eBay

brandeentertainment · ‎12-29-2013

They should give all sellers free subtitles for months of November and December so sell to tell buyers Things like Possible slow delivery times in december or to Upgrade to Expedited or Xxpesspost to ensure Delivery time is met.

Good idea/Bad Idea/Already tried before

pierrelebel · ‎12-30-2013

I use free subtitles twelve months a year.

mr.elmwood · ‎12-30-2013

Pierre, keep beating that drum. You have told everyone, many times before, how to do that. I gotta learn to do it your way!

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tobyshitzu · ‎12-30-2013

They've done free subtitle promos. Then many forget and relist with huge fees. Of course for years and years all media listings had it free, virtually no one put anything of any consequence in them.

There is no way anyone selling piles of media is going to use CAFR that ebay never finished for subtitles (no catalog)

mr.elmwood · ‎12-30-2013

What Pierre and I are playing "kitty by the door" with, is that subtitles are always free on ebay canada FR. I first became aware of that feature from ebay Canada executives going on three years ago.

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rose-dee · ‎12-30-2013

@mr.elmwood wrote:
Pierre, keep beating that drum. You have told everyone, many times before, how to do that. I gotta learn to do it your way!

I must have missed it -- do tell!

mr.elmwood · ‎12-30-2013

See post #5.

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rose-dee · ‎12-30-2013

Aha, yes, I'd totally forgotten about that -- merci mes amis!

mr.elmwood · ‎12-30-2013

Now that the idea is back in my head, I should try it. Do the listings need to be in French to qualify? I have no idea.

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pierrelebel · ‎12-30-2013

"Do the listings need to be in French to qualify? I have no idea."

NO.

pocomocomputing · ‎12-30-2013

@mr.elmwood wrote:
Now that the idea is back in my head, I should try it. Do the listings need to be in French to qualify? I have no idea.

The only issue you might have is that the Sell Your Item form eBay section names and instructions are in French and may be confusing what they are for. The SYI form layout it the same so no problem where info needs to be entered. What is actually entered in the free text areas like title, description, return policy, payment details can be in any language. Since your language is English and most of your buyers are English or can read English, no problem.

At one time (before 1 year or so ago) using the ebay.cafr site to create a listing left some eBay parts of the listing in French if viewed on an English site but apparently this is no longer true. For example, the eBay categories at the top would show in French instead of English. The Item Specifics that were eBay would show the specifics name in French, the Help for Item Condition would come up in French. So the page would have a small mix of eBay parts of the page show in French on an English site. At least on eBay.ca. Maybe not on other English Sites. I do not remember how far many sites I checked this issue on.

mr.elmwood · ‎12-30-2013

This won't work. I use Part Compatibility on dot com Motors. Dingity-dang.

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rose-dee · ‎12-30-2013

French isn't an issue for me (I'm fairly bilingual), but it might be for my US customers if it showed up here and there in listings. Although, come to think of it, a little peppering of français might just lend a certain je ne sais quoi to my listings, that Parisian sort of air.

I took a look at a few of Pierre's listings and I don't see any French text, but there didn't seem to be any item specifics on those listings, so perhaps that's where the French would show up.

I'm going to give it a try on a couple of listings (now that we've all been reminded - thank you Pierre) and see how it goes.

pocomocomputing · ‎12-30-2013

@rose-dee wrote:
French isn't an issue for me (I'm fairly bilingual), but it might be for my US customers if it showed up here and there in listings. Although, come to think of it, a little peppering of français might just lend a certain je ne sais quoi to my listings, that Parisian sort of air.

I took a look at a few of Pierre's listings and I don't see any French text, but there didn't seem to be any item specifics on those listings, so perhaps that's where the French would show up.

I'm going to give it a try on a couple of listings (now that we've all been reminded - thank you Pierre) and see how it goes.

The issue with parts of eBay listing showing up in French on other sites seems to be fixed. I mentioned this a couple of times in the past years so maybe eBay fixed it. Not because of me but perhaps in their ongoing efforts to make a universal site, they fixed many of the country/language glitches.

The eBay listing form shell is the same on most eBay sites. Change the site and the listing form language changes but all of the user details are kept.

For example, look at a listing on ebay.ca, then just change the the country suffix from .ca to .com in the browser address bar URL and you see the listing in the ebay.com USA listing form shell and language. Switch to .fr for france, .de for Germany, .it for Italy.

For most countries this simple country change works where eBay has an eBay site. Some eBay sites will not work because they have not changed to the universal setup or because they have a more complex language.

When I used to do this trick a few parts of the listing form did not work right but this was years ago. eBay.cafr was one of them.

Now it seems that most of these glitches are gone.

PS I recently reported a small bug in the listing form to Kalvin. If you look at a listing on eBay.ca, in the Shipping & Payments tab at the bottom in the Payments section, you will see two dashes under the section header Payment Details. This is present on many sites (eBay.fr, eBay.de) but not on eBay.com or eBay.co.uk. This appears to be introduced in last Thursday/Friday eBay maintenance. I found this bug interesting because it is across so many sites. The change propagated across many eBay sites despite the language used. Inside the universal form but outside the language selection. Probably a boring discussion for most to read about.

Also they broke shipping options to Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and no shipping cost is showing up when those countries are selected on eBay.ca. At least for Standard Int'l shipping option. Little things get broken every so often on eBay weekly maintenance. I just run listings tests (every few weeks) to see what I can find. I have a check list of things I look at. So I report them to Kalvin when I find them. And Kalvin does a good job of getting most of them fixed in seasonal time (sometimes quickly, sometime in a few weeks, one took a year+, some never. Not his fault as he just sends it to the eBay team responsible).

I did many years in computer tech support so I often see little discrepancies like this on eBay. It is so much easier to be a user (of eBay or other software) and complain about computer systems than to be on the receiving end in tech support or customer support. LOL! Very hard job to maintain such complex systems like eBay when so much is outside of their control (Windows updates, browser updates, virus software updates, PayPal Shipping (Pitney Bowes), etcetera). It is a wonder that it all works together most of the time. Actually, it is quite amazing that it works most of the time.

rose-dee · ‎12-31-2013

@pocomocomputing wrote:
It is a wonder that it all works together most of the time. Actually, it is quite amazing that it works most of the time.

I for one found your post very interesting 'poco', and it got me to thinking: it seems to me that eBay's site, generally speaking, worked smoothly and almost flawlessly up until early 2013. Since then it seems to have been one weird (and sometimes significant) glitch after another. Things that worked perfectly for years suddenly went awry.

My rationale has been exactly what you've just expressed - that every time they add or work on one thing, some other small thing gets broken. And as we all know, eBay has made massive changes over the past year, so they've probably "broken" a lot of other things in the process.

By the way, do you happen to know when does eBay does their regular site maintenance, or is it intermittent and not a scheduled time each week? I'm a night owl, so I often work on my store in the wee hours, and I want to try and avoid bumping up against eBay's programmers.

lady.stark · ‎12-31-2013

I do use the free subtitles on the French website since I began selling on this ID (thanks to Pierre who gave me the idea!). Feel free to take a look at my items. For some strange reason I don't understand though, those listings are taking much more time to sell than those on eBay.com.

mr.elmwood · ‎12-31-2013

@lady.stark wrote:
I do use the free subtitles on the French website since I began selling on this ID (thanks to Pierre who gave me the idea!). Feel free to take a look at my items. For some strange reason I don't understand though, those listings are taking much more time to sell than those on eBay.com.

LS, I looked at one of your listings "RARE XENA 8.5x11 montage photo by ANNE C. FERGUSON". Is it listed on the French side? I looked at the address at the top and I couldn't tell as it just seems to say ebay.ca.

Anyway, I took that title and plugged it into dot com. "O" results found and then below the solid line it gives me "More items related to "RARE XENA 8.5x11 montage photo by ANNE C. FERGUSON". Yours is there.

I change the filter from dot com to North America, still zero results found. I change the filter to worldwide and still zero results found. It still gives me the "More items related ....", but, it does not seem to be recognizing that your listings are in this world, yet, it shows them.

I'm not understanding any of that. Let's add that to yer "For some strange reason I don't understand though" and make a big pot of befuddled.

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pocomocomputing · ‎12-31-2013

@rose-dee wrote:

By the way, do you happen to know when does eBay does their regular site maintenance, or is it intermittent and not a scheduled time each week? I'm a night owl, so I often work on my store in the wee hours, and I want to try and avoid bumping up against eBay's programmers.

eBay regular maintenance is done weekly on Friday morning from 2 am to 4 am Eastern Time or 11 pm Thursday night to 1 am Friday morning Pacific time. This is usually posted on the eBay announcements in the top right corner in a blue box called System Announcements. Nothing there right now for some reason. They never really say much in the announcement, a few words something like regular "eBay regular Maintenance 11 pm to 1 am Pacific Time" withe date they will do the maintenance. The message is revised each week with the correct date.

There is no announcement on eBay.ca as far as I can remember eBay.ca servers are in the USA along with eBay.com servers. I think in eBay.ca help, they send you eBay.com announcements

Now from personal experience on eBay.ca, right at 11 pm Thursday night for me here in BC, things starts acting weird many times. My eBay or Selling Manager may act up and some part will say not available. I sometimes cannot edit a listings, whatever. Risky to try any bulk edit at this time. Total PITA as it is still early for me here as I stay up late. It is often working normal by midnight Pacific time. I usually go away at 11 pm and come back at 12. Hopefully the buying side is working fine so no sales are lost.

Now I am mainly on eBay.ca and I cannot remember if eBay.com is affected as much.

Interesting enough, you may not see the changes after the maintenance. I think they load the changed code and somehow turn it on when they want to. It seems to me some issues will pop up on Monday not Friday after the maintenance. Maybe to avoid the busy weekend shopping. Speculation on my part.

(When I was using Auctiva, they would do their system maintenance on Monday Tuesday night. I dreaded Tuesday on Auctiva as they often had issues from the maintenance and would not be working after several hours. This is back when they were free 4-5 years ago.)

i*m-still-here · ‎01-01-2014

I have another thought about subtitles:

I seriously doubt that a subtitle has ever sold an item.

Happy New Year!

i*m-still-here · ‎01-01-2014

@pierrelebel wrote:
I use free subtitles twelve months a year.

Pierre, You do this for others and so I know it's fine.

I looked at your items to see the subtitles and I'd like to make a suggestion:

The '''Free Shipping" portion of your subtitle is excellent, but you may want to remove the second part: "A name you can trust."

In general, that type of comment only makes the proposition seem dubious.

In other words, of course your buyers can trust you. Putting it in your title like that only makes them wonder why there would be any reason to question that they could.