💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 14.12.22 @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 , 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

[katie@ebay]

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@66699912 wrote:

I know the rather hopeful 1st class Royal Mail last posting date for christmas is Friday 16th , but why do my listings 1st class arrival state delivery after christmas when theoretically at least according to Royal Mail they should arrive before ? and worse still my 2nd class option states possible delivery before christmas , make sense of that !!

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Hi there,

The system is now taking Royal Mail Christmas information into account you can see more on this here. 

Could you send me the item numbers for these two sales and I'll double check for you?

Thanks,

Katie 

[petals-and-paws]

Hi Kat,

But I won't be posting them until Tuesday, if I was posting them earlier I'd have an earlier dispatch date? And 'dynamic delivery' dates aside, how can an order be delivered on a day where there aren't any deliveries? I assume eBay are aware of the strikes next week, why would they tell buyers that they'd be delivered on a strike day? 

As I said before, I know you have absolutely no control over this (and you're probably fed up with hearing about it!) but surely the dates advertised to buyers need to be achievable?

[kat@ebay]

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@ojewellery wrote:

Post and delivery have been a real business challenge these last few months.  eBay have provided back up with offering alternative courier offers, putting notices on the site and seller protections.  Its been great but its a sticky plaster answer not a solution.

We've had a big focus on getting to Christmas but there is no sign of strikes letting up. Many business' have traditionally relied on large letter format post.  Royal Mail have quite openly talked about focus on parcels so potentially large letter post is going to be going through changes only accelerated by the strikes.

Do eBay have plans to put a strategy in place in the New Year, working with business' to find new ways we can get customers to build bigger baskets to justify parcel post, offer postal discounts to get mulitbuy purchases, allow sellers of lower value items to maintain top rated status if using slower services for lower value items?

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Hi @ojewellery,

eBay are continuously looking for ways to improve sales with postage costs. We are in the middle of an everchanging situation with the Royal Mail and will have to continue to monitor how this progresses into the new year.  I appreciate you sharing this insight for sellers of lower value items and will share this to be taken into consideration for next years focus.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

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@beetleboy82 wrote:

Hi,

I sell on ebay and get a lot of 'where are my order' messages, I feel its not clear enough to buyers about the current postal delays.

I have just had a little search as a buyer and haven't seen anything obvious advising of the delays. Prehaps some big banners across your site advising of the delays would be helpful to us sellers, also make it clearer that delivery dates are 'estimated' rather than 'Get it by Wed, xx Date' its just not realistic and causes a bad experience for buyers and sellers as expectations can not be met. 

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Hi @beetleboy82 

We have updates to buyers at a number of different points through the buying process, are CS teams are also advising buyers about delays when they contact about INRs or when they open a case. They will see notifications like this:

I will as always pass your feedback on to the shipping team.

Thanks,

Dave

[louisianna]

Yes please Dave. As it stands, we cant even set our own times for dispatch which means we are being micro managed. 

And if Royal Mail continues to strike in the new year, will we see better shipping estimates? 

Ive had so many refunds I have had no choice but to issue, knowing full well the item will arrive.

[louisianna]

Thank you Kat

[katie@ebay]

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@drgwalker wrote:

I brought up an issue six weeks ago regarding the default Business Policies / Postage Options. I made you aware that you are unable to edit any saved default postage options unless you listed and amended the listing once live. Things have gotten worse.

In the postage options you have 4 prompts.

1 - View Postage Policy
2 - Edit Policy
3 - Create Postage Policy
4 - Edit Cost For This Listing

My previous issue was with option 4 ‘Edit Cost For This Listing’ as this wasn’t updating. This option no longer exists as it now defaults to option 3 with no edit options.

Can option 4 be looked into with some urgency as creating individual postage policies for listing variations isn’t really viable?

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Hi @drgwalker,

I remember speaking to you before in relation to this. Can you send me a screengrab of the issue you are explaining above?

I can take a closer look for you.

Thanks,

Katie 

[kat@ebay]

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@fatbobfan wrote:

What/Where? are the guidelines on obtaining payment for INR refunds, that will arrive after strike/weather/dispatch times issues

Would it not be easier to elongate the INR time period before refunds are issued, most customers are understanding and strike/weather aware, saving the buyer and seller the hassle of having to deal with this at a later date and what happens if the buyer chooses not to communicate

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Hi @fatbobfan,

I do understand how frustrating the current situation is with INRs. It is feedback we continue to share. However right now there is no change being made to the time period for INRs.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

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@returns_andexdisplay wrote:

Can someone explain the reason why ebay have decided to show estimated delivery after Christmas for most delivery serivces offered now? This has been going on since Saturday. 

I have emailed your head of UK and told someone from shipping would get back to me, nothing. Spoke with some in Monday then got cut off and never heard back. Nothing has been sorted as still showing after Christmas delivery. 

It's nothing to do with past metrics or carriers as I have not any major issues and I don't use Royal Mail.  

When speaking to CS support I was told to protect buyers from negative feedback or to message buyers to let them know would be delivered quicket (not sure how I message a buyer looking at my listings?).

As a small business I can live with some negative feedback as long as I can pay my bills and suppliers. With this latests interferance ebay have compleatly killed my sales on ebay whilst Amazon and own website sales are booming. 

I just want to be able to run my own business and if I get it wrong then let my feedback reflect this. 

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Hi @returns_andexdisplay 

The system is now taking Royal Mail Christmas information into account you can see more on this here. This can lead to the delivery times showing as after Christmas. 

Thanks,

Dave

[fatbobfan]

You didnt answer the guidelines question

[williabaxte7]

How do I report a scam email to PayPal ?

[returns_andexdisplay]

I don't use RM and never have so won't be part of any metrics. Postage policy is 2 day dispatch with 48hr Courier or 3 day courier. No of which refers to RM

What 2 - 3 day postage option should I use please to reflect 2 day dispatch and 2 - 3 day delivery that will not show after Christmas and now New Year delivery?  

[fatbobfan]

kat@ebay

To be clear what/where are the guidelines for getting monies back from INR refunds after the items get delivered

[kat@ebay]

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@beetleboy82 wrote:

You have a personalisation box and wondered if we could have the choice of making it complusery so a customer can not check out without filling this in? it saves us chasing the customer for the details, and we can get their orders dispatched on time. 

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Hi @beetleboy82 ,

That's a great suggestion and a valid point.  It would require a design change so I will share it with our development team.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

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@seal-extrusions wrote:

Can we please get a one-click send customer copy invoice button - eBay has hidden email addresses from us so we have got to get email addresses from customers, then send them a copy PDF invoice. I waste so much time sending copy invoices when it should just be a button in the drop-down menu.

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Hi @seal-extrusions 

Thanks for reaching out. 

Ill pass the suggestion back to the site development team to review. Its possibly something we could work in to some future updates.

Thanks,

Dave 

[ojewellery]

With the make an offer feature could the listing price limitation be removed to allow customisation.  I often have customers saying can you do x, y, z but I'd need to create a new listing.  When things are a one off it'd be great to just charge a few pounds extra within the offer.

[kat@ebay]

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@fatbobfan wrote:

kat@ebay

To be clear what/where are the guidelines for getting monies back from INR refunds after the items get delivered

---

Hi @fatbobfan ,

My apologies for not answering on the guidelines. If the item is received by buyers after a refund is given there isn't any way for eBay to force the buyers to make another payment. In these situations you would need to liase with the buyers to see if they will agree to make a payment another way or send the item back.

Thank you,

Kat

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

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@williabaxte7 wrote:

How do I report a scam email to PayPal ?

---

Hi @williabaxte7 

Thanks for reaching out.

We cant report issues to Paypal from here but you can report them to Paypal directly. You can find everything you need here.

Thanks,

Dave

[kat@ebay]

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@ojewellery wrote:

With the make an offer feature could the listing price limitation be removed to allow customisation.  I often have customers saying can you do x, y, z but I'd need to create a new listing.  When things are a one off it'd be great to just charge a few pounds extra within the offer.

---

Hi @ojewellery ,

It would be a specific design change to allow something like this. I will share it as feedback to our development team.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

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@returns_andexdisplay wrote:

I don't use RM and never have so won't be part of any metrics. Postage policy is 2 day dispatch with 48hr Courier or 3 day courier. No of which refers to RM

What 2 - 3 day postage option should I use please to reflect 2 day dispatch and 2 - 3 day delivery that will not show after Christmas and now New Year delivery?  

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Hi @returns_andexdisplay 

Parcelforce48 or DPD Classic/Direct should give a delivery date before Christmas. 

Thanks,

Dave