With the never ending deluge of eBay sellers (and buyers!) getting sanctioned with suspensions for sharing contact information, you need to take every opportunity you can to ensure that your customers can communicate with you when they need to.
In the last Seller Release, eBay promised that they’d enable sellers who want to to display a customer support telephone number with buyers who click the ‘Ask the seller a question’ link.
“We know that, for many sellers, offering telephone support is one of the ways to offer great customer service. From this summer, you’ll be able to indicate whether or not you’d like us to share your customer service phone number with buyers via the Ask a question link. We’ll be limiting when this feature is available to buyers based on customer usage and feedback”
– eBay Spring 2017 Seller Release
Tamebay reader Whirly has spotted that this feature is now live on eBay, but the box to display your telephone number remains unticked. If you would like to take advantage of this feature go to the ‘Manage your buyers’ questions‘ section of your eBay settings to tick the box and make sure that your customer support telephone number is correct.
eBay warn that they won’t always display your number and the times it will be displayed will be based on customer feedback. However if you don’t make sure that you have the correct telephone support number entered then it’ll never be displayed so log in and tick the box today.
6 Responses
Further to this and yesterday’s article re: suspensions for contact info policy breaches…
I have just gotten off the phone with eBay. My concerns are that as a business seller and one that does actually sell some (around 5-10%) items that are too large and heavy for stardard shipping, such as chairs, sofas etc. These have traditionally been handled by asking the POTENTIAL buyer to send an eBay message with their post code details and site access details to my ebay account and I will then do either a personal delivery quote as I have a van, or I will provide them with my post code for them to obtain their own quotes from a ‘Man & Van’ type courier more local to them.
That’s worked perfectly for years and not once have I ever traded outside of eBay.
So I called to get a definative answer on how I handle this situation and it was confirmed to me (“100% for sure” – no less!) that as a UK business registered seller then I can refer buyers to my Business Information details at the base of each page and ask them to call me for a persoal quote.
Is this not the exact opposite of what we’re being told elsewhere?
I was given a call reference number and “Guaranteed” that my account is not in jeopardy if i do it this way as long as I dont message my conatct details.
I also pointed out that the Business Infoormation was about to be moved or removed and the advisor stated that isn’t going to happen for definate.
I don’t know what to believe.
If I were you Paul I would not take the word of just one agent. Personally I would ask a few agents & weigh up how many agree & how many disagree. Make sure you get Ref Numbers for every call and ask daily on live help so you also have have a transcript & also ask by messaging. When you have 101 conflicting answers smash head on keyboard do not pass go do not collect £200 pounds go directly to jail with the owl & pussycat stopping off for tea at the Mad Hatters tea party on the way. Hey presto you are none the wiser & have wasted a day you could have been listing. Multiply by half a million head scratching seller & deduct loss of sales against money saved by suspending sellers for running a business correctly & watch eBay sink in ocean of paranoia & hypocrisy. Yes…. I am going stark raving mad!!! How can any eBay shareholder be happy with this absolute lunacy!
We opted in to the option last month & we still cannot see how its being used on eBay
Just to help anybody struggling to find this section. It is located in My Ebay>Site Preferences>Manage Communications With Buyers.
This is on Ebay UK – the terminology is different to the above article.