SELLERS ARE EBAY'S CUSTOMERS
Summary: The discussion seems to pertain to the relationship between sellers and eBay, focusing on a perspective where sellers are considered eBay's true customers. However, the content of the conversation is missing, preventing a deeper understanding of participants' views and opinions. Despite multiple responses from various participants, the content remains unclear, making it challenging to determine the specific points addressed in the discussion.
I have been selling since 2005 and a member since 2002. i am honest, treat my buyers with respect, have fair pricing and good communication. ebay does not care about us anymore.
they seem to have made inroads to lessen the scammers but now i feel like i am the one being scammed. i sell in stamps so i think i am exempt from the new shipping scam. ebay likes to change things but not dot their i's or cross their t's. the promoted listing debacle is a eye opener. i will end all promoted listing just before the change. i am looking at other platforms. ebay is ruining whatever reputation that they have left. i used to love ebay.
marnotom!
·10 months agoI'm perplexed as to why you seem to be objecting so strenously to the introduction of eBay International Shipping when it doesn't even support your item category. It may work for some sellers. Let them use it. It may not work for some sellers. Let them opt out of the program.
Same with promoted listings. Use it if it works, don't use it if you feel it's not necessary or it doesn't work. Nobody is forcing you to do this.
I get that you're frustrated about something, but I don't think you're attributing your frustration to the correct cause. Yes, sellers are eBay's customers, but eBay doesn't get paid for a sale until a seller gets a buyer.
whistlersmother1
OP8 months agothank you for your reply. i do not mail parcels. most of my stuff is free shipping. ebay puts the international shipping rate on all my listing views which is usually higher than the cost of my items. i now have to put my free shipping in the title. my sales are down over 60%. to my knowledge i cannot opt out of this program.
mrdutch1001
·8 months ago"to my knowledge i cannot opt out of this program. "
If you are referencing the eIS program, sellers can opt out..
As per the eIS rules and policies:
"You may opt out of the Program at an account level by adjusting your account settings within My eBay. Your opt out may take up to 72 hours to process and will not apply to any existing listings restricted from revision (e.g. there are pending bids or a pending best offer)."
lotzofuniquegoodies
·8 months ago@mrdutch1001
@whistlersmother1
According to one of the eis help pages if you choose to opt out you only have 24 hours to opt back in if you change your mind. Beyond that you have to message and request to get back in (to the dark side). With lots of patience. As far as I know it is not a toggle in/toggle out unless anything has changed. Not ready to test after the song and dance to get in.
mrdutch1001
·8 months agoThe point is IF a seller wants to opt out they do have that choice...
lotzofuniquegoodies
·8 months ago@mrdutch1001
Yes but it shouldn't be a song and dance to get back if you want to at a later date.
According to rumor and certain places in help in the US version of eIS if a (as an example) a Canadian buyer wanted something shipped from a seller via USPS instead of eIS that was supposed to be possible. It appears that was added to the Canadian version. Basically the only way is to create a specific listing just for your buyer. Useful for combined shipping when eIS doesn't permit for various unknown reasons or there are items that just don't qualify to be shipped with the program.
A toggle on off in listings would/could be the easiest work around. There is currently no way edit shipping options other than eIS or eIS plus calculated/flat rate/free unless one has no issues with business policies.
For "some" sellers eIS is NOT perfect in every situation. As @chicweb passed on eBay is incorrectly showing eIS as the defacto shipping method when sellers may have other options in place. (it is also showing that customs/duty may be applicable even in situations where seller is paying on behalf of buyer or item "should be" exempt incorrectly.) eIS has been up and running for several months and these flaws have never been correctly addressed. They could/are potentially affecting a sellers ability to sell because buyers are getting bad data from eBay.
mrdutch1001
·8 months agoand then again if sellers are not happy with the eIS in its current state, perhaps they should just opt out until such time as eBay gets the eIS functioning in a more favorable fashion...as we all know, eBay and its technology team are not infallible!
whistlersmother1
OP8 months agothe shipping platform is not the problem. the fat that they won't let me opt out is the problem. most of my stuff is free shipping and when my free shipping listing comes up they put on what international shipping would be. buyer are sending me messages about my high shipping and saying they won't buy. i send a message about free shipping and then they buy. most just leave my store and do not buy. i no longer ship parcels out of canada. not worth the effort.
ricarmic
·8 months ago@whistlersmother1 Just a wee note, stamps (and a number of other things) aren't allowed unter EIS anyway, so opting out shouldn't be a worry, I'm surprised they've let you sign up, although maybe you have some non stamp stuff scattered....
marnotom!
·8 months agoeIS does not override your business policies. Your buyers should be still seeing the international shipping rate you inserted in the listing in addition to eBay International Shipping and its rate, so I'm not sure why they're having the issue you're describing.
That said, as others have noted stamps aren't a category that's supported by eBay International Shipping, and I would have thought that even if you're opted in, eIS shouldn't be attached to your stamps listings.
What steps have you been taking to try to opt out? Do you get some sort of error message when you try?
grann-4629
·8 months agoI'm a buyer and when I see the high international shipping costs on 'offers' that are sent to me, I usually decline with the reason being the high shipping. I have yet to have a seller respond with the actual shipping or better shipping price.
I hope I come across one of your listings one of these days!
😎
flipistics
·8 months agoThey probably never even see that it was declined, let alone the reason. I know I don't.
grann-4629
·8 months agoI didn't know ... thanks.
How should I let the seller know that I like the item, like the price, but not the cost of shipping, when there are alternative cheaper ways to do it?
I don't want to be a nag to a seller by trying to get a better shipping quote.
What happens when a buyer makes a counter-offer to the offer sent by eBay on behalf of the seller ... how does the seller see that?
Thanks again.
😎
marnotom!
·8 months agoI’m still not clear on what you mean by an “actual” shipping price.
A four-ounce envelope can be sent from Florida to Ontario by mail from a USPS post office by a variety of ways for anywhere from US$19.40 to US$64.25. These are all actual shipping prices:
https://postcalc.usps.com/Calculator/MailServices?country=10054&ccode=CA&oz=33030&omil=False&dz=M5W%...
grann-4629
·8 months agoDepending on where in Florida it's coming from and where in Ontario it's going to, the seller could probably hand deliver it for less than some the costs you have quoted!
I will concede that I am not up on current shipping rates and I appreciate the updates you have been giving me. The 'actual' costs to ship something now is just so expensive and the rules and options are so complicated that buyers have to be extra careful before clicking the buy button.
Therefore, any complaints from me about the cost of shipping will cease, unless I get burned 🙂
😎
marnotom!
·8 months agoI realize you're probably being a bit tongue in cheek, but consider that if the seller were to hand-deliver that item, they'd have to concern themselves with food, lodging, and fuel while making their road trip from Florida to Ontario. Well, I guess fuel wouldn't be an issue if they were travelling by bicycle or foot. All the same, that would easily come to more than US$65. 😁
grann-4629
·8 months agoTotally a bit tongue in cheek, but if you changed the locations from Florida to North Dakota and Toronto to Winnipeg, there might be a savings ... it's only 450 miles round trip to Fargo (maybe one stop at McDucks, one tank of gas and no lodgings), but you'll get the border hassle in both directions. Might be worth it on something like an anvil purchased from a US eBay seller living in Fargo.
btw, my son needs an anvil to further his knife making hobby. They are hugely expensive and it's very hard to find used ones around here. Old farmers just don't want to give them up! So, if any of you folks happen to live in Fargo (or Grand Forks) and have a used anvil for sale, LMK.
😎
needsmorerobots
·10 months agoPromoted Listings served me well.
After the tariffs and CUPW strike, sales decreased further after Ebay introduced Priority Listings.
Priority Listings have made Promoted a waste of money.
I took all my products off of Promoted. Until Ebay comes up with a better solution, they're not receiving extra fees from me.
canoltrail
·10 months agoSo true, E-Bay does nothing to punish scammers and if you do not charge for the extra tracking number for shipping (about $15 in Canada) then E-Bay will automatically reward the scammers by allowing them to keep the item for free and refund their purchase price no matter what you say in response !!!
femmefan1946
·10 months agoYes. While eBay does not require tracking they do require Proof of Delivery in cases where there is a Claim of Item Not Received (INR).
For that reason, a lot of sellers, myself included, use Cookie Jar Insurance.
Rather than making our buyers pay more for tracked parcels, we go commando and ship untracked services.
For domestic (Canadian ) sales that's lettermail.
For US and overseas sales, LetterPost cannot be used* under the rules of the Universal Postal Union ( UPU treaty of 1894).
And not all the parcel services are tracked. Watch out for the scarily cheap Surface Packet International which is cheap all right but also slow and untracked. Use it when you want the customer to get their item three months after their INR got them a refund.
Which brings me to Cookie Jar Insurance**.
Which is just raising the price of the purchase or of shipping to include a few pennies as a premium covering the occasional Failed Transaction.
That could be an undeserved INR. It could be a parcel run over by the shipper's truck. It could be the blue sweater you shipped instead of the red one ordered.
You cover the cost of the Claim from those pennies you put in a virtual Cookie Jar.
No arguements.
No Defects.
No negative feedback.
*Just because it is illegal, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Nor does it mean that shipping goods by letterpost is unsuccessful. Just don't complain when it is not.
** Cookie Jar Insurance is self insurance, with a cutesy name. It works more efficiently than third party insurance and some sellers have claimed that the premiums actually make for a profit centre.
mrdutch1001
·10 months agoscammers are everywhere, this is not unique to eBay...ALL online selling sites got'em!> scamming sellers and scamming buyers, so it is not only "Buyer Beware"/"Seller Beware"but "Everyone Beware", and that is the way of society these days, the way of the world these days and has become a part of life...it is what it is...
femmefan1946
·10 months agoI'm opting out of the PL I have been using since it no longer seems to work for me.
I used it only for advertising once I noticed that while it definitely brought eyeballs to my listings, it did not seem to make sales proportionate to the percentage of PLs.
For the record, about 20% of my listings were PL at minimum (2%) while less than 5% of my sales were PL.
I did find that when I had PLs I had more Views , not only of the PL listings, and more sales, again not only of the PL listings.
Which was a win/win since I got the good of the promotion, but didn't pay for the unpromoted sales it seemed to bring.
The "halo" which I don't understand is the reason I am slowly dropping PL, about 25 a day depending on which account I am revising.
i sell in stamps so i think i am exempt from the new shipping scam.
Sorry, what shipping scam?
The orange sphincter's illegal tariffs?
That is something all online sellers will have to deal with until the USA catches up with reality.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·10 months agoAnd for some whackadoodle reason stamps and currency do not qualify for eis or ebay Labels discounted shipping. So one has to either use a courier with inflated customs clearing costs or Zonos with CP and SSB account with reduced discounts paying a buyers tariffs....where applicable.
eBay....Where Hoop dancing is required.
grann-4629
·8 months agoeBay....Where Hoop dancing is required.
I just watched a Hoop Dance competition. The winner was amazing ... many, many hoops involved in his dance. I would love to see the World famous
eBay 'Bot Hoop Dance Competition
but I don't get that channel 😞
😎
mrdutch1001
·10 months agoMany of us don't/haven't/nor ever did use eBay's Promoted listing gimmick...a race to see who can get to the top/stay at the top or never get to the top is a race in futility and the only winner in the race is the selling site that lets sellers gamble on any sort of "success" in a scheme for which the only winner is that selling site...
ricarmic
·10 months agoPromoted listings in their various forms are simply different "advertising" mechanisms. Ever since the early ebay days of the early 2000s there were ebay promotional ways to get your items in front of more buyers, different names, styles etc, although some of them have been "introduced" more than once in the last 25 years, another sign of being old. Note that the same problem holds true on the "non-ebay" online sites I sell on as well. There are millions of items out there, the selling venue (newspapers of old or ebays of today) are always going to be providing options for folks to boost their readership/viewers, and generally the more its boosted, the more it costs - the "classifieds" to Full page ad spectrum of the old print days, only electronically now.
Prior to the internet, for me (also in the stamps world) it was VERY expensive and time consuming to try to gather customers from the UK or Australia etc. I can remember spending hours trying to come up with different wording variations for overseas advertisements, I could only afford classifieds. On the home front, even to get in front of folks in the US was relatively prohibitive expense wise, and local to Canada, again to move up from classifieds was an expensive, risky time consuming thing to do. Same as happens now, I had to decide how and where and how "big" I advertised. It is worth noting in the words of an old timer, the "cost" to get an item in front of someone anywhere in the world is astonishingly low compared to what it was pre-internet (a 20% ad cost against domestic sales was usual, 10% was phenomenal, international 20% was phenomenal - noting that "ad cost" in today's world includes ebay store cost, promoted fees etc).
Based on my selling style, a chunk of the ebay promoted styles/variations do not make economical sense for what they deliver, for what/how I sell. As before I have to figure out where best to spend promoted (advertising) funds, if at all.
This latest iteration is somewhat surprising as it doesn't intuitively link to a reason "why", although I suspect behind the scenes, at least in my narrow view, views on an item seem to lately more significantly increase its organic viewership, so I suspect it's meant to capture "organic" sales of a promoted item spurred on by increased promoted views. (PS I'm NOT ebay cheering here, simply speculating on a reason why behind the scenes)
Really though, while it might help to know why, as always is the case I'll have to see what my overall "advertising" rate change is in the new year, and I'll adjust as necessary.
When they made the change that once someone purchases something promoted everything else they purchase that is promoted within 30 days gets dinged too (whether the view was organic or not) forced me to review my promoted approach (ALL my items were promoted at least the minimum amount at that time) and I reduced the amount of items I was promoting.
I'll do the same here, I suspect it isn't going to increase the overall cost I'm incurring much, of course if it does, I'll adjust how I spend my "advertising" dollars appropriately.
It would be so nice if things would just stay the same but the online world evolves, so we as independant "business folks" have to decide how to evolve too.