The Tool You Wished eBay Would Offer

by: iheartjacksparrow

Based on the comments over the last few years, I think the Can't-See-Me (Cassini) search is the biggest flop.

What I wish eBay would offer is true seller protection. Also, reverting all their policies back to the early 2000s before JD and DW ruined the site. (Not a tool, but I'd be motivated to go back to selling there with those changes.)

by: Smallseller

Ebay does not need tools or gadgets. It needs a site that functions without glitches. Instead of constantly filing for patents that will do nothing to help the seller, it should spend money from the yearly share buybacks to fix the constant glitches.  

by: DingDong

Ebay seems to like AI (artificial intelligence)
I would like to see some I  - intelligence  and more CS (common sense)

by: Snapped

If they’d invent a ‘directly-speak-to-someone-actually-empowered-to-fix-today’s-mucke
d-up-fess-while-I’m-speaking-to-them’ tool, that might be good.

by: terry55

We've been asking for combine shipping on ebay's app for over 4 yrs now

by: Rexford

Until eBay stops hiding listings, playing favorites, and using algorithms and AI I think that tools are useless.  

Algorithms and AI used on a site that can even get basic programming right is self-made disaster.

by: pace306

Right so "besides the shooting Mrs Lincoln, how was the play"?

eBay is SO messed up ATM - there isnt a tool that would help.

If you OVER pay your know nothing employees who continue to make bad decisions - what tool could you invent that would ever solve anything?

While there are a myriad of issues - in my mind - it all comes back to the same one thing - a REAL seller advocate/team.

Griff is %10000000 useless. He's NEVER been around when you need him, hes never protected sellers from any of eBays bad ideas, and because "the seller advocate" says its ok - then it must be - cause he knows it all ..... "Selling on eBay for DUMMIES" (he meant himself).

Selling on eBay IS for dummies (myself included) but sometimes you have to lay down with the dogs even though you know you will get up with fleas.

eBays view of sellers is where ALL bad things come from and since sellers are all alone out there with no one to look into their issues, it fails over and over.

The yoyo's in eBays first CS agent tier (Filipinos) are nice enough people but they have NO authority to do anything. The company I work for (9-6) has them too. Nice, but no power.

eBay would rather viewed on Glassdoor as a great place to work - great perks then spend money on helping their own business "partners" aka sellers.

Its like the stupid survey - if we are noise - why do you care what we think?

I and otheres here dont want to "burn eBay down", we just want a safe (for sellers), sane selling playing field.

No games, no lies, no "you're a seller drop dead" garbage!

But because theres no REAL seller protection - nothing ever gets better or changes for the better

Get sellers on the board, get a REAL seller advocate, dump %90 of the crusty old people on eBays board - the ones that hide behind fake eBay lawyers (they are about as bright as a box of light bulbs) and it will change.

But theres no TOOL for that ...

by: Mazdaman

I'd be happy if they just kept the things in the site NOW running reliably and accurately; that seems to be something that was lost in the years following Donahoe's arrival around 2008.

We seem to encounter at least a bug a week - and reporting it to eBay seems to do no good.  There overseas IT staff doesn't care (I have 40+ years programming experience and have actually shared code flaws with eBay reps), and the supposed System Status Board seems to only have "green bulbs" in it, denying any issues at all.

There are areas that have bugs occur every 6 months or so, likely because old, buggy code is pulled to add new functions or features, but it ends up re-introducing bugs all over again, and the cycle continues to this day.

But the worst for us is the "Excluded Shipping Locations", which has caused problems when orders are placed from countries we don't ship to - we've blocked them because of a lack of tracking in their postal services.  With COVID more countries are dropping tracking, yet we've had dozens of orders from "Excluded" countries in the past six months.  I suspect eBay is simply desperate for revenue, and this is one way to increase it, but when things get "lost" (buyer claims non-receipt), WE end up paying even if reps told us "eBay will cover you".  Come on, eBay.

by: Philo

Fix the IT so the site stays up and works properly.

by: alaska

When eBay made the HORRIBLE decision to kill off most of the collectibles categories, there is no tool that will save their collectibles division now! It's become almost impossible to find the items I collect. Twenty years ago I used to have a whole page of purchases each week. Now I'm lucky if I have just a few purchases a week. First eBay drives off the best sellers, then they make it very difficult to search for items when there are no categories for them.

by: Bird Mad

A way to download and backup listings. This would provide personal reassurance against eBay glitches.  Turbo Lister was great.

by: thop2212

The Best Tool Ebay ever had is when ALL LISTINGS were set to ENDING SOONEST which meant if you had a listing it was guaranteed to be seen as THE CLOCK ran out on the listing no matter what. There was no hiding of listings That is when it was a true, level playing field. We build Amazon Affiliate Websites (https://www.GetAnOnlineStore.com) and use to have to limit our listings because we'd sell so many. We could only build so many in a day and when things were set to ENDING SOONEST everyone would see your listing in the final minutes no matter what. And if you had something good to sell, you'd sell it every time no matter what, guaranteed.

It was when they started the SEARCH MANIPULATION with Best Match and the various search engines as they called them is when everything began going down hill quickly. They've had several names for their search engines over the years (including Cassini) but they all boiled down to SEARCH MANIPULATION once they stopped the default of ENDING SOONEST for all ebay users. Anyone who can remember those good ole days knows exactly what I'm talking about. Ebay use to be our GO TO SELLING MACHINE with ENDING SOONEST. Everyone had each of their listings SEEN as the clock winded down. Unfortunately, that's when they DESTROYED EBAY with the SEARCH MANIPULATION.

We use to sell 3 or 4 websites every day, now we're lucky if we sell 3 or 4 a month. Thank you for ending equal exposure for everyone, and turning it into a mumbo jumbo of SEARCH MANIPULATION.

by: cfrphoto

Modernize payments downloads with an option to download payout reports in Excel file format. Microsoft .NET developers have easy access to Microsoft Office Interop assemblies that can be used to build applications to read or write modern xlsx format Excel files. I was able to build an application to read directly from Excel files in about a week. Creating and writing Excel format files is about the same level of difficulty. Comma delimited text files downloaded as payouts detail reports are dysfunctional and require time and effort to import into Excel and convert unreadable data columns from floating point to integer and correctly format dates and currency columns. Direct export as Excel avoids possible left truncation of integers like packing numbers to 64 bits with trailing zeros or truncating strings longer than 255 characters.

Payout summary reporting is ineffective. Today's payout report had about 350 lines, mostly ten-cent insertion fees. It contained extraneous debit detail, posted separately from two banks, in unusual situation created by changing bank accounts, but one that should never have happened. Several hours were wasted converting the comma delimited file into a useable Excel file with totals for each type of transaction included in the Payout and identify and total extraneous transactions left over from recent undocumented debits. Fortunately, in today's file it was not necessary to resolve any foreign currency entries. Unlike PayPal, eBay does not enter and reverse foreign currency amounts with an accompanying row with converted amounts to allow columns to total properly. Foreign currency amounts should cancel out with another line and then be posted in US dollars. Extraneous lines before the header row should be at the end of the report. There is no single column in the payouts report that can be used as a filter in an Excel SUMIFS function.to total transaction detail by type.

Data in the Payouts window reached from the Payout email link lacks totals for gross income, final value fees, postage, insertion fees, monthly fees, refunds and holds. Postage amounts are fees and should be posted in the fee column or a separate column. Refunds must be tracked separately in Schedule C and should be tracked separately in payments reports. Each debit to the bank account should be reported separately with an email, like payouts.

by: cfrphoto

Bring back an updated and modernized version of the old My eBay page to show status of soon-to-close auctions at-a-glance. Add modern page navigation to the top and bottom of eBay search pages to allow navigation from any page to any other page based on page number or the price or date if sorted by price or date. Include Custom Label (SKU) as a possible search or sort parameter in the seller view.

by: EMarketplace

We am not going to bash on EBay, the things they do right is offer a platform which connects us with many buyers around the world offering items that can not be found easily anywhere else.
However there is something EBay has forgotten in which they need some constructive feedback and not by surveys with padded answers. EBay is not going to survive if they don’t start actually listening.
1. You could be a great platform if you weren’t trying to be someone else! EBAY is NOT Amazon, EBAY is NOT Walmart, and EBAY IS NOT Etsy so STOP trying to be!! Your customers and sellers want you to be EBay! Which was totally different then those sites and was part of your appeal!
2. NOT every seller is a criminal and not every buyer is legitimate and visa versa  
You need a tool or someone to figure this out!!!  The scams are just out of control for sellers especially for new sellers, at least start noticing and doing something about it! Not sure if a tool will help this!! But perhaps an easy way to link to the IC3 for reporting and for them to be looking into fraud and scams. Seller support is non existent.
3. The shipping glitches and business shipping policy template sucks! Unless you are selling the same type items over and over they don’t work and to complicated. They also don’t allow for options if one of the shipping companies are having issues. We left Etsy because of the shipping policies issues as well and EBAY is trying to be like them. UGH!
4. Your automated chat is awful and has never once been useful or solved a problem for us! It basically takes you in circles. Your Sellers and buyers need a tool that is called humans you can reach with a easy to find phone number, both parties can understand each other and actually can understand the problem and are all on the same page and actually can do something and have common sense!
5. Stop playing favorites with all of the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of the upper management, making tools and selling fees less to make it easier for them to be successful and ignoring the rest of the sellers! (Yes we all know)
6. Stop making more tools and actually fix all of the ones you have that do not work! We are tired of see “OOPs it is us, not you”   We are tired of missing listings, listing that show up after they have been ended or sold. Categories and shipping  that have changed over night.  We can’t babysit  all of our items daily. It is a waste of our time and prevents us from selling more. STOP patching your codes they need rewriting.
7. Many sellers are leaving because there are to many item specifics, it takes to long to list especially if you sell in multiple categories and do not sell the same sort of items repeatedly. This is where you should be copying other sites and you are not! Please figure out away to make it quicker to list.
8. Please STOP with caving to everyone’s sensitivities and vero’s. Not sure if Ebay has noticed everyone is sensitive to everything these days even if it doesn’t make any sense. And retail companies are just not happy right now because they can’t make profits they once were. So now all of these companies like having an open door into Ebay and our business and pull whatever they want even if it is legitimate because the product doesn’t have the same experience if bought new in the retail store or on their online store. Whatever!!! Perhaps they are not paying attention to their customers because it appears their customers don’t care about the whatever experience they claim to have. They want the product at a lower price. EBay where are your loyalties?? Not sure if there is a tool for that but you need to be figuring it out! Because sellers and buyers are leaving but then again you already know that because THERE ARE tools for that and it shows in the stock market reflection.
Despite all of the above, we want EBAY to succeed and our business to succeed please actually listen before it is to late!! Is there a tool for that??? Perhaps a hearing aide???!!!

by: Chicago48

Oh boy where do I begin?  I don't have a store, an ex-store owner.  Got sick of the fees and more fees eating into revenue.
#1 - when a buyer wins an Auction or "Offer accepted", EB should be able to auto charge their credit card.  Like Posh and Merc do.  No reason this hasn't happened yet on EB.  And that's why the other sites are beating the pants off of EB attracting more sellers.
#2 - Stop micro managing listings & accounts through AI/robots.   No other site on earth sends sellers notices and alerts and threats about accounts being below standard and tells them how to correct their accounts.  No other sites tries to get you to LOWER your prices (that's cutting into their profits).
#3 - I was put on a "listing" limit because I fell below standard.  When I go to list an item, EB only allows a limited dollar$$ amount.  Nowhere else is this done.  
BTW, I just had 3 sales from AMZ yesterday and so I'm going to spend more time on that site and building up my listings.
I have so many other complaints, but I just de-listed listings on Ebay.  I'm sitting on the sidelines.  Waiting for my blood pressure to go down.  Concentrate and focus on other sites.  

by: Jono77

Lower seller fees, stop multiple purchases incurring multiple postage costs, remove paid ads, make listing faster and ban repeat offenders instead of monetizing poor performance.

by: Jono77

eBay open your ears and listen to the "noise"

by: xfilefan

Actually, a VERY easy question to answer.  What tool do I want?  A tool that will block the #$@$! ''You've Been Outbid'' notices!  With the quantities of bids that I place, I had to install a panel on the side of my monitor to cover up those USELESS things from popping out every few seconds.  I've tried various ad blockers and so forth, to no avail.

by: redheadedlady

The AI needs to go.
It is hopeless.  I call it "Absolute Idiot" because that's what it is.
Do we really need it???  No, people can search for themselves!