💬Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 28.09.22 @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. Please refrain from opening discussions here, any posts without questions may be removed.

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

[hill-walker]

Hi guys.

I have nearly all my items listed as BiNs, with auto accept offers at pre set levels. Every one is set for immediate payment, but this only works when the item is bought at full price. If an offer is accepted, the immediate payment requirement is lost.

I've double checked my settings, and the 'Require buyers to provide a payment method before they make an offer' IS ticked, so the buyers should then be auto-charged, shouldn't they?.

Reading the Info link along side this, it says: "Removing this requirement may lead to more unpaid items. Setting will apply to future offers. Currently, this impacts only a select group of buyers."

It apparently had that caveat when it was first introduced which would have made sense at the time; as it would have still been in trial mode. It's a shame it appears to still be in trial mode and not being rolled out to all buyers.

Any chance you could escalate this, and get it applied to ALL buyers please?

Such a shame that something that DOES actually help sellers, is being kept on the back burner.

Two offers auto-accepted this past week – neither of them paid 😞

Thanks,

Steve.

[firstgardencity]

12 months ago I was told that 1 item I was selling was being removed at the request of MHRA.

I contacted eBay at the time as 30+ other sellers were listing the same item - some even using my photos - but their listings were not removed.

Over the year I have complained many times only to be told that if I complain about the other listings they will also be removed but if the item cannot be sold why should I have to do the investigation.  The other excuse is that new listings appear all the time but the listings with my photos must have been on there for over 12 months.

I have been told that eBay operate a level playing field but it does not seem very level from here.

[don.g.ovany]

Hi

SH is inconsistent when making certain searches. To give you an example. If I want to search for all unpaid orders it helpfully gives me a total. If I do the same search and put a buyer username in, I get no total. As I run auctions and buyers often stockpile to get better postage rates, this is important to me. The facility used to be in the old version but eBay invariably remove good features when 'improving'.

[kat@ebay]

---

@hill-walker wrote:

Hi guys.

I have nearly all my items listed as BiNs, with auto accept offers at pre set levels. Every one is set for immediate payment, but this only works when the item is bought at full price. If an offer is accepted, the immediate payment requirement is lost.

I've double checked my settings, and the 'Require buyers to provide a payment method before they make an offer' IS ticked, so the buyers should then be auto-charged, shouldn't they?.

Reading the Info link along side this, it says: "Removing this requirement may lead to more unpaid items. Setting will apply to future offers. Currently, this impacts only a select group of buyers."

It apparently had that caveat when it was first introduced which would have made sense at the time; as it would have still been in trial mode. It's a shame it appears to still be in trial mode and not being rolled out to all buyers.

Any chance you could escalate this, and get it applied to ALL buyers please?

Such a shame that something that DOES actually help sellers, is being kept on the back burner.

Two offers auto-accepted this past week – neither of them paid 😞

Thanks,

Steve.

---

Hi @hill-walker ,

Thank you for sharing this about the immediate payment requirement for buyers. I understand where your  coming from in having this applied for all buyers. I will share this with our policy and development team as feedback for review.

Thank you,

Kat

[hill-walker]

Thanks Kat 🙂

[kat@ebay]

---

@don.g.ovany wrote:

Hi

SH is inconsistent when making certain searches. To give you an example. If I want to search for all unpaid orders it helpfully gives me a total. If I do the same search and put a buyer username in, I get no total. As I run auctions and buyers often stockpile to get better postage rates, this is important to me. The facility used to be in the old version but eBay invariably remove good features when 'improving'.

---

Hi @don.g.ovany,

If I search for awaiting payment and input a buyers username its showing me a list of all their transactions.  Please see the link here. Is this what you are searching for?

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

---

@firstgardencity wrote:

12 months ago I was told that 1 item I was selling was being removed at the request of MHRA.

I contacted eBay at the time as 30+ other sellers were listing the same item - some even using my photos - but their listings were not removed.

Over the year I have complained many times only to be told that if I complain about the other listings they will also be removed but if the item cannot be sold why should I have to do the investigation.  The other excuse is that new listings appear all the time but the listings with my photos must have been on there for over 12 months.

I have been told that eBay operate a level playing field but it does not seem very level from here.

---

Hi @firstgardencity 

It is possible that these items were reviewed by the team and not found to be in breach of any policies. Unfortunately I cant see what happened in these cases.

If you have some item numbers for any that you feel may be breaching a policy you can PM them to me and I can escalate them to be reviewed. I wont be able to update on any action taken though as its for another account.

Thanks,

Dave

[don.g.ovany]

Hi Kat

Thanks for the reply. My point is that there is a little i box in a circle which shows total value. This is shown when I searcg ALL unpaid orders. It is not shown if I choose to restrict the list by buyer username for instance. Granted there is a list, but no total. There are a number of other such inconsistencies.

[*kittylou*]

Hi, 

I know this isn't a new request but is there any chance that there will be a "request total' button for combining p&p on the app and mobile sites anytime soon? I spend so much of my time advising how to request a total or finding a work around for anyone who only has a mobile. 

Please... 

Thanks 🙂 

[kempseykate]

Following on from the 'level playing field' mentioned above ...

Over a month ago on one of these Community Chats I mentioned a seller who was breaking so many rules, that I had reported for each breach, that was still trading, still flouting the rules/braking the law. I was asked to pass on the details to get this escalated to 'the team' to be checked. 

I did, and I checked on the seller once a week to see how things were going. There last new listing was 16 Sept and this is the listing I have used to assess the current situation.

1) Unregistered business seller, making (illegal) copies to sell, getting private seller offers, and paying considerably less fees than they would as a business seller.

Current situation:  Still an unreg business seller.

2) Claiming that all monies go to the local adopt a cuddly animal centre (I have changed the wording/charity to protect the not-so-innocent!), but this is only stated in the description, it's not done officially with the charity ribbon logo.

Current situation: Still claiming to donate money to charity, still not official.

3) Claiming that all the masters of the illegal copies they are selling are donated by the lovely staff at the cuddly animal centre.

Current situation:  Still getting these items donated.

4) Offers digital delivery.

Current situation: Still offers digital delivery.

5) Offers a service to make items - 'please contact me for details'.

Current situation: You guessed - still offering!

They are still breaking 5 rules, yet even when escalated to 'the team' for review, ebay have done nothing. (I won't even go into the laws they are breaking :()

So, as I asked before - have these rules changed, and the pages not been updated? Do ebay not really bother about any rules now, can we just break them as we wish in the knowledge that it's unlikely we will be punished as long as we don't make it too obvious, and stick to 'unimportant ' categories?

[rainbowtrax]

I've just been reading today's business seller update and there seems to be a big drive to improve the visibility of shops and sellers' own branding which is very welcome. What would be really useful in this area would be if all business sellers had their logo displayed next to their items in search results (and in the seller details on the top of each listing page) as is currently only done for the outlet sellers.

This would be a huge addition to the promotion of small businesses and would level the marketing playing field between the huge companies and small businesses. It should also be easy to implement as the basic set-up is already in place.

[kat@ebay]

Hi @don.g.ovany ,

Yes I now see what you mean and no this total amount is not shown when the results are filtered to a specific buyer.  I'll need to forward this as feedback to the relevant team. 

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

---

@*kittylou* wrote:

Hi, 

I know this isn't a new request but is there any chance that there will be a "request total' button for combining p&p on the app and mobile sites anytime soon? I spend so much of my time advising how to request a total or finding a work around for anyone who only has a mobile. 

Please... 

Thanks 🙂 

---

Hi @*kittylou* 

I dont have  a view on any updates at the moment but I'll reach out to the App Team on this and get back to you. Leave it with me for a bit and I'll get an update.

Thanks,

Dave.

[kat@ebay]

Hi @rainbowtrax ,

The display of the logo is feedback we have received from alot of members like yourself and have fed it back with the relevant department in eBay. While I cannot guarantee any current change with regards to the logo I will raise it with them for review.

Thank you,

Kat

[dave@ebay]

---

@kempseykate wrote:

Following on from the 'level playing field' mentioned above ...

Over a month ago on one of these Community Chats I mentioned a seller who was breaking so many rules, that I had reported for each breach, that was still trading, still flouting the rules/braking the law. I was asked to pass on the details to get this escalated to 'the team' to be checked. 

I did, and I checked on the seller once a week to see how things were going. There last new listing was 16 Sept and this is the listing I have used to assess the current situation.

1) Unregistered business seller, making (illegal) copies to sell, getting private seller offers, and paying considerably less fees than they would as a business seller.

Current situation:  Still an unreg business seller.

2) Claiming that all monies go to the local adopt a cuddly animal centre (I have changed the wording/charity to protect the not-so-innocent!), but this is only stated in the description, it's not done officially with the charity ribbon logo.

Current situation: Still claiming to donate money to charity, still not official.

3) Claiming that all the masters of the illegal copies they are selling are donated by the lovely staff at the cuddly animal centre.

Current situation:  Still getting these items donated.

4) Offers digital delivery.

Current situation: Still offers digital delivery.

5) Offers a service to make items - 'please contact me for details'.

Current situation: You guessed - still offering!

They are still breaking 5 rules, yet even when escalated to 'the team' for review, ebay have done nothing. (I won't even go into the laws they are breaking :()

So, as I asked before - have these rules changed, and the pages not been updated? Do ebay not really bother about any rules now, can we just break them as we wish in the knowledge that it's unlikely we will be punished as long as we don't make it too obvious, and stick to 'unimportant ' categories?

---

Hi @kempseykate 

We always send any listings that reported through us to be reviewed by the appropriate teams however we are unable to comment on any action that may have been taken as its on another account. 

If you would like to send me an example of the above I will forward it to the policy team to be looked into.

Thanks,

Dave