💬 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

[babybitz08]

I've just joined the chat to post about despatch dates and see a number of others have already posted with the same concern.

I use 2nd class post and have 2 day despatch time.  There are Royal Mail strikes planned for 24th and 25th November.  My sales from today are showing the following:

Dispatch by 25 Nov at 11.59pm GMT

Make sure you send your order within the dispatch time you specified in the listing.

Estimated delivery date shown to buyer: 26 Nov 2022 - 28 Nov 2022

But using the parameters I have set, I should not be expected to post the items until 28th November and the earliest the buyer should expect to receive them is 30th November.

Please could the dates be adjusted to take into account the strike days and the likely delays while Royal Mail deal with the backlog.

[petals-and-paws]

There are strikes on 30th November and 1st December too, so the earliest delivery date should be 2nd December. I'm having the exact same problem, it's so frustrating! 

[ducatimondo]

Was going to post the exact same thing.
Noticed this yesterday, that the estimated delivery times were showing as ship today, delivery on or before Friday for RM24 (1st class post)

Have checked again today and the same item shows as delivery as below if they ordered it now, after our eBay set cut off time for posting today

Free postage	United Kingdom	Economy Delivery (Royal Mail 48)	Free 3 day postage Get it by Sat, 26 Nov
£0.99	United Kingdom	Standard Delivery (Royal Mail 24)	Estimated on or before Fri, 25 Nov
£1.99	United Kingdom	Standard Delivery (Royal Mail Tracked 24)	Estimated on or before Fri, 25 Nov
£6.49	United Kingdom	Express Delivery (Royal Mail Special Delivery (TM) 1:00 pm)	Estimated on or before Fri, 25 Nov

How is it so difficult for eBay to factor in the strike days...

I asked eBay to call me yesterday on my other account and spoken with 2 colleagues. The first didn't have a clue and was unhelpful, called Leah perhaps
Eventually got transferred to a Oliver from the leadership team, was uninterested in getting it solved and said he would not do anything today about it (last night)
He also added that it didn't really matter anyway as there are seller protections for defect for late shipping and late delivery and we are protected for INR cases, etc.

 He was more focussed on insisting I was rude and didn't care why. If eBay even tried to do their jobs properly, I wouldn't have had to waste an hour on the phone explaining it to someone whom clearly couldn't care less if they tried.

eBay and eBay alone are responsible for estimated delivery times. Sellers are responsible for handling times.

If the buyer experience is so important, why do eBay seem to care so little about it?
As sellers, we know the drill and stick to what we say, post items on time, with the service chosen by the buyer and we always get all of the blame all of the time when items arrive late. We are doing nothing wrong and are valued at ZERO in these cases.

Just had an email from Royal Mail confirming strike action tomorrow and Friday, as below:

We're sorry to advise that due to strike action taken by members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), we'll be unable to provide a business collection service from you on Thursday 24, Friday 25, Wednesday 30 November and
Thursday 1 December.

Royal Mail Customer Service Points will be closed on the days of strike action. Limited resources mean there will not be alternative drop-off points for large volumes of parcels and letters. Please do not drop off items on strike days or the days following strike action.

We'll resume collections the next working day after industrial action. We'll collect as much mail as we can from you. We may need to collect additional mail volumes over several days if you have significantly more volume. Please note additional collections are unavailable following strike days. There could be minor changes to collection times because we may have to collect more items than usual.

Please check Royal Mail Latest News for more detailed information on our services.

We'll return services to normal as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.

Kind regards,

Royal Mail Customer Services

So they are on strike and eBay are still telling buyers stuff will arrive that can't even be posted...

Regards

Russ

[ducatimondo]

I posted this question in last week's chat, didn't get a reply:

When are eBay going to address the issue that our contact telephone number, landline phone, was replaced with a mobile number when we were obligated to add a mobile number for these verification text messages you added months ago.

I have asked CS for help on this more times than I can remember, but nothing has happened.

eBay treat all accounts as being the same when they implement policy changes such as this and usually always biased towards small sellers or more accurately private accounts. They probably use only a mobile phone and not more. A limited company registered in England is obligated under English Law to have a landline telephone number they can be reached at.

So when they added this feature, the mobile number added for verification replaced the only other contact number on the account; as eBay did not make a place for a second phone number...

So now when eBay try to contact our limited company, they ring my own personal mobile, on occasion as late as around around 10pm...

This needs fixing, as you are using contact details for otherwise than intended when the information was  requested by eBay.

Again, this will time out before an answer is provided and I have a chance to reply, so please contact me directly to resolve this issue.

Regards

Russ

[dave@ebay]

If you have opened an item not received case the seller will have 3 business days to resolve your issue.

If after this time they have not resolved the issue for you, the option to ask eBay to step in will become available to you. Once escalated we'll review your case. We normally come back with a resolution within 48 hours. 

Thanks,

Dave

[ducatimondo]

One of our team was trying to start a sale on both our accounts on Monday.

Could not figure out why it was not working.

Tried again yesterday, but to no avail.

Tried contacting eBay through live chat and didn't seem to get anywhere other than it will be escalated to the relevant team...

I also asked CS about this whilst on the phone last night, again I got nowhere, waste of time even asking for help.

eBay have had 51 weeks to get ready for Black Friday week when we all want to put sales on and do genuine deals for buyers, yet eBay can't get basics working correctly or even provide any help when it doesn't regards to putting a sale on.

What is the point of even trying to do deals, offer promo's, do the best we can to help buyers in any way we can when the platform don't even try at all.

Regards

Russ

[kat@ebay]

---

@a45heaven wrote:

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.

---

Hi @a45heaven ,

I had to advise of those factors as they are all the things that can have an impact on the issue. I have linked in with our tech guys and they are advising of the same. 

I understand its difficult but If there is a way you can provide some sort of screen shots to show it happening I can get it investigated further.

Thank you,

Kat

[ducatimondo]

Why do I keep getting pop ups in the corner of my screen saying I have had replies, yet they are not there when I reload the page?

On a chat that lasts only for one hour, I have no chance to read the reply and the reply again do I, then have to wait another week to post again.

Ill thought out and badly implemented?

Regards

Russ

[xi_7394]

Sure, thanks.

[dave@ebay]

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

I posted this question in last week's chat, didn't get a reply:

When are eBay going to address the issue that our contact telephone number, landline phone, was replaced with a mobile number when we were obligated to add a mobile number for these verification text messages you added months ago.

I have asked CS for help on this more times than I can remember, but nothing has happened.

eBay treat all accounts as being the same when they implement policy changes such as this and usually always biased towards small sellers or more accurately private accounts. They probably use only a mobile phone and not more. A limited company registered in England is obligated under English Law to have a landline telephone number they can be reached at.

So when they added this feature, the mobile number added for verification replaced the only other contact number on the account; as eBay did not make a place for a second phone number...

So now when eBay try to contact our limited company, they ring my own personal mobile, on occasion as late as around around 10pm...

This needs fixing, as you are using contact details for otherwise than intended when the information was  requested by eBay.

Again, this will time out before an answer is provided and I have a chance to reply, so please contact me directly to resolve this issue.

Regards

Russ

---

Hi Russ,

Apologies if I missed this one last week. 

There were some issues with verification codes and landlines. Some providers supported text messages and others didn't. This led to codes not being received amongst other issues.

We have, as always sent the feedback on this back to the development team to take into consideration for future updates. 

Thanks,

Dave 

[dave@ebay]

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

One of our team was trying to start a sale on both our accounts on Monday.

Could not figure out why it was not working.

Tried again yesterday, but to no avail.

Tried contacting eBay through live chat and didn't seem to get anywhere other than it will be escalated to the relevant team...

I also asked CS about this whilst on the phone last night, again I got nowhere, waste of time even asking for help.

eBay have had 51 weeks to get ready for Black Friday week when we all want to put sales on and do genuine deals for buyers, yet eBay can't get basics working correctly or even provide any help when it doesn't regards to putting a sale on.

What is the point of even trying to do deals, offer promo's, do the best we can to help buyers in any way we can when the platform don't even try at all.

Regards

Russ

---

Hi Russ 

I'm not aware of any issues with creating events or promotions. I would need more information on what's happening when you're trying to create the events.

You can PM me with more information on whats happening and if possible send me a screen shot of any error messages you're seeing so I can have a look into it for you. 

Thanks,

Dave

[katie@ebay]

---

@ducatimondo wrote:

Why do I keep getting pop ups in the corner of my screen saying I have had replies, yet they are not there when I reload the page?

On a chat that lasts only for one hour, I have no chance to read the reply and the reply again do I, then have to wait another week to post again.

Ill thought out and badly implemented?

Regards

Russ

---

Hi Russ,

This sounds like you have auto subscribe on for when you reply to a thread. This means you'll see that pop up every time someone else replies on a thread that you have replied on.

You can turn this off if you'd like by going to My settings > Subscriptions & Bookmarks > Notification Settings > Automatically subscribe me to all topics I participate in.

Thanks,

Katie 

[kat@ebay]

Hi All,

I just wanted to update you regarding the estimated delivery dates during the strike days. eBay will be extending the delivery dates and seller protections will be in place.

Please see the most recent announcement here.

Thank you,

Kat