Hello everyone,
Welcome to our weekly chat. This week, the thread will remain open until tomorrow as usual.
Open issues:
- Incomplete ID History
- Link to Community located on Feedback page points to eBay.com
- Some Search pages show watchers, some don't
- Items missing from combined invoice
- CA Shopping cart erroneously applying free shipping on multiple orders (under investigation)
- Request Total unavailable
Updates:
- 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!
@rose-dee wrote:
Hi Raphael, and welcome to November...
I have a question about listing on .com, which I'm hoping you may be able to answer. I noticed recently when using the new "Revise Item" form on .com that there was no box to check off for "apply my promotional shipping rule", as there usually is under each shipping section (unless I'm missing it somewhere).
If it really is gone from the revision form, does this mean I can no longer specify to which areas of the world I want to apply my promotional shipping?
I would appreciate any insight you have on this, as I'd like to ensure that the promotional shipping rules I do have in place are applied properly. Thanks!
Hi rose-dee,
Can you provide an item number for me to look at? There are a few things that determine what can and can't be revised on a listing, the listing format, how much time is left on the listing, whether there are bids or purchases, etc. The listing tools should all surface the same revision possibilities according to the specified criteria, in other words, it's not the listing tool that determines what can and can't be revised.
Please share a specific item and I'll take a look.
raphael@ebay.com wrote:Hi rose-dee,Can you provide an item number for me to look at? There are a few things that determine what can and can't be revised on a listing, the listing format, how much time is left on the listing, whether there are bids or purchases, etc. The listing tools should all surface the same revision possibilities according to the specified criteria, in other words, it's not the listing tool that determines what can and can't be revised.
Please share a specific item and I'll take a look.
Thanks Raphael -- the item # is 162266082968, although the same thing occurs with a number of other items I've checked.
This particular item, along with a number of others, was just uploaded as a brand new listing from Auctiva a couple of days ago, so there are still over 28 days left on the listing cycle (GTC). Interestingly, on Auctiva (which as you may know is fairly seamlessly integrated with eBay), the "Apply my Promotional Shipping Rule" boxes are included in their listing forms. However, when I had to access one uploaded listing on eBay to do other revisions I noticed that option was gone. Normally, using "Revise Your Listing" on .ca, the promo shipping rule boxes are there. I'm wondering if it even still applies to these listings now.
Here's a screen shot of what I see when I try to revise one of these recent new listings. Keep in mind these are .com listings, I'm on .com, using the Seller Hub, so things look different than on .ca (i.e. the listing form has been completely redesigned). I've marked where the "Apply my Promotional Shipping Rule" box usually appears.
If you could look into this, I'd be grateful, because I want to know that my U.S. customers will still see and get my free shipping promo.
So, the full horror is revealed -- see screenshot below. It appears that "Standard" shipping has now been broken out based on USPS domestic service parameters, and "Economy" has been shortened and lumped in with miscellaneous services.
Clearly, this is going to mean a high percentage of risk for Canadian sellers shipping by non-tracked services to the U.S.
Raphael, I don't even recall seeing any announcement of these changes -- and they are both substantial and devastating for Canadian sellers. There should have at the very least been some warning to Canadian sellers.
Now any Canadian seller like me, with a reasonable but extended 2 or 3 day handling time, using Light/Small Packet USA, is going to be on a very, very tight clock of 12 or 13 days, or else get defect after defect for late delivery. And that 12 or 13 days will include time getting through U.S. Customs.
Can you please confirm whether extending a seller's handling time beyond 3 days will have any effect on search placement, visibility, etc.? Of course, even if that is not the case, we have no guarantee that our U.S. customers won't be turned off anyway when they look at our ridiculously long handling-plus-delivery estimates in our listings.
This is just the worst possible news. I'm ready to give up on eBay. 
@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:Use services from "Outside the US" when listing on .com and selecting a domestic service. If you don`t the handling time is from a US address. Think of everything the opposite when listing on .com. Instead of domestic being from canada on .ca.
OK, a million thanks, I think you may have just saved me from a stroke.
Is this what you're referring to (see screenshot below)? They have completely changed the SYI form on .com, and put the shipping services in different places. I wish someone had had the courtesy to tell us...
I think a lot of Canadian sellers listing on .com are going to see that "Economy Shipping" up top with the 1-10 day estimate and come to the same conclusion I did. And then choose it and get defects.
Incidentally -- Raphael -- I notice that all my current listings have picked up my old "Economy Shipping" (which had the 10-23 timeline) and used the "new" Economy Shipping with the 1-10 day timeline in the listing. I am going to have to change them all manually.
Someone should tell other Canadian sellers!
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
i don't know if you have another id or not but it look like most or all of your items on this one are not new so you won't need UPC for them.
I'm concerned about this too as I have new items that I received without any tags or UPC info. Most of those items aren't super popular or have been discontinued so they are unlikely to be in a product catalogue and I have no way of finding the UPC for them.
Raphael, does eBay want us to generate our own UPC codes for items when we don't have that information even though they do have a code somewhere? I don't nderstand the point of doing that or even generating one for a handmade product. It may get be handy for the sellers own inventory but how does it benefit seller or buyer on eBay?
Hi pjcdn,
I'm waiting for news from the Structured Data team. I'll update my posts on here when I have more to relay.
@rose-dee wrote:
@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:Use services from "Outside the US" when listing on .com and selecting a domestic service. If you don`t the handling time is from a US address. Think of everything the opposite when listing on .com. Instead of domestic being from canada on .ca.
OK, a million thanks, I think you may have just saved me from a stroke.
Is this what you're referring to (see screenshot below)? They have completely changed the SYI form on .com, and put the shipping services in different places. I wish someone had had the courtesy to tell us...
I think a lot of Canadian sellers listing on .com are going to see that "Economy Shipping" up top with the 1-10 day estimate and come to the same conclusion I did. And then choose it and get defects.
Incidentally -- Raphael -- I notice that all my current listings have picked up my old "Economy Shipping" (which had the 10-23 timeline) and used the "new" Economy Shipping with the 1-10 day timeline in the listing. I am going to have to change them all manually.
Someone should tell other Canadian sellers!
You got it 😉
Out of curiosity, I just checked a few other listings of mine, some that are brand new, and others that are older. When I choose "Revise Listing", the form that comes up defaults to the shorter "Economy" shipping (i.e. 1 to 10 day delivery).
See screenshot below -- this is what I see on every one of these listings when I go to revise. I know for certain that the "Economy" I chose when I listed these had a 10-23 day delivery timeline. I specifically chose it over domestic U.S. "Standard" shipping for that reason.
Now the problem is that when looking at one of my listings on .com, I can't tell what the actual delivery estimate is that my U.S. buyers are seeing. It simply says: "Varies for item from an international location", or words to that effect. I have no idea which "Economy" timeline now actually applies.
So, Raphael, please advise (urgently) -- I presume all of us who are listing on .com now need to revise our listings to ensure we have manually chosen the longer (10-23 day) "Economy" shipping option if we want it, otherwise the shorter one will apply if we've previously selected "Economy"?
What a mess, yet another time-waster.
@gwrocen wrote:
Hello Raphael,
We just noticed that we received a late shipment defect - first one ever in 18 years on eBay.
We were paid for a purchase on August 21 and mailed it on August 22.
In our view it is now up to the Post Office to do its job.
On Sept. 26 or there abouts, the recipient left feedback for a satisfactory purchase.
However, he also left a "late delivery" defect for us.
Why do we get the defect for "late delivery"?
Why does the POST OFFICE not receive the defect - after all they are the ones who did the delivering???
Unfortunately this buyer chose not to pay for a tracking number for his parcel even though he was given the option to do so.
Somehow this does not seem right.
Why does eBay choose to give us a defect without giving us a chance to respond or defend our record?
Thanks.
gwrocen
Hi gwrocen,
Sorry that you got a late shipment defect.
Here is how we measure whether a shipment was on time:
- First we look for an acceptance scan. An acceptance scan occurs when a tracked shipment is inducted into the postal stream, usually at the time it is picked up by or dropped off at the post office. If the acceptance scan is recorded within the seller's stated handling time, the shipment is considered to be on time no matter what happens after that.
- If there was no acceptance scan recorded, we look for a delivery confirmation tracking event. If the delivery scan occurs before the latest estimated delivery date as shown on the listing, the shipment is considered to be on time no matter what happens after that.
- If there was no on-time acceptance scan or on-time delivery scan recorded, we ask the buyer to tell us whether the shipment arrived before a specified date, that date being the longer estimated delivery date for the shipping service chosen by the buyer.
In your case, it appears that because there was no tracking and that the shipment seems to have arrived past the date that was estimated on the listing, the buyer said no to the question as to whether the item arrived by the specified date.
We know that untracked shipping sometimes gets delayed, and that as a result, sellers will sometimes get defects for reasons out of their control. That's why we don't hold sellers to a target of 100% on-time shipments. Also, whether the late shipment was the seller's fault or the post's doesn't usually matter to the buyer. An item either arrives on time or it arrives late, and our data clearly shows that late shipments, in today's e-commerce industry, is one of the biggest drivers of buyer churn.
With all that said, the Standards team is constantly working to improve the programs in place, and some of the next things they will focus on are untracked shipments and cross-border trade. Stay tuned for announcements about that in the future.
@gwrocen wrote:
@esclyons wrote:
because without tracking EBAY does not believe you sent it when you said you did..
And they believe the recipient (buyer)????
Without giving us (seller) a chance to respond??
It works both ways. - if they won't/can't believe the seller,
(with no tracking), how can they believe the buyer??
Buyers rarely know that they are giving a seller a defect when they say no to the question about whether their item arrived on time. This is how we can get reasonably objecting answers from them.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Hello. I had a question from last week that was overlooked. I'll repost.
Hi Maureen,
Sorry, I wasn't ignoring you. It took me a couple of days to get that one figured out.
The sentence you highlighted aims to let sellers know that under Best Match, we cannot guarantee that a seller’s listings will appear in a certain order in search results, because it depends on too many variables that are evaluated in real time, and which can also change from time to time.
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