Emails sent to help eBay sellers optimize their listings last week instead created confusion. eBay sent the personalized emails with the subject line “Increase the chances of selling your items on eBay” to sellers on Wednesday with a link to listings and included recommendations to fill in empty Item Specifics fields – but in some cases, some listings already had the information already filled in, resulting in sellers spending time needlessly reviewing their listings.
Asked about the emails, eBay spokesperson Ryan Moore said, “eBay is always looking to improve the quality of our listings. There are hundreds of thousands of listings per day that have benefited from the recommendations that we provide to our sellers around best practices. These recommendations are strictly to provide guidance only.”
But some sellers were concerned that eBay might be penalizing the listings it had misidentified by showing them lower in search results since it uses Item Specifics and photo quality to boost or demote listings in search results.
When asked if items misidentified as needing fixes meant those listings were being mistakenly lowered in search, Moore responded, “With this particular instance, the misidentification lies solely within the communication itself.”
When asked if eBay would be sending out a corrected version of the email, and what eBay recommends sellers do about last week’s emails, Moore said, “A small proportion of emails had misidentified information. If sellers have questions, our customer service department will be able to help them out.”
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