Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 29.11.23 @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 marco@ebay, katie@ebay and anita@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

[returns_andexdisplay]

The frustration is I am better off the buyer then sending the item back and taking a part refund or reporting the buyer then more chance of getting the service metric removed. 

Out of 56 returns in the last 12 months over half of them have had issues with buyer abusing the return, claiming not as described when they have not read the listing or sending back damaged, used or differnet items. 

Yet ebays way of dealing with things like this is to punish sellers with service metrics on accounts for up to a year. What wonderful working conditions the powers at be at ebay have created for sellers. 

All we ask as sellers is we are treated fairly, which is not the case when a buyer makes a mistake and the seller gets punished. Which can potentially lead to scantions on thier account. 

[marco@ebay]

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@prinkink wrote:

Sorry, but this is not the case. It seems that the representetives allow the phone to ring once and then hang up which then means that they don't have to deal with my questions and can put me back into the merry go round. It really is like ground hog day. Can somebody please contact me and deal with my complaint?

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Thanks for your reply, prinkink. 

We are not able to arrange a call back for you, if you wish to contact customer services, you would need to request a call back the same way you did before. If you'd like me to assist with your query, let me know as much information as you can, and I will be happy to help.

Thank you,

Marco

[anita@ebay]

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@bravergrace wrote:

Could you clarify something about the "featured post" about setting working days and cut-off times, please?

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Postage/Set-your-working-days-and-cut-off-times-as-we-head-into-peak...

Previous staff replies on this chat board and on other eBay boads, have consistently stated that working days, cut-off times and "time away" dates are no longer taken into account when setting ETAs for customers, and that ignoring all of these is just the current system "working as intended".

This featured post seems to say the opposite.

Has something changed, or is this new post just a false promise?

Because if I set 2 or 3 days holiday, and you'll still promise my customers that they can keep the goods for free if they don't turn up within 24 hours, I'll going to lose a lot of money.  

If I book a fortnight's holiday over Christmas...

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Hi @bravergrace, thanks for your post.

We still take into consideration those things, but we have added more factors that are taken into consideration when calculating dynamic EDD. I understand though why the wording may have created some confusion and will forward your feedback to the relevant team.

Thanks,

Anita

[ducatimondo]

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anita@ebay wrote:

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@prinkink wrote:

Why do Ebay never act on reports of others sellers manipulating the search with 10's of thousands of duplicate listings?
One particular UK business seller going under 3 different Ebay accounts has 10's of thousands of near duplicate listings for the same items spread over all 3 accounts.
This means that for the items that we sell, this unscrupulous seller holds over 20 places on the first page of Ebay search for the same item and holds 7 out of top ten non sponsored results.
They release new duplicate listings every day at very low prices which naturally rise to the top and push away other sellers. Once the top positions are "stolen" their prices increase to over and above what the other sellers were charging.
I have reported this many times via phone, chat, Ebay reporting tools etc and always end up with a boiler plate response and no action even though the Ebay representatives all agree that this company is clearly breaking the rules.

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Hi @prinkink, thanks for your post.

I appreciate your feedback. eBay takes reports seriously, and we have teams working proactively and reactively to work as many reports as possible. I will share your feedback to the relevant team as we want to ensure violating listings are actioned accordingly.

In the meantime, if you feel that the right action hasn’t been taken after you reported it, you can also report it by selecting Contact us options here at the bottom of the page.

Thanks,

Anita

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I have asked and asked and asked the same thing over and over again about reporting duplicate listings.

We just get cut and paste replies, they do take it seriously, we do take action although we can't share what action we take.

I know the answer, you don't take any action, no one ever has any of the insane amount of duplicate listings removed, as if we report them and you did take action, they'd be gone, no?

So my question, are we all wasting our time reporting listings?

How long is the queue from reporting duplicate listings to them getting looked at?

I have asked the second question before and got an "the length of time varies depending on how busy they are". Then "it also depends on the type of report, as to how busy they are and what happens"

We are not asking about Vero or selling banned products or anything like that.

We are asking about duplicate listings that ruin the platform for:

Honest sellers that follow the policies.

Honest buyers that just want to find what they want to buy without being buried in a sea of the same

eBay pay a lot of money for hosting all of these duplicates

Google demotes the site like crazy for all of the duplicate content.

Any platform should be grateful that honest sellers are trying to help them solve the issue.

Yet eBay cut N paste, we will look into it and then nothing happens.

Are we all wasting out time reporting these duplicates, as I and probably everyone else have plenty of other stuff to do without wasting my time on these for eBay to just ignore the issue and do nothing with the reports we file.

So why does nothing at all happen when we file these reports?

[anita@ebay]

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@mteconlineshop wrote:

anita@ebay , Item 304912744985 is another but most of the information is greyed out and that is one from October i sent a offer to

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@mteconlineshop, thank you. I'll review both examples and will share an update here.

Thanks,

Anita

[pionelle]

Thank you Anita but with respect it is not fully resolved if ebayers like myself are not returned to the position they were in prior to the glitch. Fully resolved to me would be me looking at my Nectar page on my ebay account and seeing that nothing was amiss.

I am concerned that if I attempt to re-link my Nectar account that it will make the problem worse. On my Nectar account it says that I have been linked since 2017 and I am worried that all of my transaction history will be lost. My trust in re-linking given that I have read a lot of the posts where ebayers are constantly having to re-link is diminishing.

By the way I never got a message from ebay to say that my Nectar had been de-linked whereas some of the commenters said that they did, it is all very odd.

[marco@ebay]

Thanks for your question, ducatimondo. 

Please continue to report, as we do review all reports. In terms of how long is taking for these reports to be reviewed, this can change from time to time depending on how many reports we may receive. However, your input counts, so please continue to report anything that you think is against our policies/procedures.

Thank you,

Marco

[anita@ebay]

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@returns_andexdisplay wrote:

The frustration is I am better off the buyer then sending the item back and taking a part refund or reporting the buyer then more chance of getting the service metric removed. 

Out of 56 returns in the last 12 months over half of them have had issues with buyer abusing the return, claiming not as described when they have not read the listing or sending back damaged, used or differnet items. 

Yet ebays way of dealing with things like this is to punish sellers with service metrics on accounts for up to a year. What wonderful working conditions the powers at be at ebay have created for sellers. 

All we ask as sellers is we are treated fairly, which is not the case when a buyer makes a mistake and the seller gets punished. Which can potentially lead to scantions on thier account. 

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@returns_andexdisplay, buyers opening returns for incorrect reason is a different issue and we have ways of tracking this buyer behavior as well as actioning them. Please report such a buyer behavior here and it will be reviewed.

As for the service metrics the aim is to focus on improving and meeting buyer expectations. If there are listings that have a high claim rate, sellers may review them and see if the information is accurate, or there is anything else that may be causing them opening claims.

Thanks,

Anita

[anita@ebay]

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@pionelle wrote:

Thank you Anita but with respect it is not fully resolved if ebayers like myself are not returned to the position they were in prior to the glitch. Fully resolved to me would be me looking at my Nectar page on my ebay account and seeing that nothing was amiss.

I am concerned that if I attempt to re-link my Nectar account that it will make the problem worse. On my Nectar account it says that I have been linked since 2017 and I am worried that all of my transaction history will be lost. My trust in re-linking given that I have read a lot of the posts where ebayers are constantly having to re-link is diminishing.

By the way I never got a message from ebay to say that my Nectar had been de-linked whereas some of the commenters said that they did, it is all very odd.

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@pionelle, I understand your concern, however since the issue is resolved, buyers just need to relink their Nectar account and for vast majority it has been successfully linked.

If you'll experience further issues where account keeps unlinking, please report it to us in one of the Nectar threads and we will escalate this for you.

Thanks,

Anita

[marco@ebay]

Hey douglaspuglas, just adding more information for further clarification on this.

Please note that there are 2 separate things on this. The first one is that you can set up automatic payments required in your listings when creating them, this means that your buyers will be asked to enter the payment details to go ahead and send an offer when you set up this method for your listings. This is something you can add or not to your listings when creating them.

The second one is the immediate payment for best offers that has been added to our UK site in full, so when a buyer sends a best offer, the buyer will be required to enter payment details, so the payment can go through straight away should their offer be accepted. In this second scenario, the buyer or the seller have no control over it, as this is something we are implementing going forward to help reduce the amound of unpaid items.

I hope this helps,

Marco

[anita@ebay]

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anita@ebay wrote:

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@mteconlineshop wrote:

anita@ebay , Item 304912744985 is another but most of the information is greyed out and that is one from October i sent a offer to

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@mteconlineshop, thank you. I'll review both examples and will share an update here.

Thanks,

Anita

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Hi @mteconlineshop,

I looked into this and if you have previously sent offers for these items, the auto-send feature gives the option to send the same offer to interested buyers in the future. If the option is selected, we automatically check for new interested buyers every 48 hours from when you first send the offer until the listings ends, or you cancel the auto-send option. Offers may be sent to interested buyers that have item in the watchers list (last 30 item watchers) or they may be potential buyer, for example they have had the item in their shopping cart for a while, but haven’t made the purchase.

The automatic offer will use the same discount that you set up in the original offer. You can manage the offers in the Offer Settings page here, or if you are unable to access the link, go to Seller Hub > Active listings > On the top menu change ‘All statuses’ to ‘With offers sending automatically’’ > Search > Scroll down and on the left side of each item you can see ‘View offer settings'.

Please note, that this chat is closed for replies, if you need any further help, please create a new thread and I’ll help you from there.

Thanks,

Anita