In our first ‘In Conversation With…’ series interview of 2021, I sat down with Murray Lambell, who became General Manager for eBay UK last September in the middle of a global pandemic and the final throes of Brexit.
We wanted to find out more about the man who runs the marketplace which is the bedrock of so many UK businesses, his thoughts on the year just gone and the outlook for businesses trading on eBay in 2021.
Murray is a long time eBay users and in this interview tells of a lock down purchase he made from the same seller he bought from a decade ago. Good news, whilst the seller was great ten years ago, a lot has changed in the industry and Murray’s most recent purchase was a lot easier than back in the day – it was a big heavy item and shipping of this type of item has caught up with the ecommerce world.
We asked Murray about the impact of the pandemic, what’s happening with Brexit and what eBay for Business sellers need to focus on to be successful in 2021. Murray also talked about new tools launched in recent months as well as a hint for more to come in the future.
Perhaps most interesting, Murray acknowledges the many challenges faced by eBay sellers in 2020 and the enormous changes already taking place in 2021 and committed to continuing to work to provide solutions and advice for sellers as the year unfolds.
Murray Lambell, General Manager eBay UK talks to Tamebay
You can watch the full interview on the TamebayTV YouTube channel or below:
17 Responses
The biggest problem for EBay sellers is what to do with Northern Ireland sales and he said nothing.
Murray, would love to know when ebay are going to tackle the problem of private sellers running a business on the site. Many with hundreds, of brand new items of stock. Little or no retail standards that ebay keep pushing on sellers with things like buyer remorse returns.
Why is he doing this interview in disguise with beard and glasses ?
So basically they are going to change store subscriptions and probably increase them and fill them full of worthless add on.
Cant use GSP as you are overpriced and wont do Games but to be fair eBay have got about much of a clue about what is happening with EU trade (Brexiteer shambles)…
@Sam, yes think there are changes coming to the stores at some point as there was a survey about them last year. Some of the ideas were pay for what you want/need model. Pay to access better seller support . Other ideas were vouchers/credits for returns.
Ebay is finished, it lost it’s way under Rob Hattrell who promised that it would get better, and it did – for him! For us sellers, the lack of support, the confusing fees, the penalties if your buyers fraudulently claim and the complete clusterf**k that is the catalogue means that it’s no longer a viable platform.
Murray, could you please enlighten us as to when your launching a platform that actually functions like a 21st Century one?
The lack of functionality and continual glitches are a complete embarrassment
“Sellers are giving very strong and positive feedback” on eBay Payments. Really?
What about all the small business models that have been destroyed by eBay’s refusal to offer some form of Micr
eBay now take up to 49% in fees from a non-VAT registered seller – and that is not including the shop fees.
Was this a promotional video paid for by eBay? Certainly viewed like one.
Why not ask about the site problems? Postage estimates wrong, no protection for late deliveries, no fee holidays in lockdown 3?
Snowy
There is protection for late deliveries, just as it says in the late delivery report:
“If you dispatch on time and upload a validated tracking number, or your buyers tell us their items were posted on time when they leave Feedback, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
I use Royal Mail (48) for the majority of ebay sales. RM have been so poor this year, that I should have a late delivery defect of over 9%, which would mean loss of TRS status, along with the discount that goes with it and any associated sales boost. Instead, the late delivery defect is showing 0.5% right now. Why? Because goods were dispatched on time and a validated tracking number was uploaded, for all sales. Ebay has then removed them from it’s tally. This is protection for late deliveries.
To be honest ebay has been really good for us during lockdown
Yes there are glitches
Though as long as people buy were quite happy to work round them
Gav.
There is limited protection from the Royal Mail Crisis. Yes I I have had late deliveries removed from metrics. But not all – and all my orders have been dispatched on time.
And I have items not removed that were on the same manifest and same mail bag as ones that have been removed..
I took the decision to dispatch all my orders RM24 to mitigate the fact that when the going gets too tough, RM48 gets dumped to one side.
ALL my orders are dispatched on time.. all of them. and many I manage to dispatch after our cutoff time..
And now, after the worst RM performance in its history, (including a 1st class order that took A MONTH to arrive, I get an email from ebay telling me to “improve my metrics” and you need to dispatch your orders on time..”
Apparently despite me doing everything and more – short of hand delivering every order myself, I have very high lates – and the consequences to go with it too!
HOW F**KING DARE THEY!
As always with ebay, they assume that sellers don’t do their job properly as the reason for late deliveries.. well ebay, we pick pack and dispatch, we dont deliver, Royal Mail do that and when the mail is with them, we have no control over it, and guess what, read the papers – its been in meltdown since March last year..
but that’s my fault for not dispatching on time.. when every order has been dispatched on time
perhaps ebay, you would like to do a video on how I predict who and what is going to be ordered so I can do it before the order comes in.
Matt
It’s not perfect, but it is available and does work.
I see some missed defects too that haven’t been removed. It’s an automatic process, and being ebay, it’s not going to be 100% successful. I could get them removed if I wanted to, but I don’t need it to get down to 0%
We’re using almost the same posting method, so perhaps there is something you do different if you have a substantial number of defects not removed. I’ve stuck with RM48 and have a daily collection. As said, it should be 9% but it’s down to 0.5% and I’ve not had to do anything for that.
@Matt
You clearly aren’t doing enough in ebays eyes. You should be hiring a helicopter and hand delivering the items.- it’s just not good enough you naughty boy ?
I got an email about how I’m being “protected”. Just think- eBay protecting me from…….. eBay
You couldn’t make it up if you tried.
@ Gav
What is there to do different?? Order comes through, it gets printed off in Click N Drop.., picked, packed and dropped off at the post office. Items automatically marked as dispatched when manifested, tracking is automatically uploaded to ebay from click n drop…
Carrier delivery performance once it is in their network is not related to my “dispatching on time” performance, which is 100%
How does one item get “removed from metrics” that was on the same manifest and in the same bag as one that isn’t removed?
Am I missing something?
@ Matt
Aside from your post office drop off vs than my collection, it seems we do everything else the same. Unless the collection point scan at my warehouse is somehow better than your post office alternative, or ebay are more lenient with my (mainly) RM48 than your all RM24, then we should be seeing roughly the same results in late delivery reports: a very small number of leftovers not being removed. due to random ebay glitchiness.
In my experience, the number of missed “removed from metrics” is very low and insignificant. They do enough to keep my account well below the TRS required level.
And it’s the ebay glitchiness that leads to them to issue me with a “you aren’t doing your job” email, and “we are going to do our best to shaft your account and your business by adding days to your expected delivery and rank you lower in search results”
Which is of course completely fair and right.. when you and I do principally identical process…
And ebay wonder why they are hated by sellers so much