Featured

Richard Ambrose is leaving eBay after six years with the company.

As Director of Trust and Safety for eBay UK, Richard was the media face of eBay, appearing on TV and radio to talk about the company and to defend sellers and the ways they make money online.

With over 1000 feedback (and no negs!) Richard knows eBay inside out. He was a valued and valuable member of the community, spending his own time on boards and forums talking to buyers and sellers and taking their concerns back to eBay’s internal teams. We’ll miss his wisdom, his advice, and his no-messing style.

Richard will be traveling and freelance-writing, with trips planned to Greenland and the US. We’re looking forward to reading about his adventures, and wish him the very best of luck.

CLD

eBay UK have been running a promotion since last April offering 20% off FVFs to sellers in some categories who offer free postage on their items. This promotion was due to end this month, but has now been extended until 30th September. The promo is valid for the Clothes, Shoes & Accessories, Video games, Technology and DVD categories, and there are some other conditions, so do check before you list.

eBay UK are holding a free listing day for private sellers on the 25th June. Any items listed as auctions will have insertion fees waived (although all other listing enhancement and final value fees will still apply). The promotion applies regardless of start price.

The promotion specifically excludes both Business registered sellers and PowerSellers. There are a few excluded categories to check the details before you list.

eBays UK and Ireland Motors are holding a half-price listing weekend for the 6th and 7th June. Insertion fees for auction and BIN listings will be half the normal rate, so £4 or €4.50. Classified ads do not qualify for the promotion. All other fees apply as normal, and there is some other small print, so do read it before you list.

Golf clubs and cameras and cell phones – oh my! eBay.com are offering 5c insertion fees for a range of items in specified categories when listed with pre-filled item information. The offer runs from 2nd to 15th June, and is valid for fixed price (”buy it now”) listings by sellers with 4.5 or more across all four DSRs. Other fees apply as normal. Check out the full list of categories included; they’re ones where pre-filled item information (aka product details) is perhaps less likely to be used by sellers.

Site Changes

eBay Australia has partnered with seekingservice.com.au to provide access to business services on the site. The service allows you to find local businesses and compare quotes by posting a one-off or ongoing project which businesses can bid for.

20% is a big drop in revenue, but it may be that last year’s $2.1m bid for Warren Buffett’s annual luncheon auction was simply too big to match. Recession or no recession, the $1.68m raised for the Glide Foundation on eBay this year is still a sizable figure.

If you’re a Skype user it’s time to upgrade to the latest Skype 4.1 release which apparently fixes a few bugs in the previous versions.

China has delayed an introduction of web filtering at the last minute turning planned protests into a celebration. Software was due to be installed on all computers to prevent access to pornography.

If you’re a hand made guitar aficionado there’s a DVD on eBay you have to buy – Antony Dewar chopped down a dead cherry tree in his garden and spent three years filming it’s transformation into a pair of guitars. Running for 3 hours 26 minutes the DVD shows everything from felling the tree to the finished product.

Selling Tips

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a long term, very experienced, eBay seller who I’ve known for a many years. Their telephone bill was unusually high and they found a premium rate telephone number to be the culprit.

Further investigation revealed an employee had searched for “PayPal help line” on Google and called the first number they found. Unfortunately it wasn’t PayPal they were calling, but an independent company charging £1.50/minute for support.

There are a number of these companies out there with names such as auction help or support line. The truth of the matter is that though they may give great information (I don’t know, I haven’t called them), in reality all the assistance you should ever need is freely available to you.

First port of call for PayPal should be to telephone them direct, you can get their number by logging into your PayPal account and clicking “Contact” at the bottom of the page. Through the PayPal website they’ll supply a unique one use PIN so that when you call they can confirm that the account really is yours.

eBay users who have access to telephone support will already have been provided with the relevant telephone number, whether that be as a PowerSeller, Business seller or as a Buyer.

eBay and PayPal help pages aren’t always the easiest to navigate but Louise, the friendly virtual agent, is always available to guide you to the information you need. (It’s also great fun to ask her totally irrelevant questions although I couldn’t possibly encourage anyone to do so).

For those needing further advice your online colleagues are almost certainly in a position to help. Use forums such as the TameBay forum, ask for help on the eBay community boards, use sites like Money Saving Expert – all of these sites are totally free to use.

If you have no need to ever call (or have your employees call) premium rate numbers ask your phone provider to block access to them. This will prevent all calls to premium rate lines and ensure that if someone does dial them by accident you aren’t faced with an unusually high and unwelcome telephone bill.