Hello Canadian eBayers!
Welcome to the first Weekly Board Hour of the 2014 summer! We're looking forward to chat with you at 1 PM Eastern. Please feel free to get a head start and post your questions and comments at your convenience.
A few days ago, this question was raised on the Selling Central board:
"Why is it that when you list something, right away it shows views? Sometimes it is 1, sometimes 2. It is just confusing, wish there was a way to zero them out, so I would know how many actual views there was. Used to use Vendio, but don't want a third party involved now."
I have experienced the same thing some quite some time. I am using Selling Manager.
What is the problem? Where is the solution?
Follow up to last week thread.
"At one point or another everyone has opened up their inbox and has found unwanted emails. Sometimes called junk email or unsolicited bulk email (UBE), the Canadian government is implementing a new law, Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), to crack down on unwanted emails and texts. This law will have a major impact on businesses, because now businesses and organizations will need to prove they have consent to reach out to new, existing, or potential customers using electronic messages.
CASL will take effect on July 1, 2014. Non-compliance will result in penalties for each violation that can reach as high as $1 million for an individual and $10 million for organizations.
My question is: what is eBay doing to protect its store sellers using email marketing through eBay - sending messages to users (in Canada and elsewhere) who have added their names to the mailing list over time (I count hundreds of them on my eBay mailing list).
The legislation requires new consent be obtained or we face fines. Is eBay.ca aware of the new legislation?
What will eBay.ca do to protect us?"
You seem to indicate that you were not fully aware of the new legislation and, not being a lawyer, could not offer an answer at that time. In the meantime, I have received several requests from Canadian businesses wishing to comply with the new legislation and asking me to confirm I wish to remain on their email list.
A week later, what do you suggest for our eBay store mailing list?
Also from last week, post #6, I asked:
"While on the subject...
"What if I have a reason for not paying?
Although you're expected to pay for all items that you purchase or win, there may be cases in which you feel you have a valid reason for not paying. Check the table below for guidance.
- Seller changed the price, shipping costs, or payment method after the sale.
- This is a violation of the rules for sellers. If this happens, contact us.
Why oh why does eBay require the buyer to take extra steps to remove an unwarranted strike when the problem could be solve at time of answering eBay's initial inquiry by giving the buyer the option to explain why payment was not made. It used to be that way many years ago."
The answer received on post #13:
"As to the second question, I'm not sure."
A week later, has anyone in Toronto figured out an answer?
A different type of question today.
For twelve or so years, in addition to the weekly chat, the staff at eBay.ca would often visit different boards and, from time to time, answer questions of a technical nature, often on the Seller Central board.
In the year year or so, I have not noticed staff answering questions.
Is this a change of policy? Or is it the result of lower staff level in Toronto?.
@pierrelebel wrote:
A few days ago, this question was raised on the Selling Central board:
"Why is it that when you list something, right away it shows views? Sometimes it is 1, sometimes 2. It is just confusing, wish there was a way to zero them out, so I would know how many actual views there was. Used to use Vendio, but don't want a third party involved now."
I have experienced the same thing some quite some time. I am using Selling Manager.
What is the problem? Where is the solution?
Hello Pierre,
This is a really good question, one to which I don't have an answer on hand. I'll get in touch with the relevant team and update this post when I hear back.
My own hypothesis is that the initial views are that of the seller themselves, but I could be wrong.
According to Stats Canada, Canadians purchased nearly $19 billion dollars online in 2012, a jump of 24% from 2010..
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadians-spent-18-9b-online-in-2012-statscan-says-1.2254150
Several years ago, the eBay.ca country manager in an article written in the Globe and Mail indicated that purchases by Canadians on eBay were in the $600 to $700 million range. Hopefully, these purchases had grown to one billion dollars by 2012. However, my recollection is that about 2/3 of purchases by Canadians on eBay came from outside Canada (mostly the USA).
Has that ratio changed over the years?
@pierrelebel wrote:
Also from last week, post #6, I asked:
"While on the subject...
"What if I have a reason for not paying?
Although you're expected to pay for all items that you purchase or win, there may be cases in which you feel you have a valid reason for not paying. Check the table below for guidance.
- Seller changed the price, shipping costs, or payment method after the sale.
- This is a violation of the rules for sellers. If this happens, contact us.
Why oh why does eBay require the buyer to take extra steps to remove an unwarranted strike when the problem could be solve at time of answering eBay's initial inquiry by giving the buyer the option to explain why payment was not made. It used to be that way many years ago."
The answer received on post #13:
"As to the second question, I'm not sure."
A week later, has anyone in Toronto figured out an answer?
Even if a buyer has a legitimate reason for not paying, they are still not paying. In such cases, if the seller disagrees with the non payment for any reason, the due process is for them to open an unpaid item case in order to recoup their final value fees. If that results in an unpaid item recorded on the buyer's account and the buyer wants to justify their non payment with eBay, they have to contact us and make their case. eBay then has to check the buyer's reason against the unpaid item removal guidelines, ask the buyer for proof if applicable, and remove the strike if the buyer meets the requirements. That's how the system is built and was always this way.
"was always this way."
????
I do not think so.
Once upon a time, a buyer refusing to pay could state why. Typically seller changing shipping price would be the reason.
@rose-dee wrote:
One more question today (this one specific). I've had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what is happening with the options on the SYI/listing form.
The fee for Gallery Plus has been reduced to $0.35 (as of today), apparently because the "supersizing" no longer applies to photos that show up in regular search results. Where the "supersizing" seems to apply now is only in search results within a seller's pages. So, for example, I see it when I click on my store home page and go down the listings, but not when I do a site search and my listing is included in the results. That's a shame, because the Gallery Plus option was a real boon to selling unique and valuable items, and for me at least was well worth the extra $1.00 fee.
So... what I extrapolate from this is that eBay has lowered the price of Gallery Plus because it's less of a service than it used to be, and that now every listing on eBay will look the same in search results, with the "Quick Look" icon. What was the reasoning behind this?
Hi rose-dee,
As far as I know, the pricing for Gallery Plus was not changed. It was and remains $0.35 for Auction-style listings of any duration and for Buy It Now listings with a duration of 3, 5, 7 or 10 days, and $1.00 for BIN listings with a duration of 30 days of Good 'Til Cancelled. Please see the pricing page for reference.
@rose-dee wrote:
By the way, why is it that in this new SYI/relist form you have to go to a pop-up for the options, check them off first, then you return to the main form and other options (e.g. Value Pack/Bold, etc.) appear? Why not just put the upgrades all in one place?
Apologies, not sure what you mean here. If turned on, all the listing upgrades are shown on the Review your listing page.
@rose-dee wrote:
It's taken me 4 days and some help from other sellers on the discussion boards to sort all this out. A bit of an advance notice/instruction from eBay would have been very helpful! Why can't eBay do that for sellers?
Whenever we make small changes to the site, we have to prioritize what we announce, otherwise you would get a very long and complicated string of announcements that would end up creating more confusion than it would help. Instead, we keep announcements for larger product updates and do our best to compound those into 2 to 3 Seller Updates per year. For smaller things like these, we keep our Online Customer Support and Help Pages updated to reflect those changes, so sellers can refer to those when they see changes in the flows they use more frequently.
@rose-dee wrote:
A general question -- Do you know what eBay (by that I mean HQ in San Jose) is doing specifically, or has planned, to encourage buyers to come to the site and to reassure them of its security in the wake of the recent cyber attack, aside from the reminder on the site to change passwords? Why doesn't eBay, with all its cash, run broadly-targeted TV or other media ads at this point?
I see many sellers reporting drastically reduced traffic and sales this month. There is also a concern that eBay's relationship with Google may be a factor in this.
Can you please comment on these two aspects? Many of us are worried.
Thanks for your question. We have a remarkably resilient marketplace, and remarkably engaged users, as evidenced by how fast most active users reset their passwords and resumed their shopping activities on eBay.We have been very active in targeted marketing - in both online and offline channels - for buyers who have yet to reset their passwords. I can’t share campaign specifics and details in a public forum like this but I can tell you we have been very successful, and we will continue to invest.
There is much public domain information out there involving Google’s recent Panda update and the impact on eBay. I can’t comment on that information, or provide any internal information about it at this point. To the extent it’s a material issue, it would be discussed as part of our Q2 earnings report next month. What I can tell you is that it is always in eBay Inc.’s interest to do what we can to attract and engage as many buyers as possible, and we will continue to employ any and all levers that we can. We are only successful if our sellers are successful.
@vintagenorth wrote:
Hi Raphael, any further info on this question that I asked about last week? It seems that there have been some emails sent out to the .com folks but I haven't seen one here. According to an E-Commerce article, they are even handing out free listings for July to some of their sellers. Thanks!
@vintagenorth wrote:
Another question - I rec'd the offer to add a store to this ID last month. I was thinking seriously about doing so soon. This week I rec'd the email that said the offer was extended. However, the extended offer was only sent to my other ID where I already have a store. Will there be an extended offer for non-stores as well?
(Hopefully, ebay will fix all the ongoing problems very soon because until they do, the offers really don't matter anyway, do they? I can't be expected to upgrade while sales are falling off.)
Regarding the Store subscription promo, I asked the Promos team to fill me in on exactly how that particular promo worked. Once I get that info I'll update this post.
EDIT: Looks like there was an error in the promo emails that were sent. The US Promo team told us they are preparing a correction email that will be sent to all impacted users, so look out for that.
Hi vintagenorth,
As I said in the edit, the Promos team will be contacting all impacted sellers with an update soon. I don't have any update further to that.
@lacemaker3 wrote:
When a user needs to contact Customer service, if they are located in Canada or the USA, then only toll-free (866) phone numbers are available, which cannot be called from outside Canada/USA. There are no regular numbers that can be called from other countries, and no email or chat options.
Users outside of Canada/USA often ask questions about how to reach customer service. They say that they can't dial the number, it doesn't work. I thought that was because they were being shown the toll-free numbers, which don't work outside Canada/USA. But recently, a user posted that they were able to call eBay.com from Germany:
community.ebay.com/t5/International-Trading/why-can-i-not-email-ebay-I-am-in-europe-how-come-ebay-wa...
And, in this post, a user in Greece said that they were give an option for email contact with Customer Support with eBay.com, but they had expected to get a phone number as they had in the past:
community.ebay.com/t5/Technical-Issues/No-more-phone-contact-with-eBay-Since-when/qaq-p/21294980
So that we can correctly advise users who are outside Canada/USA, when they need to contact eBay Customer Service, it would be great if you could answer these questions:
If a user outside of North America tries to contact Customer Service on ebay.com or ebay.ca, what options are available to them?
- are they given phone numbers that can be called internationally?
- are they ever given an option for email, or live chat? (as we see on the eBay UK Customer Service if we are contacting them from Canada/USA)
Thanks lacemaker3.
You are correct - we do not provide toll-free numbers that work outside of North America when users try to connect with customer support via eBay Canada.
For international users, best bet is to try contacting customer support from whichever eBay site seems closest and is in the correct language. So if you are in Europe and speak English, try eBay.co.uk. And if you are in Asia and speak English, try eBay.com.au.
Even though your question may be Canada-specific, it's entirely likely that any of our global CS reps would be able to access the right knowledge base material to answer most questions.
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