eBay

pierrelebel · ‎07-07-2015

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m07/i07/s01

Please do not shoot the messenger!

ricarmic · ‎07-07-2015

THX for posting Pierre! I understand their reasoning.

If anyone happens to raise this issue on the weekly board, please add my main concern to the discussion:

I don't mind the shortened description as much as I am seriously concerned about the "random" phrase it appears to pull from the detailed listing above the link. In the case of my descriptions I saw excepts which were very misleading on their own. I would very much prefer that there is NOTHING besides the link they have to click on to see more.

rose-dee · ‎07-07-2015

Aha! Thank you for this information Pierre.

First eBay meddles with our photos to "enhance" them, now they're cherry-picking text to make up a "description" for us -- maybe they could stop charging us for listing if they don't want us to do the work.

Coincidentally, yesterday I managed to buttonhole a friend who has full internet service on his Iphone and finally managed to get a mobile user's look, in real time, at a couple of my listings. I was surprised (and perplexed) to see that there was a paragraph of description at the top that I knew I certainly didn't write. It was more or less an amalgam of some of the main points of the listing, but it could leave a buyer with the impression that that was the end of it -- and leave some important details out.

Exactly how eBay is doing this is also a concern to me, i.e. how do they encapsulate the information in a listing description using some sort of programme and still ensure that it's correct and not misleading? If they wanted a "consistent" appearance across the site, why not obligate sellers to write their own 100-word précis!

Copyright issues aside (I won't open that can of worms here but there's an argument to be made that if listings are copyright, eBay's fiddling and re-writing them is a violation), I certainly hope eBay is not now going to permit us to be punished for misunderstandings and misinterpretations by buyers due to this "summarizing" that result in even more defects and INAD claims -- things are already bad enough.

rosscd57 · ‎07-07-2015

I guess eBay had to move it's foot slightly to the right - before they could: Shoot it!

__________________________________________________________

Old enough to know better. Young enough to do it again. Crazy enough to try

cumos55 · ‎07-07-2015

The following statement is included in each listing on eBay.

Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing.

If anyone tampers, adjusts or does anything to the listing....

This statement can no longer apply.

mr.elmwood · ‎07-07-2015

Descriptions are irrelevant.

Buyers do NOT read them 65% of the time.

The "responsibility of the listing" are keywords, great pictures, free shipping, and a 60 day refund policy. "Look Ma! No description!".

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rose-dee · ‎07-08-2015

@mr.elmwood wrote:
Descriptions are irrelevant.

Buyers do NOT read them 65% of the time.

The "responsibility of the listing" are keywords, great pictures, free shipping, and a 60 day refund policy. "Look Ma! No description!".

Well, I'd say yes and no. The particular description being discussed here is shown right up front on an Iphone (as I surprisingly learned the other day), very short but prominently displayed. You're probably right that the effort of looking for the rest of the text by the seller is too much for most people -- whether it's 65% or not, I don't know -- but it's pretty hard to miss this "summary" description.

An accurate description by the seller can make a difference in a SNAD claim, especially where vintage, collectible, or used items are concerned. It may take phoning and persisting with eBay customer disservice to get such claims reversed, but with no description (or lack of detail), it's no dice with eBay at all.

My main problem with this concept by eBay is that they shouldn't be doing the summarizing -- if they want a brief up-front summary for mobile, then they should be requiring sellers to do it, otherwise it's a recipe for defects.

sylviebee · ‎07-08-2015

@mr.elmwood wrote:
Descriptions are irrelevant.

Buyers do NOT read them 65% of the time.

The "responsibility of the listing" are keywords, great pictures, free shipping, and a 60 day refund policy. "Look Ma! No description!".

In my main category descriptions are everything.

I've always found it annoying when sellers use descriptions to describe the appearance of an item. That is very common and pictures do a much better job. For example, many sellers will post details like the following (Yuck!): On one side there are lovely green, red,, orange, purple, and yellow flowers encircling a group of 7 brightly dressed dancing girls with long flowing blond hair and the other side shows 3 stunning ladies frolicking in a lush garden with birds of paradise floating in the tress and great danes sleeping at their feet. Breathtaking!

However, when sellers do not accurately describe the size and damage to a vintage/antique used item it will result in a return. ALL have some damage unless they've been packed in a box for the past century.

Pictures are not enough.

Even if shown clearly the damage must also be added to the description.

triber · ‎07-15-2015

I have run into a problem with the descriptions not showing. Had a buyer purchase a book of knitting patterns yesterday, the title clearly says Knitting PATTERNS but for $7.99 she thought I was selling a hand knitted sweater! I have no idea how she thought I would know which of the 4 pictured, plus the size etc. I mailed it yesterday, then get a message today saying she wanted the green sweater knitted.

Some buyers are not going to see the place to click for a full description, and for selling some items like this I can see an ongoing problems. We go to a lot of trouble to write a full description only to have it hidden? At least we should have the option to opt out of this feature.

cumos55 · ‎07-15-2015

I was able to see a couple of my listings on a small screen this past Sunday. The full listing was shown, in very small print. The print could be expanded such that it becomes readable but then in order to read the description, one had to bounce the image left and right.

Summarizing what is in the listing will not work... because a computer is doing the summary..... imagine people doing the summary??? for millions of listings...

Each listing has to be left as is.... each listing is the seller's responsibility....

and any unwelcome action on that listing creates a problem for the seller... and then eBay.....

rose-dee · ‎07-15-2015

@triber wrote:
Had a buyer purchase a book of knitting patterns yesterday, the title clearly says Knitting PATTERNS but for $7.99 she thought I was selling a hand knitted sweater! I have no idea how she thought I would know which of the 4 pictured, plus the size etc. I mailed it yesterday, then get a message today saying she wanted the green sweater knitted.

My first reaction to this was to laugh out loud, but being in the business of selling patterns too, I know what a constant worry this is. If people are already either not bothering, or having too much difficulty seeing our descriptions, what will happen when eBay makes it even easier for them to avoid the body of the text of a listing?

I agree with 'cumos' completely, that if eBay is going to continue to keep sellers responsible for listing content, they should not be adding, subtracting, or summarizing anything in our listings (and when I say "they" of course, I mean the eBay bots). The inevitable potential of misinterpretation, omission of or error in a critical point, or misrepresentation that would be seen by buyers as fraudulent or misleading, is too great.

EBay can't have it both ways, and I think this concept could lead to a lot of sellers abandoning eBay as just too risky or difficult a place to sell. In its frenzy to appeal to mobile buyers, it seems to me eBay is charging ahead without fully considering the possible repercussions.

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-15-2015

The print could be expanded such that it becomes readable but then in order to read the description, one had to bounce the image left and right.

I think that part of the problem with your listings on a mobile device is that you use the store directory on the left of each listing so that takes up some space. I personally like having that on my listings so I'm not sure what can be done about that but I also noticed that on my pc screen, many of your sentences take up the full width of the screen. If you shorten your line length then people may not have to scroll left and right as much.

I'm not 100% positive but I think that if you did not have to click on a 'description' link on a mobile to see your description then you were probably looking at your listing on the ebay 'classic' site rather than on the ebay mobile app. I don't have the app so I don't know if the buyer sees the store directory when viewing on the ap.

cumos55 · ‎07-16-2015

When my listings were viewed on a mobile App... the store directory was excluded when the description was viewed.

triber · ‎07-16-2015

I called eBay on this yesterday, and was ASSURED that this is not happening. I told them the link that Pierre gave us, and they said that it is nothing to do with eBay. After a lot of checking, she found that the hiding of descriptions does actually happen when you look at your own listings, then, in order to see the descriptions on other sellers, you have to leave you own eBay page and go to the other ones. That did work for the few we tried, so hopefully buyers are seeing our descriptions.

rose-dee · ‎07-16-2015

@triber wrote:
I called eBay on this yesterday, and was ASSURED that this is not happening. I told them the link that Pierre gave us, and they said that it is nothing to do with eBay.

I'm afraid this sounds to me like a typical eBay response from Customer Service -- pat us on the head like anxious children and reassure us that everything is just fine. I'd take anything that comes from telephone contact with CS with a very large grain of salt.

All I can tell you is that last week my friend pulled up one of my listings on his Iphone and I saw with some shock and dismay the truncated "description" at the top of my listing that I definitely did not write. I wasn't logged onto his phone at all -- he did the keyword search on eBay as a visitor himself.

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-16-2015

@triber wrote:
I called eBay on this yesterday, and was ASSURED that this is not happening. I told them the link that Pierre gave us, and they said that it is nothing to do with eBay. After a lot of checking, she found that the hiding of descriptions does actually happen when you look at your own listings, then, in order to see the descriptions on other sellers, you have to leave you own eBay page and go to the other ones. That did work for the few we tried, so hopefully buyers are seeing our descriptions.

That doesn't sound right. The description test is buyer based so some buyers do not see any descriptions unless they click on the see description link. It shouldn't have anything specifically to do with your own listings...you either see all description or you don't see any. Last time when this test was going on, the ebay reps on the .com board said that if a seller received a defect because the buyer said they didn't see a description that the defect would be removed. I don't know if that is still being done or if it was ever possible to get that done.

As far as the problem with the buyer not realizing that they were getting a pattern, I've heard of that happening to various sellers quite a few times over the years even though the full description was showing.

triber · ‎07-16-2015

One of the tests we did was that I checked another buyers listing, and the description was not showing. The moderator looked at the same one, and she could see it, that's when she told me to close my browser and open up eBay again, and then I could see the description on that listing.