eBay Sold Email Facelift Causes Seller Confusion, Workflow Disruption
eBay sellers were left confused and frustrated this week when a change to the subject text and design for sales notification emails disrupted their workflows.
A post in the eBay community forum detailed the changes, and negative impacts for sellers, with several suggesting the company should focus on addressing other issues instead of causing disruptions during the all important Q4 holiday selling season.
Looks like this changed between 7-8 this morning. Emails went from: You made the sale for [item title] to The payment from [buyer ID] is confirmed: [Item title]
eBay made the text so long the item titles are all truncated down to nothing so you can't even see what sold by browsing down your inbox.
The longer the buyer's ID is, the less of the listing title you'll see.
It's not a positive change.
If eBay wants to include something about payment confirmation, they can easily truncate the text in the email subject and make room for the item title. Something like: Payment confirmed for [item title]...
...Bottom item is the old format where it displayed a large chunk of item title. Rest of the items are new format where useless info takes up the bulk of the subject and item titles are mostly cut off.
Sellers shared that they often use these emails to quickly scan through to see what they need to ship, to avoid the hassle (and sometimes tripping eBay security measures) of having to log in and out multiple times if they have more than one account, or to organize their selling workflows in various ways - all of which are now either more difficult or impossible with the new format.
Not to mention that anyone who has taken the time to set up email filters or rules based on keywords may now find they no longer work and need to be reconfigured.
I find it helpful to be able to browse down my email inbox and see what sold across various accounts all in one centralized place without having to log into each separate account.
Gives me an idea of shipping volume for the day. As some items take no time to pack and others can be labor-intensive, having the info upfront at a glance is helpful for having an idea of how much time will be needed to manage packing that day.
The new subject line means that useful tool is gone because it's only showing a few characters of the item title so I have no idea what sold, only that something sold. Seeing a long list of buyer user IDs is not helpful.
Edit to add: I log in to each account and generate pick lists at the end of the day. What I'm referencing is having quick visibility throughout the day without having to keep logging in to each separate account. Just browse down the email inbox.
Not having the item title visible is absurd. The last thing I care about in that email is the buyer's user name - and it's about all that shows on my phone. I use those emails on my phone as a simple and portable way to pull items to ship. How anyone could think that these are useful email titles is beyond me.
Beyond the inconvenience, it seems the emails themselves now contain incorrect information about ship by dates - which could spell big trouble for sellers who rely on the information in those message if it leads them to wind up with late shipments.
...Also the email gives bad information. I have same day handling and even if it was 1 day then I would be expected to ship Oct 31st. Not Nov 1st. Even inside eBay confirms that.
I can confirm I'm also seeing incorrect ship by dates. Items sold Oct 30 with 1 day handling that have to ship by Oct 31 are showing Oct 31 on seller hub, but showing Nov 1 on these newly formatted emails.
Then I have items with 2 day handling on another account and those emails are telling me to ship by Sat Nov 2 even though I don't have Sat set as a working day and 2 biz days from Oct 30 is Fri Nov 1.
An eBay community rep responded to the thread, saying the will pass feedback left there along to the appropriate teams.
Are you seeing this new email format when you sell an item on eBay? Let us know what you think about it in the comments below!
