eBay

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-27-2013

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the February 27th edition of the weekly Board hour. Joining me today are eBay Canada's Bryan.ca (Country Product Manager) and Rodney (Head of Product Management and Country Co-Manager). We're looking forward to read your comments and respond to your questions, starting at 1 PM Eastern, roughly in 10 minutes.

Thanks!

Raphael

Country Product Manager

tobyshitzu · ‎02-27-2013

Not sure if its coincidental or if there has been a minor change from the last time I looked but there are a few more Canadian ones showing up now. But its still terrible from the way it was. Having tons of items from overseas that won't even work here at the front , and items that retail everywhere for 19.99 as "$19.54 +C $21.18 shipping" (many of which sell because they are free S&H to the USA) doesn't make it look very good to Canadian buyers. I know the feedback of many of my buyers shows they are only buying from Canada.

bryan.ca@ebay.ca · ‎02-27-2013

just search for any of the game systems like "ps3" either overall or with the games sub category. If you do it with both .ca and .com you get most of the same listings on the first page with the exceptions I described. Someone on the forum brought up phone accessories being the same way. Most of the listing at the front would be of no interest, at all, to Canadians.

I fired two queries into ebay.ca and ebay.com and found that both sites are presenting Canadian sellers on the first page.

Thanks for your feedback regarding France listing! It looks like it should not be shown in the default search. I'll take it back.

Here are my queries:

http://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?scp=ce0&_dash=0&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=ps3&_pppn=r1&_rdc=1

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=ps3&_osacat=139973&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313&_nkw=p...

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-27-2013

According to the boards it seems sellers have been receiving as lot of Unfair Negative Feedbacks lately.

In my case buyer mentions shirt has a flaw. I had no qualms with the complaint & offered a full refund & their return shipping costs once the item arrived back to me.

Never heard from the seller again assuming the item was in transit. Ten days later buyer leaves a NFB & all ones in my DSRs. Dispute was never opened so i assume there was no flaw & buyer wanted the item & the refund.

First negative in over six years. How can this be fair when sellers try to make things right.

Unpaid item disputes on my auctions are now hovering around 80% which still remain unpaid. A liitle tiring & seems to be a Major problem. Hard to get excited listing in the Auction Format.

Hello bb_cool_stuff,

Sorry you had to deal with this buyer. Unfortunately, as much as we strive to offer better protection for our sellers, there will always be cases like this one where the best attempts are only met with the same outcome. Our Seller Standards thresholds are designed to take such cases into account and from what I read, your record won't be impacted too negatively by this buyer, as frustrating an experience as this may have been.

Regarding the Unpaid Items issue, at the risk of preaching to the choir have you hardened your Buyer Requirements to help block buyers who have Unpaid Items on record? Such behavior is usually a pattern and in my experience that buyer requirement can be quite efficient in reducing the rate of buyers who don't pay.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-27-2013

FABULOUS Raphael! Thank you, thank you, thank you!! That horrid disclaimer box at the top of my listings might as well have said "Don't buy here", so I'm delighted. I thought this might be the case (update needed to policy pages), but wanted to be sure, as I had Neg. FB from a U.K. buyer recently who had to pay $40 on a $57 item. I managed to get him to agree to revise his FB because I thoroughly sympathized with him, but not every buyer would be so amenable I think.

You've made my day!!! I'm going to go and revise my listings ASAP. Cheers! 😄

My pleasure! Happy revising and hopefully, more selling!

pocomocomputing · ‎02-27-2013

Hi pocomocomputing.

Terrific question.

The Sell Your Item form in general, and Create Your Listing page in particular, is one of the most complex pages on eBay.

We ask so many different questions of our sellers, and try to facilitate so many different seller needs, that the page can be too challenging for new sellers (or even experienced ones) to complete.

There's a whole storyline on the cool things that different eBay teams are doing to make the process of listing better, but in the meantime, we've made a lot of changes to our current Sell Your Item flow over the years to try to improve usability.

To try to simplify things, we don't expose every possible variable to sellers by default. We show the essential elements, plus the most popular elements, and hide the more seldom-used features. Pay on pickup is one of those options.

If you go to the Create your listing page on eBay.ca or eBay.com, and scroll down to the "Give buyers shipping details" section, you'll notice there's a link to the right of the "Give buyers shipping details" section called "Add or remove options". You can use this link to make the pay on pick up section - and other parts of the shipping module - appear and disappear.

There are more "add or remove" links on the page you can explore for more hidden options.

More communication issues, lol. So hard to explain in words and so hard to understand on your part when quickly reading. I did mention that the add or remove is not working.

I do know about the Add or Remove options for the various sections and have explored the options.

However, in the online SYI form, the Pay on Pickup does not exist in add or remove for the Payment section unless it is turned on by using Turbo Lister or Bulk Edit (or other programs to list with). One turned on by these other methods and is in the listing, it appears in the Payment add or remove options. Uncheck the option and it disappears from the listing and you have to use TL or BE to add it again.

So it is does not exist when you try to use it directly in a SYI listing. Try it and you will see it does not exist when creating a listing.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-27-2013

What about the rule for lowest of the first domestic shipping option or actual shipping cost for international?

What about calculated shipping rule for using the cost to ship to your postal code when there is no actual cost to use for comparing for international shipping.

This is what I mean by no documentation in the help files on how shipping FVFs are calculated.

Many sellers are confused on how shipping FVFs are calculated. Many think it is a flat 9% (non store users often think this since they mainly use auctions). Some do not realize that for tiered rates like Fixed price listings, that the shipping FVF is based on the total of item price plus shipping cost. So if the total is over the common $50 break point for FP listings, the shipping FVF rate will drop from say 11% to 6% in one category if the shipping is over the $50 mark.

With shipping FVFs being hated so much, I find that the poor explanations and lack of examples hurts eBay. While I do not like eBay shipping FVFs, I do find that the implementation with the additional rules for International and the lower rates based on total actually try to minimize the shipping FVFs to sellers.

A better explanation and examples are needed in the help files.

Excellent feedback, pocomocomputing. We definitely will look into implementing this info in a Help page.

Anonymous · ‎02-27-2013

Hi pocomocomputing.

Canada Post Flat Rate Box is officially 100% retired.

We're working with PayPal to get the maintenance work done, as well as adding in the new Tracket Packet USA and Tracked Packet INTL products. We'll be making an announcement on timing and details for those services soon.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-27-2013

May I ask the eBay team whether there have been serious problems, backlogs or staffing issues with the Customer Support area that is making replying to sellers slow or difficult?

I recently received a message from eBay concerning a listing, I replied (twice) with information to clarify and resolve the situation, but have never had any response by email or telephone. I also phoned twice, was told the person involved at eBay would contact me by phone, but he/she never did. It's been a good week, and frankly, I've had to give up.

I'd appreciate any insight you may have. Thanks!

I would love to look deeper into this, rose-dee. Would you mind dropping me a line with all the details at raphael@ebay.com? Please include any reference numbers, email exchanges with CS if any, and anything else that might be useful. Thanks!

Anonymous · ‎02-27-2013

Hi pocomocomputing.

I should have read more carefully. 😉

I can't recreate that issue. The feature works for me - I can add and remove it successfully.

Could you kindly let me know what version of browser you are using? Perhaps it is a browser-specific issue.

rose-dee · ‎02-27-2013

Hi Raphael - I'd greatly appreciate that, and will send the details to you, thank you. It was quite a critical issue and one that may affect my other listings, so it was very upsetting to find no one who could/would deal with it. It also affected my seller status, so it's a real concern.

Thanks again!