eBay

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎11-13-2017

Hi ladies and gentlemen, I have read through http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sell/storefees.html#insertion but still have some questions, so any help from stores users would be much appreciated

1. If I open a basic store today, do I get 250 free insertion + 250 free auction (selected categories) ON TOP of the free 50 listings that every users get, making it 250 + 250 + 50 listings per month? Or do you lose that free 50 listings making it just an additional 450 listings a month for $25?

2. Is it 250 free insertion + 250 free auction for both .CA and .COM, making it a total of 1000 listings, or is it 500 listings for .CA only?

3. If I don't renew my store right away, and open the store again let's say in January, will all the store specific features and settings I have made (for example, item categories) still be there, or will I have to start from scratch again when I reopen the store?

4. Does the store automatically renew, or will it prompt me to pay before it ends? I really only want to try it for a month right now and I don't want it to renew automatically in December.

Just trying to figure out if it's worth $25 a month for me, as I have limited time to invest in the store itself. It's too bad eBay has been stingy about free listings promos lately...

Thank you for everybody's input in advance!

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎01-05-2018

Here is an update on how everything turned out:

1. Started my store on Nov 29. On my November invoice I was billed basic store subscription fee as follow: (29-Nov - 30-Nov) C $1.74 + (1-Dec - 31-Dec) C $26.20

2. Closed my store on Dec 31. I guess I should've done it earlier, because on my December invoice that I just received, I was billed the full amount for Jan: (1-Jan - 31-Jan) C $26.20

3. When I closed my store on Dec 31 around 00:32am, the e-mail I got told me that my store will be closed on Jan 1, 2018. If you look at my page right now it says no store exists.

4. I did got an e-mail yesterday offering me to reopen my store for a 50% discount in store fees for 3 months, if I do it before Jan 11.

Obviously pretty annoyed that eBay billed me a full amount for January store when I have no store to show for it right now, I have a few questions...

5. Should I bother calling eBay to ask for a refund of $26.20 CAD January store fee because right now my store doesn't even exist? Do you think I can get it resolved within an hour over the phone?

6. If I take up on that 50% off offer, do you think eBay would give me back a $13.10 credit (50% off the store) for January, or do you think they would just charge me store fees ON TOP of the $26.20 CAD they already charged me on my December invoice?

Thanks for answering my questions in advance. To be honest I think I'm about done with eBay, that I don't even want to waste my time calling them about this $26. I was hoping that having a store would maybe help boost sales, but it didn't work, so I have lost my TRS and power seller status now due to low sales.

pierrelebel · ‎01-05-2018

"When I closed my store on Dec 31 around 00:32am"

Did you close your store on December 31, 2017 or January 1, 2018 ?

Yes it does make a difference.

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎01-05-2018

Minor typo, it was actually 00:23am PST not 00:32am, but with 100% certainty I unsubscribed from eBay stores when it was still 2017. I'm well aware that eBay.ca goes with EST, and ending my store on Dec 31 midnight PST should've given me enough time. No place in the world was 2018 yet during that time. I actually went to bed early on New Year Eve because I had to work New Year Day (I get up at 5:30am to go to work).

The part that got blocked by the time stamp says "Your eBay Store will be closed on January 1, 2018."

pierrelebel · ‎01-05-2018

As you know, eBay bills a monthly store fee - in advance - on the last day of the billing period - for the following month.

If your store was effectively closed by eBay on January 1st, 2018 at 00:00.01am, you should receive a refund of the monthly fee in your next billing cycle.

If it makes you feel better, call eBay to confirm.

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎01-08-2018

Was gonna take up on eBay's 50% off store offer but I got the new 500 free listings promo, so I'll do that instead... my sales during December was almost non-existent so it was hard to justify to keep paying for a store.

I'll wait until next month to see if I get a credit on my next billing cycle. If not, then I'll call next month if I have time. I'm really not a fan of calling customer's service of any kind...

Thanks!

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎02-04-2018

Sooo here is yet another update.

Not only did I not get a credit for the January store, I got charged $26.20 for February for not having a store! I’m wondering if I could file a charge back with my credit card, but then there’s also FVF that’s legit...

All the bad stories I have heard about eBay customer service... I’m not looking forward to calling them. I could let the January basic stores fee go, but I’m not letting eBay charge me again for February when I don’t have a friggin store!

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎02-05-2018

One of the more frustrating phone calls I had to make recently. The girl said I'll only be waived $26.20 that was billed on my Dec 31 invoice but not the $26.20 that's now showing up on my Jan 31 invoice. I was trying to explain to her that if she looks at the actual invoice under the subscription and one time fees, it says it'll bill me $26.20 for February as store fees are charged the month before, and I need her to take that off my Jan 31 invoice before my credit card gets charged in a few days.

Not sure if she fully understood my situation (she does have an accent but her English is good)... Apparently on her side she sees that I still have a store (on my end I see that "a store doesn't exist"), so I also had to ask her to make sure that the store itself is closed as I don't to have to call again next month. Will see how this goes... But it really puts me off the whole store experience. Especially considering I only had TWO sales ($35 total) during December, so I was actually in the red after paying for shipping by having a store in December. It was still worthwhile to revive my listings so that they don't get deleted as I then got a $200 sale in January with the free promos, but not for an extra $26.20 x 2 in store fees.

I hope my Feb 28 invoice won't have a store fee...

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎02-05-2018

Finally, after 39 minutes and 20 seconds, I got $52.40 credited into my account (because she can't take the February store fee off my Jan invoice). It took a lot of explaining to get her to understand that the January 31 invoice charges for February store fees, and I already paid $26.20 on my my Dec 31 invoice for January store fee, and that's why I needed two month's worth of store fee waived and not just one.

Initially she said she can't do it and that she'd need to email her supervisor to get it done and to call back 24 hours later, and I told her that I work shifts and I can't always call eBay during day time, and if I could speak with a supervisor instead. Finally after a few more minutes she managed to credit $52.40 instead of just $26.20.

So for people who only wants to try out store briefly, here's how it worked out for me. Had to waste 40 minutes of my life to get $52 back. If I didn't have a good sale in January I really would have just told her to close my eBay account here right now.

I asked her for a reference number for the call, and she asked for my email to send it to me even though I got pen and paper ready?? Shouldn't she have access to my email in my account instead of asking me to spell her my email? And of course, I didn't receive any email after the call ended, but I'm not going to waste my time to call back for a number.

I started my phone call at around 12:15 PST, is that not early enough to get me someone that actually understands the eBay store and the associated accounting?? I'm glad I didn't try to call during a work day, as a 25 minutes lunch break wouldn't have been enough to finish this call.

pocomocomputing · ‎02-05-2018

wrote:
One of the more frustrating phone calls I had to make recently. The girl said I'll only be waived $26.20 that was billed on my Dec 31 invoice but not the $26.20 that's now showing up on my Jan 31 invoice. I was trying to explain to her that if she looks at the actual invoice under the subscription and one time fees, it says it'll bill me $26.20 for February as store fees are charged the month before, and I need her to take that off my Jan 31 invoice before my credit card gets charged in a few days.

Not sure if she fully understood my situation (she does have an accent but her English is good)... Apparently on her side she sees that I still have a store (on my end I see that "a store doesn't exist"), so I also had to ask her to make sure that the store itself is closed as I don't to have to call again next month. Will see how this goes... But it really puts me off the whole store experience. Especially considering I only had TWO sales ($35 total) during December, so I was actually in the red after paying for shipping by having a store in December. It was still worthwhile to revive my listings so that they don't get deleted as I then got a $200 sale in January with the free promos, but not for an extra $26.20 x 2 in store fees.

I hope my Feb 28 invoice won't have a store fee...

An alternative is free eBay File Exchange. It would probably be perfect for you. However, it is a little complicated to use as it is spreadsheet based. Apparently it is easy to use once you figure it out. There is good support from eBay members dollybeauty and shipscript in the Tools and Apps forum on eBay.com. You need a photo hosting site from which to upload the photos to eBay since the spreadsheet only has photo urls in it. You need to have a spreadsheet program on your computer like Excel but there are third party free office packages available.

You might consider getting a third party listing tool called Wonderlister. It is $5 USD a month for 2 eBay ids, 1 site, 1000 active listings. If you list on two sites $10 USD for 2 eBay ids, 2 sites, 2500 active listings.

Please note that Wonderlister can store more than 1000 listings but only 1000 can be active running on eBay in a month.

I wish they had 1 eBay id, two sites, 1000 listing for $5 a month.

You need a Windows computer as the program is installed on your hard drive.

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎02-06-2018

Thanks poco, I might look into that first option but will have to find a free image hosting site... Photobucket used to be good. Auctiva is a bit limited and I don't like how it renames all the file to gibberish...

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎03-04-2018

Omg I almost want to cry now. I just checked my February invoice and surprise (not), I have been charged for March basic store fee!!! Even though the CS I spoke with last month promised that my store is closed "properly"!!! I don't bloody have time to keep phoning eBay about this every month! I have a 8 hours work meeting tomorrow so I can't even call tomorrow, and apparently if I call today I won't reach the North American CS so it'd probably be a waste of my time.

Grrrr eBay. Why are you so incompetent.

reallynicestamps · ‎03-04-2018

@happy_pigeon

How can this be resolved?

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎03-04-2018

So I decided to phone CS anyway since I'm just procrastinating from my studies. I used the "call me" function since it gave me an estimated wait time of 50 minutes and I ain't gonna stay on hold for that long, and I did receive a call within an hour.

The CS I spoke with did have an accent, but she sounded more knowledgeable than the one I spoke with when I called on Monday Feb 5th. I had to explain myself quite a few times last time with my February call and it took a total of 40 minutes, and it was quite frustrating.

Today's call I only had to explain myself once and the CS (Erika?) understood my problem right away. She checked my account and agreed that my store was closed already and shouldn't be charged. She did said she had to consult another department and will call me back in an hour, and I did receive a call back roughly an hour later. She said apparently this is a recurring system problem with some accounts, which they were charged store fees despite their stores were already closed, and she'll escalate my account to the specialists (whatever it was called) to look into to ensure that this wouldn't happen with my next invoice. It might take a couple days to resolve. I urged her to apply the one time $26.20 credit right now as I do not want to pay for it next week, and she did. I saw the credit before we ended the call. Overall took about 25 minutes with the 2 calls, and Erika was much more pleasant to speak to.

I'm glad it wasn't a waste of time calling today, but I reaaaaaally hope I won't have to do this again in April though as the next CS might not be as efficient. @happy_pigeon have you heard about this store account system issue?

happy_pigeon · ‎03-05-2018

I'm sorry about your experience @zee-chan-jpn-books, what a pain in the rear.

It sounds like the changes you made when speaking to the customer service rep were made after the "cut off point", the point at which the billing system automatically captures customer account information and generates billing info. Any activity after that cut off point is not seen until the following invoice.

So, it's more of a "billing system" problem than specifically an eBay problem, but that doesn't make it any less irritating and shocking when you see your invoice...

Many thousands of years ago, I fielded calls for a cable company, and this always generated a lot of calls

I am sure your next invoice will be much more as expected... keep us posted.

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎03-05-2018

@hsppy_pigeon

What's on my invoice right now isn't the problem, the problem is the fact that even though I closed my eBay store back in December, I am still getting charged for it now in March, and I had to call CS twice so far to get it credited.

My February call, the CS promised that my store is closed "properly" but I'm still getting charged the monthly store fee, which is why I had to call again yesterday to get a credit again.

So the problem I wanted you to look into is: the CS yesterday said it's a system issue with certain accounts that they are still getting charged store fee despite their stores were closed. Have you heard of this error? Would you be able to check my account to see if the store is truly closed, as I don't want to have to call again in April for a credit because the billing system still thinks I have a store?

pocomocomputing · ‎03-05-2018

@zee-chan-jpn-bookswrote:
@happy_pigeon

What's on my invoice right now isn't the problem, the problem is the fact that even though I closed my eBay store back in December, I am still getting charged for it now in March, and I had to call CS twice so far to get it credited.

My February call, the CS promised that my store is closed "properly" but I'm still getting charged the monthly store fee, which is why I had to call again yesterday to get a credit again.

So the problem I wanted you to look into is: the CS yesterday said it's a system issue with certain accounts that they are still getting charged store fee despite their stores were closed. Have you heard of this error? Would you be able to check my account to see if the store is truly closed, as I don't want to have to call again in April for a credit because the billing system still thinks I have a store?

Corrected tag out spelling error above so that @happy_pigeon would receive the tag.