eBay October 2023 Community Chat: Where's The Support?
UPDATE 10-12-23
eBay community staff have issued a correction - after actually consulting with the "appropriate team", they have discovered the changes to how UPS and FedEx labels are charged has not in fact been paused. The phased rollout is continuing as planned.
The Shipping team reached out and wanted to share an update regarding this:
"This is still being ramped to all sellers with an expected full ramp soon"
The eBay community monthly chat for October didn't have an "official" topic but if you had to sum it up in three words, the topic would be - Where's The Support?
Several sellers brought issues to the chat that had been raised in the community weeks or months ago with no resolution and some even brought questions about that lack of resolution.
Most were met with the usual "thank you for your feedback" or "we'll pass that on to the appropriate team" non-responses that those users have already heard.
Come chat with the eBay Community team this month as the chat will be an open forum for you to ask questions. Get all of your questions ready for the us, so we can make the most out of this month's chat on October 11th at 1:00 pm PT!
One seller suggested eBay should make it easy to add gift wrapping services for the holidays, but was also dubious eBay would actually do so, so they provided a workaround for sellers who wish to offer the service.
In keeping with long standing Holiday Tradition, I will once again this year request that ebay provide a streamlinied system for sellers to offer gift wrapping as an optional upcharge within each listing. I believe this could lead to an incremental sales increase for ebay. Please pass this suggestion on to the appropriate team.
Assuming that ebay, also in keeping with this tradition, will do no such thing, I'd like to mention that sellers who want to offer gift wrapping might want to consider this workaround, which is to offer it in the Service Category, as mentioned in this week's ebay for business podcast.
Predictably, eBay staff said they would pass the suggestion on to the appropriate team.
Another seller had a question about eBay International shipping.
I am enrolled in the EIS shipping program. I have been trying to migrate all my listings over to EIS. When I set my business policy for shipping I choose No International shipping. I also have no exclusions set. When I view my item the only country that does not appear is the UK. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong.
This is just extremely frustrating. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Screen shot of Business Policy...
However, despite providing a screenshot so the chat team could review their settings, the answer was another brush off.
Could you shoot us over this question to askcommunity@ebay.com so we can take a better look at your set up and get it passed along to the proper team for review? Thanks!
Luckily, a helpful seller stepped in where the eBay reps failed.
For what it's worth, several other sellers are reporting the same UK exclusion.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/EIS-not-offering-shipping-to-UK/m-p/34026...
You're all selling in the Toys category, so it's probably some sort of category restriction.
Earlier this week, sellers expressed their desire to hear about eBay's holiday marketing plans. Since that previous thread did not get any real engagement, the topic was brought up again in the chat today.
ebay stated at ebay Open that the Holiday Season will begin earlier than ever, and this week we know Amazon has basically kicked it off with a Prime Sale, with many other sites following suit to attract buyers to their sites. Etsy, for example, is funding a 10% off purchases of $40 or more for all its sellers, and is heavily advertising this sitewide sale.
So,what is ebay's marketing plan for this Holiday Season?
Details would be nice, but if the Marketing Team can't provide that, could we at least get an answer to this question:
For at least the last two Holiday Seasons, ebay has not run a Holiday Marketing campaign for the site itself. It has run campaigns for various Focus Categories.
Is that the strategy again this year?
Or is ebay actually going to market the site and its wealth of selection beyond the Focus Categories?
The answer?
Right now we do not have any information to share on the Q4 marketing plans but if there is insight that can be shared at some point we will let you know!
This seller was frustrated with the burden of having to rework how they package their items due to the eBay shipping supply store discontinuing a popular item, resulting in the free shipping supply coupon perk for sellers with store subscriptions losing more of its value.
I discovered on Monday I now face the fact I will need to re-plan how to package 3,685 items currently listed. Because eBay has said “don’t stock that item anymore” in coupon shipping supplies store.
My shipping coupon loses value again, this time not because of inevitable rising prices but because 1 of the 2 main items I purchase has been discontinued.
Do “they” ever look at seller needs before making a decision?
There no longer is offered a stiffened paperboard mailer that can be used to mail a COMIC BOOK or 8x10 autographed PHOTOGRAPH of a sports personality. To use a polymailer or a bubble envelope requires the addition of a backing, thus increasing the price of shipping and materials. The inserts needed to use these envelopes are not offered – sending me off eBay for a purchase.
Ground shipping criteria for under 1 pound is the same as First Class Parcel was previously. Boxes are boxes. Flat mailers must be stiffened or it gets classified as priority mail.
So….not only more time, but more expense.
I repeat once again my shipping coupon loses value...
...I know others have complained on the eBay boards and in Facebook groups about the steadily decreasing value of the shipping supplies coupon. The lack of choice of items and higher prices all contribute to this shrinkage.
Any suggestions on how to wake up executives and decision makers to the fact AI and a wonder listing tool isn’t going to help with this very basic aspect of selling? And that this part (and the cost savings involved) are part of what makes that AI research possible?
And what was the answer to this well thought out and detailed question?
thanks for the feedback and suggestion. We'll be glad to pass this along to the appropriate team.
The Fall 2023 Seller update announced a new Sale tab to feature coupons in stores, which was supposed to roll out in September but now appears to be pushed to Q1 2024 because...it's complicated?
The Fall Seller Update announced a new store feature: a store home page tab named "Sales" which , when clicked , will reveal any Coded Coupon offers I have running. According to the "Seller Updates At A Glance", this is to go live in "September 2023".
I created a public coupon when this was first announced and ...no "Sales" tab appeared. I asked about this and was told it was being rolled out in waves, and I should soon have it.
I then asked at ebay open, and was told it is tentatively scheduled to go live in Q1 of 2024 (which contradicts both what I had been told previously and what ebay's own Announcement states.) I was also told it might not meet the tentative Q1 deadline, because it is a complicated change.
Since I'm currently looking at three different time frames, all supplied by ebay, and one of which has already passed, I'd like to get some confirmation on this much at least:
Will this be rolled out before the end of the year (hopefully in time to provide some value for Q4)? Or should we expect that it will be sometime in 2024?
If it is , in fact, scheduled for a 2024 release, will ebay at least revise the "Seller Updates at a Glance" to provide accurate information, or will this continue to display incorrect and confusing information?
(I currently have a coded coupon running, and.....no tab.)
This question has not received a response at this time, 3 hours after the chat was locked and ended.
Sellers are clearly frustrated with the lack of support and answers, not just in this chat, but throughout the eBay Community experience.
Hello! Can you please describe for us how the problem-solving Support flow works?
For example, someone will post a report of a problem in either the Selling group or the Technical Issues group (and elsewhere). One of the Community contacts may respond to say that they have referred it to the appropriate team... but after that, it's a complete carp-shoot as to whether they will ever get an update from that team.
Most of the time we don't even get an ALERT case number to refer back to later on. The Community contact person will often say that they're checking back with the team again (devon@ebay, you and the others have been very responsive), but that does not seem to light a fire under anyone who is supposed to be fielding these problems and dealing with them.
Similarly, if something does get fixed, it's never announced; it's just sort of quietly dumped into Production and left for someone to notice. If there's a new release with a bug fix, can't that be announced?
Focusing on the Technical Issues group in particular: it's possible to scroll through page after page of topics, but see only one or two that show a reply by eBay. Granted, a lot of the topics may be repetitive, incoherent, or attributable to User Error of some sort, but still... there should be someone whose assigned task is Front Line Response. Give the impression that there's someone on your side of the wall who's able to respond. Some topics can be resolved with one or two responses that way.
It would be helpful if we could get more consistent responses of "This case has been opened as ALERTnnnnn" or similar. Those of us who are frequent responders in the Community can use those case numbers to point others to a particular topic thread and case, if we recognize their complaint as being the same as one previously reported.
So getting back to my question at last: When you get a problem report, what happens to it? What steps does it follow? Why do the Community contacts seem to have so much trouble getting a useful answer back to update us on progress or resolution? Thank you.
eBay staff chose to give a vague answer to only part of the question while completely ignoring the rest of this candid feedback.
For the steps that follow once there is a problem is reported is one of us from the Community team will have it reported to the Tech team for an internal ticket.
In order for their to be an external ticket that we can share with members here on Community, there would need to be enough volume being reported through customer support and depending on how much volume there is will determine the priority status of the ticket.
The higher the volume leads to a higher ticket priority and bumps it up in the que for a faster resolution.
Another seller brought up concerns about ongoing problems with eBay search that have plagued the site for months and that many sellers believe are significantly contributing to low sales.
First let me state I do not shop Amazon, I TRY to purchase from eBay members or occasionally purchase from Walmart. eBay has made finding anything almost impossible.
As an example I am looking for 'womens boots 8.5 western' eBay returned to me me 5 listings, 1 or 2 were western and then the remainder of results were 7, 7.5, not western just a miserable mess of listings that in no way met my search criteria. I did numerous searches to turn up other results... let's just say I am still looking for boots. I am not the only buyer that is frustrated with trying to find something on eBay and just can't. Today, FEDEX delivered items I had to purchase from Walmart.
This search mess we all see on eBay is probably responsible for my (our) poor sales. I had 2 sales over the recent holiday and had a Markdown Sale. I can't tell you how very disappointed and frustrated I am with eBay. I don't sell sneakers or trading cards, auto parts or expensive handbags.
I imagine this interaction with eBay will cause me to have absolutely no sales for 7-10 days as is my experience when I contact support. Please fix eBay Search.
And how did eBay staff respond to this plea to fix what everyone can clearly see is broken, driving buyers into the waiting arms of competitors?
thank you for this feedback. We'll be glad to share it, along with your particular example, with the proper team!
How about that change eBay announced in September to how UPS and FedEx label charges would be processed?
eBay stated at the end of August that: In September 2023, shipping costs for UPS & FedEx would be charged immediately rather than after the package arrives.
Why did this never start? We are two weeks into October 2023, and I am only now being charged for packages that were sent in the middle or near the end of September 2023.
If you are going to announce something like you did with banners all over the site, then you need to actually follow through and have it go into affect in September 2023.
When is this actually going to go into effect? Since the original announcement about it lied about when it was going to start.
It turns out that was "paused" with no notice to sellers.
We did pause this feature, and are unsure of when it will be coming back officially. However, I'll be sure to get this feedback passed along to that team.
The seller saw through that answer and responded:
By pause I take it to mean never implemented it at all and never notified anyone at all about it.
eBay staff were also extremely non-committal when asked about plans for monthly chats in November and December and whether there will be a Q4 Seller Check In, saying there are "tentative plans" for the chats and they will "be sure to share that info [Q4 Check In] as soon as we have it available!"
Just two weeks ago, several thousand sellers tuned in to the annual eBay Open seller conference and were told repeatedly (on pre-recorded videos) just how much eBay values their sellers and how all of the executives love engaging with sellers and receiving feedback.
That was clearly nothing but a load of gaslighting nonsense and every person from CEO Jamie Iannone on down that uttered those words should be absolutely ashamed of what has become of the eBay community forum.
If eBay is unwilling to actually engage with their sellers, the very least they could do is be honest about it.
