In an @eBay blog post, and accompanying video on Youtube, the Vice president of Business to Consumer Selling and Global Trust Bob Kupbens has provided more details about what can be expected by eBay seller in the year to come. One particular area of focus will be returns.
With this modern buyer in mind, we will be reimagining the shopping experience and making eBay more personalized, intuitive and easy to navigate. We’ll help buyers find what they want quickly by leveraging product based commerce and our advances in structured data. We’ll invest heavily in cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and more, creating an eBay like you’ve never seen before.
In addition to a more intuitive and personalized on-site experience, we know the modern buyer wants their items delivered fast too. To meet their needs and help you sell more, we will expand eBay Guaranteed Delivery to include additional sellers and deliver more products in three days or less. Recently, we made it even easier to participate by removing the eBay shipping label requirement.
Checking return policies before purchasing is another common behavior of the modern buyer. Data shows that 75% of buyers check return policies before purchasing. Additionally, sellers who switched to a 30-day free-return policy (from a no-returns policy) saw up to 15% lift in conversion. With this data in mind, we’ll be encouraging you to update your return policies so you can convert more of your sales.
– Bob Kupbens, Vice president of Business to Consumer Selling and Global Trust, eBay Inc.
As you will have noticed on Tamebay over the past few weeks, eBay is clearly communicating significantly this year with the predominant aim of preparing sellers in particular about a slew of changes and developments that will be coming in 2018, and in the years ahead. And that is, frankly, a good thing. Anything that displays eBay has regained its fight and verve is to be welcomed.
It’s seemed to Tamebay in the past few years, specifically since the eBay/PayPal divorce, that eBay hasn’t developed a great deal but now it looks like the flood gates are opening and a great deal of change is on the way. Transition to the Adyen payments platform over the next few years is obviously the big headline but clearly there is more to come. We’ve written about that here today.
You can view the video from Bob Kupbens below. And the full text of his blog post can be found here.
5 Responses
I could only stomach 46 seconds of this utter BS. Note that he’s disabled comments on you tube which shows they don’t care what we think. The last two blogs he wrote were flooded with angry sellers so they disabled comments/locked the forum after less than 48hrs. This guy is talking to shareholders…no-one else. This is the Peter Principle at work folks. It’s sickening
They are a joke. They break trading laws at every step and leave sellers out of pocket.
Just today they cost us £189.
We had a buyer request a return as an aquarium filter leaked on arrival from the top.
eBay automatically accept the return and that is that.
Now the legal part starts.
According to UK and EU law. The buyer has a legal responsibility to ensure the product in their possession is kept safe and then returned in the same condition it was received taking all due care in the returning of the product.
It arrived back here hanging out of its retail box just thrown loosely in the outer box we packed in with no packaging used at all. The heavy top part had totally smashed the body of the filter making it fully unusable.
I took pictures and a video of us opening the boxes in the presence of the courier who stood to witness it.
I sent these to eBay seller protection who just refunded the buyer and told us they had no way of knowing the returns item condition, and if i felt it was the buyers fault i needed to take them to court and if they felt it was the carriers fault the buyer needed to take them to court.
Pathetic and here is why.
According to the law. The moment eBay provided the return label with the courier they assume responsibility for the safe return of the item as the buyer will not be dealt with by the courier firm as they had no contract with them, eBay did.
The carrier will not entertain the claim as the item was not packed correctly therefore according to the law it is the responsibility of eBay to reimburse the seller for the damaged item and either claim from the carrier they employed or absorb the refund themselves.
As yet again eBay assume the role of Judge Jury and executioner in their own little toytown world without actually investigating the legality of what they are embarking on before implementing these systems.
We have wasted hours taking pictures and uploading proof and evidence of the whole mess and they just throw their arms in the air and walk away.
So i have demanded they look at the situation once again and give me their final verdict before we start the process through the small claims court. Where our solicitor will be adding his hourly rate and our hourly rate and other incidental costs to the claim.
He said ignorance of the law is no defence in court and ignorance of how the parcel they took ownership of was packed again is no defence.
They should leave the buyers and sellers to find a solution without taking control of a situation they do not want to resolve legally.
On the telephone their customer service said all sellers should calculate all their annual losses through damage and returns work out the costs against their annual sales and add that percentage to their pricing. Therefore increasing their prices against already falling sales and competition from non VAT paying overseas sellers and many other non tax paying individuals.
We will continue to add our items to other websites more urgently in the rush to dump selling on eBay.
1) Make our site more personalised and easy to search
This means the “buy box and limiting consumer choice”
2) We will expand eBay delivery Guarantee in 3 days or less
This means eBay will just refund out of your pocket and not theirs of course, this is where 2D delivery might help, and you will need to send 24…the days of eco delivery options may be at and end.
3) Create incentives for offering FREE returns
Means you will get better search results, if you do not comply you will die, plus they make a fair buck out of the labels.
4) Payments
Whatever we lose PayPal, however I think all options should be on the table till the customers gets used to it. You do not just drop a brand like PayPal overnight, no sticks and carrots to begin with either.
5)Improved Tools and Guidance
They will constantly send useless emails telling you to drop your prices.
6) Communication
They could not get any worse at this, so any improvement will do.
Ebay need to evolve and rapidly they are losing so much traffic and business to Amazon. Now that I have just read the Seller Fulfilled Prime Article we just applied for it.
From a sellers point of view we would just like them to actually deal with the issues and fraud on the site better, it is the most problem riddled site of the lot, more than the rest combined.
Still NO B2B news like Amazon have done, they are missing out big time here.
Most important we would like to see a LEVEL playing field, which sadly we no longer have on eBay.
I had a buyer who messaged me with offensive and unacceptable messages; I have kept pdfs of the messages. they also obviously left wrong and unfair feedback. I complained to ebay who did not care one bit. No support for sellers from offensive buyers. ebay don’t care, they just want their money. The person above is right, they just keep their shareholders happy no-one else. ebay need to realise its not just about what it looks like, it’s about fair support for all when things go wrong! EBAY – DONT TURN YOUR BACK ON PEOPLE AND WALK AWAY. There are other sites that are up and coming!
I made a conscious decision to treat Amazon as my first marketplace a couple of years ago. The result is sales up 20%y on y and the split of eBay v Amazon sales is 30 / 70. ebay’ s constant changes bewilder me. Once you’ve finished editing hundreds of listing to conform to a new directive they go and start another round of changes. Amazon don’t change their platform; any effort I put in is to grow business not maintain it.
These videos of change just mean more work to stand still. When will they understand this? There are too many high paid executives making stupid decisions. Have they ever run a small business – probably not. It’s not the same as completing a masters at Harvard et al.