💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 23.11.22 @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

[xi_7394]

Hi, I won 2 bids yesterday, one iPhone and one Samsung, and I paid immediately. Then the iPhone order was canceled by the seller without a valid reason, and the Samsung was canceled because the seller said his son started the auction (which I highly suspect because he should have had plenty of time to discover before the auction ended) and he did not want to sell it anymore. The Samsung seller said he would refund me but he has not done it nor did he cancel the order. Could you please step in the Samsung case, cancel the order and refund me? 

Also I do not think only getting full refund is enough, there are too many dishonest sellers on ebay canceling orders only because they do not accept the price, which is not a valid reason to cancel (i.e. breach the contract). I do think that you should let the seller compensate me for my time and effort spent in bidding, and also cancel the order and fully refund me as soon as possible.

Leo

[a45heaven]

Whilst i was watching my own auctions end yesterday, i observed the final few seconds timing  jumping around back and forth, resulting in items ending before the time i had paid for and planned for them to end.

Original date posted - ‎17-10-2022 1:36 PM

Highlighting this thread to eBay Community Manager to see if they have any news -

kat@ebay  ‎17-10-2022 4:00 PM

[kat@ebay]

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@a45heaven wrote:

Whilst i was watching my own auctions end yesterday, i observed the final few seconds timing  jumping around back and forth, resulting in items ending before the time i had paid for and planned for them to end.

Original date posted - ‎17-10-2022 1:36 PM

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Hi @a45heaven ,

There can be many factors that could be affecting this such as pc/device settings and Internet connection. Can you provide some screen shots as examples showing the differences in times and we can have it looked into.

Thank you,

Kat

[thesolereviver]

Hi,

There are Royal Mail strikes tomorrow and Friday but my active listings have estimated delivery dates of Friday with Tracked 48 and my same day dispatch cut off time set at 5am on Weekdays.

Has eBay stopped accounting for strike days as the earliest I could post would be Saturday due to the strikes?

Thank you 

[dave@ebay]

---

@xi_7394 wrote:

Hi, I won 2 bids yesterday, one iPhone and one Samsung, and I paid immediately. Then the iPhone order was canceled by the seller without a valid reason, and the Samsung was canceled because the seller said his son started the auction (which I highly suspect because he should have had plenty of time to discover before the auction ended) and he did not want to sell it anymore. The Samsung seller said he would refund me but he has not done it nor did he cancel the order. Could you please step in the Samsung case, cancel the order and refund me? 

Also I do not think only getting full refund is enough, there are too many dishonest sellers on ebay canceling orders only because they do not accept the price, which is not a valid reason to cancel (i.e. breach the contract). I do think that you should let the seller compensate me for my time and effort spent in bidding, and also cancel the order and fully refund me as soon as possible.

The iPhone seller's account is mash935399 and the Samsung seller cathmcg1811. Please also block their accounts after solving my cases because they are untrustworthy sellers.

Leo

---

Hi @xi_7394 

Thanks for reaching out. 

Depending on how transaction is cancelled a seller could receive a defect against their account, if they have a number of these defects serious action can be taken against them which can range from selling restrictions to complete bans from site. 

We are unable to step in unless you have a case opened and its escalated to us. You can find the detail of how to open one here.

Unfortunately there is no option for us to offer compensation in these events but you can report the seller to have our policy team investigate them.  The details on how to report them can be found here 

Thanks,

Dave

[a45heaven]

I'll settle up for the two that I've won so far, and there might be another that's up this week. There were going to be some others, but recently there has been a few problems. I always bid at the last minute (as you'll be aware), but recently the 45 that I've been watching has ended before the allotted time

This was a message from a customer ( i think ex  customer now ) its in my messages and in the thread you didnt respond to  - Several other sellers noted the problem also in the thread.

No i can not send screen shots - this was reported to you on ‎17-10-2022-  and no response from your self 

[petals-and-paws]

Hi! 🙂 I know that estimated delivery dates constantly get brought up and that eBays response is always that it's calculated on past performance etc. But I now have orders due for dispatch next Tuesday which are showing estimated delivery of Monday to Wednesday; they won't be posted until Tuesday, so there is no chance of the items arriving on the Monday or Tuesday and then Royal Mail are striking on the Wednesday and Thursday, so the earliest possible delivery would be Friday, so eBay are displaying estimated delivery dates which are impossible to meet. eBay have told sellers there's no need to amend dispatch times as the customer facing estimates would allow for the strikes, but it doesn't look like that's happened? I also know eBay have said they will protect sellers against INR defects, negative feedback etc which is great, but we (sellers) are also getting a lot of messages - sometimes quite rude - from buyers which isn't great for anyone. Are the strike dates going to be taken into account when displaying the EDD? If not, when will eBay be amending their statement to sellers regarding seller protection during the RM industrial action, as it currently states eBay will be assisting sellers with this but it no longer looks to be the case. If they are to be adjusted, when will this be happening, as it's already starting to cause issues for a lot of sellers. Thank you for your time! 

[a45heaven]

Can you provide some screen shots as examples showing the differences in times and we can have it looked into.

Just how can i take two pics which jumps times in seconds?

[lord_and_lady_m]

Estimated delivery dates are being plucked out of thin air still. It’s hardly a system that can be connected to royal mail for the estimated dates unless Royal Mail forgot to mention the strikes to ebay? Also, My dispatch dates are now showing sooner than yesterdays orders. I’m hardly going to dispatch during a strike.

[thesolereviver]

I've now put my shop into holiday mode until Sunday and the estimated delivery date with tracked 48 is starting on Monday. How could this be possible?

[bravergrace]

Is there any chance of getting the Time Away settings to function in the same way as the old Holiday Settings?

I'm trying to have a couple of days off during the postal strikes, but when I try to set this us so eBay don't promise my customers next-day delivery for second class post, this is what I get at the top of the page:

Delivery dates may not update for select items on Time Away

Whether you choose to allow sales or pause them, you may want to change the postage format or the dispatch times on the following items while on time away: Second Chance Offers, Auto-accepted offers, Pending counter-offers, Seller initiated offers, items with collection in person, Click & Collect or Global Shipping Programme, and digital items.

Seriously?

Before I can take time off work, I am expected to go through all my listings and remove click and collect, GSP, collection in person, and switch off auto-accept on Best Offers?  

Who at eBay thinks that this is reasonable?  Or that it makes more sense to expect sellers to know about this, and to change ALL their postage policies or the postage on ALL their individual items, because the eBay Programme Streamlining Team can't manage to find a way to make holiday settings apply to all a seller's items?

This is taking one burden off the incompetent programming system, and shoving it on to individual sellers.  With the penalty that if anyone is reckless enough to take a whole week's holiday, and forget to alter the postage for ALL their 7000 listings, they may come back to find that eBay has allowed buyers to claim Item Not Received for stuff that sold while the holiday settings were switched on - because the buyers chose the Collection In Person or GSP or Click and Collect options.

This didn't use to happen under the antiquated system.  It applied the holiday dates to ALL items, except ones which already had bids or live offers at the time the holiday settings were switched on.  And it didn't crucify sellers by allowing cases to be opened and automatically closed against them for items which sold while the seller's holiday settings were on.

Surely it makes sense to apply the holiday settings to ALL the seller's items.  Not make it dependent on the delivery/collection option that the buyer chooses!

It's like telling your staff that they can have a fortnight's annual leave, but they'll be punished if they fail to:

- answer any letters that arrive at their office and have first class stamps on.

- answer any phone calls made to their landline by customers whose Christian names begin with a vowel.

- scoot into the office and stand to attention at their desks if there is an unannounced visit from a senior manager.

Seriously, is there any chance of sorting this out?  It can't be impossible, because it's been done in the past.

[lord_and_lady_m]

Clearly not working is it

FREE 3 day postage on my items taht have 2 day dispatch and 2 day of strikes.

[uncfes]

I've sales stating dispatch tomorrow - a strike day.  For the first few strikes I changed my business day handling times and then you started taking the strike days into account so I didn't do it for this strike, now I have an item saying dispatch 24th when I have no way of sending it and I assume will therefore get a late dispatch mark against my account.  I have now set amended my business day handing times to take into account the strike days but I understand this can take a couple of hours to kick in 

[kat@ebay]

Hi @a45heaven ,

I understand your example is from October but for tech to look into this they would need exact time examples so if you would have recent ones send those. As I did mention previously there can be a number of factors that can impact this including browser speed, cached data, latency on your Internet line connection and even you being logged into your own account can show different to buyers.

Thank you,

Kat

Thank you,

Kat

[petals-and-paws]

Be careful as I did the same, but then there are strikes next Wednesday and Thursday and it then had the dispatch and estimated delivery as during those strikes instead (I've already posted on here about it).

[xi_7394]

I  cannot find the option "Ask ebay to step in" under "see request details" in the ebay App. I have asked the seller to cancel the order from his side so that he would have a defect in his account and I would not be affected (which is how it's supposed to be). If he doesn't refund me within 2 days, what should I do next?

[lord_and_lady_m]

Another absurd example.

spent the best part of last night, not focussing on get orders out today, but contacting each buyer individually and telling them, these dates are wrong, there are strikes and also strikes next week. So far my buyers have been great and happy to wait, but I should have to spend the night doing it. AND there's no way of bulk messaging buyers, so I had to do it individually.

[kat@ebay · Accepted solution]

Hi All,

As we have alot of questions on the royal mail estimated delivery dates for the strikes we are taking these away to look into them.

We will get back to you here with an answer as soon as possible and update any necessary threads across the boards.

Thank you,

Kat

[a45heaven]

So myself , my customer and how ever many other sellers in the thread have the same issue with end times jumping, and the blame lies with me ?

Sorry to have disturbed you, not having an end time for auctions is unimportant apparently. 

I see the past months time have resulted in a reduction of sales. Cant be down to this problem.

Es macht nicht.