💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 20.07.22 @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. 

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

[budo_online]

I am sure you are aware of the issues us and countless other VAT registered members have encountered over the weekend. It also looks like this happened to numerous sellers last month.

Please see below previous messages from ebay.

19-May-22 Message from ebay: ‘We noticed the Value Added Tax (VAT) information on your account isn’t up to date.’

19-May-22 Correction: Your account has the correct VAT details. No action required on your part. We have your valid VAT ID. Due to a system issue, in an earlier email we incorrectly requested that you need to update your VAT details within 30 days. Please ignore the email as we verified your account is correctly updated with a valid VAT ID.

15th July Let’s reactivate your eBay account ‘We noticed your Value Added Tax (VAT) details have not yet been updated. Unfortunately, we had to restrict your account from selling until we can confirm that you have a valid VAT number on file.’

So to outline on the 19th May ebay told us there was a problem with the VAT information, then on the same day sent out a correction message saying No action required on our part and to ignore the email. Then on the 15th July ebay ended all our listings.

A lot of these listings were years old, hundreds, if not thousands of sales on our best sellers and we were top of the search rankings for most of the listings. We have spent a massive amount of time and money using promoted listings to get the listings into this position. Comparing 10th-14th July to the 15th-19th July sales impressions are down 75.8% and this is with extra money being put into promoted listings and advanced promoted listings so you can understand the impact this has had.

A few questions now:

Why did ebay end all the listings, was this done on purpose or was it a technical error? Why not just suspend the listings or set quantities to zero?

If the error was down to the sellers why did ebay tell us no action was required and to ignore the email?

Why has this still not been acknowledged by ebay apart from a phone call yesterday which offered no information or solutions and a vague round about apology?

Why has it has been down to us to spend countless hours chasing this issue through phone calls and live chat to be given false information that listings would be reinstated with full listing history?

I am sure ebays terms and conditions will be such that there is nothing we can do but moan on a forum to each other but for all the years of effort and trust sellers have put into ebay as a platform to build our businesses then the way we have been treated over this is nothing short of disgusting and still now there has been no support or advice from ebay.

So I suppose after all that ramble the most important question now is:

Does ebay care about the businesses that use the platform?

Does it care about the impact this has had on the people behind these businesses, the staff that are employed to handle ebay orders, the loss of income to the business owners, the livelihoods that will be lost over this?

For some sellers whose income is solely derived from ebay sales, and this isn’t sensationalism, it will be as serious as not being able to pay bills or put food on the table due to the strains already placed on small businesses over the past couple of years.

What are ebay going to do to support sellers who have been affected by ebays actions? If absolutely nothing, as has been the case so far, then just be honest and we can all decide our next steps.

Ideally we want the sales history and listings search ranking back or to be compensated for this. If this is technically impossible then ebay need to help us to get the listings back to where they were, be it free maximum promoted listings for a period, selling fees waived or something, anything. Surely for such a massive company ebay must have one competent member of staff/management who can come up with an idea. Just pretend to care for a few weeks and give us a bit of support rather than silence and lies.

[pixiesen2012]

can you tell us what ebay are doing about the VAT catastrophe?

there are so many sellers whose livihoods have been decimated by this

[amtuk]

My question relates to an eBay error that resulted in the termination of sellers' listings with a VAT number on Friday 15 July. I, like other VAT sellers, was victimized last Friday. At 5.30 pm my 6-year-old listings were removed - ended. The listings had about 700 followers each, and sales reached 32k in some listings and 16k in others. I contacted you repeatedly about the emails you sent regarding VAT, about the fact that my VAT number at the bottom of the listings had disappeared, I have evidence of this. You reassured me that everything was fine, you checked my account and told me not to worry about the error, to ignore the messages... Until Friday.

Now you have admitted that it was an error, advised me to put the listings up again and wait for further news from you. What is being done about this? Will our listings be reinstated with all their sales history and watchers? Or are you going to offer us compensation? Our listings were at the top of the listings in selected keywords, we worked for 6 years for this, and we spent a lot of money on promotion. What now? We had to pay to re-list. The re-listings are much lower in position because they are new, and they have zero sales. Earnings now are zero, and we have to pay the bills. We demand proper solutions to this issue as soon as possible. This is not some system error, a server error that once fixed, everything went back to normal - NOTHING WENT BACK TO NORMAL for us! I hope that I and other sellers who have been harmed in this way will receive your appropriate assistance so that everything will finally return to normal. We demand information, help, and a solution to this situation - as soon as possible. What is being done about this? 

[angeliquetaunton123]

Hi

I purchased a clock from an e-bay seller in March 2022, it has now stopped working, I messaged the seller twice, Sunday 17th & Monday 18th July 2022, but no response from the seller, what can I do please?

[red-damore]

Please answer all questions specifically  - please do not give canned responses as it helps nobody!

[simas-stuff]

Ebay EDD times are a joke!

What appears as the EDD is actually based on a complicated mathematical formula which takes into account: The seller's handling time (Understandable)

The transit time for the delivery service offered (Obvious)

The type of payment used (What has this to do with delivery?)

DSR data and feedback left by buyers! (what has this got to do with EDD? One part of the country may have the postal service running perfectly whilst anothe part may have 40% of the staff of ill with covid or other problems. Just because daves post arrived the next day super fast does not mean that johns will does it!!!)

We always take into account the handling time which the seller indicated when we generate the EDD, however, the history calculations may outweigh the display to the buyer."

[mavpan]

Can we at least get some aknowledgement of the huge mistake that has affected many hundreds or thousands of legitimate business sellers. Currently radio silence from all eBay official channels is deafening!

1. Aknowledge the problem

2. Accept resposibility for severely affecting many peoples livelihoods

3. Announce why it happened and how you are going to stop this from happening in the future.

(Anyone that sells on amazon might recognize the POA steps above)

[pixiesen2012]

nothing through ebay, as they only over a 30 day money back guarantee

[nutsnboltsuk2015]

Hello 

Recently several times per day ebay is asking us to sign in again and keeps making us send a message to phone for authorisation code? I set up 2fa on the App today will this stop it ? Thanks

[calibreautopartsdirect]

This question relates to the error where Ebay suspended our account and deleted all our 12000-ish listings due to a VAT mismatch whereas Ebay had previously in May confirmed that our VAT information was correct.

Ebay deleted all our listings on the 15th of July. Years and years of sales history gone. Watchers gone. We were told Ebay was working on a solution. It’s now been 5 days. We’ve lost £1000’s of pounds in sales so far. We have relisted everything ourselves without any help from Ebay.

We’re now selling less than half of what we were selling previously and will have to look at making staff redundant.

First we were told Ebay was aware of the scale of the issue, IT teams were working on a solution.

Now I’m being told that we have to relist the listings if we want to.

And that’s it.

No restoration of listings.

No restoration of sales history.

Sales are down to maybe 25% of normal. And will be down for the forseeable future.

The question is: how is Ebay going to support all the small business that they have damaged or even destroyed by this error.

[trudyspanish]

Hi, i phoned ebay several times, and i was told countless times that you had my valid VAT number and that i need to do nothing, i asked for this in writing, which Jermaine did and i have a copy of this and it was confirmed by ebay customer service that they can also see that private email. I was told on Monday that IT was fixing this, i have had no more contact from eBay since monday. I also phoned ebay telling them for weeks my VAT number wasnt been shown on any of my listings, got told then they will pass onto IT and they'll get back to me, which no one did.

[angeliquetaunton123]

Thanks, so the sellers gets away with it then!!!

[mteconlineshop]

I like many others had over 3800 listings removed due to the VAT **bleep**, cost alot to re put all the listings back up and now sales have dropped, been trading on here since 2009 but i feel eBay are pushing sellers like us away, no responce from them regarding it

[800bhp]

My question is what are ebay going to do about the serious damage they have done to business's by ending all their listing for a 'VAT error' which they had previously stated was OK.

[rainbowtrax]

Is there an estimated time for a fix on the listing date issue with relists? It seems to have been going on since March/April time and is still not fixed.

When you relist an item, the listing date in search results should show the date of the relist, not the date of first listing. This seems to show correctly when you search a certain seller's listings but incorrectly if you search all sellers.

This is an example from my own listings:

On 3rd April I listed an item which sold on 1st May here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/rainbowtrax/m.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=king%20crimson%20discipline%20...

On 8th July I had an identical item to list so I used the relist option on the sold listing. If I search for it in my own items, it shows the correct listing date: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/m.html?_ssn=rainbowtrax&_osacat=0&_odkw=king+crimson&_from=R40&_trksid=p2...

But if I do a search for it from all sellers, it shows the wrong listing date of 3rd April so never appears as a newly listed item, missing out on being seen at the top of newly listed searches:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/176985/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=king+crimson+discipline+lp+&LH_TitleDesc=0

[red-damore]

We would love to hear what you intend to do about the VAT debacle. 

[dave@ebay]

---

@amtuk wrote:

My question relates to an eBay error that resulted in the termination of sellers' listings with a VAT number on Friday 15 July. I, like other VAT sellers, was victimized last Friday. At 5.30 pm my 6-year-old listings were removed - ended. The listings had about 700 followers each, and sales reached 32k in some listings and 16k in others. I contacted you repeatedly about the emails you sent regarding VAT, about the fact that my VAT number at the bottom of the listings had disappeared, I have evidence of this. You reassured me that everything was fine, you checked my account and told me not to worry about the error, to ignore the messages... Until Friday.

Now you have admitted that it was an error, advised me to put the listings up again and wait for further news from you. What is being done about this? Will our listings be reinstated with all their sales history and watchers? Or are you going to offer us compensation? Our listings were at the top of the listings in selected keywords, we worked for 6 years for this, and we spent a lot of money on promotion. What now? We had to pay to re-list. The re-listings are much lower in position because they are new, and they have zero sales. Earnings now are zero, and we have to pay the bills. We demand proper solutions to this issue as soon as possible. This is not some system error, a server error that once fixed, everything went back to normal - NOTHING WENT BACK TO NORMAL for us! I hope that I and other sellers who have been harmed in this way will receive your appropriate assistance so that everything will finally return to normal. We demand information, help, and a solution to this situation - as soon as possible. What is being done about this? 

---

Hi @amtuk 

Thanks for reaching out.

We appreciate your questions regarding the VAT information.

We do need to advise this is not a technical issue:
eBay have a legal obligation in our partnership with HMRC to ensure sellers are VAT compliant at all times.
Sellers were contacted via email in June and were notified of 30 days to update valid VAT info in order to keep selling on site.

We work closely with HMRC to ensure our sellers comply with their VAT obligations.
If we are informed by HMRC that a seller is not complying with these requirements we will take appropriate action.

We will continue to share further information here on the boards as it comes.

Thanks,

Dave

[sethandcotrading]

We have had no help at all and are getting different answers all the time regarding the VAT issue. Some customer service operators are giving false information that all the listing will go back to what they were. 

What is ebay planning to do ?

[kat@ebay]

---

@budo_online wrote:

I am sure you are aware of the issues us and countless other VAT registered members have encountered over the weekend. It also looks like this happened to numerous sellers last month.

Please see below previous messages from ebay.

19-May-22 Message from ebay: ‘We noticed the Value Added Tax (VAT) information on your account isn’t up to date.’

19-May-22 Correction: Your account has the correct VAT details. No action required on your part. We have your valid VAT ID. Due to a system issue, in an earlier email we incorrectly requested that you need to update your VAT details within 30 days. Please ignore the email as we verified your account is correctly updated with a valid VAT ID.

15th July Let’s reactivate your eBay account ‘We noticed your Value Added Tax (VAT) details have not yet been updated. Unfortunately, we had to restrict your account from selling until we can confirm that you have a valid VAT number on file.’

So to outline on the 19th May ebay told us there was a problem with the VAT information, then on the same day sent out a correction message saying No action required on our part and to ignore the email. Then on the 15th July ebay ended all our listings.

A lot of these listings were years old, hundreds, if not thousands of sales on our best sellers and we were top of the search rankings for most of the listings. We have spent a massive amount of time and money using promoted listings to get the listings into this position. Comparing 10th-14th July to the 15th-19th July sales impressions are down 75.8% and this is with extra money being put into promoted listings and advanced promoted listings so you can understand the impact this has had.

A few questions now:

Why did ebay end all the listings, was this done on purpose or was it a technical error? Why not just suspend the listings or set quantities to zero?

If the error was down to the sellers why did ebay tell us no action was required and to ignore the email?

Why has this still not been acknowledged by ebay apart from a phone call yesterday which offered no information or solutions and a vague round about apology?

Why has it has been down to us to spend countless hours chasing this issue through phone calls and live chat to be given false information that listings would be reinstated with full listing history?

I am sure ebays terms and conditions will be such that there is nothing we can do but moan on a forum to each other but for all the years of effort and trust sellers have put into ebay as a platform to build our businesses then the way we have been treated over this is nothing short of disgusting and still now there has been no support or advice from ebay.

So I suppose after all that ramble the most important question now is:

Does ebay care about the businesses that use the platform?

Does it care about the impact this has had on the people behind these businesses, the staff that are employed to handle ebay orders, the loss of income to the business owners, the livelihoods that will be lost over this?

For some sellers whose income is solely derived from ebay sales, and this isn’t sensationalism, it will be as serious as not being able to pay bills or put food on the table due to the strains already placed on small businesses over the past couple of years.

What are ebay going to do to support sellers who have been affected by ebays actions? If absolutely nothing, as has been the case so far, then just be honest and we can all decide our next steps.

Ideally we want the sales history and listings search ranking back or to be compensated for this. If this is technically impossible then ebay need to help us to get the listings back to where they were, be it free maximum promoted listings for a period, selling fees waived or something, anything. Surely for such a massive company ebay must have one competent member of staff/management who can come up with an idea. Just pretend to care for a few weeks and give us a bit of support rather than silence and lies.

---

Hi @budo_online ,

We appreciate your questions regarding the VAT information.We do need to advise this is not a technical issue.eBay have a legal obligation in our partnership with HMRC to ensure sellers are VAT compliant at all times.
Sellers were contacted via email in June and were notified of 30 days to update valid VAT info in order to keep selling on site.
We work closely with HMRC to ensure our sellers comply with their VAT obligations.
If we are informed by HMRC that a seller is not complying with these requirements we will take appropriate action.

We will continue to share further information here on the boards as it comes.

Thank you,

Kat