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

[marco@ebay]

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

Can someone at eBay explain why we are paying for sponsored listings?

I ask this, as our sales have gone tumbleweed quiet on our other shop and if we hadn't been working our behinds off on this account and the other, then we'd have probably had virtually no sales.

I also ask this as when searching eBay on a PC, we have it set to 60 results per page.

Searching for items as buyer's would and then also searching as a seller would, with part numbers and such shows around the same results. We are showing results as a best match, which is where promoted listings should do the most work for us.

Almost every single time, eBay says, "did you mean (random gobbledygook)" instead of what you searched for.

So I click to say use what I searched for and look down the list.

Hardly any of the top are sponsored, which seems odd.

Then you scroll down and see easily 40 or more in a row that are not sponsored, often with poor feedback, poor photos, terrible descriptions and long delivery times.
Then there is us at position 59 our of 60, with our paid extra for sponsored listing, better feedback, fully populated vehicle fitment too, better photos, full description and offering the full TRS premium service.

So how come we are demoted to the bottom?

How come we are getting no views on our items?

How come we are getting no sales?

How can the items even be promoted when more than 40 not promoted appear above it?

Do eBay seriously expect us to pay the extra fees if we do sell something when they are obviously not been promoted and it would be more accurate to say we are paying to be demoted?

Is it really, really, really broken?

Or are eBay proving that sponsored listings are a 100% waste of money, as we are paying extra for exactly nothing whatsoever?

Please tell us the truth, actually answer the questions and for the love of god, please, please, please do not just put a cut and paste answer!!

Thank you

Russ

---

Hi ducatimondo, thanks for your post.

Promoted listings are for you to get more views/traction on the items you list using this feature, while I understand where you are coming from, you would still get as many results as possible on each search. Please note that we don't guarantee that if you use this feature, your listings will be at the top of each search result or that you will definitely sell the item, which means this is working as expected. Also, this feature is totally optional for sellers, we always recommend to do what you think is best for you to improve your listings, so you can use it or not depending on what you think is best for your sales. 

Thank you,

Marco

[toolfocus]

Hi I have a question regding the duplicate listings policy.  I understand that a seller can only list each item ONE time. However there are many Chinese sellers who are creating multiple identical stores all sellimg the exact same items and uplicating each item up to 20 times in each store.  This means they can effectivekly list the same item 500 times and flood the search rresults with their items.  I have reported a particular seller nearly every single week for the last 12 months and no tangible action is taken.  Does Ebay really have a dedicated department to deal with this? Some searches show the same item from the same seller 50 time out of the first 60 results.

[anita@ebay]

---

@kempseykate wrote:

This weeks glitch/error involved selling an item to someone in the postcode AB54. (Most couriers have AB53-AB56 as part of Highlands and Islnds). I use a rate table for surcharges to these areas, so that should have kicked in. Unfortunately it didn't so the buyer only paid the standard postage - so about £3 short of the postage needed to include the surcharge.

I am awaiting an email from ebay as to why this happened (given past experiences, I doubt I will ever get this!). However, in chat, the agent told me I could inform the buyer and ask them for the difference in postage. I said this would be against ebay rules, but they said again that I could do this.

So, has something changed? If ebay don't automatically use the rate table as I have set out, can I charge the buyer the extra, and will ebay have my back if I do so?

---

Hi @kempseykate, thanks for your post.

Could you please share the item numbers affected by this and I will report it for you for a review.

In the meantime, if you have any orders that haven’t been dispatched and were affected by the error, you may also cancel those orders if you wish.

We recommend using official eBay channels for all transactions, however we won't prohibit if buyer agrees to pay extra postage, it is up to you and the buyer. 

Thanks,

Anita

[marco@ebay]

---

@1987liamm wrote:

Hi There,

i recently received the MC011 restriction and have followed advice given, all items posted with tracking added. I'm not too sure why this happened as i have no open cases and buy all my labels through ebay, which always automatically uploads the tracking number / delivery confirmation code.

What is the best way to proceed? Should i wait for ebay to contact me after all items delivered?

Thanks

---

Hi 1987liamm, thanks for your post.

When this happens, we normally send you an email with the instructions to follow in order to resolve the restriction. If you go to your eBay messages, you will see it there and then you just need to follow those instructions as that is the only way to get resolved your restriction. Once you proceed in the way we instructed you, we will review the restriction again and you will receive an outcome via email as well.

Thank you,

Marco

[j-4-jewellery]

I am reducing my carbon footprint so only using one social media platform, instagram.

Is there any other way to use eBay's new social tool without signing up a Facebook business page?

[marco@ebay]

---

@lincolnshiremarine wrote:

Thank you. 

Please also see the other issue.

Best wishes

---

Hi lincolnshiremarine, thanks for your post.

If you are referring to the issue flagged with me last week, I've advised that I would share an update with you once I have one. If I haven't provided further updates, it's because I still don't have one. I will update the thread in question once I have an update on it. 

Thank you,

Marco

[anita@ebay]

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

In last week's chat, more than one eBay team member suggested to make another thread on here, so the discussion could continue after the hour weekly chat was up.

I read those posts and thought it strange, as I have tagged all of the community team in posts on this discussion board and no one from eBay has replied?

Why not?
I have also noticed other members tagging some of the eBay team into posts and they don't often get a reply either.

Why not?

I have also had some discussions with some eBay colleagues in private messages on here and asked them for some more information, yet they do not reply.

Why not?

Thanks

Russ

---

Hi @ducatimondo, thanks for your post.

Can you please share the thread that you created and were looking for a response, so I can review it for you after the chat.

Thanks,

Anita

[kempseykate]

anita@ebay 

Thank you for your reply. As I mentioned in my post, I am waiting for a response from ebay following the chat, but if you want to follow it up as well, feel free - 235329303266.

The question I was actually asking was is it now OK for me to charge extra postage if ebay isn't working as it should? The chat agent told me:

"When a seller faces extra postage cost , can inform the buyer and get that as well."

If that's the case, then surely we don't need to bother with Rate Tables, we can just add the extra charge on when it arises?

[1987liamm]

Thanks Marco, obviously lots of internet stories about this leading to a permanent ban, which i would be keen to avoid. Could you tell me why this happened and the timeframe for the restriction to be lifted?

Thanks

[contessa35]

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.

[ducatimondo]

---

marco@ebay wrote:

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

Can someone at eBay explain why we are paying for sponsored listings?

I ask this, as our sales have gone tumbleweed quiet on our other shop and if we hadn't been working our behinds off on this account and the other, then we'd have probably had virtually no sales.

I also ask this as when searching eBay on a PC, we have it set to 60 results per page.

Searching for items as buyer's would and then also searching as a seller would, with part numbers and such shows around the same results. We are showing results as a best match, which is where promoted listings should do the most work for us.

Almost every single time, eBay says, "did you mean (random gobbledygook)" instead of what you searched for.

So I click to say use what I searched for and look down the list.

Hardly any of the top are sponsored, which seems odd.

Then you scroll down and see easily 40 or more in a row that are not sponsored, often with poor feedback, poor photos, terrible descriptions and long delivery times.
Then there is us at position 59 our of 60, with our paid extra for sponsored listing, better feedback, fully populated vehicle fitment too, better photos, full description and offering the full TRS premium service.

So how come we are demoted to the bottom?

How come we are getting no views on our items?

How come we are getting no sales?

How can the items even be promoted when more than 40 not promoted appear above it?

Do eBay seriously expect us to pay the extra fees if we do sell something when they are obviously not been promoted and it would be more accurate to say we are paying to be demoted?

Is it really, really, really broken?

Or are eBay proving that sponsored listings are a 100% waste of money, as we are paying extra for exactly nothing whatsoever?

Please tell us the truth, actually answer the questions and for the love of god, please, please, please do not just put a cut and paste answer!!

Thank you

Russ

---

Hi ducatimondo, thanks for your post.

Promoted listings are for you to get more views/traction on the items you list using this feature, while I understand where you are coming from, you would still get as many results as possible on each search. Please note that we don't guarantee that if you use this feature, your listings will be at the top of each search result or that you will definitely sell the item, which means this is working as expected. Also, this feature is totally optional for sellers, we always recommend to do what you think is best for you to improve your listings, so you can use it or not depending on what you think is best for your sales. 

Thank you,

Marco

---

Hi Marco,

Thank you for reply.

I would like to address some of your comments.

How is it working as expected, when there are around 40 non promoted items above it, where the sellers are not offering premium service, are offering longer delivery times (as they don't even stock what they are selling), have worse feedback, have not filled out the vehicle compatibility tool and no previous sales. All of these things are supposed help with organic results on best match.

We then have the issue of paying extra to promote an item.

Dictionary definition of promote:

raise (someone or something) to a higher position or rank.

If we already should be above them in best match, according to eBay's own explanation of how best match should work, then we also pay extra for additional promotion, then how can it be working as expected; unless eBay really do want to be paid extra for actually nothing.

I put it to you that the item is only being promoted in name and not in rank. Literally the only thing we are paying for by promoting them is the word on the listing that says it is sponsored, in order to comply with the Sale of Goods Act 1988, Consumer Contracts Regulations 2018, etc

I do not see anything else that is being shown or otherwise evidence that the item is actually being promoted in listing rank.

The items are not getting any views, so sales are inevitably not going to appear on items eBay appear to be hiding.

So once again, I put it to you, how is this working as expected, unless you are expecting it to get no views or sales?

If paying for a promoted listing is not paying for it to appear higher in the rankings, then what are we paying for?
It is literally in the description of what we are paying for, promoted listings, so therefore they should be promoted, no?

Thank you
Russ

[marco@ebay]

---

@toolfocus wrote:

Hi I have a question regding the duplicate listings policy.  I understand that a seller can only list each item ONE time. However there are many Chinese sellers who are creating multiple identical stores all sellimg the exact same items and uplicating each item up to 20 times in each store.  This means they can effectivekly list the same item 500 times and flood the search rresults with their items.  I have reported a particular seller nearly every single week for the last 12 months and no tangible action is taken.  Does Ebay really have a dedicated department to deal with this? Some searches show the same item from the same seller 50 time out of the first 60 results.

---

Hi toolfocus, thanks for your post.

We do, please continue to report all items that you think are against our policies and procedures, and our team will review all of them and take actions accordingly based on the result of the review.

Thank you,

Marco

[anita@ebay]

---

@j-4-jewellery wrote:

I am reducing my carbon footprint so only using one social media platform, instagram.

Is there any other way to use eBay's new social tool without signing up a Facebook business page?

---

Hi @j-4-jewellery, thanks for your post.

You should be able to sign in using Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest. Can you let me know more, what is happening if you chose Instagram? Does it not allow you to continue without Facebook?

Thanks,

Anita

[marco@ebay]

---

@1987liamm wrote:

Thanks Marco, obviously lots of internet stories about this leading to a permanent ban, which i would be keen to avoid. Could you tell me why this happened and the timeframe for the restriction to be lifted?

Thanks

---

Hi 1987liamm, thanks for your reply.

We are unable to review restrictions over this channel, so I wouldn't be able to confirm why this happened. However, this information would also be included in the email we sent you. In terms of time frame, that would depend on how busy our restriction team may be at the time you submit all the information I presume was requested to you. It would typically take 5-10 business days, but sometimes it might take longer.

Thank you,

Marco

[Anonymous]

The problem is the sequence of orders in the csv download is ifferent to the sequence of orders on the awaiting dispatch page. So we have to move orders up and down in the csv file so they do match. 

[anita@ebay]

---

@kempseykate wrote:

anita@ebay 

Thank you for your reply. As I mentioned in my post, I am waiting for a response from ebay following the chat, but if you want to follow it up as well, feel free - 235329303266.

The question I was actually asking was is it now OK for me to charge extra postage if ebay isn't working as it should? The chat agent told me:

"When a seller faces extra postage cost , can inform the buyer and get that as well."

If that's the case, then surely we don't need to bother with Rate Tables, we can just add the extra charge on when it arises?

---

@kempseykate , thanks, I will report it from my end as well.

Ideally, rate tables should work as intended and there shouldn't be any extra charge. But if it’s a one time situation, and buyer agrees to pay the extra charge, it is ok. It doesn’t mean that the rate table issue should be happening, so I will make sure it is flagged.

Thanks,

Anita

[toolfocus]

Well to be honest in my opinion the specialist department is non functioning.  I have reported a seller who duplicates maybe more than one hundred items, and each item up to 500 times.  I have reported them weekly during more than 12 months and each time the customer suport agent assures me that serious action will be taken. However, nothing tangible happens, the seller in question just keeps creating even more duplicate listings.  A search for "216pc socket set" shows the same item from the same seller in one of their 50 duplicate shops about 48 to 53 times out of 60, depending on the week.

[marco@ebay]

Thanks for your reply, ducatimondo. 

Feel free to provide a few examples, and I will be happy to review that myself.

Thank you,

Marco

[ducatimondo]

Am I not getting an answer to my question if those 2 items are duplicates?

I asked you guys to check, as the trust and safety team do not think they or the hundreds and hundreds of the same item they also have listed are duplicates.

[marco@ebay]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

The problem is the sequence of orders in the csv download is ifferent to the sequence of orders on the awaiting dispatch page. So we have to move orders up and down in the csv file so they do match. 

---

Thanks for your reply, s2s-shopdirect.

If you create a thread on this and tag me, I can review this myself to see if this related to an update or a technical issue. Once you tag me, I will get back to you there as soon as possible. 

Thank you,

Marco