Hello everyone,
Welcome to our weekly session. As usual, I'll be around for most of the day and possibly until tomorrow.
Here are the issues I am currently tracking:
- UPC codes suddenly not recognized on live listings (mjwl2006)
And the issues for which I have had news:
- Notifications reappearing in the header (pocomocomputing) - Fixed
- Full shipping FVF charged on combined orders with discounted shipping (dutchman48) - The billing team is investigating on this.
- Listings allowed to go live without a photo (rose-dee) - This is a known bug that is being worked on.
- SYI stripping the weight off when switching back to USD on an item that was originally in USD and set up with calculated shipping (block36) + stripping Item Specifics when attempting to update Handling price or time - bug has been logged and work has begun.
- SYI preventing relist and Sell Similar if the original listing had a non compliant photo (pierrelebel) - problem has been identified and I am engaging with the relevant team to address.
Will you guys close the Toronto office early tomorrow and Friday afternoon?
Hi Raphael,
Will wonders never cease on eBay? Here's one that twisted my noodle this week. It would be helpful to have an explanation (so I can do more of what works!).
As you may recall, I recently moved many of my listings over to .com, having finally given up hope for any resolution to the ".com cart disconnect". For the past few years, listing everything on .ca, and even offering free shipping within Canada, I'm lucky to get 1 Canadian buyer every few months. Suddenly, since moving a third of my listings to .com, I've had five item purchases by Canadian buyers, one of which was apparently able to use the .com cart to combine two items in one order (a first since mid-2013 when the cart disconnect stopped all my combined multi-item orders!).
Now, all of this is terrific news for me of course. But after having spent years assuming that my listings on .ca would get exactly the same exposure to Canadians looking on both .ca and .com, I'm beginning to wonder.
Do you have any explanation for this sudden shift in the eBay space-time continuum? I'd love to know why it worked, or exactly what I did right to generate what for me is unheard-of Canadian interest. I'm beginning to think there is magic over there on .com 
A policy question.
Somewhere eBay states: 'Please note that eBay does not permit sellers to accept cash payments sent by mail "
What exactly does it mean? We know we cannot suggest in our listings that cash is welcome. But what happens to the seller who receives cash in the mail because that is the way the buyer decided to pay (whatever the buyer's reasons)?
Is this an infraction? If so, how can it be monitored?
@tobyshitzu wrote:
Can ebay consider doing something about buyers providing wrong, outdated or incomplete addresses?
The competing site will prompt for a correction if you have so much as a letter capitalized wrong.
On ebay I have had what seems an excessive number of issues with the buyer providing a wrong address. This week another one, not a new user, who "forgot to include an appartment number". They only mentioned that after I had confirmed shipped, they responded thanking me for that, then another message later tellling me to add an appartment # as if there is anything I can do about it then. It will likely eventually come back to me. Untracked item so no "protection" from any consequences for me.
Not long ago another one with the same thing with a new user. That one opened a case when they saw the tracking update with "undeliverable address", though I got that resolved with having tracking for proof.
Have had numerous ones "forgot to change to my new address", often after item was shipped. Seems to be something specific with ebay that increases the chance of wrong addresses
Hi tobyshitzu,
I'm really not sure how our competition can validate whether a buyer's address is current or even if it's missing an apartment number. There is an address validation service offered by Canada Post but it is not infallible and would not be able to catch outdated addresses or figure out missing apartment numbers.
For what it's worth, it's not true that you get no protection. Even if you ship untracked, when the buyer tells you about their wrong address in eBay Messages, CS can see it so if anything happens you can point them to that.
Just curious, how often does this really happen out of your total amount of sales?
@pierrelebel wrote:
Will you guys close the Toronto office early tomorrow and Friday afternoon?
Hi Pierre,
Not that I know of. Why, were you planning a visit? 
@rose-dee wrote:
Hi Raphael,
Will wonders never cease on eBay? Here's one that twisted my noodle this week. It would be helpful to have an explanation (so I can do more of what works!).
As you may recall, I recently moved many of my listings over to .com, having finally given up hope for any resolution to the ".com cart disconnect". For the past few years, listing everything on .ca, and even offering free shipping within Canada, I'm lucky to get 1 Canadian buyer every few months. Suddenly, since moving a third of my listings to .com, I've had five item purchases by Canadian buyers, one of which was apparently able to use the .com cart to combine two items in one order (a first since mid-2013 when the cart disconnect stopped all my combined multi-item orders!).
Now, all of this is terrific news for me of course. But after having spent years assuming that my listings on .ca would get exactly the same exposure to Canadians looking on both .ca and .com, I'm beginning to wonder.
Do you have any explanation for this sudden shift in the eBay space-time continuum? I'd love to know why it worked, or exactly what I did right to generate what for me is unheard-of Canadian interest. I'm beginning to think there is magic over there on .com
Hi rose-dee,
Congratulations on your business picking up a bit domestically!
However, it is really hard to tell exactly what caused this. It could really just be circumstantial, a work of Murphy's Law as it were. The only difference that is possible between listing on eBay.ca vs eBay.com when it comes to Canadian buyers is, Canadian buyers won't see items listed on eBay.ca if the item only offers shipping to Canada and the buyer is searching on eBay.com. But you always offered shipping to the US as well I think, so this doesn't apply to your case.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Great to hear of your recent good fortune, rose-dee. May I hazard a guess? Theory One is that many casual Canadian buyers are unaware that there is an ebay.ca and pay little or no attention to what site they log into and don't realize when it might be ebay.com or ebay.ca. They will probably go to ebay.com automatically since we are more familiar with the idea of a dotcom address. Or they might bypass ebay.ca altogether for the greater selection perceived to exist (true or otherwise) on ebay.com. Theory Two is that brand, spanking sparkly new listings achieve higher rank in Best Match search results... especially if both the seller and the seeker are identified as from the same geographical region. (Pardon me for butting-in. You may certainly tell me to MYOB, Raphael, and/or correct me if I am incorrect.)
Hi Maureen,
I'd say your hypotheses are pretty good. Both may be true, but I think what rose-dee is seeing is a result of many things, not the least of which is simple luck.
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@mjwl2006 wrote:Great to hear of your recent good fortune, rose-dee. May I hazard a guess? Theory One is that many casual Canadian buyers are unaware that there is an ebay.ca and pay little or no attention to what site they log into and don't realize when it might be ebay.com or ebay.ca. They will probably go to ebay.com automatically since we are more familiar with the idea of a dotcom address. Or they might bypass ebay.ca altogether for the greater selection perceived to exist (true or otherwise) on ebay.com. Theory Two is that brand, spanking sparkly new listings achieve higher rank in Best Match search results... especially if both the seller and the seeker are identified as from the same geographical region. (Pardon me for butting-in. You may certainly tell me to MYOB, Raphael, and/or correct me if I am incorrect.)
Hi Maureen,
I'd say your hypotheses are pretty good. Both may be true, but I think what rose-dee is seeing is a result of many things, not the least of which is simple luck.
Yes, I agree Raphael that luck may be a good part of the explanation. Yet it's unfortunate -- and rather difficult to take -- that all my hard work has boiled down to nothing but luck! I might as well just throw up my hands and do whatever.
With respect to exposure, I'm not sure I can agree with 'mj's' theory, since it was my understanding that whether a Canadian buyer logged onto .com or .ca, he/she would see the same items, provided shipping was shown to Canada on each (which I do). Am I wrong in that? Will Canadian buyers who log onto .com not see everything listed on .ca even if shipping to Canada is offered?
The "brand new listings" theory doesn't hold water either, since I've frequently posted groups of new listings on eBay.ca for years, with absolutely no effect on my Canadian sales. Ironically, those have been many of the same kinds of listings that sold to my Canadian buyers in this particularly anomaly. Maybe I shouldn't use that word "anomaly", it will jinx the whole thing.
Another irony is that I decided I could no longer offer free shipping to Canada on most of the items I listed on .com because of the increased shipping FVFs (I used to take advantage of the $0 domestic shipping charge when listing on .ca because I knew I'd have few Canadian buyers, but that no longer works on the .com side, where "domestic" is U.S., and shipping most of my items is more expensive). So the items that sold to Canadians this week did not have free shipping, as they would have had on the .ca side -- and I don't "pad" my prices to absorb the shipping costs either. Bizarre.
It would be so helpful to know what it was that created this little blip, other than mere fate. I just wish there was more method and less madness to the process of listing and selling on eBay.
As I said -- twisted noodle effect. Rather sad that it may have simply come down to plain old good luck. 
@pocomocomputing wrote:
Here is an interesting topic posted by an experienced seller who should not be asking such a question.
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/How-to-List-for-Lowest-Fees/m-p/315146
I'm about to list a more expensive collectable item and it just occurred to me that FVFs might vary depending on the category I choose.
Is that true, and if so which category would be most in my favour?
To me, it is asking how to minimize final value fees by deliberately listing in the wrong category which is a form of fee avoidance and a policy violation.
I have had a policy violation for listing in the wrong category. Not for fee avoidance but because I thought my item could be listed in the category I chose. Sometimes it is hard to tell which category to list an item in. This may have happened to me a couple of times over the past 6+ years.
I also had a duplicate listing violation a couple of times and again by accident. From what I read in the eBay.com forums, having even just one duplicate can result in a suspension.
Now to the the point of this post. Why are policy violations hidden from the seller?
Policy violations used to be visible to a seller and are no longer visible. There used to be a time limit on each violation so the seller would know when it expired. Is this information still gathered? If so, why is it kept secret. I would think the new found seller appreciation by eBay would be more open.
Hi pocomo,
To start, pretty much all categories (all except selected Business & Industrial categories, Real Estate, Classified Ads and Motor Vehicles) now have a flat FVF of 10% if the seller doesn't have a store. So the question asked by the seller you referenced is pretty much moot.
As for the policy violation section that used to be on the Seller Dashboard, I can't tell why it was taken away. It's definitely things that are still tracked in the backend.
@pierrelebel wrote:
A policy question.
Somewhere eBay states: 'Please note that eBay does not permit sellers to accept cash payments sent by mail "
What exactly does it mean? We know we cannot suggest in our listings that cash is welcome. But what happens to the seller who receives cash in the mail because that is the way the buyer decided to pay (whatever the buyer's reasons)?
Is this an infraction? If so, how can it be monitored?
All it really means is that if a seller was to say in their listing that they accept cash payments sent by mail, we would remove the listing under the Accepted Payments policy. As with most eBay policies, our jurisdiction doesn't extend beyond the confines of the site, so if a seller was to get paid that way there isn't much we could do about it, also it would most likely already be over with once we could ever know about it.
@pocomocomputing wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
Hello everyone,
And the issues for which I have had news:
- Notifications reappearing in the header (pocomocomputing) - Fixed
When was this fixed? On another buying ID I use, I checked and this morning I have a notification that "You won this item" from days ago pop up again. I deleted it a few times as far as I recall.
I'm told it was fixed in the past couple of weeks. Can you tell me what user that is? Also please include your system + browser details. Thanks!
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