April 10th Weekly Board Hour

[kalvin@ebay.com]

Bonjour eBay.caers!

Welcome to this week's edition of the Board Hour.

Rodney (Head of Product and Country Co-Director) and Bryan.ca (Country Product Manager) will be fielding your questions for the full hour, while I quietly exit at half past.

Let's get this show on the road!

[Anonymous]

Hi pjcdn2005.

There's no escalation until the buyer decides to click on the "Have Customer Support review this case" button. And buyers can't do that for three business days after they have opened the case.

Hope that helps.

[bryan.ca@ebay.ca]

Yes that is the reason.

But it doesn't solve the problem.

It doesn't tell people how to get onto the new site.

If you go to the bottom of the eBay Canada or eBay UK or eBay.com home page and click on the Russian flag it takes you to the American site.

🙂

Sorry didn’t know that’s the issue you're trying to tackle. Allow me to help, if you want to see the site in Russian either you need to be coming from that region and we have detected in a few ways that you want eBay.com to be displayed in Russian. Or you have an account that has been registered to a Russian address.

Hope that helps.

[karl*katz]

Correct, it's now redirecting to eBay.com and the interface is now in Russian.

So that would mean a Russian member visiting in Canada or The UK or Australia would not be able to access eBay in there home language?

[rose-dee]

Some clarification of the new policy please...

Now you will always have at least 3 business days to resolve any issues about transactions directly with your buyers through the Resolution Center, before a case is escalated to eBay for review.

Wording of this policy in a previous update suggests that the buyer has the option of opening a case after 3 days. To me that means that there is no case unless the buyer opens one but if they do decide to open one after 3 days, ebay will make a decision.

So basically, there is no longer a  20 day window for the buyer to escalate.

But in the above wording it sounds as if after 3 days, the case is automatically escalated and ebay will make a decision.

Which is it?  

I've been concerned about this too, especially in the context of slow or delayed shipping to the U.S. (and elsewhere).  It appears that if a seller can't "make it right" within 3 days of buyer contacting seller, the case will escalate.  This seems very unfair to sellers in situations where the seller has no control over shipping times, and where a message from seller to buyer asking him/her to wait another few days might spontaneously resolve the problem. 

[Anonymous]

Hi pierrelebel.

The Canadian program requirements and US requirements are different. It's $3k with US buyers to qualify for the US program, and $1k with any buyers for the Global program.

I'm hoping that the reason you are seeing $3k is either because (a) you are checking on eBay.com, and/or (b) because you have a US registration address.

Would either (a) or (b) be true in your case?

[pjcdn2005]

Hi pjcdn2005.

There's no escalation until the buyer decides to click on the "Have Customer Support review this case" button. And buyers can't do that for three business days after they have opened the case.

Hope that helps.

It clarifies it but does not make me happy.

Regardless that the open case will not count, that puts a huge amount of pressure on sellers (especially ones that don't use tracking) to refund before the 3 days are up, just in case the buyer does then escalate. Once they do escalate, does that mean that ebay makes the decision or do I still have the option of refunding? Or if they do escalate and there is tracking but the item isn't there yet because it hasn't had time to arrive...will ebay decide in the buyer's favor?

I've often had newer buyers use that topic the day after the item was sent to ask for the tracking number. So now they will be told that they open a case in just 3 days?

Or, an international buyer will use that heading after 2 or 3 weeks because they don't have their item. It is usually enough to give them a quick reply and a reassurance that if the item is not there within a certain amount of time that I will refund. In the past, if they did happen to open a case then, I would still have some time before ebay would be making a decision. But it seems like this will no longer be the case so that is where the pressure comes in.

Ebay does not seem to realize that most buyers have no idea on how their actions will impact a seller and also seems to assume that all buyers are reasonable and will not  escalate unless there is good reason to. That is where the extra pressure comes in as the time line to escalate is now shorter.

[pierrelebel]

Hi Rodney.

I made sure to click on the PowerSeller icon from my eBay.ca dashboard page and the resulting page shows .ca.

And yes, this account as you know goes back to 1998, well before eBay.ca was born. 🙂

However, when I use my pierrelebel-canada account, go to my dashboard on eBay.ca and click on the PowerSeller icon, I get the same:

Basic PowerSeller requirements:

12-month rating: (Apr 2012 to Mar 2013) Minimum global sales and

transactions US $3,000.00 and
100 transactions

[pierrelebel]

correction, for my pierrelebel-canada ID (registered in Canada) it does not state US$ but shows $3,000

[pjcdn2005]

correction, for my pierrelebel-canada ID (registered in Canada) it does not state US$ but shows $3,000

I'm registered on .ca and I see this on .ca

Basic PowerSeller requirements:12-month rating: (Apr 2012 to Mar 2013)

Minimum global sales and transactions US $3,000.00 and
100 transactions

[Anonymous]

Hi pocomocomputing

Sorry that this has been confusing, apparently even to us. 😉

1) No, you'll get 50 free auctions for the month, and starting April 16th, you can add 50 fixed price listings too.

For store subscribers, the changes take place May 1st, for exactly this reason, so I suspect your fixed price 50 for non stores subscribers may actually start then as well, even though it isn't clearly documented on our announcement. I will seek confirmation on this.

(Note that you can keep track of your free listings in My eBay, on the All Selling page, under Listing Offers at the bottom of the page).

2) You get 50 for each listing site. 🙂

3 and 4) We will deduct the free listings you've already taken advantage of from your total, so it is not possible to game the system in this way.

[rose-dee]

Hi pjcdn2005.

There's no escalation until the buyer decides to click on the "Have Customer Support review this case" button. And buyers can't do that for three business days after they have opened the case.

Hope that helps.

This is reassuring.  Perhaps the wording of the policy should be altered.  I read it just as pjcdn did, and found it confusing.

[Anonymous]

- Correction re 3 and 4). Your subscription begins when you open it, so I think the total gets pro-rated. For sure, you won't be able to game the system. 🙂

[pierrelebel]

Just to clarify : a premium store will get 500 free listings (auction or fixed price) on eBay.ca

AND 500 free listings (auction or fixed price) on eBay.,com

for a total of 1,000 listings (auction or fixed price).

Is that correct?

[Anonymous]

Remember that this just means customer support can look at the case at that point. It doesn't mean customer support will then find you at fault.

If the buyer opened a case because they are worried about shipping time, and you as a seller haven't been able to respond in 3 days, that buyer is getting increasingly agitated. Involvement of eBay customer support at that point can be helpful to them, as well as to the seller in some cases.

[Anonymous]

Hi pierrelebel.

That is correct. 🙂

[bryan.ca@ebay.ca]

I'm registered on .ca and I see this on .ca

Basic PowerSeller requirements:12-month rating: (Apr 2012 to Mar 2013)

Minimum global sales and transactions US $3,000.00 and
100 transactions

Hi Guys,

Looks like there might be an issue with the sellers Dashboard not reporting the correct amount. We will check with the team and have it corrected if required. Thanks for the information.

Bryan

-- Edited by bryan.ca@ebay.ca at Apr 10, 2013 2:20 PM EDT

[pierrelebel]

🙂 Thank You! 🙂

[bryan.ca@ebay.ca]

This concludes this week's Board Hour. Thanks everyone for participating, see you next week!