eBay

hlmacdon · ‎09-12-2017

It looks like they are rolling out warnings, at least via users who use seller hub on ebay.com. Had a new listing pop up today with a warning and action item under tasks to remove contact info from listings. I use a template service, with no external contact info listed anywhere. Seems to be flagging as a false positive due to the link to an actual ebay URL which is included by the template by default. The following URL seems to be getting flagged: http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FindAnswers&requested=ebayusernamegoeshere

From what I can see they are just doing a key word search for "contact" and not even whitelisting their own URLs. Seriously guys, how stupid and incompetent can you get? Can we stop wasting seller time with incompetent programming and changes and fix actual broken things like the shopping cart? Thanks!

hlmacdon · ‎09-14-2017

More info here

This is an absolute joke. It looks like links from template providers are triggering the bot to flag listings. Any images not hosted on ebay apparently may be causing an issue as well, so if you have a gallery in your description you may be getting flagged. Other issues related to non-white listed domains seem to be triggering the bot to flag listings. Quoted for hilarity:

"Hey @jenstad, it looks like the image links in your listings are the issue as they could take the buyer off of eBay. You are able to load up to 12 photos in your listings for the buyer to review, so generally do not need to include additional or duplicated photos in the description. Removing these should resolve this for you, but keep us posted if you run into any other trouble!"

I don't even know what to say after reading this. The incompetence displayed in this latest effort is mind boggling. Why aren't ebay managers that are responsible for this project managing and actually communicating with developers? No word if this is causing these falsely flagged listings to get deranked in best match. This whole thing reeks of being handed off to an intern or farmed out to freelancer. Ebay has become a gong show, full stop.

rose-dee · ‎09-15-2017

I haven't personally had any of these warnings (yet), but I do use Auctiva, and I do have photos hosted by Auctiva within my description pane. So perhaps it's just a matter of the bots not yet having found me.

How can anyone carry on a business and make money with one idiotic problem or another happening every other week. Not only are we wasting our time "fixing" what eBay tells us is unacceptable, but it's never, ever done for any length of time. Meanwhile, important things (like checkout) are still not working properly.

You're right, this is becoming completely absurd.

hlmacdon · ‎09-15-2017

@rose-dee wrote:
I haven't personally had any of these warnings (yet), but I do use Auctiva, and I do have photos hosted by Auctiva within my description pane. So perhaps it's just a matter of the bots not yet having found me.

How can anyone carry on a business and make money with one idiotic problem or another happening every other week. Not only are we wasting our time "fixing" what eBay tells us is unacceptable, but it's never, ever done for any length of time. Meanwhile, important things (like checkout) are still not working properly.

You're right, this is becoming completely absurd.

The bots seem to be either processing listings randomly, or perhaps flagging GTC listings as they renew. The current alert system is tied to users of Seller Hub, as the action task is tied to that. Listers on .ca aren't using seller hub. If I log into .ca I don't see the flagged listings anywhere, but on .com I do. You may want to try logging in to .com and seeing what shows up there. I'm not sure if you have to be enrolled into Seller Hub by having listings on .com or if it simply defaults to Seller Hub.

I have no problem with changes as long as they are a) implemented with a modicum of intelligence, b) well documented and communicated, and c) working with ebay solution providers to ensure things are compliant. Everything they are currently trying to accomplish could have been rolled out at once, instead they are piece mealing it and handling it horribly. Support staff at ebay have no clue how this is being implemented. You would think they would realize company revenue would actually grow if sellers weren't running around fixing things or implementing work arounds.

femmefan1946 · ‎09-15-2017

Dunno about the Seller Hub, all I've seen of it is the clumsy new Feedback that doesn't self-fill and requires more typing. It does have an obvious Report Buyer for unhappy sellers though, which may help with scolding for false positives.

I have been notified about a few hundred listings with 'policy violations'. The offending code seems to be a link to my own eBay store.

Huh.

hlmacdon · ‎09-15-2017

Joy of fing joys

Now we are getting the below email:

We're writing to let you know that as of September 15, 2017, some of your listings require immediate update due to policy violations or active content usage.

62 of your listings contain(s) contact-information such as phone number, email address or weblinks, which is in violation of listing policies. Noncompliant listings will soon be blocked.

Using one of the oh so handy tools ebay provides to scan a non-compliant listing:

- No active content found. Your listing is ready to go!
- No non-compliant links found. Your listing is ready to go.

No contact information. But hey they only gave me a period instead of an exclamation mark for the non-compliant link pass, maybe that is a hidden message.

Thank you for wasting more of my time.

cdbasement · ‎09-18-2017

Please - someone from eBay help clarify this!! I have honestly lost count over how many times in the last 10 years there has been some major disruption affecting sellers along these lines. Anyone remember pre-set shipping fees for CD's/DVD's/Records? Pulled everything down and relisted 1 at a time to eBay.ca. How about this one: eBay.ca listings must be in Canadian $$ - another winner. I use a third party listing service (Inkfrog), they could not accommodate this so again, pull everything down and relist again. Etc etc etc.

At least this time around the "fix" is just to open each item, strip out Inkfrog's template, and submit change. Not a big deal if you have a few hundred items listed, but I try to run at 6,000 items at a time.... This is going to take forever!!!! Only 3600 to go (Oh yeah - and the number will fluctuate throughout the day, 60 randomly dropped off today without being edited... **bleep**???)

eBay - what is the drop dead date for this? Do I need to pull multiple all nighters? If my health fails as a result perhaps I should put you on notice (I'm sensing lawsuits) ???

And then what? Another 45 days goes by and you decide something else needs to be fixed? Maybe you folks need to look internally at your absolutely dreadful business practices.

What about all the "links" that show up on our listings for non-eBay products? The hypocrisy is not even amusing any more. Enough is enough!

Also - what happens at the drop dead dead with our items? Do they drop into the ether (good luck manually trying to inventory 6,000 items to find out what is missing) or will they drop into unsolds?

This is insane!! I have noticed a substantial uptick in business as the fall buying season has begun. I have at least another 10,000 items to get listed, but instead I'm regurgitating current inventory because eBay is sensing that there might be something hinky (although they are not sure). If anyone seen Ina Steiner's post last night on a well read online sellers board, apparently eBay doesn't have any answers when you call them (if you can get through, as obviously there are overwhelmed with this).

Dammit! A few months back I started considering dumping off all my inventory to other traditional retailers and leave eBay altogether. But, as if in an abusive relationship I gave them another chance. I doubt anyone form eBay who reads this will have the balls to step up and make this right. Anyone want an inventory of 55,000 CD's / DVD's that generate a nice monthly cash flow???

Allan

zee-chan · ‎09-19-2017

I wish they can have some sort of function where they could just take out the "offending" active content code out of our listings with a few clicks. I don't really have the patience to edit my listings one by one...

hlmacdon · ‎09-19-2017

@cdbasement wrote:

I use a third party listing service (Inkfrog), they could not accommodate this so again, pull everything down and relist again. Etc etc etc.

At least this time around the "fix" is just to open each item, strip out Inkfrog's template, and submit change. Not a big deal if you have a few hundred items listed, but I try to run at 6,000 items at a time.... This is going to take forever!!!! Only 3600 to go (Oh yeah - and the number will fluctuate throughout the day, 60 randomly dropped off today without being edited... **bleep**???)

eBay - what is the drop dead date for this? Do I need to pull multiple all nighters? If my health fails as a result perhaps I should put you on notice (I'm sensing lawsuits) ???

As an update on this and based on what I have been able to deduce from talking with some template/service providers and ZERO help from ebay, there are a number of things that can cause the filtering algorithm to flag your listings for contact information policy violations. It appears this is still very much a WIP as there have been several patches to the algorithm as some earlier issues (ebay domain links, some template provider credits) appear to be fixed now. The following is still applicable:

This is being rolled out to users of Seller Hub first but will be rolled out to all users as this is part of a major program to revise the criteria for allowable listing formats on ebay. The recently announced fall update highlights give a high level overview of the changes. It will effect you, just a question of when they roll it out to a broader customer set.
No tools have been provided by Ebay to indicate what is wrong in your listing. Seller Hub provides those users with a list of flagged listings, but no guidance. Shipscript has this tool to scan listings for *some* issues. It is useful for highlighting html links. It does not check for contact info issues. Sellers have been given no guidance on what is causing their listings to be flagged. Ebay employees seem to have no clue on the filtering criteria or they are not allowed to publicly comment on the criteria (as with aspects of Best Match and other algorithms). Calling ebay won't get you anywhere.
Any external http link that isn't to an asset (by asset I mean for example a .CSS style sheet or .jpg image rather than a .htm/,html link), will trip the filter. A limited number of domains have been whitelisted in the fall update. These include video services (several restrictions on content), shipping services, and a very limited credit format for template/listing service providers. If a domain name is referenced in the listing and it isn't on the approved domains list, your listing will get flagged.
Users of certain template/listing providers that embed product images in the description have reported having listings flagged. You may want to stick to ebay image hosting only. That eliminates any HTTPS issues, so 2 birds 1 stone.
Template/listing service providers have been told their domains are NOT going to be whitelisted. Some of these services use http links within the listing they generate. These links effect core functionality of their template design. There seems to be confusion among providers and many have been caught off guard. You'll need to confirm with your provider if they will be updating and when this will be done. Removing current html links in your listing may break parts of your template.
Certain words or phrases will cause your listings to be flagged. You may not want to use any word or phrase that can be construed as "communication" within your item description. Some ebay employees have suggest that "ebay message" may be acceptable. I say avoid anything that is unrelated to your item.
Certain strings of numbers are being recognized by the filtering algorithm as phone numbers. Be very careful when copying and pasting information from one application to your listing provider. You may want to scrub all of your text by pasting it into a plain text editor like notepad.
Certain model numbers of various types of parts (think car parts, industrial, etc) are being recognized as phone numbers and flagged.
You need to check the actual html source (you can find this in the item description html tab) in the for your product descriptions very carefully, especially if you use a template provider or have use different providers in the past. You may have legacy html that isn't being stripped out/overwritten when you post an update through your listing program. Shipscript's tool will help you identify some of the issues but wont find everything.
If your listing is compliant after editing, it should drop off the flagged list after a somewhat short period (mine would drop off after a few minutes but YMMV). The only way to tell if a listing is compliant is if it drops off the Seller hub flagged listings task list. No idea how they are going to handle this for non-seller hub users.
The filters are buggy. I've had listings with 100% identical html source be flagged as both compliant and non-compliant. I've had listings that were flagged be unflagged with no editing.

If you haven't guessed from all the changes, ebay has gone full amazon. I wish they would have just rolled this into one update requiring all listings to go through an ebay listing/template generator. This would be far easier if they would just come out and say they are going into full retail marketplace mode and want a single, consistent look for everything on the site.

For those of you who aren't technically inclined, I would suggest that if you have any listings flagged, completely empty the content of your item description html tab and start fresh knowing what the limitations are. Judging from the boards, there are a lot of sellers who have had lots of random left over code buried within the html source on their old listings. There are things that won't be visible on the page that will trip filters and have you scratching your head.

hlmacdon · ‎09-19-2017

@zee-chan wrote:
I wish they can have some sort of function where they could just take out the "offending" active content code out of our listings with a few clicks. I don't really have the patience to edit my listings one by one...

This isn't really an active content issue. Active content is one of the criteria that has changed with respect to what is allowed in the listing format. Having links be secure is another criteria, mobile friendliness another criteria, and on and on. The latest changes encompass what you are allowed to link to and essentially what you are allowed to write as it pertains to any communication. The problem with just stripping out bits of code is you can't do that without understanding what the code is being used for. For example for some template providers you may have dozens or hundreds of external html links being used for various things like links to your store categories or other aspects of the template design.

The TLDR of all these changes is that ebay is basically setting new guidelines for what is allowed to be put on a given listing page. Unfortunately rather than do that all at once, they've done it bit by bit, using different tools. All of this could have been done in one go. I'm sure there are many sellers who are sick to death of revising their listings yet again.

ricarmic · ‎09-20-2017

At this time, I'm not planning to "fix" the 400 listings that are in violation. That 10% are all "old" listings listed more than 2 years ago. I recognized back then that eventually they weren't going to like links to my own store or my own pictures etc and I adopted the "short and sweet" description style with short text only, nothing fancy.

As I understand it, my offending items won't have their descriptions presented only a pulled portion (probably gobbldygook) unless the person clicks on the expand description link.

My belief is that few people are even looking at my descriptions anyway, I'm thinking as long as they don't drop the visibility of the actual item any further (which is probably low already anyway) I don't care.

Perhaps I haven't paid close enough attention and if I see the sales of the offending ones stop almost completely, I'll revisit that decision.

Time will tell.....

(I have experience from other sites where they just stopped (with no notice) allowing self hosted links at all. This meant my items description dropped from 4 to 40 pictures to only the gallery type picture and my descriptions had gaps in them where the picture links used to be. Stuff still sold despite that, so apparently only one picture is enough sometimes.... my point is it might be worthwhile to wait and see how much a difference it makes, unless a very large % of ones items are affected??)

hlmacdon · ‎09-21-2017

@ricarmic wrote:

As I understand it, my offending items won't have their descriptions presented only a pulled portion (probably gobbldygook) unless the person clicks on the expand description link.

My belief is that few people are even looking at my descriptions anyway, I'm thinking as long as they don't drop the visibility of the actual item any further (which is probably low already anyway) I don't care.

According to the policy page

Listings that are not corrected by October 15, 2017 may be subject to the following actions:

Removal from search results
Unsuccessful submission of new or revised listings containing contact details
Modification or removal of noncompliant content
Other account-level action

Basically the big stick to force compliance is killing visibility of the item, no search result visibility will dent sales. That followed by a filter in place to block relisting of GTCs as they roll over will force people to get things updated. From what is listed there and from the other posts, it sounds like they will either block the description entirely or just strip offending bits of the html source for listings that are still active. Not sure what other account level action encompasses as the linked page is just a list of what is not allowed.

In my case it was worthwhile addressing it in one go as almost all of my listings were flagged, expect for the ones that randomly unflagged themselves for no apparent reason. It is worth mentioning that your flagged listings may not be complete yet. Mine took several days before the bot was done flagging listings. Easier at this point to just move everything to a compliant format that meets the guidelines here along with all of the other changes (ie mobile friendly, active content, https, etc).

I think you are absolutely right that hardly anyone reads descriptions, judging by the number of people on phones, questions that are already answered in item descriptions, etc. I just pared mine back to a more basic format. All I really care about is being able to update specific content within a template on the fly (shipping information or similar information you may update from time to time).

ricarmic · ‎09-21-2017

Ugghhh my apologies, my comments were meant for the

HTTP vs HTTPS issue.

Apparently I didn't drink enough coffee yesterday...... and/or there are so many things to worry about anymore it is easy to get confused about what's what!

As far as I know I'm ok on the contact info issue.

Sorry for adding confusion to this thread....

hlmacdon · ‎09-21-2017

@ricarmic wrote:
Ugghhh my apologies, my comments were meant for the

HTTP vs HTTPS issue.

Apparently I didn't drink enough coffee yesterday...... and/or there are so many things to worry about anymore it is easy to get confused about what's what!

As far as I know I'm ok on the contact info issue.

Sorry for adding confusion to this thread....

You are certainly right about that! For the http/https issue you'll get your listing description not loaded unless the user triggers it. That one is going to be a bit less of an issue. From a scan of your listings there are 1763 with bad target issues, and 1764 with SSL issues. The SSL issues look like your self hosted images which look like generic images you use in your listing. My only concern with those is given that is a personal domain tied to your username that it might get flagged at some point in the future. Assuming you only have a few generic images being used you should be able to do a bulk edit find/replace.

ricarmic · ‎09-21-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:
You are certainly right about that! For the http/https issue you'll get your listing description not loaded unless the user triggers it. That one is going to be a bit less of an issue. From a scan of your listings there are 1763 with bad target issues, and 1764 with SSL issues. The SSL issues look like your self hosted images which look like generic images you use in your listing. My only concern with those is given that is a personal domain tied to your username that it might get flagged at some point in the future. Assuming you only have a few generic images being used you should be able to do a bulk edit find/replace.

Your scan got 1763?

I just reran the IWAYs thing, and it's dropped down to 398 from 400 (which is what I expect will be the case for the listings with self hosted images which are unique pictures of the item being sold).

I'm presuming you ran something else other than the IWAYS tool against my stuff? I ran turbolister until January 2016 and the placement is about right to mean that this scan also included the turbolister ICONs which are "HTTP" links.

I'd be interested to know what tool you ran?

hlmacdon · ‎09-21-2017

@ricarmic wrote:
Your scan got 1763?

I just reran the IWAYs thing, and it's dropped down to 398 from 400 (which is what I expect will be the case for the listings with self hosted images which are unique pictures of the item being sold).

I'm presuming you ran something else other than the IWAYS tool against my stuff? I ran turbolister until January 2016 and the placement is about right to mean that this scan also included the turbolister ICONs which are "HTTP" links.

I'd be interested to know what tool you ran?

You can use shipscript's active content scanner here and compare the results with the iways thing. To dig into the details of a specific listing, the active content sandbox tool here will give you specifics of a listing. If you click on the markup tab it'll highlight the relevant code within your source.

ricarmic · ‎09-22-2017

Yep it is the turbolister stuff as well as links back to my own store.

I'll have to contemplate if/what I do now that it is 50% of the listings.......

THX for the info!!!!

rose-dee · ‎09-22-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:

Certain words or phrases will cause your listings to be flagged. You may not want to use any word or phrase that can be construed as "communication" within your item description. Some ebay employees have suggest that "ebay message" may be acceptable. I say avoid anything that is unrelated to your item.
Certain strings of numbers are being recognized by the filtering algorithm as phone numbers. Be very careful when copying and pasting information from one application to your listing provider. You may want to scrub all of your text by pasting it into a plain text editor like notepad.
Certain model numbers of various types of parts (think car parts, industrial, etc) are being recognized as phone numbers and flagged.

OMG, this is what happens when bots are let loose -- no contextual judgment, and no quarter given by eBay. You're wrong even if you may be right.

Thank you for posting all this information above. As I've said in previous posts, my grasp of digital background is practical, not technical, and I suspect I'm not the only one in that boat. I think the task required here is going to be beyond many sellers. And how many inadvertent "infractions" will any one seller be allowed before being downgraded into oblivion?

You're right, it's eBay morphing into Amazon. Pretty soon everything will be generic or stock photos, with 2 or 3 lines of generic text. Not a very comfortable place for some of us.

hlmacdon · ‎09-23-2017

@ricarmic wrote:
Yep it is the turbolister stuff as well as links back to my own store.

I'll have to contemplate if/what I do now that it is 50% of the listings.......

THX for the info!!!!

Shipscript was working on/tweaking a bulk editor so you may want to look into that more closely and see how that is shaping up.

hlmacdon · ‎09-23-2017

@rose-dee wrote:
OMG, this is what happens when bots are let loose -- no contextual judgment, and no quarter given by eBay. You're wrong even if you may be right.

Thank you for posting all this information above. As I've said in previous posts, my grasp of digital background is practical, not technical, and I suspect I'm not the only one in that boat. I think the task required here is going to be beyond many sellers. And how many inadvertent "infractions" will any one seller be allowed before being downgraded into oblivion?

You're right, it's eBay morphing into Amazon. Pretty soon everything will be generic or stock photos, with 2 or 3 lines of generic text. Not a very comfortable place for some of us.

Ebay unfortunately is not a software company. You get outsource or intern level code that is just plain dysfunctional. At this point you have to accept it is no longer ebay, but rather a marketplace with marketplace rules. They need to be hiring technical people from the ecommerce world into executive positions, not people who are stuck in 90's brick and mortar retail mindset.

I'm fine with the change in direction, but they need to provide users with tools to cope with these changes. It really puts non-technical people at a disadvantage. They are basically forcing people to edit code which frankly is ridiculous. Try explaining to someone non-technical that they have to look at the source of their listing to find remnant bits of code that aren't displayed on screen in their listing but are causing a policy violation. Then tell them they need to do that for active content, non-ebay links/contact information, broken targets, SSL issues, and whatever else ebay comes up with.

At the very least any flagged listing should walk a user through which part of their code got flagged and provide tooltip style hints on how to fix the problems. They are going to end up losing thousands of listings at the rate they are going, which is a huge potential loss of revenue.