Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 13.12.23 @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. Some questions may not be suitable for this weekly chat, as it closes after 1 hour. If you have a long question or one that requires a lot of investigation please write a discussion post on the boards and tag our team members. 

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

[eshopforce01]

Hello,

It's a shame.

I can see many people here trying to improve their eBay shop and the buyer experience.

That would be a plus to have a bit more technical answers and knowledge from the specialist team.

Thanks

[anita@ebay]

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@contessa35 wrote:

Hello, I've raised this before, but the problem is still ongoing, so I thought I'd ask in another way. I apologise for the length and complexity, but it's a long-lasting, frustrating issue which is hard to find an explanation for and very difficult to deal with.

I'm a buyer, and I am always running up against a problem regarding items listed using eBay International Shipping by sellers in the US in my category of interest - Dolls & Bears (some other categories are affected too, but by no means all). Although the affected sellers (by now, it's pretty much all of them, and all their listings in affected categories) have always sold to the UK using the Global Shipping Program and continued to do so with eBay International Shipping (which replaced GSP in the US). Howver, about 3 months ago, without the sellers changing anything, the United Kingdom totally disappeared from the country listings in the shipping details of their EIS items - it's not in the shipped-to countries, nor in the list of countries they wouldn't ship to. The effect of this is that eBay International Shipping (EIS) disappears from their affected listings, with no other international shipping offered. The 30-day return facility provided by EIS, along with all the estimates of shipping cost to the UK and VAT disappear, and warnings appear that the seller has not provided details for shipping to the UK and may not ship here, suggesting the buyer contacts them. Contact usually doesn't work when I try though with this issue - eBay blocks it. Very often, but not always, eBay also immediately blocks attempts to bid, buy or make offers too. Once aware, the sellers try to add the UK back in, but can find no way of doing so.

Plenty of US sellers are complaining about this on their community chat, including a 90+ message thread. Every UK buyer I've asked to look sees it too, so it's not some error of my setup. It appears that eBay representatives do not see this issue if they check from inside eBay's systems, but it definitely exists for sellers in the US and buyers in the UK (it appeared gradually initially, on just a few items which corrected themselves an hour or two after listing, but soon escalated to a problem affecting nearly all EIS Dolls & Bears category listings that should ship to the UK, and is permanent). I have watched an unaffected listing change to showing the problem in seconds, whilst the seller had no interaction with it and had made no changes at all, as soon as it auto-renewed for another term, having not yet sold.

Many sellers and buyers remain unaware of this issue until it's pointed out, with buyers assuming it's just the seller's decision not to send to the UK, and sellers assuming all is fine, unless a UK buyer contacts them, or they discover it themselves when they start noticing a lack of UK bidders and buyers. Obviously this is having a very bad effect both on sellers' sales and buyers' attempts to purchase.

Some eBay reps have suggested that US sellers put UK buyers in an exemption list to bypass the problem, but it also bypasses EIS, and many would strongly prefer to use EIS. Another suggested workaround which does seem to work is for the seller to place an affected listing for a UK seller who has agreed to buy it, in an unaffected category instead as a Buy It Now special listing. Is this OK to do in eBay's opinion? The seller may have to cancel the original purchase if the UK bidder was able to bid and win it or complete a buy it now originally (sometimes we are able to, though mostly we're not, where this issue applies, and we're never allowed by eBay to pay for an item affected by the issue anyway without the seller resorting to some kind of workaround!). So sellers typically have to cancel the original purchase in those rare cases that a UK buyer get that far, by stating "something wrong with the buyer's address" as the reason for cancellation. Is there any negative aspect to doing this, for the seller or buyer?

Finally, does anyone at eBay know if there is any possible reason for this actually disappearance of eBay International Shipping from the US to the UK in Dolls & Bears not being a glitch or bug, but by design? That is, is there any reason that eBay has decided it is not suitable for US sellers to offer collectible dolls (vintage ones, and for collectors over 15) to the UK? I can see no statement of such a thing, they don't seem to be restricted items (why would they be? They've never been before) and as far as I know, the incoming UKCA safety regulations are now going to run alongside CE now, instead of replacing them, and CE has never been an issue in this respect. I believe UKCA is pretty much the same standard, just made UK-specific. So I don't think it could be a reason for all this, but one US seller wondered so I thought I'd ask!

Thanks very much for any help or ideas.

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Hi @contessa35, thanks for your post.

Could you please create a thread on one of the boards and tag me, please also share some item numbers as examples and I will look into this for you.

Thanks,

Anita

[anita@ebay]

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@ducatimondo wrote:

Are these 2 items duplicates according to eBay's polices:

404462608293 and 335006915771

Yes, or no?

Thanks

Russ

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Hi @ducatimondo, apologies I missed your post. I am reviewing it now and will get back to you shortly.

Thanks,

Anita

[anita@ebay]

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anita@ebay wrote:

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@ducatimondo wrote:

Are these 2 items duplicates according to eBay's polices:

404462608293 and 335006915771

Yes, or no?

Thanks

Russ

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Hi @ducatimondo, apologies I missed your post. I am reviewing it now and will get back to you shortly.

Thanks,

Anita

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@ducatimondo, I looked into this and because they specify two different models of vehicles that they are compatible with, it would be an exception and allowed. We allow up to 5 separate fixed price listings for identical items designed to fit multiple devices, when each listing is differentiated by spelling out the brand or model the item fits.

Thanks,

Anita

[anita@ebay]

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@lincolnshiremarine wrote:

Good afternoon

I am yet to hear back with regards an issue I raised on here and told to post on seller central by Marco with regards some of my listings now just saying Evri for economy delivery and Evri for next day.  Not all my listings have defaulted to this, but many have.  It use to be Evri, Yodel and DPD.   No one from ebay has given me an explanation to this.

Please see another issue..................................

Buyer purchased item yesterday 12/12/23  1.20pm via standard 2 - 3 day delivery. Order# 11-10919-15056

Printed off postage label ready.

Looked on the buyers estimated delivery time, it states arrival 13th December - 14th December. This is impossible as the parcel will not be collected by the courier until 13th Dec as it was purchased after our dispatch cut off time 9am.

Looked further down on the page under "Delivery history "

Tuesday 12th December at 6.47am tracking provided.  The buyer did not purchase the item until 1.20pm, so how can it state a postage label was created at 6.47am.

This means that ebay thinks we should of posted the item today and this is the issue. How can tracking be provided at 6.47am when the buyer did not purchase the item from us until 1.20pm on 12th December 2023.

Is this one of the reasons why we are all seeing totally unrealistic delivery times for buyers, as purchases made after the dispatch cut off time are actually being classed as purchases prior to the cut off time.  Hence why the buyers delivery dates are incorrect?

This is happening with all my postage now, another example order# 05-10928-15259 order placed today 13/12/23 at 8.32am tracking number provided at 1.53am on 13/12/23.  How can a tracking number and time be given BEFORE a purchase has been made.

This is why your ebay tracking is wrong and buyer think there parcels are late to arrive when in fact they are not.

Please advise what is happening about this issue.

Best wishes

Buyers purchase time and dateMade up printed label time

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@lincolnshiremarine, regarding your second question, I looked into these orders and see what you mean about the time-line of the tracking number. I’ll flag this to the tech team for a review.

As for the estimated delivery dates, I wasn’t able to replicate it. The 1st Order was made on the 12th Dec and has estimated delivery date 14-15th December, please see here. The other Order was made on the 13th Dec, estimated delivery date 15-16th December, see here. These are the dates we display to your buyers and will be looking at when it comes to metrics or cases.

Please note that the chat is now closed, if you need any further help, please create a new thread, tag me and will continue helping you from there.

Thanks,

Anita