Hello everyone,
Welcome to our weekly chat. The thread will remain open for most of the day this week.
Here are the issues I am currently tracking:
- UPC codes suddenly not recognized on live listings (mjwl2006)
And the issues for which I have had news:
- SYI form stripping weight value when switching currency - The team is working to figure out a solution to this.
- Full shipping FVF charged on combined orders with discounted shipping (dutchman48) - The billing team is investigating on this.
- SYI preventing relist and Sell Similar if the original listing had a non compliant photo (pierrelebel) - problem has been identified and work has begun.
Lastly, the eBay Canada office observed a moment of silence this morning at the 11th hour. We are thankful to our fallen soldiers for the liberty and freedom we all enjoy today. Lest we forget.
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
Hi Raphael,
There really is a lot of confusion on the way the return system is set up from both buyers and sellers. I know that when a seller accepts a nad return from a buyer, the system tells the buyer that the seller will send them a shipping label. Some sellers simply don't want to do that and some sellers can't do it because they are in another country but either way, it is not clear to buyers what they should do if they do not receive a label. I don't know the actual wording that ebay shows the buyer at the time but I know that some of assumed that if they don't send the item right away, that they will lose the chance to do so.
It's my understanding that the only thing a buyer can do when the seller refuses to send them a label and/or pay for the shipping, the buyer needs to wait until ebay can be asked to step in but buyers don't realize that. They don't equate the stepping in with the label issue so they just get frustrated. Question (finally) When a buyer comes to the board because they don't have a label in a not as described situation and the seller is not helping them, should they be advised to wait until they can ask ebay to step in...is that correct advice?
There are many threads with situations like this on both .com and .ca but in the following two threads the buyers felt forced to buy their own label and one was under the impression based on info from ebay that they would be reimbursed later on. As I said, I don't know exactly what they read and what gave them that impression but I wanted to pass on the info. I do think that situations like this only upset buyers and I think that ebay needs to either clarify the return label situation or not make promises that are not followed through on.
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Buyer-Central/Seller-to-Refund-Return-Shipping/m-p/317911#U317911
Hi pjcdn,
I'm actually right in the middle of an item not as described case as a buyer. I just opened the return request yesterday and the seller has yet to respond. Here is what verbiage I see on the return page:
Having been through this before, I totally agree that until eBay steps in, if the seller is unresponsive of doesn't provide clear direction, a buyer is kind of left to figure things out on their own. In those cases it's probably best to just wait & escalate when the time comes. That way they can speak to an eBay agent if needed and get a clear set of instructions on how to proceed.
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
If a seller has less than 400 transactions every 3 months, will the new shipping time metric take into account transactions for a year or just for the previous 3 months? If it is for a year, how will that work in February? Sellers will be judged on transactions from mid September until the end of the January?
For lower volume sellers who are on a 12-months evaluation cycle, the OTS (On Time Shipping) metric will only get evaluated from September data onwards. Larger sellers will be evaluated on their past 3 months' data as usual.
If you wonder why September, it's because we think it's more fair to only use data gathered after we announced this change.
@jt-libra wrote:
Hi Raphael:
As of this afternoon, the "Actions" column on my eBay Active Listings Page, my landing page, has moved from the far right of the page to the first column. There seems to be no way to move it back where it was. This has occurred on Firefox, Chrome and IE.
At first I thought it was a glitch so I shut down and reopened the browsers but it was still there ..... and I don't like it there! I'm sure I'm not the only person who has a preference as to how their landing page is set out. In one tab, I have my listings in alphabetical order; on the other, I sort them by Time Left. Now all I see is "Assign Automation Rules" or "Send to Online Auction". I find it very distracting and an inefficient use of space. For now, I've just made the column as narrow as possible.
Anyway, I did a brief search to see if I could change it and came across a thread on the U.S. boards with a number of identical complaints. For some, this started last month and, for others like myself, just today.
Was this intentional and, if so, do you know the reasoning behind it?
Thanks.
Hi JT,
Unfortunately I don't have any info on that. I've been asking but it's been hard as this part of the site changed hands recently. I'll make sure to pass on your comments to the team when I reach them.
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
I don't remember if you commented on this before.....A couple of sellers are saying that if .a change is made and all listings on.ca will be in Canadian dollars, the rules for us posting on the U.S. site will also change. For example...if I get 200 free listings on .ca for my store, I can do another 200 on .com. Has it ever been discussed that the rules for listing on the 2 sites will be changed in the future?
It has not been discussed as far as I know, nor do I know of any plans to change the way the free listing count per site works for promos. I actually had a discussion with the promo team earlier today and they've assured me that regular scheduled promos should continue to run as they have, with free listings available on both sites for Canadian sellers.
@rose-dee wrote:
My drop-down options column has just shifted to the far left today.
I really dislike it there. Not only does it push information that is more important to me every day further to the right (some out of sight), but it's visually distracting. I'll probably also be constantly accidentally touching that down-arrow and then having to backtrack each time -- a real nuisance.
Raphael, does this have anything to do with the changes being made to design the new seller Hub? Can we expect more of the unexpected on our Seller pages from now until that feature is fully implemented?
Hi rose-dee,
I have no idea, sorry. As I said to jt-libra, I'm investigating.
@sylviebee wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@pierrelebel wrote:
On a totally different subject, a Canadian seller - having received negative feedback - wrote today
"I called eBy and they won't touch it...... as expected. In the end they said that it's perfectly OK for me to buy from her and leave retaliatory NFB."
post #10; http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/A-Very-Vengeful-Seller/m-p/318522#U318522
How can an eBay employee suggest a seller could leave retaliatory feedback? Does that not go against everything eBay stands for?
Obviously the employee who said that is 100% wrong. That would imply committing a much worst policy violation, which is to say that the original seller would have to buy an item from the original buyer with the sole intent to disrupt their business. Not super sure how this is enforced today but back when I worked the CS queues in the Vancouver office between 2006 and 2008, people who did that were immediately suspended, no warning issued. Glad to read that the OP on the thread you linked to does not intend to follow that advice.
I'll see if I can track down the CS agent who said that and make sure they receive appropriate coaching.
Raphael; I agree that this should not be allowed.
However, my buyer (not this id) did precisely that and CS agreed that this was clear.
Their position was that even though what occurred was clear they would not move the NFB left for me because the seller did not precisely say that it was retaliatory FB.
Hi sylviebee,
I don't like what I'm reading at all. Can you send me a direct email with all the details, when you talked to CS (dates) and anything relevant?
Thanks!
@pocomocomputing wrote:
Here is an old issue that keeps coming up.
A seller has an auction running. The seller restricts the countries they will ship to.
A potential buyer is registered in a country that is blocked by the seller. The buyer has multiple shipping addresses in their eBay id for their friends or relatives or even a freight forwarder and changes their Primary shipping address to one that the seller ships to so they can bid. If they win, they have the item shipped to their friend/freight forwarder who will reship to them in their country
The buyer is not doing anything wrong but using a method that for most sales is fine. The seller responsibility is to the address that they shipped to in a country they ship to.
The buyer places a bid and the seller sees the bid and checks the eBay id and finds it is in a blocked country. The seller cancels the bid and blocks the bidder thinking the bidder is up to no good and blames eBay for allowing the unwelcome bidder to bid.
Why is this old problem still happening? It pops up in the forums her on a regular basis.
Or am I misunderstanding the scenario I described above?
The problem here is, as far as I'm concerned, a lack of communication on the buyer's part. I don't think it's a good idea to prevent buyers from having multiple shipping addresses. As a buyer I certainly use them. However if I decide to get something shipped to a friend in the US, I usually contact the seller first to tell them about what I want to do and allow them the opportunity to refuse if they don't like it.
In your scenario, if I was the seller and a buyer did this without contacting me first, I would probably think they are not legit.
@sylviebee wrote:
Raphael, the point is that no one will openly admit to retaliatory NFB and unless the buyer does so eBay will do nothing about it
Same thing as sanctioning this bad behaviour.
It's not that they're giving out the wrong information.
It's that they are telling us/me how it works in the real world.
At least that's how it unfolded for me.
What the CS rep told you about FB only being removable if the author states the FB is retaliatory is baloney. What isn't allowed is to buy items from a seller with whom you've had a previous bad experience just to be able to leave negative FB. If a buyer left you negative FB under those circumstances, it should be removable. At least, that's how the policy worked back when I enforced it. I'm talking to a few contacts in CS to make sure it's still the case as we as making sure the agents who gave you wrong info get the necessary coaching.
This concludes our session for this week. Thanks everyone and see you next week!
Oh and Happy Diwali!
