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Hello everyone,
The weekly session is back! Sorry for the hiatus last week. I'll be here most of the day today.
Open issues:
- Odd missing gallery picture in search results
- Errors when uploading more than one tracking number at a time (repeated, erroneous numbers saved)
- Selling limits live items count discrepancy
Updates:
- Sold items going into Unsold container - Resolved
- Seller marketing emails issues - Selling team assigned someone to this, waiting on news.
- Wrong tax rates applied to PayPal labels - still no update from PayPal and Pitney Bowes
- Missing Tracked Packet destinations - still no update from PayPal and Pitney Bowes
- Combined shipping offers not shown to international buyers - under investigation with shipping team
To my fellow rebels, scoundrels and nerf herders, May the Fourth Be With You!
@rose-dee wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Good afternoon, Raphael,
As you may or may not know, when a Canadian buyer attempts to browse an American version of a Canadian store, they get a pop-up window that says 'do you really want to go to XXXX.com when you can use XXX.ca'. When is ebay going to adopt this approach? There are casual and new ebay users who don't even know ebay.ca exists.
Thanks,
Maureen
Hi Maureen,
Great recommendation. Thanks!
Just one moment, hold your horses please!
While this may work well for online retailers who have a seamless, completely functional checkout system across all platforms, and may be a lovely concept for sellers listing mainly on .ca with a lot of Canadian buyers, what would happen to those of us who have a .ca store but list on .com? Just a few issues I can think of from the perspective of a seller like me who has had nothing but trouble listing on .ca and has moved to .com for that reason:
Hello rose-dee, happy to answer your questions. 🙂
rose-dee wrote:
- Would a Canadian buyer who goes to .ca have any difficulty attempting to make a multi-item purchase or check out seamlessly if they choose an items listed on .com (in $US) by a Canadian seller?
Not at all, as the eBay.ca shopping cart works with any items listed on any site.
rose-dee wrote:
- Would automatic shipping discounts that were set up on .com (for listings moved there in order to make the cart work properly for U.S. buyers), still work for .com listings purchased via .ca? My understanding was that the two automated promo shipping systems were separate.
That is correct, you would have to replicate your eBay.com combined shipping discount rules on eBay.ca as well.
rose-dee wrote:
- Would all markdown features that are available on .com still be shown to .ca shoppers for my .com listings?
It depends on what feature, but in each case, if you offered a reduced price, any buyer anywhere would be charged the same reduced price for the item, however some might not see that the price is a reduced price. For example, if you put a $10 discount on a $50 item, buyers on eBay.com will see $50 $40 but buyers on other eBay sites might only see $40.
rose-dee wrote:
- Would being routed to .ca change the visibility or presentation of .com listings to that Canadian buyer?
No, except for the previously mentioned discount treatment.
@rose-dee wrote:
Two weeks ago you provided a sample of text (with HTML tags) that could be used in a listing to supersede eBay's bots creating an arbitrary summary of the listing description. I have three questions about this:
1) Can the tagged "blurb" be placed anywhere within the Description section, or must it be at the very top?
2) Will it still work if inserted into text within a listing frame (e.g. such as an Auctiva frame, which is then dropped into the eBay Description section whole)?
3) Will there be a dedicated spot in the SYI form for sellers to create this summary, as a reminder that it must be done if the seller wants to avoid bot-speak?
4) I do understand that if the listing description is 800 characters or less, the bot takeover won't apply, but will there be some sort of counter made available in the SYI form?
1) It can be placed anywhere, what part of the description you tag is up to you.
2) As long as only the summary text is tagged (meaning without the frame code inside the tags), you should be fine.
3) I don't know of any plans to do this.
4) I don't know of any plans for a character counter, but it's not impossible to think we may implement one. Until we do, there are plenty of free web pages where you can copy-paste your text to see how many characters it contains.
@rose-dee wrote:
I'm not sure I even know what 800 characters looks like in terms of how many lines are available, but it can't be much. In any case, for me, having a bot pick and choose what to put in a listing summary for a OOAK or unique item is absolute poison, so I'm going to have to do something about this for almost every listing.
For reference, this last quote from your post contains 323 characters.
@rose-dee wrote:
Another subject entirely...
Last spring (i.e. 2015), eBay announced that it was removing Omniture from store features. We were told something similar would replace it "in a few months". Honestly, I relied quite a bit on Ominiture for marketing purposes, regardless of whether some thought it wasn't completely accurate, and I miss it a great deal.
Any ETA?
After all, we're coming up to nearly a year. Why couldn't Omniture have been left where it was until eBay had something to replace it?
There are listing performance metrics included in the Insights tab on the upcoming Seller Hub, so it's unlikely that we will on board a new 3rd party reporting partner before we launch that. In the meantime, there is a Terapeak app available in My eBay that you can use.
@lady.stark wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@lady.stark wrote:
Hi Raphael. Up until yesterday, I was paying my seller fees in US $. My automatic payment was my American Express card. I changed my billing currency yesterday and tried to add my credit card again, but the system does not want to accept it. It says "Visa or MasterCard" only. Do you know why I can use it for my billing in US $, but not in CAD $? It does not make any sense... thanks!
Hello lady.stark,
Amex isn't accepted on eBay.ca, it is on eBay.com though. Perhaps you had set it up on eBay.com before?
Nope. I added it quite recently (maybe last year), and it was on eBay.CA. I did not use .com for more than 3 years.
I could be wrong, but in over 8 years working at eBay Canada, I don't remember Amex ever being accepted on eBay.ca.
@rose-dee wrote:
Until you mentioned this issue up 3 weeks ago, I had no idea this was a glitch. I tried to send a promo email after setting up a store-wide markdown, and it appeared that it simply didn't happen.
@pierrelebel wrote:
[...]Three weeks later, I have not yet heard from eBay about the email marketing problem. Tried it again yesterday - same result - "Failed" with no explanation as to why something that has worked for more than ten years is not working now.
I assumed I must have done something wrong, or that it was -- like so many other features -- temporarily "out of service". There was no message to say the feature was disabled, so I thought, OK, maybe the email had actually been sent (without a confirmation for some reason). So I didn't go back to try again.Thank you for bringing this up. I have to wonder how many sellers, like me, may not have even been aware that the email marketing was not functioning at all, or wondered whether they'd made an error during input that might have affected the function.Incidentally, I don't think that sellers wouldn't care about the absence of this feature. I use it frequently, purposefully, and rely on it to communicate with my subscribers en masse on specific occasions, such as when I list new pattern designs. I consider my email subscriber list -- and the ability to reach directly out to customers who are clearly interested in what I sell -- to be a key elements of my marketing."Failed" with no explanation as to why something that has worked for more than ten years is not working now."When I read this I couldn't help but think about the "cart disconnect". EBay had a checkout system that worked for years across borders, then suddenly didn't. No explanation, no announcement, and no fix for that either, going on not just three weeks, but three years.The question in my mind lately has been not: "Shouldn't eBay do better"?, but "Can eBay do any worse than it has"?
For you and Pierre: I got an update on the seller emails issue last night. The team has rolled back code to try and fix the issue, which didn't work but allowed the developer team to identify the root cause. I'm on a very large email thread where many people are expecting an update, which should come soon.
@rose-dee wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@hallscrystal wrote:
Hi,
On this page:
http://pages.ebay.ca/sellerinformation/news/sprupd16/features-fees.html
Items must be less than $150 for free Gallery Plus etc. - Basic Store
What happens with multiple items?
Are the fees calculated on the total amount available or just for one?
If I have a listing that customers can buy up to 6 glasses at $50 ea - are listing fees based on $300, or $50?
Hi hallscrystal,
In your example, the fees for listing upgrades would be based on a $50 item.
Well, well, another interesting little change that I'm sure few sellers (me included) noticed, what with the other seismic changes that have gone on around here.
As an aside, I had to smile at this tactic (increasing fees for "background" services). It's so reminiscent of what the B.C. government did a few years ago when it was desperate for cash but knew it would be political anathema to openly raise taxes -- they simply increased fees for every little government service. Need a document? There's a fee for that. Better access? There's a fee for that too.
But here's my question about this particular fee hike: I really don't "get" the rationale behind offering free upgrades on cheaper items (list price <$150). It seems utterly counter-productive. I would think eBay would be keen to encourage sales of high-value items (i.e. more FVFs for eBay) by providing cheaper listing upgrades for them (or at least favourable/promotional pricing).
I'm really at a loss. Raphael, perhaps you could explain eBay's thought process on this subject -- if there is one. Or was it just a matter of: "we need more money, oh yeah, here's a place we can raise fees and nobody will complain?
The rationale behind pricing changes is way above my pay grade unfortunately. I'm happy to help you make the right choices for your business, as I have done in the past, but I can't comment on why these changes are made.
@ricarmic wrote:
Hi Raphael!
Umm the "answer" to my question changed? Originally you mentioned that you did not know the answer and that you'd go see what you could find out. Now it says what is below, which isn't an answer to my question, I'm thinking it was meant for someone else.....????
Everything after Hi ricarmic has changed, I'm thinking it was a miss-edit???
=========================================================================
@ricarmic wrote:
Hi Raphael!
Regarding the supplies coupon:
My store is registered on .COM (I actually now and "forever" have sold only on .COM)
My $75 coupon says it is only valid on the ebay shipping store on .COM and it says it is $75 US$
So I am supposing that I can't use my coupon on the Canadian store.
I did some looking and I don't understand if the coupon can be used on the .COM side against the item and the shipping, or if the coupon can be used only against the item cost? I've never had anything to do with coupons before so I don't really know how they work.
If I can't use the coupon in the Canadian store and/or against the combined item/shipping cost in the eBay.COM store, it's a lost "benefit" to me....
Hi ricarmic,
It would be great if we could find a way to make shipping to Canada from the USA the same cost as shipping to the USA from the USA. But as everyone knows, shipping to or from or within Canada is really expensive. Regardless, the way to think about this is that if eBay is investing $1 to reduce the cost of shipping supplies for US buyers, they are investing $1 in ours as well. It is equal.
Hi ricarmic, no mis-edit, I did say I would update with the answer once I got it. This is the answer 🙂
@forester_studios wrote:
Hi Raphael - Just wondering if Ebay is aware of a new "bug" when printing labels through Paypal. In the past when I printed a shipping label with Paypal the item would be moved automatically from the "Awaiting shipment" section to the "Paid and shipped" section.
Lately I've noticed this does not always happen and sometimes I need to manually use the "Mark as shipped" button to get the item to move to the "Paid and shipped" section.
Now I realize this isn't the most important issue on Ebay, but nevertheless it is just one more "Glitch" to deal with. Hope this can be fixed soon. Thanks!
Hello forester_studios,
I wasn't aware of this, thanks for flagging. I'll send a word to my only remaining contact for PayPal labels, but for obvious reasons will refrain from promising a quick resolve on the issue.
@arkh_angel wrote:
Hello,
Had this problem a few times lately and was wondering how such an important issue/functionality could have been overlooked.
Customer fills a return request. I send him an answer within the resolution center. No answer from customer.
Next day I send a message using eBay's messaging system and got an answer within minutes.
This happened a few times to me and I can't believe nothing tells the customer that a message waits for him in the resolution center. This is SO important! Don't you want us to resolve our issues by ourselves with an easy way to communicate with the customer? How will they know if they don't even get a notification?
Now I don't even use Resolution Center anymore to communicate with customer since it is unreliable.
Regards
Hello arkh_angel,
Are you talking about the Resolution Centre, or the Returns flow? They are two different things. I know that messages sent in the Returns flow trigger a notification for the recipient. For the Resolution Centre, I'd have to look deeper. If you'd like to carry on this conversation, please reach me via email.
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