Today's gripe: I find the new subject heading 'sale confirmed' to be misleading

[momcqueen]

💸 Sale confirmed: LEGO 71021 Series 18.....

I'm ambivalent on the new icons in our subject lines from ebay. Red dot for outbid, some weird finger in the air for top bidder. I find this 'sold' icon is too tiny to decipher as the subject line in my Inbox. 

Also, if I may play semantics: in my books, a 'sale' does not transpire until money changes hands so for ebay to alter the wording from 'your item sold' to 'sale confirmed' is misleading. The 'sale' of that item is 'confirmed' when I receive payment, not when the buyer express their intention to purchase which is all that a 'sale' is in this context when the rest of the message reads as follows: 

Sold and unpaid:

Great news, your item sold. Now it’s time to get it ready. Hi Maureen, Your buyer hasn't paid yet, so hold onto the item until you receive payment. We'll send your buyer a reminder to pay within 48 hours. 

There is a difference between this message and one from a  listing where Immediate Payment Required was enabled and the listing is ended because the seller (me) actually received payment. So, if the software is intelligent enough to know whether payment has actually been received, the subject line should be similarly distinguishable between both variables. 

Sold and paid:

 Congratulations, your item sold and it’s been paid for. Hi Maureen, It's time to pack up your item and ship it out. Make sure you send it within 0 day, the handling option you selected in your listing. 

Catch my meaning? A 'sale' is 'confirmed' when I get paid for it. Not before, and ebay can obviously tell the difference between the two so if they want to change something, why not that? I cannot help but think this is another of those 'improvements' for areas that don't need fixing when there are large, critical sections of ebay that very obviously do. 

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

In follow up  what the heck semantics, I just noticed on my Shippo Order page the "must ship by" displays Ship by 9 PM on ALL past transactions. I always try to to package and mail in 24 hours. Not sure if they are rounding up to the next 9pm. Pretty sure my orders come in at random times so not sure why 9 PM has become their standard. And my local drop off point closes at 7:00. Really have no control over their business hours. Is the system factoring in weekends and holidays?

-CM

[momcqueen]

☝️ Your bid is winning now but watch out for competition

🔴 Outbid. Raise your bid of C $XX.XX for LEGO Series 18 Retro Police Officer CMF

✅ ORDER CONFIRMED: Lego 71021 Minifigur...

🚚 ORDER SHIPPED: Lego 71021 Minifigur...

😞 Transformers RESCUE ... sold for C $XX.XX, but there's more! 😊

🔵 Your day is about to get even better—you deserve the best savings ...

✋ Hey hey, Maureen! Make Mom go wow ...

💲 Our coupon has got your name on it! Wondering what savings we've chosen?

The #1 trend on eBay is ... 🔵

New items you can't resist. 😃

Other icons-encrusted messages from different online retailers:

📎 You've received a 20% offer. It's our thanks to you!

🏁 40% OFF your entire in-store purchase begins NOW – start your engines!

⌚ ENDS TONIGHT up to 40% off sitewide

🔵 (1) invite pending: You've been gifted 40% OFF your order

Here's why we ❤️ these 3 summer staples

Oh yeah! Your Sunday is about to get a whole lot better. 😃

💥 $5 graphic tees today

🚨 SAVINGS ALERT: Buy one, get one 50% off Gerber white essentials. In-Store Only.

☀️ New summery styles ☀️ snag 'em for up to 40% OFF

👗 Psssst... dresses! 👗

I feel like I get dumber everytime that I look at an email with a smiley-face in it. Now get off my lawn!

[momcqueen]

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

In follow up  what the heck semantics, I just noticed on my Shippo Order page the "must ship by" displays Ship by 9 PM on ALL past transactions. I always try to to package and mail in 24 hours. Not sure if they are rounding up to the next 9pm. Pretty sure my orders come in at random times so not sure why 9 PM has become their standard. And my local drop off point closes at 7:00. Really have no control over their business hours. Is the system factoring in weekends and holidays?

-CM

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I think Shippo must be defaulting to Pacific Time as adopted by ebay.com whereas mine on ebay say 11:59 pm eastern time which is the time followed by ebay.ca. ebay's handling time doesn't offer a '24-hour handling time' so it would be accounting for your handling time in business hours. 

Like all my weekend orders say ship by 11:59 pm on Monday, May 7 because I have a same-day dispatch setting for handling time. Which is also misleading, to be honest, because there is NO postal counter anywhere open past 9 pm. It's not as if you can stroll into a 24-hours Shoppers and find someone at the Canada Post desk at 11 pm at night. At least not anywhere around here.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

Ahhh yes, the things defined as improvements...Increased fees, contracts that end at their discretion, built in advertisements in your listings(pretty sure no one wants to see those), new announcement messages with bonus smileys, the long drawn out anticipated  roll out of the Sellers Hub (Canadian Edition) with features advertised but not included and "Date Issues". How long to resolve? Million dollar question. Can hardly wait for the Summer Edition.  Now where did I put my Aol floppy disk Version 3.2? Is it time to downgrade??? Drat!! Out of baileys for my coffee!!! Sighhh 

  

-CM

[momcqueen]

The Summer Seller Update will include a whole new raft of emoticons for sellers to use, rolled into Store subscription fee increases of an extra 25 per cent. But free to use! Don't forget to smile about it.

 

[kawartha-ephemera]

Honestly, it would drive me to the lunatics asylum if I were receiving all these "congrats" and "urgent action required" type of communications from ebay.

So, I've all of that stuff shut-off with the exception of messages from other users, offer received, promotions and ebay news and account information.

The PayPal transaction emails are enough for me, I know these can be subject to a short delay at times but since I use one day shipping an occasional delay doesn't matter. As for "awaiting payment" cases those are generally auction related and are being watched closely anyway.

Ebay still finds plenty of reasons to send me spammy emails though, drives me nuts!

Case in point. Recently I started receiving a steady stream of notices every time a particular seller turned on their computer... terrible stream of unwanted spam.
Finally got fed up with deleting emails so I investigated... couldn't figure why I was getting these messages, wasn't following any sellers, was not watching any items etc. ... I purposely don't use those lists because of the ebay spam they generate.

After an in depth search I finally stumbled across the source of the problem on my profile page. Appearing there below my collections was the seller' s profile logo under the title "Interests". This really took me by surprise because up until that moment I'd never heard tell of such a feature and I knew I'd never added this seller to any list.

Anyway, eventually came to discover this "Interests" list is some sort of search related feature, kind of like a saved search list but obviously one doesn't have to "save" a search to end up with a seller on this list. To make matters worse ebay makes it very difficult to find out how to delete sellers from that list, took me at least an hour to figure out how to manage that.
There, that's my little rant of the day.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

Would it be alright to designate today as All Posts to be Tongue in Cheek Day? Feeling nostalgic for the olden days when suggestion box ideas/rants were entirely anonymous!!

-CM

[pinetreecottage]

Your customer has put the item on hold.  It is not sold until you get paid.  At the end of the day, when you "ring off" just like a brick and mortar store, that sale in not in your register.  You could have all your sales show this way, and have no money to show for it.  If this happens at months end, when you tally your sales,  your figures would be completely wrong.  If the customers choose not to pay, they risks a slap on the wrist for not paying, not much more.  I would like to know, who the creative geniuses are who are constantly changing things, that don't need changing.  Maybe this is one for the mods on Wednesday.  

[momcqueen]

Precisely! It’s not ‘sold’ until it’s paid so to say ‘sale confirmed’ on anything other than a IPR Order..? Bogus. For items where a buyer has bought/ended the listing without payment, the message should say something different. ‘Purchased’ or ‘Purchased Payment Pending’ or ‘Reserved’ or ‘Reserved Pending Payment’. I cannot enable IPR on all listings because I offer Local Pickup and the two functions are mutually exclusive.

[mmmcross]

I'm mad about it for more practical reasons! For years I've relied on email (specifically Gmail) as part of my selling activity--record keeping, cross-referencing, so many things. With a stupid unnecessary little change in the wording I can't filter and search my records as easily, and for some reason they've made it so that it doesn't display a whole item title in the subject of the email like it always did before, so I can't see an overview of activity at a glance. They may seem like minor changes to some but after years and thousands of transactions it adds up...

[momcqueen]

That’s a very good point. The word. ‘Sold’ was valuable in that respect whereas ‘sale’ means many things on its own and ‘confirmed’ could as well. And the lack of a viewable item title is plain dumb. I noticed same with Best Offers too. Like....?!

[ricarmic]

Same for me, the useless little icon pushed enough other stuff over so the title is not of much use unless one opens the message, which just takes more time. I use the eBay and Paypal messages as a significant component of my "process" to manage the selling process so I don't miss any.....

I'm with Momc, I don't know why we need to have pictures in our email titles. Perhaps I'm just 20 or so years too old to understand.....

[reallynicestamps]

Your buyer hasn't paid yet, so hold onto the item until you receive payment. We'll send your buyer a reminder to pay within 48 hours. 

On the bright side, I do like the wording here.

It makes it clear to a newbie (in particular) what has and what will happen.

We all to often see naive newbies ship and hope to be paid based on the previous wording.

I agree about the Title though. That confused me too.

[reallynicestamps]

"gifted" ? "GIFTED!!"

Fun fact in German 'gift' means 'poison'.

Joining you on the lawn. Bringing hose with spray nozzle.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

In the past a bid, making an offer or a clicking on an item to buy now was a commitment to your interest in a sellers item. Appears now each transaction has become an opportunity to expect the possibility of a return. I don't think that's how these transactions were ever intended. What we have here is a failure to communicate!!!

-CM

[katlover1952]

Totally agree MJ. The first email I got like that totally confused me. Sometimes I wonder why they continue to make useless changes & don't change the things they should!

[lucitabby]

LOL Mo.  I suppose the icons on the emails go hand-in-hand with the badge system, "neat, you have no returns" and "new for you," etc..

Nice to know ebay is keeping us up to date the with Elementary and Junior High schools slang and smileys.

I feel like I get dumber everytime that I look at an email with a smiley-face in it. Now get off my lawn!

[esclyons]

TOTALLY AGREE , the new icon, is very easy to miss, and very wrong, the sale is not confirmed until payment is made..  but in the same argument your item sold, is basically the same  statement, 

I am more upset about the change in format of the email received, , why change, does ebay think this helps in any way at all. No it doesn't,,

Send me the bold your item sold.. and i am happy..