Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 26.02.25 @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 marco@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. We understand that certain topics, such as concerns about businesses possibly using private accounts, can be frustrating and important to you. Please refrain from asking the same question repeatedly in our weekly live chats. We assure you that we carefully review all posts in the forum and ensure that your concerns are communicated to the relevant teams for appropriate action.
To maintain a constructive and community environment, posts that repeatedly breach this guideline may be removed. Continued violations could result in further action against your community account. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding in helping us keep our community focused and respectful.

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

[lamppostelectrical]

Good Afternoon,

Ref details such as Manufacturer details and EU Responsible Person details, would it be possible for me as a seller to be able to save these within my account somehow.

Each time I list a new product, I enter these details, however I have to find the details and enter each line individually.  Many of the items I list are from manufacturers that I already list so the ability to be able to select these details from a dropdown would be very helpful and would save a lot of time.

[custom-giftsuk]

Is there any update on eBay taking action against sellers who continue to sell to Northern Ireland/EU without conforming to GPSR?

[fjgjhgjkhkljkl_39]

In brief, does eBay have any plans to introduce any kind of handmade section on eBay?

In not so brief, I've sold on eBay for over 20 years, have quarter of a million feedback from selling a significant quantity of goods in that time, eBay is something a bit special to me, it allowed me to find, what I guess most would call, a career as an online retailer.

However since moving from off the shelf into handmade I'm having a hard time with eBay, looking at the sales history of competitors they aren't really doing any better either. The search is swamped with off the shelf products and whilst there is nothing wrong with that it does seem a feasible option for eBay to introduce some kind of area within the site to highlight handmade goods from businesses and then have a good old shout about it.

Business ticks over nicely on Etsy, given the size of eBay's customer base I would assume it would here too, if there was that extra visibility through a dedicated space.

[marco@ebay]

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@lamppostelectrical wrote:

Good Afternoon,

Ref details such as Manufacturer details and EU Responsible Person details, would it be possible for me as a seller to be able to save these within my account somehow.

Each time I list a new product, I enter these details, however I have to find the details and enter each line individually.  Many of the items I list are from manufacturers that I already list so the ability to be able to select these details from a dropdown would be very helpful and would save a lot of time.

---

Hi lamppostelectrical, thanks for your question.

At the moment, I don't think this would be possible. However, if you don't mind, I can pass this on as a suggestion, so it can be taken into consideration for future updates. 

Thank you,

Marco

[lincolnshiremarine]

Good afternoon

Please can you look into this issue for me.

The same buyer brought two items on one transaction, then brought another item on a separate transaction.  We included the second purchase in the same parcel as the first purchase,  we tried to add the tracking number onto the other transaction.  However, the eBay system will not longer allow you to do this (we have done this several times in the past) it now says "tracking number added is already used for a different buyer"  

The tracking number we are trying to add onto the other transaction is for the same buyer.  How can we resolve this please, as I have marked this as dispatched, but no tracking number is showing by that second purchase.

Order number: 13-12751-55785 & order number: 13-12751-55786.

Thank you

[susapric-68]

When are you going to make it easier to report business sellers on private accounts? around 80-90% of the people on these forums moaning about the new buyers fees are business sellers on private account. One had sold 200 packs of batteries as well as many other items all listed with multiples to buy. Think someone hit the nail on the head earlier is that they get around the new GPSR and the EU won't like the fact you have taken no action when they find out

[wellingnorth]

Firstly thank you for your response last week regarding charity listings.
From experience now as well I can see that the full 4% + 72p buyer fee is charged on a 100% charity listing.
But currently the blurb on a 100% charity listing still says "All net proceeds will support XYZ" or on a lower percentage something like '10% of the sale of this item will benefit XYZ'
There is no mention of a buyer fee on the listing page or on the submit bid panel so the buyer at the moment might reasonably assume that full price they bid is going to charity.
Ideally you would update your policy to discount the buyer fee for charity listings like you did for seller fees, but if that's not possible could this wording be changed to make it clearer that ebay are taking a percentage here?

I also noticed another issue with charity listings. If the postage amount charged is too much and I refund some, 50% of the refund seems to be taken from the donation portion rather than the postage so the charity loses out when that should be coming out of my payment instead.

Secondly I wanted to raise an issue with saved search emails. Previously it was fairly straightforward to see that some items were international because the prices had been converted from foreign currencies and so were odd numbers. Because buyer fees mean that many UK listings are odd numbers it is no longer possible to do that - as you can see in the screenshot attached there's no obvious way to see which are domestic and which are international. 

The end result is that I am clicking through to these listings much less as I don't know whether they are international and so will have higher postage costs. Would it be possible either to show a price breakdown with original price + buyer fee, and / or to show price in original currency + conversion so that it's easier to distinguish between domestic and international listings in these emails?

[dave@ebay]

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@custom-giftsuk wrote:

Is there any update on eBay taking action against sellers who continue to sell to Northern Ireland/EU without conforming to GPSR?

---

Hi @custom-giftsuk 

These updates have been happening in the backend of the system. With large updates like this they don't usually roll it out at once, they usually roll out in stages so it might not be noticeable at first. 

I don't have any recent updates on it but I'll post it as soon as I have anything more.

Thanks,

Dave

[custom-giftsuk]

Can I also ask if its allowable to have 2 different accounts, with the same VAT number, same company number, same business name selling the exact same items as each other but with a slightly different email address?

[davrman]

As there's no eBay feature for this, perhaps the auto-fill options provided by many web browsers (with or without extensions/plugins) may help to complete these fields semi-automatically?

[marco@ebay]

---

@fjgjhgjkhkljkl_39 wrote:

In brief, does eBay have any plans to introduce any kind of handmade section on eBay?

In not so brief, I've sold on eBay for over 20 years, have quarter of a million feedback from selling a significant quantity of goods in that time, eBay is something a bit special to me, it allowed me to find, what I guess most would call, a career as an online retailer.

However since moving from off the shelf into handmade I'm having a hard time with eBay, looking at the sales history of competitors they aren't really doing any better either. The search is swamped with off the shelf products and whilst there is nothing wrong with that it does seem a feasible option for eBay to introduce some kind of area within the site to highlight handmade goods from businesses and then have a good old shout about it.

Business ticks over nicely on Etsy, given the size of eBay's customer base I would assume it would here too, if there was that extra visibility through a dedicated space.

---

Hi fjgjhgjkhkljkl_39, thanks for your post.

I see where you're coming from. However, I haven't heard anything on this recently, so I wouldn't say that there are plans for this any time soon.

I'd be happy to pass this on for you to the relevant team, so this could be taken into consideration for future updates.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

---

@lincolnshiremarine wrote:

Good afternoon

Please can you look into this issue for me.

The same buyer brought two items on one transaction, then brought another item on a separate transaction.  We included the second purchase in the same parcel as the first purchase,  we tried to add the tracking number onto the other transaction.  However, the eBay system will not longer allow you to do this (we have done this several times in the past) it now says "tracking number added is already used for a different buyer"  

The tracking number we are trying to add onto the other transaction is for the same buyer.  How can we resolve this please, as I have marked this as dispatched, but no tracking number is showing by that second purchase.

Order number: 13-12751-55785 & order number: 13-12751-55786.

Thank you

---

Hi @lincolnshiremarine 

I've sent this over to the shipping team to look at I'll get back to you as soon as I have an update.

Thanks,

Dave

[marco@ebay]

---

@susapric-68 wrote:

When are you going to make it easier to report business sellers on private accounts? around 80-90% of the people on these forums moaning about the new buyers fees are business sellers on private account. One had sold 200 packs of batteries as well as many other items all listed with multiples to buy. Think someone hit the nail on the head earlier is that they get around the new GPSR and the EU won't like the fact you have taken no action when they find out

---

Hi susapric-68, thanks for your question.

I see where you are coming from, and I see your point. However, for now, we'd recommend to continue to report them same way, we take these reports into consideration and work is actually done with them. However, I will pass on your thoughts on this, as that is also relevant on this topic.

Thank you,

Marco

[lincolnshiremarine]

Thanks Dave

As said it is the same buyer, so I cannot understand why this is an issue.  Furthermore,  we have always been able to add the same tracking number to multiple purchases, same buyer, but separate transactions.  I cannot override it at all. 

How long will it take for the shipping team to look at this please?

Best wishes

[guymafo]

Dear Community Team

This month I have decided to downgrade my shop, culled my listings from one category due to the continuing non activity of eBay policing the incorrectly registered sellers trading on a private account. Eg, One seller 5 shops 3000+ multiple quantity listings in each, active for at least 3 years,  reported several times nothing is done. 

When are eBay going to actually do something about these sellers? 

Please don’t tell to me to report, it doesn’t work. 
GM

[marco@ebay]

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@custom-giftsuk wrote:

Can I also ask if its allowable to have 2 different accounts, with the same VAT number, same company number, same business name selling the exact same items as each other but with a slightly different email address?

---

Hi custom-giftsuk, thanks for your post.

That would be duplicating listings, basically. So, this wouldn't be allowed.

Thank you,

Marco

[marco@ebay]

---

@davrman wrote:

As there's no eBay feature for this, perhaps the auto-fill options provided by many web browsers (with or without extensions/plugins) may help to complete these fields semi-automatically?

---

Hi davrman, thanks for your reply.

Potentially, yes. I will add that to the feedback in question, as it wouldn't make any harm including this. As we always say, please note that this doesn't necessarily means that the changes suggested will be implemented.

Thank you,

Marco

[custom-giftsuk]

Thank you for that Marco, glad to have it in black and white so that when we report this again, we have the official answer for the solution 🙂

Can I ask another & last question for today -  if it is ok for a seller to state in a listing that they are getting 2 of an item in a pack, which is in their title and listing images showing 2x but then offering 1 item (not 2) in their options to show a lower starting price or would this be considered search manipulation and/or false advertising?

[susapric-68]

And how would be the correct way to report them, nothing works