo

---

Hi @bojangled ,

It would base it off the sellers location and what drop off points eBay is aware of that are around that location.  That's a fair point regarding physical access/transport to get there. It is a new process so it will be evaluated on how it is working for further improvements. I'll share the point as feedback.

Thank you,

Kat

---

So can we take it, from your response, then that Simple Delivery WILL be compulsory for private sellers from early next year?

---

Hi @kempseykate,

We don't have confirmation on that as of yet. As soon as we do I will share.

Thank you,

Kat

[kempseykate]

Thank you Kat - but the CEO of the company has already said it will happen. Why do we always have to have this secrecy about upcoming changes 😞

[funkybunnie-direct]

I find this frustrating (as I am sure many legal business sellers do - obvious from the number on post and comments in seller chat) that ebay decided to do this just before the busiest and most profitable period of the year. And before they introduced no private seller fees that they didn't take any action on these illegally ( I keep using that word because that is what they are according to UK law) before the introduction.

You state that action has been taken on 'a lot' of sellers. I'm not asking for private details, but could you please advise what 'a lot' is by number? are we talking 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000  Seems amazing that not one of the private sellers that I am following appears to have had any action taken.

[kat@ebay]

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@funkybunnie-direct wrote:

I find this frustrating (as I am sure many legal business sellers do - obvious from the number on post and comments in seller chat) that ebay decided to do this just before the busiest and most profitable period of the year. And before they introduced no private seller fees that they didn't take any action on these illegally ( I keep using that word because that is what they are according to UK law) before the introduction.

You state that action has been taken on 'a lot' of sellers. I'm not asking for private details, but could you please advise what 'a lot' is by number? are we talking 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000  Seems amazing that not one of the private sellers that I am following appears to have had any action taken.

---

Hi @funkybunnie-direct ,

I get that this is frustrating for you and other sellers but we don't have that kind of information available and its not the kind of detail that will be shared on these weekly chats.

What we do from here is share the sentiment and points raised which can help towards future changes. 

Thank you,

Kat

[marco@ebay]

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@lincolnshiremarine wrote:

Good afternoon,

Where can I find the VAT invoices for postage purchased through eBay? Such as Evri, Yodel and Royal Mail. They do not seem to appear on the monthly Tax invoice.

Thank you.

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Hi lincolnshiremarine, thanks for your patience on this.

I've just checked there again, and we wouldn't have a VAT one. We only have the one you can get through the legacy tool as shown in the screenshot below. 

Hope this helps,

Marco

[marco@ebay]

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@darth_baggins wrote:

You're probably sick of hearing about EDDs by now, but how can it be correct that 2nd class, 1st class and RM24 Tracked all have the same EDD range?

If the 'dynamic' estimates are working as intended, then maybe the intention is wrong. What incentive is there for a seller to offer postage upgrades if the customer sees no benefit?

Also, you're quoting Saturday for next day delivery for something ordered on a Tuesday. Plus RM charge extra for Saturday special delivery so Saturdays should not even be included in this.

When is eBay going to admit that the whole thing is just broken?

This is what I saw when buying something yesterday.

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Hi darth_baggins, 

I've received an update on this, and after reviewing the item in question, no faults were found. I've been confirmed that this is due to the different factors that EDDs take into consideration for its dynamic calculation. 

Thank you,

Marco