eBay UK Shares How They've Acted On Seller Feedback In Year End Review
eBay UK is wrapping up 2023 with a look back at all the ways they say they've acted on seller feedback this year and sellers weren't shy in sharing even more feedback for 2024.
UK General Manager Eve Williams highlighted improvements like launching new webinars and tutorial videos, hosting annual eBay for Business Awards, expanding Authenticity Guarantee, sustainability initiatives, reducing unpaid items, and AI powered listing tools in a video posted to the eBay for Business UK YouTube channel.
Kudos to Eve and the eBay for Business UK team for not only allowing comments on their YouTube videos, but also engaging in the comments section - the US team could use a lesson in the importance of seller engagement as unfortunately, most of their videos remain locked to comments.
Sellers were not shy about sharing additional feedback, with over 300 comments posted on the video in less than 2 days.
As a relatively new eBay business seller (started in 2020) my biggest issue with eBay is the lack of access to support when I need it and the apparent lack of a mechanism to give constructive feedback on certain elements of the selling process.
I'm not sure if eBay work with focus groups when developing new features and changes but it feels like they do not given some of the changes that get made.
The changes in the past 8 years (25 trading on eBay) have been nothing short of disastrous to my business. Sales are so inconsistent it impossible to read any market. eBay control everything and trust has only this year been somewhat gained.
Christmas period is always hyped but past 5 years it’s just been a massive disappointment. The push for “refurbished” “Trading cards” and “Nike trainers” is a clear indicator of the level of lack of understanding.
On a positive note, eBay are willing and help at every stage but the overall picture is the algorithm will kill your business if you don’t list, sell cheap, give your stock away. Promote, pay more fees, give your customer all your profit and make sure it’s gifted wrapped with a kiss. Difficult times as per usual running a “business” on eBay .
I strongly suspect that 2024 will be the the last year (21st year of trading on eBay). As so many mentioned feedback system needs a total reset and rethink. Fees for some items are simply ridicules. The way eBay continue to try to get sellers to promote items (at an additional cost) is putting the other sellers on a back leg.
There needs to be better, much better customer service for sellers, a single point of contact on the phone 24/7....We are paying you for a service! There needs to be a much quicker response and a reply to EVERY request to amend feedback. Sadly other platforms have and continue to get it right and are making eBay a far less attractive platform to trade with.
I really hope we continue on eBay but at the current loss of customers unless good change comes then I will take my business elsewhere which is a real shame.
Sellers in the eBay UK Community were also not shy with sharing their thoughts on the 2023 recap.
Just finished watching the video, will keep this fairly simple, I am sure many of you will have comments...
At around 1 Minute:
"my management team and I are already looking at what we can do in 2024 to remove more barriers, advocate for your interests and give you access to more information to help you keep growing"
I've got a great idea, you don't need a management team at all. Just read these message boards.
Stop putting up barriers in the first place then perhaps there would be none to remove?
You are just so out of touch with what everyone things, says and feels it is unbelievable. Look at the YouTube comments on the video after a few minutes.
If you really care EBay, then reply and engage properly with some of the comments and evidence based issue reporting people are leaving on here.
'A heart felt thank you for everything you have done to support your customers.' It's about that time 15 seconds in you should probably completely disregard anything else said. It's a shame eBay didn't do everything they could to support their customers, i.e. the sellers.
It's only been a challenging year because eBay have broken their platform...
However I agree with some here I'm all for positivity. The huge problem with that is you can only be positive for so long. Nothing positive about constantly banging your head against a wall.
Granted there are things to hopefully move a business forward HOWEVER if eBay continue to not fix issue such as EDDs, unfair feedback, helping scammers to 'grow,' hiding paid for listings, pushing up fees, bringing out unwanted features, breaking good features, actually NOT listening to feedback, terrible CS etc etc then there is little you can do.
This video message is what it is, a complete load of tosh and shows how far out of touch with their sellers eBay really is. The comments below the video speak volumes. If I'd made that video and then looked at the replies a week or so later I'd be ashamed.
I'll tell you one improvement:
for every significant change made, describe the problem it is intended to fix.
Add data on the number of reports of that problem, rounded up or down if that's desirable from a data-protection POV, if it may be contentious (or just in general).
This prevents bright development teams having brainstorms and creating solutions looking for a problem, eg Ebay autocorrecting brand names in URLs of search results, after the first page of results which has to be one of the wackiest things I ever saw. I cannot to this day imagine what problem this was supposed to fix?
Give the change a number so sellers (and buyers) who are on the ball can give accurate feedback and the team knows right away what happened, when, where, and how.
This is especially important for any tinkering with Search which is the lifeline between buyers and sellers.
Secondly, use technology to pay attention to things said on here. Yes some people are extremely hostile and negative, a bit weird, and there's a lot being said, but why not use AI to scrape the things people say and condense them down to numbers and type, then cross-reference this to Ebay's policy/software changes and updates.
This is already possible, there are free interfaces like tldrthis.com which do this with articles, and Ebay could get their own to keep an eye on Community trends.
(I'm not a seller, just a fairly casual buyer, and I do also try to address things as positively, or maybe more accurate to say as productively, as possible.)
Meanwhile on the US side, eBay Seller Advocates Chuck Van Pelt and Jonathan Chard stopped by the eBay for Business podcast for a year in review seller features wrap up.
How do you think eBay has done at acting on seller feedback in 2023 and what would be on your wish list for 2024? Let us know in the comments below!
