Hello Canadian eBayers! Welcome to the April 30th Weekly Board Hour. Please start posting at your convenience, we will start answering at 1 PM Eastern.
As they say in French : "Here we go again!"
Last week, in post #6 I explained the problem facing some (not all) sellers who were not getting the "free listing" when listing on eBay.ca and eBay.cafr. There was no problem with free listings when listing on eBay.com. I was one of the sellers negatively affected.
Rodney replied in post 12: "I am very sorry that this happened to Canadian sellers. It is obviously not the experience we want. Not sure why this promotion went wrong yet. It has been a long time since we had a "defect" like this in a seller promotion, and I hope it is even longer before we see a recurrence."
Rodney did not address my comment/question about the quality of customer service.
This week, eBay offers a new listing promotion (by invitation once again).
http://pages.ebay.com/promo/2014/0429/1000ADay.html
Clearly, invited sellers should be getting free listings whether they list on eBay.com or eBay.ca
From reports I have seen, most sellers are getting the free listing on both sites (I do get them this time) BUT some sellers have reported NOT getting the free listing on eBay.ca. Same situation we had last week, different sellers.
Once again, when contacted, your customer service representatives showed a total lack of knowledge claiming the promotion was offered on eBay.con only.
For more information, please take a look at (starting at post 22):
"after speaking to 2 reps, I was told that the promotion of 6000 free listings from April 29th to the 4th May was for the US only."
My first question today: Why do some Canadians experience the same problem we had two weeks ago in another promotion?
My second question of course: Why are your customer service representatives so unaware of the details of the promotion?
Finally, my third question: What will you be doing to fix both problems? (promotion to .ca and customer service misinformation).
Thank you for tour time.
@kays_place wrote:
An item sold last week but it was broken in my recent move (which was the same day as the sale was done). I communicated with the buyer, he was very understanding and I refunded his payment. My question is will that be a "Defect"? I am leery as to ask for a cancellation as I am not sure if that would be a "Defect".
Hello kayjay_treasures,
Unfortunately I think the system would interpret this as a defect. With that said, the reason why sellers don't get penalized until they have more than 5% of their transactions with defects from 8 or more different buyers is specifically to allow unavoidable situations like these. Provided this doesn't happen too often, you wouldn't be at rish as a result of this transaction that didn't go as planned.
@kays_place wrote:
Also, If I cancel any listing (with no bids) is that also a "Defect"?
No. In this case there hasn't been a transaction yet, so there can't be a defect.
@rose-dee wrote:
On a similar topic, can you confirm whether choosing the option "Other" when cancelling a transaction will never result in a defect? Or will it result in a defect under certain circumstances? If so, what are those?
There are situations where none of the usual cancellation options apply, yet the transaction should be cancelled through no fault of the seller. Many thanks.
Hi rose-dee,
As you probably know, we can never say never 🙂
Choosing "Other" in itself wouldn't create a defect on that transaction. Best approach is to have a clear and detailed conversation with the buyer vie the eBay Messages, so that if you do end up with a defect, eBay CS can review the case and overturn it if applicable.
@pierrelebel wrote:
As they say in French : "Here we go again!"
Last week, in post #6 I explained the problem facing some (not all) sellers who were not getting the "free listing" when listing on eBay.ca and eBay.cafr. There was no problem with free listings when listing on eBay.com. I was one of the sellers negatively affected.
Rodney replied in post 12: "I am very sorry that this happened to Canadian sellers. It is obviously not the experience we want. Not sure why this promotion went wrong yet. It has been a long time since we had a "defect" like this in a seller promotion, and I hope it is even longer before we see a recurrence."
Rodney did not address my comment/question about the quality of customer service.
This week, eBay offers a new listing promotion (by invitation once again).
http://pages.ebay.com/promo/2014/0429/1000ADay.html
Clearly, invited sellers should be getting free listings whether they list on eBay.com or eBay.ca
From reports I have seen, most sellers are getting the free listing on both sites (I do get them this time) BUT some sellers have reported NOT getting the free listing on eBay.ca. Same situation we had last week, different sellers.
Once again, when contacted, your customer service representatives showed a total lack of knowledge claiming the promotion was offered on eBay.con only.
For more information, please take a look at (starting at post 22):
"after speaking to 2 reps, I was told that the promotion of 6000 free listings from April 29th to the 4th May was for the US only."
My first question today: Why do some Canadians experience the same problem we had two weeks ago in another promotion?
My second question of course: Why are your customer service representatives so unaware of the details of the promotion?
Finally, my third question: What will you be doing to fix both problems? (promotion to .ca and customer service misinformation).
Thank you for tour time.
Hi pierrelebel,
To echo what Rodney said about this last week, we're sorry this has happened, obviously this is not the experience we want to bring to our members. We've flagged the issue with the appropriate teams and are working with them to ensure everything gets straightened out and that the issue doesn't repeat itself, even though it appears it did with this new promotion. Unfortunately I am not at liberty to discuss this in much more details for now, but rest assured we will not leave this unattended.
@arlene_v wrote:
Hi Raphael!
I only buy on eBay infrequently, but have been shopping more here this year than usual. Some good buys!
Lately I have seen many GSP items that have very confusing "import charges".
The best example of this are these two listings, almost identical in all respects, listed by the same seller within an hour of so of each other, showing disparate "import charges" to my location here in Ontario. (A difference of over $20!)
They were active when I checked them last week, but are now no longer available, but the pertinent info is still there.
111315030724
121308890232
Why do the "import charges" vary so much between virtually identical items, other than the colour of the rhinestones? There should only be HST on these for me here in Ontario, because they were made in Canada (Sherman jewelry is a very well known Canadian manufacturer of vintage costume jewelry, and is very collectible here, so this is of interest to Canadian buyers). This is stated in both auctions, so I am really at a loss to explain this difference in the "import charges".
Many thanks for any insight, much appreciated.
Hi arlene_v,
Thanks for showing me this. I tried to see what would cause the difference but like you, I can't really tell. The only difference between the two I can spot is in the Item Specifics: one has Country/Region of Manufacture, and the other one has both Country/Region of Manufacture as well as Country of Manufacture. It's possible this may cause the difference in price. In any case, I've sent this case to the GSP team so they can tell me what is causing this, or file a bug report if this is what we're seeing.
@bookelph wrote:
Can I ask a question about the Defect Report ?
I know it isn’t available yet on ebay.ca, but I was looking at it on ebay.com.
For GLOBAL Transaction, my Defect rate shows 6; For USA it shows 4
When I use the “Download a Report” (see which transactions have defects)
The report shows: Your total transactions with defects as of April 30, 2014: 1
Is the report inaccurate? Or am I not doing it right?
When will it be fixed/accurate?
When will ebay.ca have it?
I'm curious to see what transactions resulted in defects, and the report is an easy way to identify these.
Just FYI,
I'm not overly concerned about Defects at this point:
the rules have changes somewhat with returns, ie, cancel first...then refund.
Most times, in the past I haven’t even bothered with cancellation if it’s a small $$ amount, my concern was always more about treating my customers well....I know I will have to change my procedure going forward to avoid a defect
Hi bookelph,
Thanks for flagging. I'll need time to investigate this, so I'll update this thread when I get to the bottom of it and send you a note by email to let you know I did so.
@pocomocomputing wrote:
Suggestion
In site preferences, Message flow,
My eBay -> Account -> Manage communication with buyers
The eBay message flow to a buyer is shown on this page. The third option "If your buyer hasn't paid in a couple of days" sends a payment reminder to the buyer if they have not paid. There is an option to turn off this message by the seller. The message is sent after 48 hours.
This is useful for sellers who have longer terms for payments like 7 or more days. Why cannot this reminder still be available to sellers to use but allow selection of the number of days when to send it?
Sellers with longer payment terms manually send out the reminder but have to remember to do this.
The Unpaid Item assistant is customizable to different days before starting an unpaid Item case. Why not the reminder? Maybe integrate the two options somehow.
Hi pocomocomputing,
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll take it back to the team.
@pocomocomputing wrote:
Site issue with eBay id links to my Profile.
If I am logged into my account and view one of my active listings, in the top right is my eBay id with feedback rating. If I click on the eBay id, it is supposed to bring up my Profile Page. It gives an error now. If I look at another seller's listings, it brings up their Profile page properly. This was working a few days ago as I occasionally randomly check my listings and try out various parts of the eBay listing page.
On a similar note, if I go to my feedback page, there are links on the right for different things. One is a View eBay My World and that is a dead link when I view my feedback page. It should go to my profile page. It works for other sellers feedback page. Also the link should be renamed to View My Profile.
It also happens on my id anywhere apparently (At top of Active listing page in Selling Manager).
I do not know if it is just my eBay id or any sellers. It happens on eBay.ca or eBay.com.
Thank you for this report. There has been recent issues with Profile pages, I can tell you all those you reported here are already logged and being worked on, some of which have already been resolved.
@pocomocomputing wrote:
How will defects affect search visibility?
If I have 0 defects, then there should be no impact.
If I get one defect, is it going to affect visibility. If I have 5 defects, what will happen.
Is there a threshold where a certain number of defects affect search visibility.
I ask because in the past, I have had a buyer give me all 1's for DSRs on a sale. I have few sales. I did not make a sale for weeks after this.
Another time I had a 1 in description. Same thing sales died.
Will some defects be tolerated before it affects a seller since it is apparent that all sellers will have some defects all the time in their review period (3 months or 12 months).
The official answer to this questions is: the lower your defect rate, the higher you'll place in Search.
