Hello Canadian eBayers,
Welcome to our weekly chat! Please start posting at your convenience, we will join you at 1 PM Eastern.
Good morning Raphael.
For the last week or so, we have seen many many posts on several boards - on both eBay.ca and eBay.com - about gallery pictures not showing up.
Are you aware of the problem?
One poster suggested this solution:
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Buyer-Central/IMAGE-PROBLEM-RESOLVED/m-p/295913#U295913
Are your "customer service representatives" in the USA and the Philippines aware of the problem? solution?
Hi Raphael, I have 3 questions today:
1) Is eBay aware that the "Store categories" panel has disappeared when a listing is opened? This has been going on for quite a few days now for me. I know it's impacted some other sellers but don't know how widespread it is. If eBay is aware, is this a permanent change? If so, it will seriously affect my buyers' ability to easily find what they want in my store -- I depend on those categories to direct buyers once they "land" on any listing. I'm very worried about this feature vanishing, as sales are slow enough as it is.
2) In the most recent promo, "Sell Similar" was stated to be excluded, yet some of us sellers have tested a listing using "Sell Similar" (and complying with the other terms of the promo), and these are showing up in the promo free counter on our Summary page. Are these in fact free, i.e. was the promo announcement wrong, or is the promo counter wrong?
3) Back to the "cart disconnect" issue (oh no 
)-- If a Canadian seller lists all items with free domestic shipping, is that enough to eliminate the problem U.S. buyers have been having with multiple purchases from Cdn sellers? Or do we have to offer free shipping to everywhere in order to avoid the US cart disconnect?
@pierrelebel wrote:
Good morning Raphael.
For the last week or so, we have seen many many posts on several boards - on both eBay.ca and eBay.com - about gallery pictures not showing up.
Are you aware of the problem?
One poster suggested this solution:
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Buyer-Central/IMAGE-PROBLEM-RESOLVED/m-p/295913#U295913
Are your "customer service representatives" in the USA and the Philippines aware of the problem? solution?
Hi Pierre,
I have searched in the current and recent site issues list and there are no reported issues with gallery pictures (last one that would fit that description was resolved about 2 weeks ago).
If the issue has to do with malware, as the solution thread you provided suggests, this wouldn't be something we could fix on our end in any case. Malware can create all kinds of funky behaviour on the computers where it installs itself, everyone should sweep for these regularly.
@rose-dee wrote:
Hi Raphael, I have 3 questions today:
1) Is eBay aware that the "Store categories" panel has disappeared when a listing is opened? This has been going on for quite a few days now for me. I know it's impacted some other sellers but don't know how widespread it is. If eBay is aware, is this a permanent change? If so, it will seriously affect my buyers' ability to easily find what they want in my store -- I depend on those categories to direct buyers once they "land" on any listing. I'm very worried about this feature vanishing, as sales are slow enough as it is.
2) In the most recent promo, "Sell Similar" was stated to be excluded, yet some of us sellers have tested a listing using "Sell Similar" (and complying with the other terms of the promo), and these are showing up in the promo free counter on our Summary page. Are these in fact free, i.e. was the promo announcement wrong, or is the promo counter wrong?
3) Back to the "cart disconnect" issue (oh no
Hi rose-dee,
1) I am unaware of this change so I will ask someone on the appropriate team. I do see that the View Item page seems a bit more minimal than it used to. Once I get word on what this is, I'll update this post.
UPDATE: This is a bug and it's being worked on. Stay tuned, the store categories should come back to the View Item soon.
2) Is this the promo you're talking about? http://pages.ebay.ca/promo/2015/0302/ShipFree.html
I'll ask the Promo about this. Normally if Sell Similar ended up counting in the promo, it would mean that this was how it was set up on the backend. Whether it's an error or the terms were changed by design, in the end you're benefiting from this since using Sell Similar to create new listings would save a lot of time as opposed to creating only new listings from scratch.
3) Offering free shipping domestically or internationally would change nothing with regards to US buyers being unable to combine items when purchasing your items on eBay.com. The only way to allow US buyers to use the shopping cart on eBay.com to buy your items would be to list them on eBay.com.
@rose-dee wrote:
Sorry, one more query related to 2) above: If "Sell Similar" is in fact intended to be excluded from the current promo, can a seller use their "templates" for creating new listings?
I found - through testing yesterday -- that the listings I created from a template also showed up in my free promo counter on the Summary page, but wondered if they're considered the same as Sell Similar? I don't want to list a whole lot of items and then find out later (when I'm billed) that they weren't free after all. Every penny counts at the moment.
Creating a listing from a draft or template would be the same as creating a new listing from scratch, so these should count towards the promo like your test suggests. Sell Similar also would be considered to be a new listing (that is the main difference between using Relist and Sell Similar), which I suspect might have been the reason why the promo seems to have been programmed differently than how the terms were written and that Sell Similar qualifies for the promo.
@kcgwynne wrote:
Hello Raphael
Two Questions:
1. About buyer blocks. I had mine set to 2 unpaid strikes within one month. The question is that one calendar month or 30 days between attempted purchase and the last strike? As I recently had someone asking about purchasing off ebay on the last day of the month.
2. About free shipping. If a customer purchases multiple items is there a way to automatically give a discount? without having to manually refund.
Hello kcgwynne,
1) As far as I know, the time setting on this buyer requirement is according to the time where the buyer attempts to bid (not by calendar month). So if your buyer had an unpaid item strike within the month prior to the day they wanted to buy from you, they would not have been able to.
2) Yes. There are 2 ways to do that:
- On BIN listings with multiple quantity, you can specify a different shipping cost for the first item bought, and a different shipping cost for any additional items purchased from the same listing. This is set in the shipping section in the listing flow itself.
- You can also program combined shipping discounts for buyers who purchase more than one item across multiple listings. This can be set for auctions, BIN listings, or both. These combined shipping discount rules can be set from the Site Preferences page.More information on this: http://pages.ebay.ca/help/pay/shipping-discounts.html
@rose-dee wrote:
But last week (or perhaps it was 2 weeks ago) in the Wed. session you said that offering free shipping would eliminate the problem of US buyers not being able to make multiple purchases using the cart. Now I'm confused. I'll try to find the post and copy it here and perhaps you could clarify if I've totally misunderstood.
What I said was that offering free shipping to US buyers would resolve the problem of them needing to combine shipping to avoid paying full shipping price on each individual item. If the shipping is free, they don't need to use the shopping cart in order to save on shipping, because shipping is free in the first place.
@lady.stark wrote:
The "print" listing option is gone, both on eBay.com and eBay.ca... Why? I always used that option to print a file for my TV show and movie prop purchases! Please bring it back!
Hi lady.stark,
The Print option on the View Item page was retired a while ago. The View Item team is considering bringing it back at some point, but I don't have any ETA for this unfortunately.
@rose-dee wrote:
So does that mean that sellers would have to offer free US (international) shipping on every item, but could still if they wished, charge shipping domestically?
You didn't actually quite make it clear last time that free U.S. shipping would be necessary, just free shipping "on everything", and I suppose I took that to mean that offering free domestic shipping would be sufficient as a workaround. Obviously that's not the case, and that's why I wanted to clarify this.
(From the Feb. 11th board hour): "Speaking of work arounds, your business model in particular lends itself perfectly two simple solutions. You don't use calculated shipping and your items have generally a low shipping cost. Why not simply adjust your sale price to make everything free shipping?"
I never called anything necessary, please understand. You have a specific problem, for which I have proposed several specific solutions.
Let's summarize the problem once again so we're all on the same page. You're in a situation where buyers who shop on eBay.com are unable to take advantage of your combined shipping discount because they can't put your items in the eBay.com shopping cart, which is the only way to combine items into a single order on eBay.com. So the thing that is really deterring buyers from purchasing your items are the shipping costs. If you eliminate those shipping costs, the problem goes away.
@rose-dee wrote:
I wanted to bring up one more matter related again to the US buyer cart disconnect. The following is from your Post #45 (I think) of Feb. 11th:
1) As I explained before, only CA sellers who list on eBay.ca AND offer combined shipping discounts on BIN items end up in a situations where buyers on eBay.com cannot get their orders combined. I don't have the actual number on hand, but that's a surprisingly low number of sellers, and certainly not all Canadian.
I'm confused by this answer because it seems to me that the problem of US buyers not being able to easily and smoothly check out using their cart is going to affect many more Cdn sellers than just those who list on eBay.ca and offer combined discounts on BIN items.
Amazingly enough, it is 100% true that the group of CA seller affected by this is much smaller than even we had anticipated. This is largely the reason why we've been having difficulty in getting the remedy work prioritized. But my statement remains true.
@rose-dee wrote:
Every U.S. buyer who attempts such a purchase and can't figure it out, then goes away (to another, easier site, or back to .com) may well decide never to try buying from an eBay Canadian seller again. There are probably a lot of disgusted U.S. buyers out there because of this. It's not a reflection on you personally of course, but I only hope eBay.ca staff would pass on to eBay HQ the broader serious implications of this problem.
First off, every US buyer who runs into this problem would already be on eBay.com since this is the only place where the problem exists. And yes, as we've explained time and again, we've made the full business case to eBay HQ and everyone agrees that this is work that needs to be done, however there are things that have even more business urgency that keep getting ahead in prioritization.
@rose-dee wrote:
Secondly, why, can't a Canadian seller listing on eBay.ca with BIN items, avoid the US buyer issues if they simply don't offer combined shipping discounts? I'm sorry, but I don't understand how that solution doesn't flow from the logic of your first statement above. In other words, wouldn't removing combined shipping discounts allow U.S. buyers to use their cart when purchasing from Cdn. sellers? I'm desperate for another answer rather than listing on .com which has many, many other issues attached to it for a Cdn. seller. Thanks.
Only items listed on eBay.com can be added to the shopping cart on eBay.com. Nothing will change that until the eBay.com shopping cart is rebuilt. So if the problem is that US buyers cannot benefit from your combined shipping discounts, then not offering those combined shipping discounts wouldn't remedy anything.
The two best options to solve this for your particular situation are:
- list your items on eBay.com, that way buyers on eBay.com can use the shopping cart and benefit from your combined shipping discounts.
- Offer free shipping to the US, that way buyers on eBay.com still won't be able to put your items in the shopping cart BUT they won't need your combined shipping discounts at all because shipping is free.
@rose-dee wrote:
So, to return to the current promo, is "Sell Similar" allowed (= free of charge) in this promo, or not? In other words, if we use it, will be charged listing fees later?
I don't know the answer to that, as I said before. I'll update my original reply with the appropriate info when I have it.
In the meantime, you can see for yourself if your newly created listings (Sell Similar, or from a template, etc.) decrease your promo count or not.
