💬 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

[katie@ebay]

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@pixiesen2012 wrote:

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

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

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Hi @pixiesen2012 ,

We will be providing information on the boards to members as much as we can as the information is available. 

Thanks,

Katie 

[800bhp]

Are you being serious?

Can I please refer you to the message sent to us on the 19th MAY, copy below,

No action required on your part. We have your valid VAT ID.

Dear Seller,

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. We apologise for any inconvenience. Regards,

The eBay Payments Team

[800bhp]

Are you being serious?

Can I please refer you to the message sent to us on the 19th MAY, copy below,

No action required on your part. We have your valid VAT ID.

Dear Seller,

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. We apologise for any inconvenience. Regards,

The eBay Payments Team

[pixiesen2012]

sellers were told their information was correct and the message was a glitch!

read the post:-

Ebay Destroyed 19 Years of business due to VAT Err... - Page 12 - UK eBay Community

these are sellers who have always been compliant, their details were upto date and correct

ebay ended all their listings and removed the sales history because someone got the code wrong!

this needs to be dealt with properly and not hidden under a rug.

[calibreautopartsdirect]

Hi Kat, just speaking for ourselves (and I'm sure many others) our VAT info was correct. We pay our VAT. HMRC did not inform you that we are non-compliant. Ebay themselves confirmed our VAT info was correct. So if it was not an error, why did Ebay suspend our account and delete all our listings?

[pixiesen2012]

you have to chase the seller yourself, it has nothing to do with ebay

[j_n_tee]

I Also had this issue, in May received an ebay message that i need to update my details and add a VAT number (BUT i've been vat registered for over a year and is and has been on my account and displayed on my listings), Later that evening i get a message to say to ignore that message as it was sent it 'error', and since then the VAT number had not been displaying on my listings BUT did when i print invoice for buyers. Rang ebay a few days after again and agent said they are aware of a glitch, and that she's manually fixed it and should show up in 24hrs, heck it did, it still hasn't rang again, the agent said it's be escalated to the tech team as a priority and be fixed in 2 /3hrs, few days later still not showing on my listings, rang again, and agent said there is no update, raised it again and said it should be fixed in 24/48hrs and i'll get an email.

Did i - NOOOOOOO...

My fustration was i getting told different things, with varying timescales and each time i'm having to explain the whole issue from scratch.

I then put a thread on the technicial forum - Dave from ebay said he'll chase and report back

No-one did..

I rang again and finally got someone who knew what i was on about and gave me a fix! I put the fix up on the thread i had started..

My point having spoken to a number of agents who said they'll get it fixed, or there is no problem, but thankfully one agent knew the fix! ....Who is holding these agents accountable to what they are saying...as it was clearly lies! Ebay is letting their agents get away with saying what they want! Then there are some who actually care and worked through the issue! Time and time again Sellers are being let down or being screwed over. Estimated delivery dates is another bug bear which ebay is clearly not listening to sellers! ...What is the accountability look like to ebay.

[kat@ebay]

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@simas-stuff wrote:

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."

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Hi @simas-stuff,

eBay are calculating estimate delivery dates on more than just the dispatch. It takes more factors into consideration including past performance and buyers location. We continue to feedback examples of EDD's that sellers are providing for the shipping team to monitor.

Thank you,

Kat

[carparts34]

Got to be the worse reponse ive read. No admittance from ebay that they are at fault......Lets push it back to HMRC and blame them. You were the ones that tols us we were compliant!!!! This VAT issue was going on for over 12 months and each time we contacted Ebay to calirify the situation to be told be were compliant and we didnt need to do anything....KAT.........poor form. This is not the way you should treat you customers and its certainly not the way I treat mine!!!!

[unique-personalisedgifts]

I concur; eBay's algorithim is also not taking into account the following (I got told they would feed this back but still no luck and still having to deal with unrealistic customer expectations due to eBay trying to pretend they are amazon!)-

Same day dispatch item - had to move it to 2 days as we had too much demand due to it being a teacher gift.

Algorithim still expecting us to send it same day and quoting customers arrival the following day after purchase (despite it also being 2nd class delivery which hadn't changed)

Thanks eBay, had to take all of my stock off of these listings - stopping all the profit you were making from me in fees and promoted listings because of your unrealistic times to buyers.

[red-damore]

Your communication concerning the VAT debacle was absolutely inadequate given the gravity of it.

Why was your communication so poor?

Why weren't warnings given?

Were eBay sellers considered in the way you communicated the information?

Why wasn't something as simple as a warning pop-up used?

[thefantasycollectiongiftware2014]

No action required on your part. We have your valid VAT ID.

Dear Seller,

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. We apologise for any inconvenience. Regards,

The eBay Payments Team

[thefantasycollectiongiftware2014]

I received this message on the 19th may please check my messages ui also called in onthe 14th and was told it was another glitch and my vat was correct

[dave@ebay]

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@angeliquetaunton123 wrote:

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?

---

Hi @angeliquetaunton123,

The eBay Money Back Guarantee covers you for 30 calendar days after the or within the seller's stated returns window, whichever is longer. The details of this can be found here.

If you have an issue outside of this timescale you may be covered by the manufacturers warranty. Depending on the payment method used you may have extended cover for any issues and can log a request through them. 

Thanks,

Dave

[kat@ebay]

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@nutsnboltsuk2015 wrote:

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

---

Hi @nutsnboltsuk2015 ,

This is part of the new verification process that eBay introduced due to managing payments. Due to having payments on site there is certain points on the site where verification will be requested. It does mean you may be prompted to enter in codes a number of times during your time accessing your eBay account.

Thank you,

Kat

[vespajets]

At aprox 5.30pm UK time on Friday 15th July whilst listing on E Bay we noticed a notification box which was the first time we had seen this stating that my VAT details/business details were incorrect. Prior to this we have had no correspondence that there may be a future problem.

I had been working on my business page all day prior to this time.

I followed the link given to me on this warning box taking me to my business settings and checked my VAT number was correct, which it was.

Subsequently over the next hour I noticed all my 2500+ items listed had ended. Why did this happen and why did no one contact me directly or put my account on hold whilst this problem was under investigation at your end, as ending all the listings has now caused so many problems.

I contacted one of your call centre staff immediately and informed them of the problem. They instructed and guided me to change my VAT business name from Vespajets to Anthony Wright and assured me that everything would be back up and running between 24 & 72 hours.

At approx 10pm I re-checked my E Bay listings and to my horror all my listings were still starting to end but at this time I was given the option to relist them. I listed the first 200 items without any fees showing and when I went to list the 2nd 200 items, it then flagged up that I would have to pay to relist them.

I contacted the call centre and again the lady informed me that all my items would be restored in 24 hours with no cost to myself and reassured me everything would be ok.

My business 100% relies on EBay for sales and I am currently building an E Commerce web site that has been linked to E Bay for stock control and prices.

At approx 7pm on Saturday 16th July I contacted EBay via the on-line chat. I was directed to three different departments to solve the problem.

Please see below a link to the chat transcript:

Whilst relisting the items the reality of the problem unfolded that all the relisted items would have a new E Bay item number and would not be linked to the current stock on my Web page. I myself and the staff have spent over 4 month Linking my E Commerce Web site page to my E Bay business page to update stock quantities , weights and sizes.

I have currently put my E Bay shop and web site on holiday mode because when I sell something my stock levels will not change on either site.

This error has caused a catastrophic effect on my business. In order to move forward I need E Bay to relist all my products with the same item numbers as they were prior to E Bay ending my listing with no warning to myself.

I have also now laid off two members of staff as i have nothing for them to pack up to send off until i get all my listings up and running and re-connected to my woo commerce web site

when i do list my products i would not expect to pay to re-list them or that would be kicking us when we are down

I would like to speak to someone in charge who can help with this matter as all delays are losing our business revenue.

Regards Tony

[carparts34]

It is a technical issue Dave..........your technical issue that has caused companies to lay off staff. Read what people are saying !!!!! They were complaint so if its not a technical issue you must have removed listing on purpose.!!

[mavpan]

 kat@ebay  dave@ebay  katie@ebay 

As all the previous messages have CLEARLY stated - every SINGLE seller who was told to update their VAT information was later sent a message stating.

No action required on your part. We have your valid VAT ID.

Dear Seller,

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. We apologise for any inconvenience. Regards,

The eBay Payments Team

Many sellers also RANG eBay and questioned this and were ASSURED that all was well and nothing needed doing. So please do not try to fob people off with your stock answer you have already posted multiple times.

This is a HUGE issue for many sellers and was 100% not any of our fault. 

Further to this why REMOVE all listings without warning rather than just hide them - as we all know this is possible to do and is what can happen with sellers on a temporary suspension.

[katie@ebay]

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@calibreautopartsdirect wrote:

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.

---

Hi @calibreautopartsdirect ,

We can confirm 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.

Many thanks,

Katie 

[ukhaberdashery]

Looking at some of the ebays replies so far they seem to think the problem is to do with HMRC and compliance. We are not arguing about that, but the fact that eBay continually gave sellers the reassurance that their information was correct and they did not have to do anything. Ebay gave sellers the wrong information... Multiple times..... This has very little to do with HMRC but you seem to be fobbing people off with its because of them......NO, its because of you.

This afternoon 10 years of hard work were deleted by eBay.
We have been told they are unable to correct their mistake and won't be able to get listing back to how they were before.

10 years of individual product feedback... Gone.
10 years of How many sold (which gives customers reassurance in a product)... Gone
10 years of buyers' loyalty to certain items held in their watched list... Gone
1500 listing each with an average of 30 variations. 45000 items reset to nothing.
ie the images below. 1398 sold feedback that is 250 positive and no negatives. People won't see this on the relists/reupload, There will be nothing there for them to select us over other sellers, and since we are now below other sellers why should they buy from us. They will go elsewhere. We will lose money.

We are now starting from scratch because of ebay....On that item which is 5 years old, It will now take 5 years to get back to where I was before eBay messed it up. If that is even possible as increased sellers mean more competition and therefore harder to sell an item.

What am I supposed to say to my employees who are paid by the hours they work and will go from 6 hours a day to 3 or 4. Why are they taking a pay cut (and me as the owner) because of eBay?

I am sure you are well aware of the problem as there is an eBay presence on the forum (and surely the business sellers board must be frequented often), and yet no reply to the 2 threads there, one started on 16th July and the other the 18th of June.

There is even a forum post on the 19th of May titled "Update VAT Information email" where an eBay representative posted an answer saying "Hi All, I had a look into this and can confirm it was a tech issue. An automated email was sent out in error, I've added each of your accounts to the Tech Ticket. There's no action needed from your side. ......Thanks, ....... Dave

If eBay had dealt with the issues that started in the May post "Update VAT Information email" or even the June post ""Let’s reactivate your eBay account" email " a lot of us here now would be ok and selling as usual. We are not....... My guessing is next month there will be another lot of sellers having this done to them and their business is now failing.....Why was it not sorted 2 months ago?

It seems there has been a complete lack of eBay being able to resolve the issue and also giving out information that was 100% wrong.

When I first go the email 2 months back I called eBay and started a chat, and after a few questions was told my information was correct and when I asked so I should ignore the message I was told yet.....(I have the transcript if you want it but segments from it "Thank you so much for the information, Simon. I would like to share with you that your VAT details are verified."..."So I can ignore the message?"...."Yes, please that would be great.") ......Yet another eBay glitch it seemed...... This same story seems to be what happened to a lot of sellers asking the same question...just ignore it as your information is correct. This was wrong information given out by eBay employees.

There's a lot more to be said but if they cant get us to where we were before the blunder there is no other thing to talk about apart from compensation.

How is eBay going to compensate us for the short-term problem we have ie very few sales, time spent sorting out eBays mistakes ie paying staff to fix the mistake, time taken to figure out what to do now, loss of future sales ie a month, 3 months ahead. I think everyone is different so their profit loss is going to be different.

Maybe fees taken over the last 3 months should be refunded and may be fair to all with the issue.

Please don't insult us with a free month's shop subscription..... Just a note, when I was uploading the new products it seemed to be charging me even though I have 1500 free listings in my shop. So just relisting seemed to have cost me £90