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Where’s this hidden in the settings? Is it more info than what’s on the Sender portion of a shipping label?
I’ll give this a shot on some neutral feedback I received where the buyer attached an inoffensive (but irrelevant) image alongside their text. I don’t “need” it removed by any means, but I’d like to see if they’ll sweep it up because of the image.
Well, here we are.
Doing the following:
- Lowering my PL rate to 3% (down from 4%.)
- Turning off automatic promotions. Will manually add listings once they hit 30-40 days on the site and need the bump in search.
- Upping what price point I consider worthy of promoting. Currently $20, might raise to $30.
I’m too worried to turn them off entirely, but curious if others do and what happens.
I just talked to a new seller earlier this week who was confused as to why their $500+ sale only paid out a few hundred. They either accidentally promo’d the listing or it was turned on by default, not sure. I walked them through turning it off but told them they needed to check every new listing they made to ensure it wasn’t turned on again. They were upset and wanted to know if they could contact eBay and get their money back. Bad news LOL.
At this point a large majority of my sales are from promos, so if this change goes into effect I don’t really see it impacting me that much. I’m more curious if sellers see a drop in sales if they exit the PL program entirely. Like you said, it’s probably up to what you’re selling and how crowded the market is. I really need that top 1, 2, or 3 spot in search to move stuff sometimes, otherwise it never sells despite multiple of that same item selling daily/weekly – the influx of new & promo’d listings never gives my listing time to shine.
Short of finding ways to get new sellers on the platform, eBay has to squeeze more out of existing sellers.
@Sharyn – I appreciate the reply regardless!
I found a temporary solution for my dilemma.
As pointed out by Ryanne in another thread, eBay tracks multiple addresses for your account. The “main” address is your account address, and this is the one that must match your bank account. In my case, I’m split between two locations, both of which are valid addresses for me, so the main address can be left untouched. I’ll need to change this eventually, but I’ll be able to do it at my own pace now.
The other addresses eBay tracks are ship TO, ship FROM, and return TO. The interesting bit is that ship FROM allows multiple addresses. These are the addresses that you can choose from when you go to purchase a label. This is apparently designed for people who ship from multiple locations, and as a result, each listing must declare the item’s location via ZIP code. In my limited experience testing this feature, the default location is pulled from you account address, NOT your primary ship from address.
Step-by-step instructions for desktop:
- Add your addresses here under “Ship from address”: https://accountsettings.ebay.com/uas/addresses
- Set your new address as the primary address.
- For existing listings: Active listings -> Edit -> Choose from Selected or Edit All. In the bulk editor, hit Bulk Edit, then scroll down to Item Location. Make sure you submit your changes.
- For new listings: Look for Item Location.
All in all, not that bad. The hard part will be remembering to update the item location for each new listing.
Haven’t encountered this, but if I did, I would just make one of the new duplicate policies the default and migrate all the older policy’s listings to it. The “migrate” feature can be messy if you have outstanding offers for items (sent or received) but it’s pretty good about shoving all the listings that can’t be changed into the same duplicate policy.
Is it a size thing maybe? I’m not really sure – eBay’s shipping calculator says there should be no increase in cost going from 15oz to 1lb.
At least it’s not UPS! They’ll quote you $10 then send you a bill for another $12 two weeks later LOL.
For years I was selling cordless phones. I could reliably source at least a dozen or more a week and list them within minutes. It was so easy. Prices would hover anywhere from $15 to $20 all day. Not crazy numbers, but they would sell eventually. Then other people jumped on the market and drove the price down and down and down until it was straight up unprofitable, like $5-$8 net.
To the other point: I won’t touch anything under $20 now. I crunched the numbers and found the money I made from sub-$20 sales was so low it wasn’t worth the time investment. I effectively cut out all of those items and my bottom line barely moved.
Not trying to rag on anyone who lists below that BTW, but I strongly encourage people who are considering cutting it out to click the order ID on the desktop version of eBay and look at the fee breakdown for those items. Nowadays it even includes the cost of shipping labels after you purchase them. You can just take that number and sub out your cost to get net profit. Might be shocking to see how low that number gets!
I’ve had this happen a few times and have always challenged the dispute. People can open up payment disputes for all types of reasons, but “didn’t recognize the transaction” is the most easily provable on your and eBay’s end. If eBay punished you for that it would be totally wack given you have no control over the payment process.
I’m convinced it’s random whether the feedback gets removed. Even if you talk to CS they’ll just run you in circles trying to get you to reply to the feedback instead of getting it outright removed.
Case in point: I had a buyer who was very adamant they wouldn’t return an item and expected a full refund instead. I said, no, ship it back (duh) and they went absolutely ballistic. The feedback they left was really nasty, but absolutely full of things eBay can prove are false:
Seller doesn’t reply to messages -> I responded to every single one.
Seller advertised returns but doesn’t accept them -> Free returns for 30 days.
Feedback removal was denied despite this. CS rep said I should just leave a reply instead. Asked why they’d allow false information to be posted and was told there were two sides to every story. No, there isn’t – the entire transaction happened on your website where every single detail of the sale is recorded, including messages exchanged.
It’s not that serious, but it’s pretty annoying.
I would let it go. It’s tempting to dig in and fight someone given you’re in the right, but consider the time and energy that you’ll spend doing it. Not worth it.
If the buyer is already operating in bad faith then there’s a good chance they’ll push it further. I pushed back against a scammer once and got a legal-sounding threat in response. I let it go, took the chargeback fee, and moved on with my life. There’s more money to made elsewhere.
My results, although it’s still running until the end of the year:
- Sales: $178.45 (5 items)
- Spent/ROAS: $69.42 (2.57)
How are you able to see what was promoted BTW?
One $50 sale so far from approx. $25 invested. Not really worth it, but if eBay is footing the bill then w/e.
A little rough around the edges (it’s a beta, though):
The generated report is from some completely different ad campaign I ran 3 weeks ago, so I don’t know what $50 item actually sold via an offsite ad. I need to know what items are getting the most traction and from where. Other ad campaigns work this way so I’m sure what’s different here.
Every item in my store got promoted. Either I missed the option to select items or it’s just not a feature they support yet. I have zero interest in promoting some items given it’s averaging at $0.10 a click and I’d rather not add more overhead to sub-$30 items.
I’ll take any advantage I can get and have ran with eBay’s other CPC model for advertising in the past. This one feels a little undercooked but if they can sand down some of the rough spots then there’s a lot potential for sellers who want to play ball.
I’ve gotten a handful of theses messages over the years and they almost always came days after I shipped the item. I believe in most cases it was from people deleting their accounts, but if the buyer is still active on eBay then I have no idea.
I echo your sentiments about support. Unless it’s a sale over $100 or so I’m just not going to deal with them. I’m fairly certain some of the support staff are using AI to respond to messages, because the last email conversation I had with support was borderline unreadable and filled with inaccuracies. After the third time correcting them about what item was being discussed I gave up.
