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eBay companion incompatible with Firefox 3.0.1

Having downloaded the eBay edition of Firefox 3 I was a little disappointed that the first time Firefox updated that the eBay companion stopped working.

Apparently it’s not compatible with the latest Firefox version, but if you know of a workaround please let me know.

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!

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.

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.

Goofbay goofed with voucher code

Goofbay have written today to all their members who received their latest newsletter apologising for sending them an eBay discount offer which wasn’t valid.

A member of the Goofbay team received a voucher code from eBay that he believed could be shared amongst all eBay members. He had one of their design team create the newsletter and emailed it to registered Goofbay members.

Sadly the offer was restricted to the eBay users that it was intended for and users soon discovered they’d have to pay full price for the purchases they’d made on eBay. Even the eBay landing page specifies the offer is limited to certain eBay users. Goofbay will have done ok out of it though - the voucher carried an affiliate tracking link

In the email Matt from Goofbay said “I would like to offer my sincere apologies to all who this voucher did not work for. Goofbay is a well established and respected eBay affiliate and we have no intention of misleading you.”

Goofbay have a range of free tools for both buyers and sellers, and make their money through the eBay affiliate program which pays them for buyers and sellers they send to eBay.

 

(Although we’ve shown the voucher above please don’t assume it will work for you unless it was specifically sent to your eBay account)

The PayPal bugs that last for weeks

With everything else that’s been going on recently, it’s been a good time to bury PayPal glitches. Not that PayPal glitch reports seem particularly time-sensitive these days, because the ones we’ve heard about have been going on for weeks.

I had an email from TameBay reader Antonio, regarding PayPal payment notification emails, which he is simply not receiving. I know this problem has been going on for a while because I’ve complained about it myself: the real problem is that it’s intermittent, so it can take longer to notice that it’s actually happening. Antonio says that PayPal support have told him that “our engineers are actively working to resolve this with the highest priority”, but in the meantime, anyone who works purely on PayPal emails really needs to use another way of checking what payments they’ve really received.

Earlier in the week, TechCrunch reported on another long-running bug, whereby users trying to pay subscriptions (recurring payments) through PayPal would not be able to do so if they were in a different country to the merchant collecting the payment. TechCrunch speculate that this was “a very simple thing to change, perhaps a single line of code”, but it still took nearly two weeks to be fixed. The PayPal Developer blog reports that as of yesterday, the problem is resolved, though some payments may have been collected twice.

eBay UK Seller Dashboard launched, broken

eBay UK have announced the long-awaited upgrades to the Seller Dashboard. Sellers can now see where they score on a range of eBay measures:

• PowerSeller status: what you need to do to move to the next level, or whether you’re in danger of dropping down the ranks
• search standing: are your listings being disadvantaged in search?
• seller discounts: did you get one last month, and will you get one next time?
• account status: have you paid your seller invoice?
• policy compliance: have you broken any eBay rules? how many are you allowed to break each month?
• DSRs: are you better than average or worse? Scores are now being calculated to two decimal places, and you can see your average over 30 days and 12 months.

This should have been introduced months ago when all the policies changed, but we’ll let that go: it’s an incredibly useful tool for sellers and should finally make it possible to keep an eye on all the things you need to think about to be a success on eBay (except perhaps actually making a profit - you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself).

But it wouldn’t be a new feature on eBay if it didn’t come with a glitch, and the Dashboard came with a real corker. Numerous sellers yesterday reported seeing messages that their accounts were in breach of unspecified policies.

Click screenshots to embiggen. Thanks to iposters and Board_Surfer.

According to one Account Manager, the problem was caused by “was caused by the tool retrieving data from an incorrect location within our systems”, and should now be fixed. But in the current climate, this is a glitch that should never have been allowed to happen.

PayPal Express Checkout supplies wrong country

PayPal users who move country appear to be unable to update their address when they move to a different country. This includes gift addresses and is resulting in purchases from websites being despatched to the wrong country.

Websites that use the Paypal Express flow to collect payment and address information are being presented incorrect information and at least one seller as abandoned it in favour of a third party checkout.

Example of PayPal Express checkout address problem
Correct Address		Address from PayPal Express Checkout Flow
xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Blackthorn Rd Sandyford Industrial Estate Dublin 18 IRELAND		xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Blackthorn Rd Sandyford Industrial Estate Dublin 18 SPAIN

As can be seen sellers unaware of this issue will ship goods to the wrong country.

There appears to be no option to change your country if you move, or are temporarily outside the UK. In fact there’s not even an option to specify a gift address outside the UK, so no buying gifts for relations who live elsewhere. As can be seen the country is hard coded into every new address that you add to your PayPal account.

The only option to correct the address issue is for the buyer to open a brand new PayPal account in the country they want the good shipped to. Sadly this is something outside the sellers control, and buyers appear largely unaware of.

If you use PayPal Express Checkout make sure you double check addresses prior to shipping, and keep an eye out for messages from buyers that are aware of the issue.

SMP sales records inaccessible

Many eBay UK sellers are having problems accessing SMP sales records, so printing invoices, viewing addresses and so on is impossible at the moment. eBay are apparently aware of the problem but have no timescale for a fix at the time of writing. We’ll update this post if there’s any further news.

Thanks to Andy from Little Sunflowers for the heads-up.

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.

eBay Jobs isn’t working

Fancy a job working for eBay? No, me neither but even if we did, we’d be out of luck: eBay appear to have forgotten to renew the domain name for their site advertising jobs in their Dublin offices.

Or perhaps it’s that eBay Jobs Ireland didn’t actually have any real jobs listed? A TameBay correspondent who applied for a CS job back in April received no contact whatsoever apart from this automated email:

Faked advert that wasn’t offering a real position, or just part of the job description?

PayPal security compromised with XSS flaw

Over a year ago PayPal were one of the first sites to implement EV SSL, which is the technology that turns your browser address bar green for known safe sites and red for known spoof sites.

The idea behind EV SSL is that users can easily tell if they are on a known safe site and be warned if they’re on a spoof site. That’s no longer the case though, a Finnish researcher Harry Sintonen, has discovered a cross-site scripting vulnerability on PayPal, which bypasses the EV SSL leaving your browser with the green safe known site indicator.

The only indication that something out of the ordinary is occuring is a pop up alert with the message “Is it safe?” which it most certainly is not.

PayPal are working to close the exploit and emphasised that the exploit was not used in any phishing attacks.

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.

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.

Did eBay mean to put PayPal in charge?

Browsing the new help pages for transaction problems, (which are actually quite good for both novice buyers and sellers) I couldn’t help but chuckle at the final step for “My buyer didn’t pay”

There appears to be a mistake with the final step being “PayPal’s final decision” which I’m sure should actually read “You may be eligible for a final value fee credit”. (That’s unless PayPal can now adjudicate on cases where a buyer never actually paid? )

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)

eBay UK : “we’ll process FVF discounts manually”

There’s good news this afternoon for some sellers with DSR/FVF discount problems. Those who are incorrectly being told they are not PowerSellers and have received zero DSRs in the last 30 days should be getting their discounts after all. Pinkie James has just posted on the PowerSeller Board [PS sign in required]:

We’ve identified the problem and confirmed that it has affected a very small number of members. We apologise for the frustration the wait will have caused as we’ve worked on the problem. It will be fixed in the next rollout of the Dashboard (this will be the rollout of the full version not the version currently in use. We will of course manually back-credit anyone who hasn’t but should have received their discounts and will pass on details of how this will be done once finalised.

Affected sellers, do feel free to keep us up to date on the status of your discounts. I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll be saying it again: this roll-out has been the biggest fiasco I’ve ever seen in eBay’s history, and the program should have been delayed until everything was working properly.

Firefox intermittently blocks feedback page

Over the last few days I’ve become increasingly frustrated with the Firefox browser whilst on eBay and it’s failure to display eBay feedback pages.

About fifty percent of the time when clicking to view a users feedback the message above is displayed. Opening the same page in alternative browsers such as Internet Explorer doesn’t exhibit the same problem.

Please eBay, get it fixed!

PayPal: Your payment has been refunded

Buyers paying with PayPal are being sent automated messages informing them that their payments have been cancelled, even though they’ve completed successfully. My inbox is filling up with messages along the lines of “Hi, why has my payment been refunded?”.

Payments are also showing in Selling Manager Pro as pending, but checking in PayPal reveals that they have in fact cleared.

This problem appears widespread, and PayPal are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. In the meantime we’d recommend you check manually for payments, mark items as paid manually and step up communications with buyers.

PowerSeller FVF discounts : a tale of woe

You’d think that offering discounts to your biggest and most loyal customers would be a good thing, wouldn’t you? A thing that would make them want to spend more money with you, maybe even like you. But eBay have managed to turn their PowerSeller FVF discount scheme into one of the biggest fiascos I have seen in my eight years’ trading on the site.

First there was the Seller Dashboard, which didn’t roll out until more than a month after the new pricing scheme. Imagine if you asked *your* customers to guess the price they’d have to pay you. This should have been implemented at exactly the same time as the new pricing, even if that meant delaying the fee changes.

However, it gets worse. Imagine if you promised your customers a discount, and then charged them the full whack. That’s exactly what happened to me.

When the FVF discount scheme was announced, one of the first questions asked was how it would affect those of us who don’t trade on our national site: French residents who list on .co.uk, UK residents who list on .com, and so on. For a company that promotes international trade, it seemed a little bizarre that eBay didn’t think of this one for themselves. For a few days, Pinks made different statements. Some said that sellers would only be entitled to discounts on their national site, so if they sold elsewhere, they’d have to pay full price. Others said you’d get a discount based on your local site, but it would apply on sales from other sites too.

Then came the good news: an eBay employee, asked specifically about my account, said I would get the discount because it was based on your main trading area, in my case, eBay UK.

Have I got a discount? Dear reader, I have not. Nor have I got access to the seller dashboard. It seems French sellers stay French, even if they’re selling on eBay UK.

Now I know a lot of people are tempted to get protectionistic about this, but lets be logical: if I only get the discount by being UK-registered, that’s a pretty huge incentive to start lying about my location, put something in my listings about “your item may ship from my holiday home in France”, and get 35% off my fees. I won’t. But I would bet money that thousands of sellers from across the world who make their living on eBay UK are thinking of doing exactly that right now. I thought we’d largely cured the location misrepresentation problem, but this discount scheme might bring it all back again.

We asked eBay to comment on this more than a week ago, but they’ve been either unable or unwilling to clarify the position. I still don’t know whether I’m not entitled to the discount I was promised, or whether someone’s forgotten to push a button somewhere.

And it seems I’m not the only one with a problem. PowerSeller Lynne from Josordoni Collectables told me earlier today “I keep on checking and as of now the dashboard is still showing ‘not calculated’. My April invoice should have been available from yesterday, and that isn’t up yet either.”

A thread on the PowerSeller Board [PS login required] suggests that Lynne’s problem is far from unique. Some sellers are having the dashboard waver between ‘not calculated’ and ‘no discount’; some are told ‘no discount’ when they have four green ticks indicating they’re entitled to the discount; others are seeing their figures drop at the last minute, and inevitably this raises questions about their accuracy.

I loved the idea of this scheme when it was announced; rewarding good sellers seemed exactly what eBay needs. But in reality, the whole thing has become a farce that even eBay staff don’t seem to understand. It’s causing good sellers an immense amount of frustration and worry. It’s going to encourage location misrepresentation. This half-ready scheme should never have been launched until it was properly ready: sometimes, it feels like policy is being made up as we go along.

Sellers forced to charge for collection

Changes in the way postage costs are set when listing have been made for local collection. My take on this is that it has been done to split “Collection in person”, from postage and courier rates, to prevent gaming Best Match. The options are shown here as presented in TurboLister. Unfortunately the way that it has been implemented means that if you offer “Collection in person” as a free option it will not be displayed in your listings.

This is the screen shot for a listing with a single postage option of local collection offered with £0.00 entered as the cost.

Buyers are presented with a message to check the item description or to contact the seller to check actual postage costs. This destroys the use of local collection as it implies the seller will actually be able to deliver the item, which may simply not be possible for heavy or bulky items.

The only way to display local collection as a delivery option is to charge buyers for the privilege of collecting their purchase.

I tested offering a paid delivery service such as Royal Mail or Parcel Force in conjunction with free collection and again unless a charge is made the “Collection in Person” option will not be displayed on eBay informing buyers that it’s an option.

It’s ludicrous that sellers can’t allow buyers to collect items without imposing a charge. Sure some sellers do have collection charges, but the vast majority, that offer collection, offer free collection. From now on if sellers want to inform buyers that collection is an option they’ll be forced to charge at least £0.01 to indicate that collection is available.

PayPal double charge VAT on eBay

Early on Friday morning sellers reported that eBay sales paid through PayPal were having VAT double charged. This appears to have affected many sellers both those who had already charged VAT had it charged again, and those who aren’t even registered to collect VAT still had VAT added.

Collecting VAT for non-VAT registered sellers is not only illegal but even for VAT registered sellers is against the new eBay VAT policy that went live on 20th February this year. The best advice for all sellers is to check payments received on Friday through PayPal and if VAT was added incorrectly to refund the over payment.

TameBay reader Simon who sells on eBay as trolleymaster told us “The main worry for me and other sellers was the loss of our high DSRs and/or feedback rating”. When a glitch like this results in overcharging customers sellers should refund as quickly as possibly, but Simon also advises stepping up communications to affected customers to assure them you’re aware of the problem and informing them of how you’re resolving it.

Potentially the biggest problem for sellers unaware of the problem will arise at a tax inspection when they discover that they’ve unwittingly double charged VAT. This will be a tough one to track back at some point in the future, especially as there has been no communication from eBay on the announcement board for future reference.

As of Friday evening it appears the glitch was resolved, so it’s just Friday’s payments that need to be verified.

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