eBay

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

Hello everyone,

Welcome to our weekly chat. The thread will remain open for the next 24 hours or so, please go ahead and post at your convenience.

Open issues:

Anchor Store coupon not working/only working on AU site
Errors when uploading more than one tracking number at a time (repeated, erroneous numbers saved)
Request Total unavailable

Updates:

Printer friendly Order Details page missing items - Resolved - fix rolled out or to roll out soon.
Selling limits live items count discrepancy - We are investigating further.
Missing Tracked Packet destinations - still no update from PayPal and Pitney Bowes
Combined shipping offers not shown to international buyers - ticket open

If anything is missing, please let me know. Thanks!

dutchman48 · ‎07-06-2016

@snoopwiz wrote:
Hello Raphael,

We are working on a fully Canadian solution which will be much more attractive price-wise.

Having used my previous coupon ($109 or so), I found myself paying approx $111 for a quantity of 50, 4 x 4 x 6 boxes. Whats that now, about 2 bucks and a bit,per box? My current supplier, being U-Line (and also through an independent I deal with), charges me 33 cents for the same box, which would total $16.50 for the same 50 boxes and, lets add in about $14.00 for shipping, totaling about $30.00. A cringe-worthy $80 less. For 50 boxes.

What is the corp going to do for their Canadian sellers moving forward to make up this extraordinary cost difference?
I won't even mention that the size box I bought is really not the ideal size for my business, as that was not made available through the seller. Oh wait, too late, I already did mention that, didn't I? 🙂

Why do they not triple the coupon for Canadians to offset the tripled price? Should be as easy to do as price tripling

momcqueen · ‎07-06-2016

While we're griping, I'd like to take issue with box sizes. Not everyone here on ebay sells bowling balls. The smallest one for sale at the company store is 8 x 6 x 4 and it's still twice as deep as I use for 85 per cent of my boxed orders. That extra cardboard weight and space to be filled with void material (peanuts etc) is the difference between 210 g and 260 g and can double the cost on an international shipment. The only thing I can use is the tape and soon I will have enough of it to create a performance art piece.

tch_ca · ‎07-06-2016

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@tch_ca wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@tch_ca wrote:
Carrying an item over from last week with respect to "killing off" fraudulent accounts from Ebay (Specifically what the process is). The account ID identified in this example was deleted from the the thread but I did forward an email to Raphael with details on the subject. Unfortunately the response was less that satisfying (not unusual from Ebay). I will not post the complete email sent by Ebay but I will post my response. Basically Ebay's response to me was to speculate reasons as to what "might" have happened as opposed to investigating the details and dealing with the issue.

My response as follows,

--------------
Raphael,

This is just more of the same Ebay rhetoric. This is clearly a case of fraud. It’s not really an issue for my company since I am protected by PayPal and all these shipments were tracked. Where Ebay fails is doing it’s due diligence on the issue. Here is what I know.

The buyer charged back 3 items for a combined total well over $5000.00 (This is just from me)
The buyer is unresponsive.
PayPal (on numerous occasions), eluded to fraud with a stolen CC on the account during the many phone calls that were exchanged because of the amounts and numbers of charge backs.
I’ve contacted two other sellers (from feedback on the buyer's account). One was another coin dealer, one a US jewelry dealer. Bothe were also charged back on for numerous items.

Mistake? Coincidence? Wrong reasons?.....Laughable response!!!! This is about as obvious as fraud gets! You have access to more information that I and you can easily do due diligence and have the information that I’m already privy to. I assume you have a back door to PayPal. Do you not? If the buyer charged back let’s say 10 items, is it not safe to assume that it’s fraud?????The point is that this is just another example of financial self preservation by Ebay and moving the burden onto the CC companies to take the loss and basically not taking responsibility and being an irresponsible corporate citizen by leaving the account active. I need a better response than that.
tch_ca,

Is it fair to paraphrase my response to your email but to post your own comments in their entirety? I'll remind you that it's against policy to post private conversations on eBay forums.

As unacceptable as it may seem to you that the buyer's account isn't yet suspended, with all due respect, you don't have the full picture because we keep our users' account information private. I explained that to you in no uncertain terms in our email exchange.

Please don't post excerpts from private conversations with me on public forums again.
Raphael,

It is one of the reasons why I paraphrased your side of the email. The content of what I sent is mine and mine alone. I wrote it, I have the right to post it. If you feel something is inappropriate or what I paraphrased inaccurate you can defend it or have it easily have it removed. The answers you provided to my questions was inconsistent with the information I have already obtained. I may not have the "big picture", but I have enough information to know the intent of the buying account (that BTW is still active). The reason why Ebay doesn't like to kill off accounts because it then has to refund all the fees (correct me if I'm wrong) to all the sellers. In this case, I suspect it would be in the thousands. I'll be more than happy to paste your full response so that you don't feel your words are not being taken out of context.

Raphael, I've made this issue public because it's yet another example of the complete lack of support sellers on Ebay by Ebay. You see the comments on the threads, you know how the sellers feel about this stuff.
I totally understand what you were trying to do, I assure you. But in doing so, you breached an important rule. Please don't do it again.

You are making several assumptions, one of which is that if the account is still visible, it means the buyer is still active. That isn't necessarily true. I can't comment further on this.

Lastly, you are indeed wrong when saying that we would leave a fraudulent buyer's account active so that we could keep from refunding fees. If we can do anything about it, we don't keep fees on transactions that don't happen.

That may be so, but in this case it appears Ebay kept transaction fees from fraudulent transactions. So who is "out" the money? CC companies or PayPal? You can continue to argue the "you don't know the big picture theory" but I've done enough research on this particular case on my own, including a police report with the Maryland Sheriffs department to know better. Slice it however you chose, you're wrong in arguing that this is anything BUT fraud.

I'm not making any assumptions. I don't know if the user is still active or not (going by feedback they are no longer) and most fraud is "in and out". The fact remains that even if the account is dormant, it is still a registered account/user on Ebay. And although I know PayPal has been blocked from the account it doesn't stop the buyer from potentially soliciting sellers and trying to arrange different type of payment (at some point).

I brought this issue up because it fit in with some of the other posts on this week's chat related to buyer abuse and how Ebay chooses to handle those.

Lastly, If you can point me to the "no re-posting email" rule, it would save me the search. In theory, your responses as a representative of Ebay (a public company) are in the public domain.

momcqueen · ‎07-06-2016

To tch_ca: you won't gain anything by trying to dispute this with Rapheal. He has done you the courtesy of a warning. Any other member here on the thread could report your initial post at any time and the moderator would overrule and swoop in to edit it regardless. For your information, here is the link to Community Guidelines. Best not to test them. http://pages.ebay.ca/help/policies/everyone-boards.html

Threads do get shut down for violations. As a friendly head's up.

bunbar · ‎07-06-2016

Why can't Canadian Sellers who have access to a US address, use their coupons on the US site since it's coming from there anyway, or at least have those options on the Canadian site. And also as someone else asked, why can't we get sizes we need. I use 4x4x4 and any other box is too big.

I haven't seen one Canadian seller who is happy with anything offered with these coupons and yet we have no options to pay less monthly and not use them

luxe.labels · ‎07-06-2016

I'm Canadian but have a store on .com. I also have a US shipping address I use to receive my purchases. Why am I still getting a coupon only good on .ca? I had to leave last month's unused and I can't see using this month's either. It's just not cost-effective.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:

2nd coupon code and 2nd had to log in on ebay australia to use it. WHY!!!???

I don't know why but I would love to find out. I'll ask my marketing team to investigate. Can you just confirm the following? You attempted to use your coupon code on eBay.ca first and it was rejected?

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

@dutchman48 wrote:

@dutchman48 wrote:

raphael@ebay.com wrote:

@pierrelebel wrote:

"Buyers who abuse the eBay Money Back Guarantee risk not being allowed to use it anymore"

Thank you for your reply.

So from your reply I understand that as long as "buyers" do not use the eBay Money Back Guarantee, eBay does not monitor abuses by members requesting refund from their sellers for non-receipt.

To the best of your knowledge, does PayPal?

One would think that any relatively new member making fifteen (15) claims for non-receipt in a few months would raise some "red flags" at eBay and/or PayPal.

Pierre,

I apologize for implicitly giving you the wrong info. We do monitor refund requests even if the buyer doesn't escalate to eMBG. The important part is, we do pay attention to buyer abuse and take action whenever required. Also, to the best of my knowledge, PayPal has similar provisions in place.

In your scenario, the new buyer with 15 INR claims probably did raise flags, but you as a fellow user wouldn't be able to see or know about them.

I will do it again but politely!.

Sellers are allowed very few issues before they are restricted or turfed by Ebay even though they have no control over many of them.

Why do buyers not get the same punishment as quickly as sellers and buyers are allowed to run rampant for who knows how long. When something finally does get done, Ebay should be required to reimburse all the sellers for their losses since Ebay was a very large contributing factor

Why does Ebay not set up the same strict punishment grid for buyers as they have done for sellers?

Hi dutchman,

Not being part of the teams who design these consequence systems, I'm not exactly qualified to say why things are the way they are. Buyer and seller protection are constantly being looked at however, and we strive to improve where necessary.

Short of being able to answer your question as to why things are this way, I'll make sure the appropriate teams see and acknowledge your suggestion.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

@snoopwiz wrote:

Hello Raphael,

We are working on a fully Canadian solution which will be much more attractive price-wise.

Having used my previous coupon ($109 or so), I found myself paying approx $111 for a quantity of 50, 4 x 4 x 6 boxes. Whats that now, about 2 bucks and a bit,per box? My current supplier, being U-Line (and also through an independent I deal with), charges me 33 cents for the same box, which would total $16.50 for the same 50 boxes and, lets add in about $14.00 for shipping, totaling about $30.00. A cringe-worthy $80 less. For 50 boxes.

What is the corp going to do for their Canadian sellers moving forward to make up this extraordinary cost difference?

I won't even mention that the size box I bought is really not the ideal size for my business, as that was not made available through the seller. Oh wait, too late, I already did mention that, didn't I? 🙂

Hi snoopwiz,

It appears that U-Line is a Canadian company who likely ships their supplies from a Canadian location. As I pointed out in a previous post on this subject, currently the eBay supplies for which you get a coupon ship from the US, which has higher cost implications. Not ideal, that's true, but it's the best we are able to do for now, until a fully Canadian program can be set up.

gman1993306 · ‎07-06-2016

How will items not recived be handled due to Canada post lock out

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎07-06-2016

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:
2nd coupon code and 2nd had to log in on ebay australia to use it. WHY!!!???
I don't know why but I would love to find out. I'll ask my marketing team to investigate. Can you just confirm the following? You attempted to use your coupon code on eBay.ca first and it was rejected?

Both coupons were attempted to use on ebay.ca. Numerous buyers have spent hours on the phone wasting their time. You think by now someone would make this information available on the announcement board or at the very least with the latest coupon code release e-mail. Its no wonder sellers are beyond frustrated with everything going on and have NO confidence in ebay any more. This is unacceptable, but add it to the never ending list.

theodoreides · ‎07-06-2016

It is disappointing that these things were not ironed out prior to raising the store fees. I have a basic store and the 35 dollar coupon is useless to me as the pricing is so out of whack. All I get is a few more listings thag I pay for with the store increase - nothing free about those.

theodoreides · ‎07-06-2016

With respect to the Banner being used to advise Ebay users of the pending postal disruption - it only shows up on the Main page. Does not show on search result pages or item detail pages. I expect that very few people will even notice it. Certainly not the promoted awareness Ebay suggested.

dutchman48 · ‎07-06-2016

Why does Ebay Canada not make the supplies coupon fair by tripling what we get as the price is tripled for us.

It was very easy to triple the price and tripling the coupon value should be only a few key strokes.

We saw an increase in store fees and did not get the same benefits as .com.

It seems like to be on .ca is another punishment for Canadian sellers, just like listing currency fiasco, and now the potential mail strike.

What is Ebay Canada ever going to do to help Canadian sellers?

dutchman48 · ‎07-06-2016

And we all know what forwarding to the right team generally means! File 13

And I am not talking about what they broke or made a mess of in the first place!

snoopwiz · ‎07-06-2016

Hi snoopwiz,

It appears that U-Line is a Canadian company who likely ships their supplies from a Canadian location. As I pointed out in a previous post on this subject, currently the eBay supplies for which you get a coupon ship from the US, which has higher cost implications. Not ideal, that's true, but it's the best we are able to do for now, until a fully Canadian program can be set up.

Thanks for the response Raphael,

Not that it matters but U-Line is an American company who has distribution centres in about 10 locations, 7 or 8 in the US, one of which happens to be in the Mississauga (A Toronto burb)

I have seen you say that the corp is working on a Canadian program however, my sub-question was not addressed, that being ...what. if anything is being done to even the playing field until such time as the Canadian program is set up? Or will this be a "stand by folks, we are working on it and, in the meantime, keep pis*ing away your $109 coupons on $30 worth of stuffs you just may not have wanted in the first place.?"

I am not trying to be an ass, I know it was a decision made in the US, for the US. The fact that it turned out inherently unfair to Canadian sellers is not something that is going to show up at the top of the corps "things to do today" list.

I mean, how long has the coupon program been in effect? A few months now. How long has it been since the first "Holy **bleep**" was uttered by a Canadian seller? A few months now? And honestly Raphael, are we any closer to a solution now?

The preceding was spoken/typed out of sheer exasperation. But, I am sure you could tell. 🙂

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

tch_ca wrote:
That may be so, but in this case it appears Ebay kept transaction fees from fraudulent transactions. So who is "out" the money? CC companies or PayPal? You can continue to argue the "you don't know the big picture theory" but I've done enough research on this particular case on my own, including a police report with the Maryland Sheriffs department to know better. Slice it however you chose, you're wrong in arguing that this is anything BUT fraud.

I'm absolutely not saying that there isn't any fraud there. I'm saying that I'm unable to disclose to you whether or not we drew the same conclusions as you have.

tch_ca wrote:
I'm not making any assumptions. I don't know if the user is still active or not (going by feedback they are no longer) and most fraud is "in and out". The fact remains that even if the account is dormant, it is still a registered account/user on Ebay. And although I know PayPal has been blocked from the account it doesn't stop the buyer from potentially soliciting sellers and trying to arrange different type of payment (at some point).

You are making assumptions, not the least of which is assuming that the individual who owns the account actually still has, or ever will have access to it. That's something you don't know and that I'm unable to disclose.

tch_ca wrote:
Lastly, If you can point me to the "no re-posting email" rule, it would save me the search. In theory, your responses as a representative of Ebay (a public company) are in the public domain.

That information has already been given by another member, please feel free to refer to it. When you do, you'll see that you are wrong about anything I say being public domain. That is only true of what I post here. Please follow the rules.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

@bunbar wrote:

Why can't Canadian Sellers who have access to a US address, use their coupons on the US site since it's coming from there anyway, or at least have those options on the Canadian site. And also as someone else asked, why can't we get sizes we need. I use 4x4x4 and any other box is too big.

I haven't seen one Canadian seller who is happy with anything offered with these coupons and yet we have no options to pay less monthly and not use them

Hi bunbar,

Canadian sellers get a Canadian coupon. That's how the program is setup. Not many sellers have access to a US receiving address, that's probably why that was not considered under the current program. Not saying it's okay or that the program is perfect, just to be clear. I'll take the recommendation to the team.

On the available box sizes, I took note of your comment and mjwl2006's and will pass that along as well.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

@luxe.labels wrote:

I'm Canadian but have a store on .com. I also have a US shipping address I use to receive my purchases. Why am I still getting a coupon only good on .ca? I had to leave last month's unused and I can't see using this month's either. It's just not cost-effective.

Hi luxe.labels,

Sorry that the current store coupon isn't the right fit for you. The program has been setup so that Canadian sellers get a Canadian coupon. It follows where you are located instead of which site your store is registered on.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-06-2016

@gman1993306 wrote:
How will items not recived be handled due to Canada post lock out

Hello gman1993306,

We have published our plans in great detail here, please consult that page as any updates will be added on there, if any: www.ebay.ca/canadapost.

To save you some time, here is the part that answers your question:

Am I covered against buyers opening cases for item not received?

If you list on eBay.ca, estimated delivery dates will be extended on your listings and buyers will have to wait until the latest estimated date before they can open cases for item not received. If you list on eBay.com or another eBay site, and your buyer opens a case for an item that is stuck in transit, you should call Customer Support and explain the situation. eBay Customer Support agents are aware of the Canada Post disruption and will be equipped to guide you as well as the buyer through the disruption and the open case.