eBay's email changes cause confusion for sellers

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frustrated

It seems eBay have made some changes to their sold item emails in the last few days, which may cause some confusion to sellers. TameBay reader Kate from Cat’s Eye Designs forwarded me an example from one of her own sales:

Sale price: £2.99
Quantity: 6
Quantity sold: 3
Quantity remaining: 3
Buyer: XXXXXXX

Kate points out that the quantity sold to the buyer in question was 2, and that 3 is in fact the total quantity sold from this listing. On another transaction, where the buyer had bought a single item, the email read:

Sale price: £3.50
Quantity: 11
Quantity sold: 9
Quantity remaining: 2

Again, the email reflects the total quantity sold from the listing, not the number purchased on this individual sale.

It probably bears saying again; if you’re relying on any single set of emails for sales information, you’re going to run into problems sooner or later. Better at least to reconcile eBay with PayPal, and to be getting your information from the site, not relying on mail.

And if anyone from eBay is reading this, could we have the “send invoice” button back please? I notice there’s a yellow button to go to My eBay, so I assume this hasn’t been removed in an anti-phishing move to get people to stop clicking things in emails. So it seems like yet another case of the people who design things at eBay have never used the site. It wasn’t broken, it didn’t need fixing, please, let’s have it back.

28 Responses

  1. Same here, just had a ‘LONG’ phone call to US (at my cost)…. thinking this was bloody spam or our system has been compromized.

    Ebay………US……bloody useless.

    What’s the spanish word for tomorrow…tomorrow (only joking I know what it is) & obviously ebay do too.

  2. Oh, and another thing.

    Usually when an item is sold from shop inventory, the email header says [email protected]. BUT know it says [email protected]….and when I asked about this (in my long expensive phone call) I was told it was NOT an proper ebay address..

    The subject line has changed too. usually it says shopinventory sold, now it says your item has sold.

  3. Near poohed my self this morning i got my first one of these and thought one buyer had bought 47 of one item at £9.99, as each one takes 20 mins to wrap i thought thats my day off gone !!!

  4. Thought I’d cracked it too…………..ve got 10 emals sales notfcatons, the total amount of tems sold (accordng to ebay) was 552 tems………..when n fact it was 12……………….

    Lke wnnng the lottery & then losng the tcket!!!!!!

  5. Typical Ebay maths innit?

    1+2+1+2+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 equalled 16 when I was at school.

    According to the emails I’ve had from Ebay today it now equals 162.

    Surely thats an improvement – its over 10 times better in fact!!

  6. Wow. That image is amazing.

    Sadly, most posts about ebay could have that image and be spot on.

  7. Another example of the ever lengthening list of both unecessary changes and incompetant implementation at eBay under the ‘hoe’.
    But remember – you are part of an experiment in ‘disruptive innovation’ so that’s alright then (NOT).
    After all it’s not as if we actually have businesses to run….
    pip pip

  8. I’M RICH…….I’M RICH…….I’M RICH…….I’M JUST SILLY RICH…….

    Oh thank you eBay for the ‘new’ mass fortune I am receiving at my late time in life.

    Beyond the tally above,, we have now soldf ‘another’ 159 items & Im doing alright……Oh thanks you ebay (I’m now down on my knees, thanks im upstairs for this great gIft so late n life.

    I LOVE YOU EBAY……………………oh, I LOVE YOU.

    To ebay.
    I HOPE EBAY READ THIS, AS TOMOOROW I WILL BE VERY TEMPTED TO CLOSE OUR ACCOUNT & WILL CERTANLY BE WANTING THE COST OF MY PHONE CALL (1 ABOVE) TO USa back.

    Yours very sarcastically
    A seller.

    PS actually only sold 3 more tems (not 159)

  9. NUMBER crunch (from 8 above).
    JUST LOOK At these numbers

    Sale 1
    Quantity: 100
    Quantity sold: 67…………………………Actual items sold: 1
    Quantity remaining: 33
    —-
    Sale 2
    Quantity: 71
    Quantity sold: 26 ………………………..Actual items sold: 1
    Quantity remaining: 45
    —-
    Sale 3
    Quantity: 100
    Quantity sold: 66…………………………Actual items sold: 1
    Quantity remaining: 34
    —-

    Ebay needs to sort this out VERY QUICKLY.

  10. You think that’s bad? They completely broke my Quantity Manager today. Simply stopped sending the most important part of the program without notice. Might be related to this change. Hopefully it will be back soon.

  11. @Clayton – I think I may be using it again 😉

    @Gerry – deep breath there 😉 Makes me so glad I’m largely running single item listings now!

  12. And the emails to the buyers are equally screwed.

    eg

    ‘It’s all yours, now you just need to pay.

    Dear xxxxxxxxx
    We hope you enjoy your latest purchase. The next step is pay the seller. Pay now to get your item as soon as possible.

    Pay with PayPal, the safe and easy way to pay for your eBay purchases.

    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Sale price: £5.99
    Quantity: 2
    Subtotal: £5.99
    Estimated delivery: Varies ……’

    Quantity 2?
    Thats what I had, he bought just the 1.

    And the invoices.

    Last night I sent 5 invoices to customers who had bought during the day but not paid.

    No less than 3 different mutations.

    WHO would shut the lot down.

    John

  13. There is actually a whole list of other things that are wrong. I think somehow we have .com message templates being used on .co.uk.

  14. On the plus side without the cocked up messages i have a very good weekend , god i love Bank Holidays and Ebay lol

  15. Do they have to change *EVERYTHING*?

    I like to be able to see what total quantity that a buyer bought was. This just makes it totally confusing, and the “send invoice” button was a cool feature because you could click that button and see if you’ve been paid.

    This new email completely sucks and it didn’t need to be changed.

  16. 😆 Well lets be fair on eBay, not much has gone wrong lately.

    Looks like the hurricane season has just started.

    What John said #15

  17. We’ve had a few sold emails now that are in the old format so fingers crossed.
    Had the expected email today from someone saying I got an email saying I’d bought 11 of these – I’ve now paid and you will be shipping eleven won’t you.
    What a great day. Thanks ebay! 🙂

  18. Well all mine today have been in the “new improved” format, and I have had to check those ghastly Paypal emails with the unreadable small print very carefully to see what I have actualy sold.

    Grrr.

  19. Seems to have been ok here since about 6pm tonight fingers crossed

  20. Panick over for now!!!!.

    Won’t be long before the next ‘hurricane’*no doubt.

    Took us 3 times as long to prepare mailing labels today…..having to double check every email/everything against SMP/paypal etc.

    NEXT BANK HOLIDAY I am definately going away till Tuesday evening.

    * cheers whirly

  21. Yes mine seems to be OK now, thank goodness. I’m sure we’ve have these emails before, as Sue said, they can’t even think up new ways to break things.

  22. The ‘Your eBay purchase has been shipped’ email has now changed as well.

    Sellers need to check it out.
    User name appears in black on dark brown! Prior to today shop name appeared here in a sensible colour.
    Paragraphs in top box message are ignored.

    Poweseller Support says that it is a bug.

    They wish!

  23. This email is back again, BUT it appears the quantity sold bug is now OK????????????!!!!!!!!!!.

    I simiply do not understand why they have altered it. The old email is good & clear.

    The big problem if you are cut & pasting the buyer postal details from your email notification (as we do) It does NOT cut & paste properly from this new email template.
    You can still do it, but when copying it to a label template it alters the configuration of the words, pasting the whole address along one single line, so you then have to break the addess down line by line manually.

    This is much slower than the old email template.

    PLEASE EBAY:

    BY ALL MEANS CHANGE THE EMAIL TEMPLATE IF YOU HAVE TOO??, BUT FIX THE NAME & ADDRESS PASTING ABILITY.

    please< please<

  24. #26 I agree – except for one more thing – ONCE AGAIN IT’S TOO SMALL!!! Just like the Paypal email the text is now small and won’t respond to the larger text options.

    As someone who has an eyesight problem, I’m beginning to wonder if ebay/Paypal have someting against people who have sight difficulties? Would this count as discrimination against people with disabilities?

  25. #27

    “I’m beginning to wonder if ebay/Paypal have someting against people who have sight difficulties?”

    Thankfully even eBay would not be that vindictive…………………….!

    This is probaly some ‘youing’ GOOD sighted fiddler, that sees change for change sake…. Seems the norm in the 21st century…………AND has not even thought about people with poor eyesight.

    The old saying, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’…. does not seem to apply

    TO EBAY: Come on guys, just put it back & move on to something far more important. PLEASE

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