Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 20.11.24 @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 and dave@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. 

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

[pg_kicks]

Sorry for quoting a reply but dave@ebay this has been the response for months now yet the system is still broken and the site is still overran with accounts breaking UK law and policy. I agree a handful are asked/forced to upgrade but as one is changed another 10 are created, the constant we are trying to fix this for so long is either showing whoever is fixing it is not very good or eBay are not doing enough on it. 

Why can't eBay have an open in person forum with us?  We can give better feedback and help on how to solve this issue, we use the site every day, know the tricks and loopholes and can help.

Also I know Katie will be busy, we all are, but after 7 weeks do you know if theres been any answer to the questions you sent over to her?

[kat@ebay]

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@maggna wrote:

This morning I received an email from eBay about delivery tips for sellers.

In the email, eBay say "Peak season essentials" "Buyers want things fast" which made me laugh. I would suggest to eBay that buyers who need things delivered fast don't even consider eBay. This is because there is no way to filter search results based on delivery speed. The only way to find out the full delivery speeds and services a seller offers is to go into each listing and go to the postage collection and returns section. No one will spend a long time doing this and will likely give up and shop elsewhere.

This has been pointed out to eBay many times, I can only assume eBay disagrees that a delivery speed filter would be helpful to buyers. Why is that?

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Hi @maggna,

Thanks for raising this point. This does seem like a good idea as a search filter and likely would take some some planning for the functionality to be introduced as delivery speeds are ever changing.

I will give your suggestion as feedback to our shipping team.

Thank you,

Kat

[moldosgifts]

Thank you for that update 

BUT if they are a business they should have all listing removed until they can offer evidence they are not a business or register correctly , that would be all the evidence we need.

The crux is it takes far too long for action to become evident to us.

We do monitor these members f we can find them and 90% of the time 2 weeks later they are still trading.

[*kittylou*]

Hi, 

Has something changed in the way offers are accepted? I am having problems with buyers accepting multiple offers no longer being able to request combined postage and / or having to pay for each offer separately as it needs paid immediately (?) with me then having to go through each transaction and then refund each one on overpaid p&p. Previously buyers could click accept and then move away from the pay screen, I would get notifications and could then send an invoice with combined p&p. 

I am truly thinking of giving up. I tried moving to "free postage" which we all know isn't free for anyone but this year's sales have been dire so I have reverted back to adding p&p and being clearer about my charges (and giving better value to those who do buy multiple items). I am now being reminded what a pain it is and can't believe that after selling on here for nearly 10 years that a buyer still can't easily request combined postage on all platforms. 

Thanks, Katharine 

[dave@ebay]

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@pg_kicks wrote:

Can you just confirm if we are still expect to use 'other' as the reason when reporting businesses on private accounts? The one checked by either AI or people who dont know UK law so never actually take action or do we need to tell CS now as last time I spoke to them they told me it had to come direct from them.

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Hi @pg_kicks 

At the moment that is the correct reporting route. As you know we are currently working with both the site and policy team to streamline this process and we will let you know about any changes as soon as we have more. 

Thanks,

Dave

[pg_kicks]

Thanks, like I said in a previous post, they've been working on it for months and as you can see, theyve failed at every step, its like they dont want to fix it. Let us help, we know the loopholes and tricks they are using, we are here to help please just let us help and make the site safer and eBay will actually make more money.

[a45heaven]

 1:1 selling clinic 

where in the world are these based?

Just wondering if they are refocused CS from Asia?

Have they practical selling experience. As the agents who dealt with Power Sellers here in the past.

Are they comparable with the UK based Power Seller 1 to 1's you abolished years ago. Kat said you hadnt been updated as to the location several weeks ago - maybe you have by now?

[dave@ebay]

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@returns_andexdisplay wrote:

Thanks for your reply last week. Hi returns_andexdisplay, just an update on this.

The shipping team has confirmed that the service you used for the transaction in question was 48 hours, so that's why the EDD was showing Monday-Wednesday. Monday being the dispatching day + 48 hours, would give a result of Wednesday max. So that's why the EDD was showing that date. That would confirm that it is working ok, and no issues were found either.

Thank you,

Marco

Whilst I don't disagree the EDD is working as designed. The issue seems to be in the design, when on A Friday evening a item was shown to a buyer with a chance the item may arrive Monday. In my world this is never going to happen, as after 3pm on a Friday nothing is going to get dispatch till Monday. 

At what point are ebay taking the data from to show buyers EDD?

If it is when the parcel enters the courier network something needs changing with the way EDD is being calculated to reflect a more realistic EDD to buyers as currently ebay are over promising and underdelivering. I prefer to work on under promise and over delivery as it save the hassle of wheres my item emails or defect which ebay hit sellers with.  

If as you claim EDD is working as designed why are Saturday and Sunday orders not showing EDD Monday - Wed as well when they are all being dispatched at the same time? 

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Hi @returns_andexdisplay 

The EDD is calculated on a number of different factors for example delivery times in a certain area and your past delivery performance.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of the process here.

Thanks,

Dave

[returns_andexdisplay]

In regards to ebay taking action against private sellers, we don't need to be told what action has been taken against a private account running a business. We will be able to see with the information available publicly with business information displayed, buyer remorse returns accepted and the likely hood they have to raise their prices to reflect paying ebay fees. 

Is there any plans from ebay to offer businesses who try to offer the service ebay advise to buyers, try to do the right things and pay full FVFs a better business package to be more competitive to your competition? 

As currently it is way over priced compared to what is offered by others who offer more listings

[howmuchtobid]

Also one thing I would add that isn't often mentioned, it isn't just the sales these businesses on private accounts make, it's also the number of listings they have.

The net result is the website is swamped with stuff that doesn't sell and it becomes difficult to find stuff a buyer may actually want. The 300 free listings a month for private sellers is crazy. 10 - 20 is more than enough, if they want more they should pay for it.

Ebay isn't a charity so I don't really understand what is happening as many of the things Ebay are currently doing must be costing the company lots of income.

[dave@ebay]

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@a45heaven wrote:

Refunds

This was brought up in June - a Mentor confirmed the issues exists - as it is a financial issue, one would have though it mattered in the production of accounts for sellers.

The shown information below is what you show when i refund a buyer £4.00 to offer a postage discount.

Any thoughts?

Review refund

Total refund

£4.00

Refund summary

Refund summaryTransaction details Transaction amount

Purchase price	£3.07
Postage	£0.93
Fee creditsShow details	-£0.46

Amount you owe

£3.54

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Hi @a45heaven 

I'm not aware of any tech issues but is you PM me the transaction ID I'll have a look into it after this chat. 

Thanks,

Dave

[returns_andexdisplay]

At no point in any past data have I dispatched via a courier and delivered on the same day. 

Even if I dispatched a parcel to my next door neighbour and a courier collected it, they would still not deliver it the same day. 

So why is ebay showing this to buyers? 

[lincolnshiremarine]

Good afternoon

Can you explain why my feedback counter figure keeps going down despite buyers leaving feedback? 

Has eBay decided to mess this up as well?

Best wishes

[kat@ebay]

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@russellmattin wrote:

I`ve been following the chats between members on GPSR but they are no real help as they just seem to be about the ridiculously complex interpretation of how the scheme is supposed to work, so typical of EU legislation you need to employ a team of bureaucrats just to work out what it means never mind actually putting it into practice! For this reason I can understand why ebay have been rather quiet on giving business sellers advice but time is running out and we NEED TO KNOW…..

• will ebay tell us exactly which of our items need GPSR info
• will ebay just suppress the search facility on non compliant items in a) just the EU/NI or b) everywhere

• or will ebay remove non compliant items completely

these are the questions business sellers need answers to, its no good just referring us to various web sites and copies of the regulations they don’t tell us WHAT EBAY WILL DO. We need to know so we can make informed decisions about our future selling methods

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Hi @russellmattin 

I understand its a complex policy and alot of instances of being referred to the legislation itself is mainly due to it being EU who have introduced the policy.

Ebay will not be advising which exact listings need the information. Sellers will need to  determine for themselves whether they need to add this information to their listings when postage is offered to the EU. All sellers can provide GPSR specifics in the Item Disclosures section and in their item description. Once the GPSR goes into effect, buyers in the EU and Northern Ireland may find non-compliant listings are no longer available to them.

Thank you,

Kat

[a45heaven]

All refunds show this way with Postage refunds - 

As requested previously , wouldnt it be a decent idea to have a log of outstanding issues as the US site has, so they can not be over looked as this appears to have been.

[custom-giftsuk]

Is there any update on missing data/listings from the Product Research section of eBay. I have contacted eBay CS and messaged Kat on these weekly chats now for six weeks with zero results apart from "IT are fixing it". So can you tell me if eBay are “fixing” this or if I’m just being left out to dry with missing listings & data because if its not working for me, its not working for everyone.

[a45heaven]

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/Postage-Refunds-Narrative-new-system/td-p/7605...

[custom-giftsuk]

Can you tell me when I report listings for breaking eBay rules and I go through the automated report – I get a “this item has not broken any rules” which shows that the “automated response” is extremely limited in its factfinding (ie none), but when I contact eBay CS in regards listings which have broken rules, the eBay CS always understand and have been quite proactive in responding and saying that “Yes these listings clearly break eBay rules and that they will report them for removal”. However both courses of action get exactly ZERO response and the items I have been reporting for months still are on eBay, still breaking eBay rules. So my question is – as a member of the eBay Community Team how would you go about getting someone to action these listings which so clearly break eBay rules that eBay Customer Support wont even say what the item is?

[krafty-kreations]

Hi Dave

At the moment that is the correct reporting route. As you know we are currently working with both the site and policy team to streamline this process and we will let you know about any changes as soon as we have more. 

So it really is a waste of time reporting then, because I have done loads this way who are all still happily trading on private accounts.

I know you can only pass on feedback, but as this topic is mentioned time and time again on here and on the forums shouldn't eBay be more transparent about the situation? 

Whilst these sellers are allowed to carry on using private accounts undercutting business sellers as well as filling the site with 300 new listings each month it is a lot more than frustrating!! 

At eBay, we are dedicated to ensuring a fair and equitable marketplace for all business sellers.

Seriously!! 

[moonspender]

Ebay have advised that if an item is excluded from GPSR you just need to add the date of the item in specifics .. i assume this is still correct as ive spent 2 days updating my listings ?