💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

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 , dave@ebay  and katie@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

Available via Email for Community-related inquiries:
contactcommunity@ebay.comeBay
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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

Search is completely broken.

 

All searches return no results/zero items

Looking at saved sellers (or any sellers) shops shows zero items

 

This is critically important for sellers of auctions; as these items will end with very few bids and at an undervalue.

 

Can you arrange for this to be fixed urgently,

---
Experience is something we gain, just after we needed it
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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

The Classic American Cars category seems to have disappeared. Is that permanent?

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm


@hatsford wrote:

Search is completely broken.

 

All searches return no results/zero items

Looking at saved sellers (or any sellers) shops shows zero items

 

This is critically important for sellers of auctions; as these items will end with very few bids and at an undervalue.

 

Can you arrange for this to be fixed urgently,


Hi @hatsford,

 

Thank you for your message.

 

This is a high priority technical issue with our teams at the moment. 

They are aware of the issue and are working to resolve as soon as possible.

 

We will continue to share updates across the community as we receive them.

 

Thanks,

Katie 

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

This isnt directly affecting me but it gets asked a lot on the boards. 

 

With regards to needing a VAT number, do you need to make sales of £85000 or over before you need to change or do ebay take last 3 months and multiple it by 4 and if over you need to apply or another system. Nobody seems to know but sellers are being asked to provide a VAT number when yearly sales are under £85k.

 

Also as I asked in pm when having a conversation but was just ignored, which reporting option do you need to select for when reporting a private account who is clearly a business? I dont want to open the can of worms but I'd love to know the exact reason I need to select when I report. Not that much gets done but at least I know I'm trying. There isnt a clear option.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

Good afternoon I have a problem that really needs sorting . I ordered a item in June pad for item using 500 points £2.50  from my nectar card  and rest using PayPal . .the item was refunded a few days later as the item had been lost in transit . I have received a refund back to my bank account for the PayPal payment . But have not received the refund for the nectar points used . I have spoken to nectar regarding this and they say I have to contact eBay to get this sorted. 

Please help!

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

I have a buyer who is being beyond abusive. They are and have been misusing the ebay system to cause as much carnage to us as possible. I have spoken to ebay support who have been absolutely no help, and even suggested that we continue selling to them despite the history of problems they're causing.

The inital cause of their frustatration is an international return that they forced open and was eventually closed in our favour because of the outright lies they were claiming as truths.

We blocked them and hoped that would be the end of it, they have since created approx 5 new accounts to bypass the blocks that we keep putting on their account, we have spoken to them and asked them to stop creating new accounts and to stop ordering from us but they continue anyway.

Each time they make a new account and place an order, we contact support who usually tell us to cancel the order, which we do. This is fine, but they just then leave scathing negative feedbacks. Despite ebay guidelines saying these reviews will be automatically removed because ebay instructed us to remove them, they're not alway removed - leaving us with this terrible reviews on our account.

The customer has recently placed an order with another account, and for some reason ebay support has told us to send the order to her, even though we warned she would make trouble some how.

The order was sent from UK to USA, and unsurprisingly she has opened a return request, falsely stating that the measurements are incorrect, which they aren't (everything was triple checked before sending to her because of these issues). She is now demanding we cover her return costs and reimburse her initial postage.

Ebay support have said we should accept the return and report the buyer, and they will then refund the cost of return postage, but ebay guidelines say this is capped at £3.50 (return postage will be about £20). And in the past we have used this reporting function but never actually received a refund, so doubt it will actually happen.

I'd really like to talk with someone that might actually be able to help me out in this situation. Would be greatly appreciated. At the moment it feels like this customer can get away with literally anything with no issues.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm


@mutley.1953 wrote:

The Classic American Cars category seems to have disappeared. Is that permanent?


Hi @mutley.1953 ,

 

That category is still there. Please see the link to it here.

 

Thanks,

Kat

I am currently away on maternity leave. Please reach out to the community team for support
Did you find your solution? Help other members by marking your problem as solved. Simply click on "Accept as solution" for the answer that helped you.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

Hi.

 

I bought some paint on Ebay but the lid came off in transit. Fortunately the paint was contained in the packaging, but I had to throw it all away. The seller wants me to open a dispute and then they will refund me, but there are no options that allow me to claim a refund without me having to return the item. Obviously I can't do that!

 

I took photos and a video of my opening the parcel, showing the leaked paint and mess.

 

What do I do to get my money back please?

 

 

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm


@pg_kicks wrote:

This isnt directly affecting me but it gets asked a lot on the boards. 

 

With regards to needing a VAT number, do you need to make sales of £85000 or over before you need to change or do ebay take last 3 months and multiple it by 4 and if over you need to apply or another system. Nobody seems to know but sellers are being asked to provide a VAT number when yearly sales are under £85k.

 

Also as I asked in pm when having a conversation but was just ignored, which reporting option do you need to select for when reporting a private account who is clearly a business? I dont want to open the can of worms but I'd love to know the exact reason I need to select when I report. Not that much gets done but at least I know I'm trying. There isnt a clear option.


Hey @pg_kicks,

 

I know there can be some confusion with thresholds. I had a conversation with our teams about this recently and they gave me some great points that helped clarify this:

  • VAT threshold in the UK is £85,000 in a rolling 12 months. The rolling 12 months is important to point out as it is not based off a tax year.
  • We take into account turnover for this £85,000 threshold and we do not take listed stock on the site into our calculations.
  • Postage costs are included in this calculation as it is based off complete turnover.
  • In regard to the Global Shipping Programme we calculate the turnover received by the seller. Therefore, the international leg of the shipping costs is not included as turnover.
  • For a cancellation, if a refund is issued to a buyer this amount is no longer considered as turnover and would not contribute to the £85,000 limit.
  • International sellers who list items that are located within the UK, do not have to hit the £85,000 limit. They are required to be VAT registered as soon as they have at least 1 listing located in the UK, even if it doesn’t sell.

The HMRC may also request for eBay to take action. If you believe a member is trading incorrectly you can report via the listing page but for the most part this work is done internally and we do not rely on member reports.

 

Thanks,

Katie 

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

I click your link but it shows no results. Was fine yesterday.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

Thanks for the reply, hopefully that clears it up when its next asked on the boards.

 

Sorry if you missed the second question I asked, it has been missed before in direct messages.

 

What reporting option should we use if we wish to report items on private accounts when the seller is clearly a business. We were told to report these but there is no option stating breaking the law/clearly a business. I know its pretty pointless as I have reported plenty of listings that are just holding listings when the seller doesnt have stock (they are still there weeks later) but has discounts but every little helps.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm


@williabaxte7 wrote:

Good afternoon I have a problem that really needs sorting . I ordered a item in June pad for item using 500 points £2.50  from my nectar card  and rest using PayPal . .the item was refunded a few days later as the item had been lost in transit . I have received a refund back to my bank account for the PayPal payment . But have not received the refund for the nectar points used . I have spoken to nectar regarding this and they say I have to contact eBay to get this sorted. 

Please help!


Hi @williabaxte7 ,

 

I know we answered this question for you last week so just to check was the sale cancelled on eBay?  Do you have an item number that I can check for this transaction?

 

Thank you,

Kat

I am currently away on maternity leave. Please reach out to the community team for support
Did you find your solution? Help other members by marking your problem as solved. Simply click on "Accept as solution" for the answer that helped you.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm


@bundl_clothing wrote:

I have a buyer who is being beyond abusive. They are and have been misusing the ebay system to cause as much carnage to us as possible. I have spoken to ebay support who have been absolutely no help, and even suggested that we continue selling to them despite the history of problems they're causing.

The inital cause of their frustatration is an international return that they forced open and was eventually closed in our favour because of the outright lies they were claiming as truths.

We blocked them and hoped that would be the end of it, they have since created approx 5 new accounts to bypass the blocks that we keep putting on their account, we have spoken to them and asked them to stop creating new accounts and to stop ordering from us but they continue anyway.

Each time they make a new account and place an order, we contact support who usually tell us to cancel the order, which we do. This is fine, but they just then leave scathing negative feedbacks. Despite ebay guidelines saying these reviews will be automatically removed because ebay instructed us to remove them, they're not alway removed - leaving us with this terrible reviews on our account.

The customer has recently placed an order with another account, and for some reason ebay support has told us to send the order to her, even though we warned she would make trouble some how.

The order was sent from UK to USA, and unsurprisingly she has opened a return request, falsely stating that the measurements are incorrect, which they aren't (everything was triple checked before sending to her because of these issues). She is now demanding we cover her return costs and reimburse her initial postage.

Ebay support have said we should accept the return and report the buyer, and they will then refund the cost of return postage, but ebay guidelines say this is capped at £3.50 (return postage will be about £20). And in the past we have used this reporting function but never actually received a refund, so doubt it will actually happen.

I'd really like to talk with someone that might actually be able to help me out in this situation. Would be greatly appreciated. At the moment it feels like this customer can get away with literally anything with no issues.


Hi @bundl_clothing,

 

I'm sorry to hear about this situation. Here on the community it is challenging for us to support here as we cannot publicly discuss or appeal cases and feedbacks. 

 

The best thing to do would be to appeal the feedback based on the information provided to you to cancel and to cancel sales from this buyer if that's what you feel most comfortable with. 

 

In order to do this we would need you to speak to our teams via the eBay help pages.

 

Thanks,

Katie 

Did you find your solution? Help other members by marking your problem as solved. Simply click on "Accept as solution" for the answer that helped you.
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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm


@mutley.1953 wrote:

I click your link but it shows no results. Was fine yesterday.


Hi @mutley.1953 ,

 

We are currently experiencing a technical issue with the search results so while the link is correct due to this alot of search results are not showing. This is being worked on as we speak so once its resolved the link should show you results. 

 

Please keep an eye on the search results threads on the boards as we will update those once tech confirm a fix

 

Thank you,

Kat

I am currently away on maternity leave. Please reach out to the community team for support
Did you find your solution? Help other members by marking your problem as solved. Simply click on "Accept as solution" for the answer that helped you.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

When is eBay going to start taking this issue of fake products on the marketplace seriously? And in many cases not only is the product fake many of the VAT numbers being used are not correct for the seller, they are using VAT numbers for companies that have been dissolved.

 

We are reporting these listing daily but nothing gets done about it.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

Yes item was cancelled on ebay

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm


@pg_kicks wrote:

Thanks for the reply, hopefully that clears it up when its next asked on the boards.

 

Sorry if you missed the second question I asked, it has been missed before in direct messages.

 

What reporting option should we use if we wish to report items on private accounts when the seller is clearly a business. We were told to report these but there is no option stating breaking the law/clearly a business. I know its pretty pointless as I have reported plenty of listings that are just holding listings when the seller doesnt have stock (they are still there weeks later) but has discounts but every little helps.


No problem @pg_kicks, those bullet points tend to reach the most frequent questions we see.

 

There isn't a specific reporting option for this. Our teams run checks in the background. The most relevant one would be: 

 

katieebay_0-1686749140305.png

 

Thanks,

Katie 

 

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

Okay. Great. Thanks for that.

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💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.06.23 @2pm

Item number234766148407

and nectar points have not been returned to my account as I have checked today 

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About this Weekly Chat!

Welcome to the Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team! Unless otherwise noted, chats occur every Wednesday from 2pm to 3pm.

Our Community Team will be in the Chats to help with the questions.

If you have multiple questions please open a post per question so we can get back to them individually. If it's something we can't answer right away we will get back to you after the chat has finished.