Checkout glitch estimates delivery yesterday
November 21, 2008
delivers within -1 day
eBay staff on various forums have been made aware of the problem but don’t seem yet to have any information regarding a fix. One PowerSeller support rep actually told a seller that the one day delivery information came from the Royal Mail website. I’m fairly certain the RM website doesn’t say anywhere that parcels will be delivered the day before they were dispatched however.
At this time of year with delivery times becoming more critical, it’s a glitch eBay need to fix as a matter of urgency, and if it can’t be fixed immediately, the estimated delivery time needs to be removed until it *is* fixed. For sellers, in the meantime, communicating with buyers about actual delivery times becomes more crucial than ever.
For any sellers who do wish to stick to the suggested delivery schedule, you can purchase your tardis on eBay.
‘Block remedy’ locks non-US sellers out of Turbo Lister
November 16, 2008
pile of rubbish
I normally avoid updating TL until it stops working: if it’s not broken, I don’t try and fix it. But today I’d added some new categories to my Shop, so I ran the “check for updates” process. Once TL had downloaded the upgrade, it competely failed to sign into two of my selling accounts: I got a strange message saying “block remedy” and a link to “continue” to another sign in page, which hung indefinitely, not letting me in to list.
Finally a thread on the HTML and Technical Issues board came to my rescue. I had to completely uninstall the UK version of TL I was running and reinstall the US version from scratch. Signing into that, I then got a new screen telling me that eBay didn’t recognise my computer: I don’t know why because it’s the same one I’ve been listing from for months. One automated phone call and an input PIN code later, my problem was solved; I can now list again.
This sign-in problem isn’t limited to Turbo Lister: other sellers are reporting the “block remedy” message appearing when they try to sign into Omniture, so it seems to be a problem with third-party authorisations, rather than with Turbo Lister specifically. Perhaps eBay could take the line recommended by eBay Ink and let us know what’s going on?
Photograph by Chiara Marra.
PayPal glitch undercharges on 3rd party checkouts
November 15, 2008
There is a glitch with PayPal which is undercharging for carriage on 3rd party checkouts. The glitch appears to be affecting sales where the buyer selects optional insurance on top of the normal postage cost. PayPal appear to be changing the total and not charging for the insurance the buyer has selected.
PayPal and eBay have identified the problem which first exhibited itself at around 11am on Thursday and are working on a fix. They aim to get a solution completed and rolled out as soon as possible and will continue working on it over the weekend.
Buyers who don’t select optional insurance are not being affected with postage correctly charged and the glitch only appears to affect those using 3rd party checkout solutions. Sadly many of those using 3rd party checkout solutions such as ChannelAdvisor are amongst the biggest sellers on eBay who may have hundreds if not thousands of incorrectly charged transactions.
PayPal glitch stops seller withdrawals
November 6, 2008
Sorry, an error occurred after you clicked the last link
Some sellers have had success simply refreshing the page: it then flips back to the normal withdrawal process. This worked for me but not for Chris, so it’s probably worth trying again later if it doesn’t succeed the first time. There’s no word of a fix from PayPal yet, but if there’s any official comment, I’ll update this post.
Featured first double dips on fees
November 5, 2008
It appears that there is a glitch on items using the Featured First enhancement where users are getting billed again for the feature if they make revisions to their listing.
The glitch has appeared on 30 day listings for which a 7 day Featured First enhancement was applied. When a revision is made (even a simple revision like adding more inventory to the listing) users have been charged a second time, but for a full 30 day Featured First fee.
eBay advised users to run long duration listings and to adjust the quantity as stock sells and is replenished but double dipping on fees, changing the Featured First option from a 7 day to a 30 day and re-charging, shouldn’t be happening.
If you have been using the Featured First enhancement and have subsequently adjusted the quantity available on a listing, check your invoice and make sure you haven’t been over charged.
PayPal glitch threatens to cancel echeque payments
October 25, 2008
PayPal echeques are a pain point at the best of times. Buyers often think they’ve paid and don’t understand why sellers don’t ship immediately. Sellers are frustrated at having to wait up to 10 days for the funds to clear and when an echeque doesn’t clear it’s often days until it fails and they have to request the buyer to repay by an alternative method.
Now the latest glitch from PayPal is an email informing sellers that their echeque payment will be canceled if they don’t “claim the funds”.
Dear Chris Dawson,
Claim your funds
You received 4.99 GBP from xxxxxxx@xxx.xxx on 23 Oct. 2008. If you do not claim your funds by 21 Nov. 2008, this transaction will be cancelled and the money will be returned to xxxxxxx@xxx.xxx’s account.
Log in to your PayPal account to view the details of this transaction.
You are being asked to manually claim this money because:
You are one of our high-volume customers. We ask PayPal users who receive more than $10,000.00 USD per month to complete our Supplemental Merchant Information form.
To fill out the form, click the link below:
https://www.paypal.com/uk/MERCHANT
The information you provide helps us protect the integrity of our network. Payments sent to your PayPal account will be held as ‘Pending’ until you complete this form.
If you have questions about this transaction, log in to your PayPal account and click on History found towards the top of the page. Click on the details of the transaction in question for more information, or to accept or refuse this payment.
Yours sincerely,
PayPal
The echeque detailed is due to clear on the 31st October, in the mean time there is nothing that can be done to “claim” the payment or to get the echeque cleared quicker.
The email, although addressed by name, resembles spam and has the one thing that PayPal advise they never to do - it contains a clickable link requesting users to log into their account to update their information. Quite frankly all the time PayPal send emails with links in it’s no wonder that unsuspecting users fall for phishing emails. Using US dollars in emails to UK customers makes the email look even more suspicious.
Reporting the email to PayPal elicited the response “That is a spoof email. We would never ask you to fill out your business information on a link. We would ask you to log on to your account and follow steps to complete”. Sadly the emails aren’t spoofs - they’re addressed to the correct name containing details of a genuine transaction and the link is to a genuine PayPal page, they’re just a PayPal glitch.
PayPal have a new website intended as a fun interactive way to learn about online safety with a test. The correct answer to how phishers prey on victims is “Describing threats to your account and stating you must authenticate your information immediately followed by a link”.
In order for the advice to be taken seriously PayPal themselves should never send emails requesting users to click links and update their information.
TurboLister update wipes out returns policy
October 24, 2008
There is a major update to TurboLister today which wipes out any existing returns policy set on users templates. Once the update is installed you’ll need to go back in to each listing (or use multiple edit) and re-enter your returns policy details.
This change updates TurboLister in line with the removal of the returns drop down to specify 7, 14 or 30 days for accepting returns.
There are now only two options - “Returns Accepted” and a returns policy, or “Returns Not Accepted” in which case there’s a warning reminding sellers that they buyers may have legal rights to return items.
For users who were signed up to the TurboLister Beta program you’ll be updated to the non-beta version now the full release is available.
Edited to add: There’s another glitch which is removing returns policies from live listings. The returns policy details on the old version eBay are displaying a message “The seller will not accept returns for this item.” Switching to the new page displays the sellers full returns policy.
Edited to add: eBay have confirmed the glitch in TL and issued and a fix was issued on Saturday. If you’re still having problems with your returns policy in TL you’ll need to update again to get the latest good version.
eBay close spoof@ebay.co.uk email address?
October 24, 2008
eBay’s safety center requests users to forward spoof or phishing emails to spoof@ebay.co.uk or spoof@ebay.ie.
There are two reasons for this - firstly eBay will advise you if the email is genuine or if indeed it is a spoof. Secondly eBay have automated scanners which parse the email for web addresses and, if an unknown possible phishing site is found, alert a real live human to check the site out and start working to get it removed from the Internet.
Until the phishing site is taken down, which can take time especially when working with overseas Internet Service providers, eBay can drop the web address into a database so that your Internet browser can flag it as a phishing site (normally by flashing red).
I was somewhat surprised tonight when forwarding a spoof email (to spoof@ebay.co.uk) to receive the following reply - I hope it’s a temporary glitch rather than the service being discontinued:
Hello,
Thank you for your email. You’ve received this automated reply because the method used to contact eBay is no longer in use.
To send us your query, click ‘Contact Us’ on any eBay Help page.
We’re sorry for the delay. We look forward to helping you resolve your query as soon as possible.
Regards,
eBay Customer Support
Strangely, although sending an automated reply, to let me know spoof@ebay.co.uk is no longer in use, the reply still had a KMM reference in the subject line! If you receive the same reply resend any potential spoof email to spoof@ebay.com as that reporting email address still appears to be working.
What is Featured First and Featured Plus
October 18, 2008
The difference between Featured First and Featured Plus has many sellers confused as to which they should use and which has the best benefits.
Featured Plus
Featured Plus is the older listing enhancement, it adds extra visibility to a listing by duplicating it at the top of the search results page.
Your listing will only be in featured section of the page it naturally falls on in search, so if your listing is on page 39 of search results Featured Plus will duplicate your listing at the top of page 39.
Featured Plus is great if your fixed price listing in Best Match is on the first page of search results, auctions will naturally appear on the first page as they get close to the finish time. It’s not so great if you’re still appearing on page 39 and that’s where Featured First comes in.
Featured First
Featured First will lift your listing to the top of page 1 of search results, but in a rotation with any other listings that have the enhancement. There are two slots reserved at the top of the first page of search results and any matching listings with the Featured Plus listing enhancement will appear in rotation in this slot. Your listing will still appear on the search results page it naturally falls on.
There has been confusion as in the past Featured Plus often boosted listings to the first page of search results. This was actually a programming error which has been corrected and Featured Plus items now will only appear at the top of the page they naturally fall on.
Gallery Featured
Gallery Featured was an old listing enhancement which has been retired. Gallery Featured worked in a similar way to Featured Plus, but would boost a listing to the top of search results when viewed as a gallery rather than the default list view. Gallery Featured is no longer available and has been replaced with Featured First.
In summary Featured Plus boosts your listing to the top of the page of search results that it naturally appears on. Featured First may display your listing in the featured section at the top of page 1 of search results, but only in rotation with other listings which have Featured Plus applied.
The best situation is for your listing to naturally appear on page 1 of search results and then to apply the Featured Plus listing enhancement - that guarantees your product will be one of the first a buyer sees when they search for your item.
Glitch or design?
While writing this post it’s been discovered that Featured Plus listings will only appear once in search results if they naturally fall on page 1 of search results.
This behavior isn’t what’s expected - the listing should still appear in the search results slot it naturally falls on as well as in the featured section of the page. Featured Plus listings on page 2 or higher of search results are displayed as expected in both the featured section as well as their normal position, lower down the search results page.
This may be because eBay want the first page of search results to show as many different listings as possible and are suppressing duplicates, or it may be yet another search glitch. We’ll update you as soon as we have more information.
PayPal glitch unlocks payments on hold
October 18, 2008
A PayPal glitch is allowing users to withdraw funds being held under the 21 day rule. A thread on the UK Payments and Postage board details how a user made a legitimate partial refund and discovered that funds became instantly available with the temporary hold removed. A similar thread on the US discussion boards was pulled by the moderators.
Some sellers have tested refunding as little as 1p and their payments have come off hold as well, allowing them to withdraw the balance to their bank account. The sellers who have reported this state that they have already been left positive feedback and so PayPal should have released the funds anyway. They’re not using it to release funds which are still legitimately on hold according to PayPal’s rules.
For anyone thinking of taking advantage of this we’d highly recommend that you don’t. PayPal can still hold funds or even freeze your account even if you’ve withdrawn the money. If you think the funds should be made available then telephone PayPal and ask them to remove the hold, rather than risk losing your account entirely.
eBay search broken - buyers offered off site ads
October 17, 2008
eBay’s search has been intermittently broken at times during today and totally broken for part of this evening.
A seller contacted me this morning and their items were invisible on eBay UK. Logging into their account they could see items for sale but a search of sellers other items stated they had nothing listed for sale. Even when searching for specific individual items by title they failed to appear in search results.
Some time later the items re-appeared on the site, but they had the newly listed icon next to them - including the item shown above which is a ten day listing with just over 24 hours left to run. A nine day old listing should not be designated as newly listed with the newly listed icon.
This evening things got progressively worse. First came the messages that eBay were unable to run the search entered, although eBay’s off site adverts seemed to function perfectly. Send buyers off eBay while it’s broken and they may never return.
Then the situation deteriated further with searches returning messages simply saying “Sorry, that’s not working right now”. Title and description searches are known to be broken with an estimate of about a week to fix. This evening not even title searches were working, sellers with listings finishing this evening may not have had great success. The problem appears to have affected both the eBay UK and eBay.com sites.
With the busiest time of the year fast approaching buyers, sellers and especially eBay themselves need to have a reliable site. Searches not working is simply not acceptable for an ecommerce site the size of eBay.
Mutual cancellation fee credit glitch resolved
October 15, 2008
We’ve heard from a few sellers recently that they have not been receiving final value fee credits on transactions cancelled by mutual agreement. This is in contradiciton of eBay’s own statement that “if the buyer confirms this mutual agreement, the buyer will not receive an Unpaid Item strike and the seller will receive a Final Value Fee credit.” Pinkie James has now said on the PowerSeller Board that this was a bug, and has been resolved. Anyone who’s filed a mutual cancellation in the last week or so might want to check their seller invoice, and contact eBay for the appropriate refund if it hasn’t been received.
Title & Description search will be broken all week
October 15, 2008
eBay have acknowledged a problem with search, where a title-and-description search is not showing up items which should be visible, though the same listings *do* show in a title-only search. The problem was first reported on seller forums both in the UK and the US earlier in the week: customer support had told several sellers that there was no known problem, but the eBay.com Announcements Board has now said:
Title and Description Search is not displaying all items correctly. Please be assured that we are working aggressively to resolve the issue, and expect it to be fixed by the end of next week. We know how frustrating this is, and sincerely apologize that the fix will take so long, but the reindexing necessary to complete the fix literally takes several days to run.
If you are a seller and your item is not displaying in a Title and Description Search, please don’t hesitate to contact Customer Support, and they will be happy to refund your fees upon validation that your item is impacted by this bug.
If you are a buyer, these items are always available by using Title-only Search (simply uncheck the Include title and description box when running a search). Additionally, if you have Favorite Searches set up, you may want to temporarily modify them to search by Title only.
I would respectfully suggest to eBay Support that they have no idea how frustrating this is; their income, after all, isn’t relying on this function working correctly. Moreover, not everyone reads the AB board - particularly buyers for whom it normally holds little of interest - so they will have no idea why their searches are suddenly not working.
There’s been no corresponding announcement for UK sellers yet, but with an official post to point to now, sellers with missing listings should probably contact customer support with details of the affected items.
Updated to add: also on eBay France.
eBay UK defaults to old search - 30 day BINs vanish
October 6, 2008
Many users on eBay UK appear to have been defaulted to the old search experience. Instead of displaying Best Match with only auctions sorted ending soonest, fixed price listings are also displayed in the pre-Sept 25th sort order.
What’s worse is that sellers who have made use of the new 30 day listing format get zero visibility in core search results. 30 day BINs act as SIF listings in the old search and for many sellers this means they now have very few, or even zero, listings appearing on the core site.
It’s possible to opt back into the new search experience, but the big question is how many buyers will? Threads are starting to appear on discussion boards including Q&A and the PowerSeller board suggesting large numbers of users have been switched back to the old search experience.
If eBay are running tests with small numbers of users still showing the old search experience that’s one thing. If vast numbers of users have been switched back it has serious repercussions for sellers who have switched to 30 day listings as buyers simply won’t see their products.
I’m hoping that eBay move most users back to the new search experience in the very near future. In the meantime sellers who have worked to get to the top of Best Match with Recent Sales are reaping no rewards, but are actually being disadvantaged against sellers who blindly re-listed 10 day BINs.
SM & SMP intermittently broken
October 6, 2008
eBay appears to be decidedly broken this morning. On the busiest day of the week sellers are getting “Input Error” when attempting to use Selling Manager or Selling Manager Pro. Not a good start to the week when there’s a whole weekend’s worth of sales that need printing and despatching.
The good news is that PayPal and My eBay appear to be working so sellers will be able to get some work done 
eBay tell buyers to get a full refund
October 1, 2008
eBay have updated the Buyer Protection page with the advice that if your item “arrives significantly as described, then you can receive the full value of your purchase (including postage) back when you pay with PayPal”.
Personally I’ve always believed that if a buyer gets what they paid for and are happy with it, as a seller I should be allowed to keep their money. Hopefully eBay will update the page to read “arrives significantly NOT as described” before too many satisfied customers want their money back.
New P&P requirements in place from 30th Oct. 2008
September 27, 2008
The latest update email from eBay UK includes a message at the bottom regarding postage charges.
Changes to our Excessive Postage & Packaging Charges Policy will come into effect on 30th October 2008. Excessive shipping costs are cited as a major reason for buyers spending less online. These changes will enable us to continue serving sellers with the largest volume of buyers on the web.
If you sell on eBay, read more here
The link is to the eBay.com announcement board - information there doesn’t always apply to sellers on eBay UK.
eBay have introduced maximum postage and packing charges for books, DVDs, music and video games on eBay.com. Also sellers are required to specify the shipping costs up front on all listings.
The only recent UK announcements regarding shipping are the display changes.
It’s unclear if there’s a UK announcement to come, or if the emails have had US information appended in error. Either way eBay are keen to see competitive shipping costs so it would be no surprise to see maximum charges for the UK in the near future.
Extra verification for non-knife buyers on eBay UK
September 26, 2008
At the end of August eBay announced they would introduce additional verification procedures for buyers wishing to purchase knives on eBay. From September buyers need to place a credit card on file or enter their card details at the point of purchase.
That seems an eminently step to ensure no one under the age of eighteen purchases knives but it’s being applied for non-knife listings.
TameBay reader Kate attempted to buy “PLASTIC BELL FLOWER FLOWER BEADS” from the plastic beads category. Although there is no reference to knives in the description she was still warned that placing a bid is confirmation that she’s legally entitled to buy a knife.
In her words “This is the silliest thing I’ve come across yet - no wonder buyers get put off.”
Links Policy: eBay’s own goal
September 24, 2008
With all the brouhaha regarding off site links both in the UK and the US you might expect eBay to be a pretty safe place to trade. Buyers shouldn’t be directed to sellers own websites but that’s not the case when it’s eBay themselves.
A new seller profile on Jack Sheng (who has two eBay accounts with 1 million feedback and another about to reach the million mark) links directly to his websites.
Why not link to his eBay shops? Why link directly to his websites eforcity, everydaysource and accstation?
Buyers going to marvel at his 1 million feedback are simply getting redirected to off eBay websites. The eBay ID’s are eforcity, everydaysource and accstation. Mind you I don’t suppose Jack is complaining about a few extra sales with no eBay fees to pay!
Come on eBay, get your house in order and change the links Jack’s eBay stores.
PayPal transactions reversed without warning
September 21, 2008
I’ve had a bizarre problem with PayPal payments over the last week or so. Certain payments have been - apparently at random - reversed in my PayPal account and the money returned to the buyer, without any action from me or from the buyer. They’ve all been related to eBay purchases, and in every case, I’ve had the payment email from PayPal but no email about the reversal.
In some cases, there’s been a second PayPal payment, which has successfully completed and the item shows on eBay as purchased. Other times the item listings don’t show a corresponding purchase, My eBay and SMP don’t show the transaction, and the item remains available for purchase: it’s as though nothing ever happened.
The one glimmer of cheer is that the reversals seem to take place immediately, so checking a PayPal account via their site does show whether the transaction is successful or not.
I’m not the only person with the problem: a thread on the PowerSeller board has many sellers with the same issue, but sadly, no solution from eBay.
This is what PayPal support have said:
this transaction was reversed as a result of a failed Ebay transaction.This customer had attempted to purchase this item via Ebay, however the Ebay transaction had failed. As a result of this transaction failure, Ebay had instructed PayPal to reverse this transaction. You are unable to view this transaction in your Ebay account because of the fact that the transaction failed.
If you wish to obtain additional information as to why the Ebay transaction failed, we recommend that you contact Ebay customer support for further details.
eBay Support say they are not aware of any problems with Checkout.
Fortunately, in most cases, my buyers have been sanguine about it. Most (the ones with the duplicate payments) aren’t aware of any problem. One, who had multiple failed payments, said he knew something odd was happening but would just keep trying til it worked, and has - more buyers like him please! One lady insisted that she had an email from PayPal saying she’d paid me, and she hadn’t cancelled, so she’d paid. Only after repeated pleas from me to look at her PayPal account did she see that, yes, the payment had been reversed. I think she thinks I did it, but at least we’ve resolved the matter.
If I ever get any sense out of Support, I’ll post it here: otherwise, anyone who relies solely on PayPal emails to manage their dispatches, needs to start checking their account.
Best offers not showing in My eBay
August 30, 2008
If you have best offers on your eBay listings currently they’re not showing in My eBay. Although you may be seeing “With Offers (0)” it’s possible you have outstanding offers waiting to be actioned.
The only way to see best offers at the moment is from the individual listing or by checking your email / My Messages for notifications. This glitch shouldn’t affect you if you have auto accept/reject levels set on all your listings which offer best offer.
DSRs and feedback glitch - an update
August 10, 2008
eBay.com have put out another announcement about the ongoing problems with detailed seller ratings. As many users have already found out, the seller dashboard has been made unavailable while DSR scores are recalculated. “Trust factors” in best match ordering (DRSs, buyer satisfaction ratings and postage costs) have also been disabled for the time being. PowerSeller discounts and best match standings will not be calculated until the recalculation of DSRs is complete.
This statement is somewhat at odds with comments made on Friday by eBay staff, who said that the display of the DSRs themselves and not the actual scores were affected. It seems that whatever is broken is rather more serious than was first thought.
In an apparently-related problem, feedback scores are also not updating as buyers leave feedback. This one we can live with. But there is already mistrust, suspicion and conspiracy theory around the DSRs amongst many sellers, and having the feature so completely broken is only going to make that worse.
DSRs displaying incorrectly - known glitch
August 7, 2008
If you’ve seen your DSRs drop drastically tonight and your seller dashboard has got all sorts of ugly new red stripes, don’t panic: it’s a glitch. eBay are “working on this issue with the utmost urgency, and expect to have it corrected soon”.
Random Item Specifics appear in ASQ
July 30, 2008
A rather strange glitch today, brought to us by my competitor chum Jane the demon bead lady. On replying to an question from a prospective buyer this afternoon, she got the following:
click to embiggen
The men’s flip flops aren’t anything she sells, and are certainly nothing to do with quartz chip beads.
I like very much the idea of having item specifics show up when you’re answering ASQs: it can only help with those “how big are these 6mm beads” and “what colour are these black jeans” questions. But I would prefer them to be from something I am at least selling myself.
eBay companion incompatible with Firefox 3.0.1
July 20, 2008
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.
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