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eBay.com, .ca sellers told ‘PayPal required’ in error

Sellers listing on eBay.com and eBay Canada may be receiving messages telling them that PayPal is required on their listings in error today. eBay say that they are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.

With so much speculation that ‘compulsory PayPal’ will be rolled out beyond the UK and Australia, this will be one glitch they’ll want to fix as soon as possible.

eBay email preferences ignored - users flooded with mail

eBay sellers are complaining that although their preferences are set not to receive End Of Item emails they’re being sent regardless. It’s especially bad for those selling in the technology categories as they’re getting flooded with hundreds of emails due to taking advantage of the 1p listing promotion running between 1st and 15th July.

It’s especially annoying for sellers who check their emails on mobile devices, with one complaining “I think me blackberry’s about to catch fire“.

More eBay listings lose their postage costs

An old eBay glitch has raised it’s ugly head again this weekend. I’ve just spent the last hour editing listings which have mysteriously lost their postage information.

I know that the postage was included in the listings, it’s still there in my saved TurboLister templates. Also similar listings for the same items have the postage information intact.

Lost postage information is something that has happened on more than one occasion in the past however now it’s more important than ever that listings have the cost and postage service entered in the eBay specified section. Listings without postage information will disadvantaged in search appearing on the last page of results and buyers will never get to see them.

The message displayed in the image above is doubly annoying because I’m all ready well aware of the importance of postage details. What adds insult to injury is I now have to cancel SIF items that have had sales and lose the fees that I’d paid for 90 day listings. Even worse I’ll now have to wait another 28 days before I can include the offending items in Markdown Manager sales.
 
Just how am I meant to run a business when the site loses half the information? I’m unlikely to score highly on the “Item as described” DSR for the buyer who’s just emailed me requesting a postage cost on the item he’s purchased with no postage specified.
 
On a final note in the time it’s taken me to write this article another half dozen listings have lost their postage details. I’d already edited all listings with missing postage before I started writing - this is more than frustrating, it’s plain ridiculous!

SMP glitch stops Firefox printing

Sellers using Firefox may be having a problem printing off their packing slips at the moment: some sheets appear to be printing correctly, while others are showing just the seller’s logo and address, and still others are completely blank. The problem appears to occur with both versions 2 and 3 of the browser, but doesn’t happen with IE7. The problem has been reported to Support by many people including myself; if we get news of an estimated fix time, I’ll update this post.

Please remember to reuse or at least recycle the blank sheets: think of the trees

Glitch stops selling to Australia

A glitch in eBay’s listing system has stopped sellers listing their items as available to Australia. Users in the TameBay forum as well as others on several eBay message boards have reported that when relisting items, they have tried to select “Australia” as one of the places they will ship to, they receive an error message telling them that they cannot offer their item in Australia unless they accept PayPal. All of these sellers do accept PayPal.

For new listings, the SYI form has greyed-out the Australia box to make it unclickable, whether or not the PayPal information is filled out.

eBay say that they are aware of the problem and are working on a fix, though there doesn’t seem to be an estimated fix time. The only current work-around is to offer your items available to “worldwide”.

Domestic UK listings are shown as International

John, a specialist stamp dealer, has revealed to TameBay that he has discovered that some eBay Shop Inventory Format listings are hidden on eBay.co.uk and only visible as International items.

He lists on eBay.co.uk, has a UK registered eBay account, states his item location as “East Anglia, United Kingdom” and yet his listings are appearing as International. A search for “ICELAND STAMP BOOKLET” returns no core matches, but currently shows just one of his listings as available as a Shop item, however he has a further 11 shop items which should be displayed.

Using advanced search to specifically add in SIF items (not something the casual buyer is likely to do) reveals the missing items are available, but are shown from “International Sellers” in the “United Kingdom.

The items have just a few days left to run, but John has paid for 90 day SIF listings and his products have been hidden from buyers in search. Only by visiting John’s own shop have the products been on show unless buyers used advanced searches. Even searching eBay.com for International listings only shows the one listing that appears on eBay.co.uk.

Something strange is going on - For a UK registered seller the United Kingdom shouldn’t appear as International on eBay.co.uk. Are any of your items also showing as International instead of domestic?

Are you spamming your customers?

I’ve noticed recently that SMP is sending out duplicate automated emails to a large proportion of buyers, in particular the “Payment Received Notification” email.

You can easily check which emails have been sent by clicking the number against the customer record in the Emails Sent column of SMP sold items.

I’m crossing my fingers that buyers view too much communication better than not enough, or simply write the duplicated emails off to a glitch on their server, rather than ding me on DSRs.

So far I’ve had no complaints, but it’s one worth keeping a check to see just how many emails your customers are receiving.

Does Best Match spell the end for Featured Plus?

I’ve been trying to work out the value of paying for the Featured Plus listing enhancement with Best Match and it’s not straightforward.

In the past it’s been a pretty obvious choice, Featured Plus would get your listing to the top of the page it naturally falls on. With the default listing order as “Ending Soonest” that would always mean at the end of the auction your item would be at the top of the first page of search results.

Now in Best Match items will no longer be sorted “Ending Soonest”, but as most relevant to the buyer’s search. This means that your Featured Plus upgrade costing £9.95 (up to £29.95 in some catagories) may never make it to the top of the first page of search results.

Actually it could be even worse than that, because if you aren’t being advantaged in search, or currently if you’re being disadvantaged compared to those with standard search standing, then your items are highly unlikely ever to appear on the first page of search results.

It may be that when Best Match is implemented it will still show the Best Matching Featured Plus items first, but to be honest if you can pay to be Better Matched than your competitors it’s not really Best Match is it? If, as a buyer, I’m expecting to see the Best Matched products that’s what I should be presented with.

There may still be users that manually change their sort preferences to “Ending Soonest” in which case Featured Plus would still work well, but do you want to pay for a listing upgrade reliant on users preferences?

Should you carry on paying for Featured Plus listing enhancements once Best Match is fully rolled out in the UK? Personally I’ll probably save my money, and invest it in cheaper listing enhancements such as Bold, Highlight and Subtitle.

Making my listing stand out when it does appear strikes me as a lot more cost effective than paying for a Featured Plus enhancement which may never be seen.

PayPal have non-secure images (again!)

For the last week users of PayPal have been presented with a pop-up, warning that the page has non-secure items on it. What’s worse is that the non-secure items are on the PayPal log in page.

The image is one offering up to 17% cashback from selected retailers and is hosted at http://www.paypal.com/….8jpg. In order to be secure the URL needs to begin https, not http.

PayPal merchants go to great lengths to ensure images in their website checkout are secure, in order to avoid pop-ups being presented to their customers. PayPal have their own secure servers so there really is no excuse.

Whilst on the face of it, it’s just a minor oversight, it can hardly inspire confidence in PayPal’s great security if they can’t even keep their log in page free from errors.

eBay fee savings: 20 Top tips

We’ve looked at how to see how much money you’re spending, and how to budget for listing enhancements. Today we have 20 top tips for fee savings using the eBay Fee Schedule to your advantage:

Save where you can

1) When listing set your start price a penny less to fall into a lower fee bracket.
e.g. List an item for £15.00 and the insertion fee is £0.50, list the same item for £14.99 for a £0.25 insertion fee - 50% saving!

2) Use Multiple item listings where it can save money
e.g. If you list an item for £7.00 Buy It Now (BIN) you could list two on the same listing and still pay the same £0.25 insertion fee.

3) Open an eBay shop, the £6 the shop costs are easily recouped with Shop Inventory Format (SIF) listings, cross promotions and email marketing.

4) Make full use of SIF listings with listing fees from just £0.03

Strategies for savings

5) Sell more expensive items to get lower Final Value Fees (FVF)
e.g. Sell 10 items at £10.00 and you’ll pay 7.5% FVF or £7.50.
Sell 1 item at £100 and you’ll pay 7.5% of £29.99 plus 4.5% of £70.01 or just £5.40.
The FVFs drop for items over £30.00 and again for items over £600.00

6) BIN can be cheaper than SIF if you sell multiples.
e.g. If you sell £10 items and sell 12 or more on a multiple item listings:
A SIF with £0.09 insertion fee and 10% FVF will cost £11.01 total
A BIN with £1.90 insertion fees but lower FVF will cost £10.90 total.
For £10 items selling less than 12 from the listing makes SIF cheapest, but if you think you’ll sell 12 or more then BIN will save you money, plus you get higher exposure in search helping you sell even more.

7) List in the cheapest catagory, Technology and Media categories have lower fees.
e.g. A multifunction Printer/Fax/Scanner can be sold for lower FVF in Computing>Printers than under Business, Office & Industrial>…>Fax Machines.

8) When selling a car the maximum insertion fee is £8.00 and the maximum FVF is £35.00.

9) Use email marketing to bring back previous buyers - it costs nothing to get more buyers to view your listings.

Instant Discounts

10) Make sure you qualify for Volume Seller Discounts, 20% - 40% off your FVFs

11) Make full use of Cheap Listing Days when they fit your selling strategy

12) Apply for the PayPal Merchant Rate Discounts as soon as you receive more than £1500.00 in a single month.

13) If you’re VAT registered add your VAT number to eBay for a 15% reduction (Luxembourg Vat rate) on eBay fees.

Seven fee freebies

14) If you use Second Chance Offers there are no insertion fees

15) If your final value is £0.06 or less there are no FVFs (less than ½p rounded down to zero)

16) If you use Classified Ad Format there are no FVFs

17) If you use Listing Designer use TurboLister and then it’s free.

18) If you schedule auctions sign up for Selling Manager Pro (SMP) and then it’s free

19) If you use SMP sign up for a Featured Shop and then it’s free (Plus you get Sales Reports Plus thrown in for free on top)

20) If you use multiple pictures eBay charge fees - your own webspace or PhotoBucket is free

And finally

The lower your start price the lower your insertion fee. (Yes I know that’s obvious, but it’s worth a quick reminder )

International Site Visibility launches, breaks

eBay’s new International Site Visibility feature launched today, and hundreds of eager sellers were keen to add it to their existing listings and reap the rewards of extra visibility on eBay.com.

Sadly, eBay’s system didn’t want to play, and many sellers who tried to add in the new feature were greeted with this error message:

(Emphasis mine.) Happily, Pink Rona has now posted on the PowerSeller Board that the items are visible on .com despite the message; anyone who finds their item not showing up as expected should contact Customer Support “and your fees will be refunded once investigated.”

PayPal IPN failure entails manual reconciliation

PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification (IPN) system which online merchants use to integrate payment processing to their ecommerce sites had intermittant problems over the weekend.

This bug led to customers having payments taken from their accounts, but no notifications were being passed to the merchant who naturally were unaware and didn’t ship their order.

A TameBay reader reports about 14% of his transactions failed and have had to be reconciled manually. One of the biggest problems for merchants was the intermittant failure which didn’t immediately trigger alarms - If all payments had been affected it would have served as a warning there was a problem and sellers could have reacted more quickly to ensure customers orders were shipped.

According to the PayPal blog the issue has been resolved, and PayPal will be working with merchants to update any outstanding transactions.

Email marketing shows neutrals as negs

Sellers have been complaining for a while now that eBay are treating neutral feedback like negatives, but now on email marketing, neutrals are actually appearing on the “negative” line of the feedback scorecard.

PowerSeller Angie from TShirts-4-U first highlighted this on a post on the PowerSeller Board: here’s her scorecard from the feedback page:

and here’s her score from a marketing email:

As you can see, all neutrals have been turned into negs. Other sellers have confirmed the same thing has happened to them.

Could this be the first indication that eBay are getting rid of neutral feedback altogether? It’s not clear at the moment whether it’s a deliberate change, or a glitch. I think it’s more likely to be the latter, though frankly nothing eBay could do with feedback would surprise me any more. Until we have some clarification and maybe a fix, sellers would probably do better to leave feedback off email marketing altogether.

Updated to add: examination of more cases shows that the problem is almost certainly that the figures for negs and neutrals have been swapped over; this is a glitch, but one that desperately needs fixing.

The eBay sale that never happened

Last week I received the PayPal payment shown left which triggered the strangest investigation I’ve ever seen on eBay. On the face of it I’d received a perfectly normal payment for a routine eBay transaction except that 44 seconds later the payment was reversed.

I don’t get too many reversed payments so the next step was to find out why and naturally I took a quick look at the eBay listing.

I was amazed to discover that the item hadn’t received a sale - in my Payal account and on the PayPal payment received email it clearly stated that it was an “eBay Payment Received” but the item hadn’t actually been purchased. There’s no way to guess the email address I have on my PayPal account - it’s totally different to my registered eBay email address so the only way to get it is from an eBay purchase.

I spoke to PayPal and all they could tell me was that the payment had been made through eBay, and that eBay had for some reason triggered the reversal. Contacting eBay was fruitless, support escalated the situation to the technical wizards and they ran a data reset designed to retrieve any lost data from my account. This failed meaning the details of the buyer, Seller, and item number don’t match any transaction record on eBay.

So I’m left with a payment which has been reversed for a transaction which appears never to have occured in the first place and I’m unable to contact the buyer (can I call them a buyer if they didn’t buy?) as eBay are (quite rightly) unwilling to provide me their telephone number.

What annoys me most is not the loss of a sale. It’s the fact that this was a brand new buyer to eBay, who only registered on the day of the failed transaction, and may be left wondering why they never received the printer they thought they had bought.

So what did happen to my sale? Did they buyer buy and then an eBay glitch lost the transaction record, or did they never make a purchase in the first place?

eBay UK publish phone number by mistake

eBay UK this weekend accidentally made a customer service telephone number for top buyers visible to all users. The number appeared on a button at the top of My eBay pages, and judging by my inbox, was seen by dozens of surprised users. eBay phone numbers are usually a closely guarded secret.

Richard Ambrose posted on the PowerSeller forum that this was a “good old-fashioned cock-up”. The number has been removed from general display now. Anyone who has made a note of the number should be aware that - like the PowerSeller support number - staff will not assist callers who are not part of the top buyer program.

Demand Draft appears as payment option on eBay

eBay have inadvertently changed the payment methods displaying on listings to read “Demand Draft” instead of “Postal Order/Bankers Draft”.

A demand draft isn’t something I’ve come across before but appears to be a guaranteed cheque drawn on a buyers account but not generally available in the UK. Hopefully we’ll get our Postal Orders and Bankers Drafts back soon.

(Thanks to Eddie from AuctionChex for the info)

• Recent Comments

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