eBay

bn880 · ‎08-03-2022

I am writing as I was caught off guard by a return feature on eBay which is now costing me 50% extra in Final Value Fees. Maybe a fair warining to someone as busy as myself.

I list mostly services and nearly every client of mine/ours is quite pleased. 0 negative feedback.

As it is a service that requires MAILING IN things for repair which takes time, and things that on occasion can not be serviced or repaired, there are invariably refunds and cancellations as well as long waits to SHIP BACK a serviced item.

January 2022 I got some notice about not sticking to shipping standards, I contacted support to explain I'm just waiting for clients things, ok... they said not to worry about it. I contacted support one more time to clarify another email a month later, still thinking it was about shipping late. Same story.... 2-3 Months later my account is listed as "Below Standard", I am also busy with the war in Ukraine at this time and not checking every sub page on eBay.

Turns out, after yet another support call that its due to "Out of stock" sales. When I had NONE (NEVER did I sell anything out of stock on eBay in 20+ years). I was basically occasionally selecting "out of stock" when canceling an order for a client (as agreed mutually) and I had no idea this had any kind of chance to cost 50% in fees. There was no warning about it on the selection screen, no double confirmation... just... as if it was fine to select either option listed.

Long story short, support now refuses to remove ANY of the out of stock "defects" because they say it's now over 90 days since the last one (even though I have proof of all the comms with each of the clients that nothing was out of stock), but this leaves me paying 50% more in fees for 6+ months. I simply didn't catch what the problem was due to poor communication by the eBay site, the emails, eBay support and due to never having dealt with it and not having time to dig through every eBay meny for fun.

Defects support REFUSES to put me through to a supervisor to solve this, and I have delisted many items as it's just not worth doing business at 20% plus fees.

Super frustrated... any tips to resolve this appreciated.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-22-2022

devon@ebay wrote:
@ricarmic wrote:
Yes I think OPs situation makes it a challenge to live within the ruleset.

My morning coffee may have worn off already, but I think in a rather long and painful way the OP's discovered that to live within the ruleset they need to get the buyer to initiate the cancellation request soas not to offend any of the automagic rules noticing that the seller is doing this a lot*.

Having said this, one would worry next that if one has too many customers requesting cancellations directly some other form of rule would be offended and restrictions etc applied in that case as well. The difficulty will be in finding someone who can reliably answer this before OP finds out again it doesn't work, which in some cases is taking a year to resolve once the limitations have been exceeded. devon@ebay do you have a mechanism to find someone who can provide reliable advice for this kind of selling situation?

Assuming the "get the customer to request the cancellation directly" route is viable, at least in my world I have a portion of only partially computer literate buyers so I'd have to write up very detailed descriptions of the exact steps they'd need to take to do the cancellation themselves.

*This "rule" limitation was news to me, I get about one a month where customers are asking me to cancel, which I do with the "buyer asked to cancel" reason. It would be good to have an idea of what ratio causes a problem for the seller.
Hi @ricarmic! For the situation that @bn880 is having with defects we always recommend that if a buyer reaches out to a seller in regards to wanting to cancel the transaction to have the buyer submit for the cancellation request. When a seller cancels on behalf of the buyer using the 'out of stock' option they would have a defect placed on their account for that transaction. If there are enough of these defects this would cause the seller to fall into below standard causing higher final value fees. You can find more details on this in our help pages here. We do look into buyers that ask for cancellations on a frequent basis and take the appropiate action on those accounts.

devon@ebay

You said...."if a buyer reaches out to a seller in regards to wanting to cancel the transaction to have the buyer submit for the cancellation request"

What do you mean by that? If it has been longer than an hour after the sale, there is no way for a buyer to go through eBay to cancel so I don't understand what you mean by having the buyer 'submit' a cancellation. They can send a message to the seller requesting one but the cancellation then has to be seller initiated and at that time the seller can choose the buyer requested option.

devon@ebay · ‎08-22-2022

@ricarmic wrote:

Hi devon@ebay sorry I was confusing, the out of stock was the early problem.

Subsequently the seller used "buyer asked to cancel" when the buyers had requested this via messaging and this caused the subsequent 2nd problem because some sort of maximum was reached for that too.

Apparently there is some sort of "maximum" ratio of "buyer asked to cancel" cancellations picked by the seller as well before it causes problems.

This is what I was asking about.....

1. What kind of ratio is ok for Seller to use "buyer asked to cancel" before it becomes a problem (it is an option and doesn't cause seller problems if rarely used after a buyer sends a message to the seller)

2. What kind of ratio is ok for Buyers to cancel before it becomes a problem for the seller (ie if a seller has a number of cancellation requests coming through what ratio becomes a problem for the seller)

The problem the seller has is there are situations where the repair is not possible and this happens after the "purchase" has been made, so there needs to be some way to painlessly cancel the purchase in a mutually agreed process by buyer and seller.

Does this help?

Hi @ricarmic! I may have confused the question myself so no worries! To answer your questions as far as ratios here is what I have:

1. This would only become a problem if a seller is using this option a lot and buyers are reporting that they did not request to cancel the purchase. There is no ratio but we do look into all the reports we get for this matter

2. A seller can have as many cancellation request from buyers as possible since it is the buyer wanting to cancel and the seller has the item ready to ship. This would not cause any issues for the sellers.

devon@ebay · ‎08-22-2022

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

devon@ebay wrote:

@ricarmic wrote:

Yes I think OPs situation makes it a challenge to live within the ruleset.

My morning coffee may have worn off already, but I think in a rather long and painful way the OP's discovered that to live within the ruleset they need to get the buyer to initiate the cancellation request soas not to offend any of the automagic rules noticing that the seller is doing this a lot*.

Having said this, one would worry next that if one has too many customers requesting cancellations directly some other form of rule would be offended and restrictions etc applied in that case as well. The difficulty will be in finding someone who can reliably answer this before OP finds out again it doesn't work, which in some cases is taking a year to resolve once the limitations have been exceeded. devon@ebay do you have a mechanism to find someone who can provide reliable advice for this kind of selling situation?

Assuming the "get the customer to request the cancellation directly" route is viable, at least in my world I have a portion of only partially computer literate buyers so I'd have to write up very detailed descriptions of the exact steps they'd need to take to do the cancellation themselves.

*This "rule" limitation was news to me, I get about one a month where customers are asking me to cancel, which I do with the "buyer asked to cancel" reason. It would be good to have an idea of what ratio causes a problem for the seller.

Hi @ricarmic! For the situation that @bn880 is having with defects we always recommend that if a buyer reaches out to a seller in regards to wanting to cancel the transaction to have the buyer submit for the cancellation request. When a seller cancels on behalf of the buyer using the 'out of stock' option they would have a defect placed on their account for that transaction. If there are enough of these defects this would cause the seller to fall into below standard causing higher final value fees. You can find more details on this in our help pages here. We do look into buyers that ask for cancellations on a frequent basis and take the appropiate action on those accounts.

devon@ebay

You said...."if a buyer reaches out to a seller in regards to wanting to cancel the transaction to have the buyer submit for the cancellation request"

What do you mean by that? If it has been longer than an hour after the sale, there is no way for a buyer to go through eBay to cancel so I don't understand what you mean by having the buyer 'submit' a cancellation. They can send a message to the seller requesting one but the cancellation then has to be seller initiated and at that time the seller can choose the buyer requested option.

@pjcdn2005 you are correct in what you are saying and I apologize for not being clear on buyers submitting cancellations. Buyers do only have an hour after purchase to submit a cancellation from their end to a seller. If it is past the hour they would need to reach out to the seller via messages and that is when the seller would cancel the sale due to buyer requested.