eBay Bugs & Issues Thread

[kalvin@ebay.com]

Hi Everyone,

We are starting a new thread here for you to post your concerns when you encounter an eBay issue or bug and have un-tacked the previous thread that has been around since the beginning of 2008.

Here are some important things to point out:

1. This is not eBay Customer Support. All bugs and site issues should be reported to CS to ensure that they are escalated & tracked. You can report issues to CS using Contact Us. Enter a brief description of the issue you are encountering into the search box and select the most appropriate topic(s).

2. We would like to keep this thread as organized and purpose-driven as possible. If you don't have a bug or site issue to discuss, please consider posting to a different board/thread.

3. Provide as much detail as possible when describing your Issue.

Thanks -

Kalvin

[kalvin@ebay.com]

Another bug,

Reported here;

http://forums.ebay.ca/topic/Canadian-Powersellers-Discussion/When-Paying-Ebay/600036443&#msg600706433

And I quote,

When trying to pay eBay fees via the "one-time-payment" link on eBay's "Account page, we now get this message:

You have requested an outdated version of PayPal. This error often results from the use of bookmarks.

This is not encouraging....

Hi Surplus,

Thanks for posting that here as well. I just went through the one-time payment process on eBay.ca using the Account tab links/flow and had no problems. I'd be interested to find out more on this because it does seem like it's more of a cache/cookies issue on an individual computer rather- at least at first glance.

~K

[kalvin@ebay.com]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks agian for your efforts to help bring some of these things to light.

I'm sure many of you are aware of this already, but I do feel the need to point out that not all of these things are bugs- or at least not in the strictest sense of the word. Just as the eBay site is complex (which it is, despite any opinions to the contrary), the relationship between individual computer/browser settings, OS platforms, etc... can also be complex and cause various strange behaviours to occur.

By and large, when a bug occurs on the site it's going to affect a large number of people. What's more is that any given issue that happens could be site related (which again would usually mean it affects a lot of people) or it could be an issue with how their computer/system/set up or tools are communicating with the site- which technically may not be an eBay issue (or bug, so to speak).

That's not to say that we aren't interested in helping people use the site effectively or to help resolve those problems- but it's important to note that not all of the issues being mentioned here are actual "bugs".

There is also a difference that needs to be mentioned between bugs and enhancement requests. Some of what is mentioned aren't actually "bugs" but may just be the result of the way a feature was designed and may not be perfect for every use case. With the enormous number of use-case scenarios it's a tall order trying to design things that work for every one of them. That's not to say that enhancement requests aren't valid as well, but it's important to note the distinction.

One other thing that I think should be mentioned is that Vincenzo and I are here because we are on your side. Just as you are experts on how the site functions from a user standpoint, we are experts on how the site functions from a back-end perspective- something you can not necessarily understand from where you sit and use the site. When we talk about what's possible on the site and what isn't and that the site is complex it's because we eat, drink and live this kind of stuff all day, every day.

~K

[pierrelebel]

Have a nice weekend guys, you have earned it. 😉

[surplusdealdude]

Yup, we'll be back at you on Monday.]:)

[surplusdealdude]

Ah, heck, bugs don't ait.

All sorts of reports on the Paypal forums that people cannot pay for their ebay purchases with credit cards.

[surplusdealdude]

Should be, "bugs don't wait":-p

[pocomocomputing]

Ah, heck, bugs don't ait.

Bugs do ait up all our time when trying to work on eBay. They are hungry little bugs!

;-)

[surplusdealdude]

I just came from the Paypal forums.

HALF of the posts on the Shipping board are about Paypal shipping not working. Been that way for a while.

[surplusdealdude]

Paypal has a glitch in payments to sellers - sometimes the payment doesn't post for 3-4 days.

I'm getting an earful about that as well.

It all impacts on ebay, too - if the payments don't post, the sellers hold off on shipping. If they can't access Paypal shipping, they keep trying rather than going to the counter.

So add these problems to the pile.

[surplusdealdude]

turbolister - the Canadian version has so many bugs in it, I tell people to get rid of it and download the .com version and add Canada as a selling site.

[surplusdealdude]

File Exchange - The template issued by ebay to new people trying to upload has mistakes in it.

One is a spelling mistake in one of the titles.

for the other mistake, they've chained several operations together with pipes to try and save a few columns.

When you try to upload using this template, you get vague errors.

These are NEW people trying to use this - it can take a week to figure out what's wrong.

[surplusdealdude]

A buyer is reporting that they got no emails from ebay when they bought a couple of items from a seller.

Paypal sent the emails, but not ebay.

http://forums.ebay.ca/topic/Bidding-And-Buying/Ebay-Emails-About/500048867#1279376615007

[surplusdealdude]

Featured listings are supposed to be kaput, but a seller is still seeing newly listed ones.

http://forums.ebay.ca/topic/Selling-On-Ebay/Why-Am-I/500048906

[pocomocomputing]

Clean up the ebay.ca Solutions Directory

I started selling on eBay in Jan 2009. I had lurked on eBay since the early 2000’s. This id is from 2003. I did not actually use it until 2009! I never bought anything; I tried a couple of times and lost out by snipers. I read a lot about eBay in the forums over the years (ca and come). My learning curve was quick and I believe I have figured out how to be a good seller on eBay (and a good buyer but I never had a need except for 3-4 items). I learned HTML, learned how to ship, all kind of little details. I learned every day. I even post answer to fellow eBayer when I know the answer.

So one of my big pet peeves with eBay and ebay.ca is the look of disrepair and abandonment of the eBay.ca site. My experience as a new eBayer from Canada on the ebay.ca site using the resources available for a new user (seller or buyer) was poor. It had and still has a look of “I don’t care” in certain areas.

One of the tools for new eBay sellers was the Canadian Solutions Directory. It was hopelessly out of date and is (was) full of dead links, links to scammers and other bad sites, information on existing vendors was from early 2000’s. From my experience this was a huge disappointment as I was trying to learn what tools were available and evaluate them. I was actually appalled at the state of this Solutions directory. I wasted so much time looking at the “Solutions” and researching them that this was not a positive eBay experience.

I will repeat some of what I said before in that post that was deleted. This directory needs to be cleaned up and some simple rules put in place to keep it current. Anyone listing in that directory must renew it yearly or it will be deleted. The content must actually have something to do with eBay and eBay.ca.

As I understand it, you are cleaning it up. I posted this to keep the issue visible in this thread.

[pocomocomputing]

11) Shipping - continued

Clean up the PayPal shipping label instructions printed with the PayPal label on the bottom half of the sheet.

Some of the pages has misleading and just plain wrong information on them. It is out of date, from early 2000's for some. To the best of my knowledge, all of these shipping methods can be dropped off in a corner red letterbox (confirm please). I usually bring Expedited to the closest Postal Outlet because it is too big to fit in the corner box and because I want to make sure the package barcode is scanned.

As you read, you will see that the last instructions for has the most up to date instructions.

(Experienced ebay sellers and the ebay.ca staff will think this is trivial stuff. It is not! Read my follow up post to this on my experience.)

Here are the instructions

Light Packet and Small Packet USA or International

Instructions
1. Choose a box designed for shipping.
2. Wrap your items so that they are secure in the box and seal the box using proper shipping tape.
3. Cut the label on the dotted line and retain the bottom half for tracking purposes.
4. Attach a plastic envelope to the largest side of the box (do not bend it around sides or end of box). Place this label inside the plastic envelope.
5. Take the parcel to a Canada Post retail outlet for shipping.

Canada Post Expedited Parcel USA

Instructions
1. Choose a box designed for shipping.
2. Wrap your items so that they are secure in the box and seal the box using proper shipping tape.
3. Complete the Customs area with an itemized list of contents and Country of Origin Manufacture.
4. Cut the label on the dotted line and retain the bottom half for tracking purposes.
5. Attach a plastic envelope to the largest side of the box (do not bend it around sides or end of box).
6. Take the parcel to a Canada Post retail outlet for shipping. Expedited-USA cannot be deposited in a Street Letter Box.
A barcode should be printed on the label because Delivery Confirmation is selected. If no bar code is visible, please contact the help desk at 1-800-277-4799 for assistance.

eBay Flat Rate Box USA

Instructions
1. Use an eBay Flat Rate Box for shipping (for more information, visit www.ebay.ca/canadapost).
2. Wrap your items so that they are secure and seal the box and seal the box using proper shipping tape.
3. Cut the label on the dotted line and retain the bottom half for tracking purposes.
4. Tape the label so it appears squarely in the designated area on the box (do not bend it around sides or end of box). Do not tape over any part of the barcode on the label.
5. Take the parcel to a Canada Post retail outlet for shipping or drop into a Street Letter Box.A barcode should be printed on the label because Delivery Confirmation is selected. If no bar code is visible, please contact the help desk at 1-800-277-4799 for assistance


Expedited Post Canada

Instructions
1. Choose a box designed for shipping.
2. Wrap your items so that they are secure in the box and seal the box using proper shipping tape.
3. Cut the label on the dotted line and retain the bottom half for tracking purposes.
4. Tape the label so it appears squarely on the largest side of the box. (Do not bend it around sides or end of box). Do not tape over any part of the barcode on the label.
5. Take the parcel to a Canada Post retail outlet for shipping. All items except Priority Courier may also be deposited in a Street Letter Box.
A barcode should be printed on the label because Delivery Confirmation is selected. If no bar code is visible, please contact the help desk at 1-800-277-4799 for assistance.

[surplusdealdude]

Your feed to Google product search still isn't working properly.

I've had this product;

UHMW repro black sheet 2.75 x 13.75 x 16.875(22.4K)

Listed here for over 3 months and it still doesn't come up on Google Product search, which is about 25% of my traffic.

[surplusdealdude]

And, btw, I do have it classed as "New".

[pocomocomputing]

Gallery Image bug

The gallery image in ebay when using View Listing for example under the ebay ID here in these forums does not get generated sometimes. I read about this issue a month or so back and checked my listings to find that I was missing 2 or 3. I read about the ebay tool for fixing missing gallery images and used it to fix mine. I bookmarked the tool.

I was reading the eBay forums today where someone had the issue so I posted the ebay help link for refreshing the gallery picture. I decide to check my own listings again and was amazed to find 12 recent (July 3 and on) listings missing gallery pictures. I fixed them all and the ebay tool confirmed that these listings were missing gallery pictures.

I spot-checked Pierre's listings and saw no missing gallery pictures and I checked a couple of other IDs but found none.

I use use Selling Manager Pro using the SYI form to upload my pictures from my hard drive. Pictures are 1000 pixels on the longest side or better. Pictures are from my digital camera (newer, 8 mp camera) with a few from a flatbed scanner.

What is the status on this bug? Any idea why I was hit with so many?

PS Pierre, you have so many listings. Are you aware of this issue and has it affected you? Just curious since you have such a large amount of listings.

PS I am sorry to say that I fixed all my listings otherwise I would have left an sample listing.

PS The tool is here for anyone reading this and wondering where it is.

Changing your Gallery picture

This will give you a little background on the gallery picture. At the bottom is Resubmitting your existing picture, so click on that to an eBay web page to fix your problem.

Back to this issue. The problem is not directly related to this thread. However, the trouble I am having to report and get some action on it is becoming annoying.

I submitted a few listings again and 6 of 6 were missing gallery images in the search. Very annoying to manually fix. So I decided to be a good ebay seller and report this issue to eBay live chat! I put my cynicism with eBay CS aside and gave it a shot.

I started at 4:40 PM Pacific Time, got in queue, waited my 15 minutes, got to CS, was told after a few minutes they saw the problem, they would transfer me to Image Hosting Support, I was switched, in queue waiting again, after 15 minutes the connection, did, I was queued again to regular support, transferred again, had to explain again (I did a cut and past of log copies!!), transferred again, repeated 3 more times.

Net result, 1 1/2 HOURS wasted, never got to the correct person, still have the issue, I will manually fix the issue as I described above as I can't save them as examples anymore.

Do you wonder why ebay users are so frustrated with eBay? You bury the ways to get help in the Contact Us interface which makes it nearly impossible to get to live chat easily and then when you do, you cannot even get to a CS to discuss the issue and resolve it. Reaching the first level that shuffles you to a second level does not count as reaching CS!

So you can tell us to use Live Chat over email as it is interactive but it does not work. I don't care if it is a technical issue transferring. It does not work.

In the 18 months of using ebay as a seller, I have had only 2-3-4 satisfactory experiences where CS resolved the issue I had. In most cases, it was me not knowing how to do something.

All the other experiences are negative experiences that make me avoid using CS at all.

Couple the eBay experience with my recent PayPal telephone experiences where the same robot CS type repeats the same thing over and over as I try to explain the issue. Not interactive at all. Repeat the script until I tire and end the call. No better than reading a FAQ. Then I go to these ebay forums and I get a response right away that the issue appeared to them in the past days and must be an PayPal glitch. So I reported it to PayPal by email. I will play email ping pong with PayPal email CS now.

And couple those experiences with CS from other Internet services I have tried and you can understand why I and others just don't believe in CS anymore.

Do you feel and hear the frustration with this CS issue? Not just eBay, all CS. And I know it is because CS do not have the experience of using the tool they support.

PS I am relating these experiences so you can understand why users are frustrated and how they get that way. Some ebayer like Pierre have been here forever and complain/report issues. It takes me just 18 months (actually 12) of ebay to reach the same frustration levels and cynicism that the other ebayers have.

eBay wastes my time. Time to report, time to manually fix issues, time to make unneeded changes because new ebay rules appear every 3-6 months, time to read the forums regularly so I don't get caught on an issue, and I could go on.

ebay would do much better by being a stable platform rather than constant change. For buyers as well as sellers!

[pocomocomputing]

Answer Center web page Topic sidebar On the Road on eBay.ca

Why does this outdated (2003-2005) appear on the right sidebar? It makes ebay.ca answer center look abandoned. There are some other links that reach outdated pages from 2003-2005.

As a new user, I saw this On the Road and thought it may be worth going. I checked it out for current dates and times and slowly realized it was dead. I don't know how many times I checked it out in my early weeks on ebay last Jan-Feb before I asked in the Answer Centre about it. The reply was it does not work and is out of date and has been reported many times. Another positive experience for a new seller.

To a new ebay user, these links do not inspire any confidence at all when reaching these pages.

When I first was trying to figure out eBay 18 months ago, I hit so many older dead pages that I got misinformation like the Solutions Directory. to a new user, you cannot tell what is new or old information and you take the advice found without being able to distinguish the real facts. And a new user should not be faced with deciding whether the information given is current or not. How do they know?

Please clean up the site so new users have a better experience for new users. I had so many issues like this that it is a wonder that I bothered to stay on a t eBay. How many newbie's quit because of all the negative experiences.

PS If you want more bad outdated links to fix, I will provide them but only if you actually fix them.

[surplusdealdude]

Well, Dale Carnegie will be rolling in his grave over that, that's for sure.