Hello Canadian eBayers,
Welcome to our weekly chat. Opening up the format a little this week, I'll be with you on & off between now and sometime after 1 pm. Please start posting at your convenience.
Good morning Raphael
As it grew eBay has added an increasing number of policies, rules and regulations. One of them is the restriction by sellers to show their email address or website URL in their listings. Sellers are also forbidden to give their email address to buyers when using the eBay messaging system. The goal of these rules and restrictions is easy to understand: eBay wants to protect its revenue by making it more difficult for members to trade off site (fee avoidance rules).
We may not like those restrictions but we understand them: eBay protects itself and its revenues. It is a business decision.
This vigilance by eBay brings me to this question: why does eBay not show the same vigilance in protecting buyers by preventing sellers from listing terms and conditions in their listings clearly in contravention of current selling policies?
We see millions of listings by sellers telling potential buyers they must buy and pay for insurance if they want protection in case of losses in the postal system. We see millions of listings telling potential buyers the seller is not responsible if their shipment gets lost in transit.
For example: “I cannot be held responsible for damaged, lost, or stolen items during delivery. If you are not willing to risk it, please be sure to ask for insurance, or any other available add-on services. All will come at an additional cost.”
Why does eBay allow such listings? You have found the tools preventing sellers from cheating on you, why not show the same zeal protecting buyers?
Currently eBay relies on other members to “report” offending listings. Obviously it is not working. eBay could hire 1,000 workers for the sole purpose of searching and deleting listings in contravention of the rules while advising sellers to not do it again if they want to keep their listing privileges. Yes, it would cost eBay some money. One thousand workers at $30,000 each would cost 30 million dollars (or you could contract it out overseas for much less). Not a big deal when you look at your annual gross profit of 12 billion dollars. It would be less than one half of one percent.
Don’t you think your buyers deserve some real protection?
There is a technical problem with some eBay stores. Have you had the opportunity to look into the problem?
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Can-Dollar-showing-on-store/m-p/309540#U309540
@pierrelebel wrote:
Good morning Raphael
As it grew eBay has added an increasing number of policies, rules and regulations. One of them is the restriction by sellers to show their email address or website URL in their listings. Sellers are also forbidden to give their email address to buyers when using the eBay messaging system. The goal of these rules and restrictions is easy to understand: eBay wants to protect its revenue by making it more difficult for members to trade off site (fee avoidance rules).
We may not like those restrictions but we understand them: eBay protects itself and its revenues. It is a business decision.
This vigilance by eBay brings me to this question: why does eBay not show the same vigilance in protecting buyers by preventing sellers from listing terms and conditions in their listings clearly in contravention of current selling policies?
We see millions of listings by sellers telling potential buyers they must buy and pay for insurance if they want protection in case of losses in the postal system. We see millions of listings telling potential buyers the seller is not responsible if their shipment gets lost in transit.
For example: “I cannot be held responsible for damaged, lost, or stolen items during delivery. If you are not willing to risk it, please be sure to ask for insurance, or any other available add-on services. All will come at an additional cost.”
Why does eBay allow such listings? You have found the tools preventing sellers from cheating on you, why not show the same zeal protecting buyers?
Currently eBay relies on other members to “report” offending listings. Obviously it is not working. eBay could hire 1,000 workers for the sole purpose of searching and deleting listings in contravention of the rules while advising sellers to not do it again if they want to keep their listing privileges. Yes, it would cost eBay some money. One thousand workers at $30,000 each would cost 30 million dollars (or you could contract it out overseas for much less). Not a big deal when you look at your annual gross profit of 12 billion dollars. It would be less than one half of one percent.
Don’t you think your buyers deserve some real protection?
Hi Pierre,
Buyers certainly don't lack protection on eBay.
Whatever a seller chooses to state on their listing does not trump the rules and policies in place. Taking your example of a seller writing in their terms that they cannot be held responsible for items lost or damaged in transit, this is 100% invalid because eBay policy puts the responsibility of care for an item on the seller until such time as it has been successfully delivered to the buyer. At best, such a statement is completely moot and at worst, it will drive buyers away from that listing.
@pierrelebel wrote:
There is a technical problem with some eBay stores. Have you had the opportunity to look into the problem?
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Can-Dollar-showing-on-store/m-p/309540#U309540
New generation Stores pages show items in the local currency to the buyer who views them. So if you're Canadian and look at your own store on eBay.com, you will see CAD prices. However if a US buyer looks at the same store page they will see USD.
No issues at play here, this is working as it is supposed to.
@rose-dee wrote:
Hi Raphael,
I can't seem to use the "Reply" button (this has been going on for a week or so), so I'm editing a blank screen I posted.
My question: Can eBay tell us what the reason was for removing Ominiture long before anything was available to replace it? I really depended on Omniture to guide my decision-making, and it's a bit of a hardship having it deleted altogether. I'd just like to know if there was an important reason for doing so.
Thanks!
Hi rose-dee,
Unfortunately I have no insight on this, other than we have moved away from Omniture because it wasn't meeting expectations, and that there is a replacement product coming. It's possible that a contractual term forced us to part ways before the new product was ready, but this is me speculating; I don't know for sure.
@dutchman48 wrote:
Hi Raphael
Any information on my email I sent to you?
Hi Raphael
Remember I brought up the Fiasco with FVF's on shipping if multiple items listed on .com and sold to someone in Poland that FVF on shipping are not calculated on the domestic rate but the domestic rate times the number of items.
I have another situation with 5 items listed on .ca and sold to Poland with the following details:
Sold 5 items to Poland listed on .ca.
Domestic shipping is $2.50 and 50¢ for each additional which would be $4.50 domestic if sold to Canada and 27¢ FVF on the shipping.
Shipping to Poland is $10.00 and 50¢ for each additional for a total of $12.00 for shipping
Ebay charged 14¢ per item FVF on shipping for a total of 70¢
Please explain to me how this works as it makes no sense to me.
I have brought this up before with a combined sale from .com going overseas which made no sense either.
It is certainly not based on anything to do with domestic sales and in my opinion another rip off cash grab by Ebay without any valid support for same
Here are the 5 item numbers:
261990226872
261990200729
391215609446
261963715303
261963724532
I apologize if I sound perturbed as I am more than that by this whole fiasco and rip of of FVF's on shipping as no one seems to know how Ebay calculates it and what it is based on!
Hi dutchman48,
I have forwarded your case to the appropriate team for review, but haven't got a response yet. I'll follow up with you as soon as I get anything.
@dutchman48 wrote:
Is Ebay ever going to deal with return shipping on international sales for INAD?
Buyers are returning items at whatever cost they want and expect sellers to pay. Ebay does nothing.
If the seller refuses to reimburse buyer, what does Ebay do? Neither is protected.
I have been stuck with garbage from the US and no way I will pay for return with tracking without answers to above questions.
And please, I don't know or I will look into is a no answer as these issues have been around forever.
And, why is China exempt from any of this?
If you are a buyer and need to return an item that wasn't as described, and you are unable to reach satisfactory terms withe the seller, you should simply escalate to eBay CS. If the case if sound in your favour, eBay give the seller time to accommodate for the return shipping (usually they recommend for the seller to issue a partial refund to cover for return shipping, so the buyer doesn't have to pay out of pocket) and once the item is returned to the seller, a full refund for original item price + shipping is issued. If the seller fails to comply with eBay's instructions, eBay will step in and issue a full refund, and deal with the seller directly.
Essentially, if the seller fails to make it right when you have an item not as described, just let the case get to a point where you can escalate and then ask eBay to step in. They will guide you through the rest.
@dutchman48 wrote:
What is going to happened in search with sellers not prepared to pay the bribes for added exposure?
Not sure I understand your question. If you're talking about not paying for international (UK) exposure, then all it means is that your items won't show in the default search results set on eBay.co.uk.
@dutchman48 wrote:
I sent a cancellation request to a buyer due to he opening a dispute for non receipt on a previous order.
He agreed to cancel so the sale was cancelled.
He paid for the item about 3 weeks later. How was this possible. My Ebay shows different information the the Escalation department screen does.
Their file number is 1-52112186301
What do I do now. I don't want to deal with this buyer, he is on my blocked list, and I don't want to mail and open myself for INR claim again or allow him to leave feedback.
Basic question, why does Ebay allow a buyer to pay for a cancelled sale and again, open sellers up to buyer abuse?
It shouldn't be possible to pay for a transaction that was already cancelled. May I have he item number? The number you gave is a CS case ID number which I am unable to look up.
@rose-dee wrote:
One further question:
When eBay makes a permanent change that will impact a large number of sellers, some significantly, why is it that they can't place a "flag" of some sort on that change?
An example is the recent defaulting of the SYI form (when using "Sell Similar") to $Cdn as the listing currency. Had I not read the reports of this on the discussion boards, I would have ended up with a whole lot of listings that I would have to delete (I sell exclusively in $US). There are many other instances where something has been changed and we only realize it after hours of discussion on the boards, when it becomes clear it isn't just another glitch.
If eBay could place a small but noticeable flag on such changes for the first week or two, that would save many of us a lot of wasted time and concern. EBay did this, for example, when they introduced the free relists a few months ago, with a little yellow flag and message. Why can't this be used elsewhere?
Without getting into details on eBay site architecture, simply put, doing this isn't always possible. Different pages/features have that capability, others don't. We do our best to communicate site changes in a timely manner, but aren't always able to given code update schedules, bandwidth constraints, etc. It may sometimes happen that the time required for preparing appropriate communications on a certain project or update exceeds the date where we have to roll it out, lest we would have to wait a long time before we have that chance again.
