ALL NEW Competition Thread...Last Post WINS ;-)

[naughty.tortie]

Well..... it couldnt be lost forever could it !

So its back... all singing, all dancing... no farting allowed...

May the dirtiest player win 😄




I am first... I WILL BE LAST

[peteryola]

Argh... but at least I got the 17871 reversi recently...!!

[cke786]

And I'll get the 18000 too  😉

[peteryola]

...unless I do a run of almost 100 posts in the middle of the night when you're asleep...

( I won't, by the way - it's considered bad form to do a run from further back than 2 or 3 posts ).

[cke786]

I'd say 3 posts or more is not good form!

[peteryola]

Agreed - although in the days when the boards and threads were busy, people would run up from further for big ones, but they rarely managed more than two consecutive posts anyway, so there was still very much an element of pot luck.  The most success was from people with remarkable senses of timing - who usually bagged a snipe with a single post anyway; Rowdy Robbie springs to mind as the best there was at doing that.

[cke786]

One thing I've been wondering, is how many people actually know that eBay has a forum?

[peteryola]

Probably not many these days - I suspect most will be aware of the help boards, but not teh discussion ones.

Many of those who are aware will have probabluy been put off by the ridiculously awkward format the boards have been in for the past three years or so.

Traditionally laid out forums seem to be doing well, in contrast.

[cke786]

The new format was to make it easier for mobile device users..... despite it making it worse to use for mobile device users and ultimately desktop computer users as well.

The whole site is now supposed to be modile device friendly, but it's terrible to use on the phone and tablet! I think they have baboons designing & coding for them!

[peteryola]

That's usual for these days... If it ain't broke, let's break it...

[cke786]

They started breaking it in 2012, maybe even a bit before that!

[peteryola]

I do vaguely recall a previous format change around that time, yes - although it wasn't a particularly damaging or confusing one.  Wasn't it more that a couple of boards got merged with others and a slight font change or something?

[cke786]

It mostly messed up the invoice layout, but it also affected the search engine as well, which ended up with peeps start to get less sales.

[peteryola]

Ah... that's the side of it I wouldn't notice these days isn't it?  Given that I abandoned selling on here years ago... just posting now, really.

[cke786]

It's my employment, I has no choice 😅

The invoices getting messed up was most annoying, as we were using D5 integrated label sheets, before the update, we just had to press print and that was that, after the first update, the From label address was now a larger font size than the Post To address, which ended up with several parcels being delivered to us rather than the customer!

I learned how to edit the HTML code for the Print page, so I was was able to change the size of the address labels fonts, which was fine but took up a bit of time with each order that required the edit, thankfully I got pretty fast at it, about 20 seconds per edit, though still time I could direct elsewhere, this stopped anything being delivered to us by mistake.

Now with the most recent update with the new look of the website, printing on D5 integrated label sheets from the browser is now impossible, I now have to download the invoice PDF file, go online to a website to convert the PDF into a word document, though each one the formatting is different, edit the address label text font size, edit the margins, hope that it doesn't push the Qty information off the page, then edit that if it does... and even then it's plain luck if the addresses are actually on the labels correctly!

I've spoken with eBay support about the issue, but the coding staff just tell them that nothing is wrong with the invoices layout, despite I not being the only other seller who's having this problem and has been part of discussion in the eBay Seller forum.

Every 'improvement' update they make, just makes this place worse to use!

[peteryola]

Hmmm.... Obvious question, why not get your own website instead?  No listing fees or final value fees if you do that - although yes, you'd have to weigh that against the domain and hosting costs...

For the addresses thing - can you not just copy and paste the address details from the pdf and put that straight into Word to print the labels?  Most pdf documents, if you highlight part of the text with the cursor, you can then copy with the Control C command even if there is no copy option on the right click... 

[cke786]

We do have our own website, granted it's only been up a short amount of time and is starting to generate traffic, eBay is the main source of online sales! As for Amazon.... pfft, we were selling on there, then they started demanding more documents, then even though I gave them exactly what they asked for, they still kept on asking for them and we've not been able to sell anything since!

Many PDFs do hold their formatting if you copy them, but alas the eBay ones do not, it was actually the very first thing I tried to do, the only thing I found that worked was to download the PDFs then convert them to Word files and edit them that way. It's all very annoying, but that's eBay for you!

[peteryola]

Can you not just use the snipping tool to screenshot them...?

Then paste the snips into Word and save as pdf?

[cke786]

It still wouldn't solve the problem with the text font-size and positioning issues, actually make it more difficult. The whole current invoicing system isn't fit for purpose, I've changed my options in the Customise settings, though this does nothing but mess up the formatting further! 😕

[peteryola]

Hmmm.... so there's no zoom view option that you can use to make it bigger before snipping, then?

[cke786]

Problem is, one label needs decreasing in size, unbolding most of the address label text, the other label needs the text size increasing, again unbolding most of the address label text, then both labels need moving down and moving to the right. The attached image shows how the addresses would look on the label sheet if I was to just print the order invoice from the eBay invoice print feature.

BTW eBay, the names, addresses & order details on the image are ficticious, I made them up completely, they do not exist!