Police officially ignore eBay scams
February 28, 2007
Garreth Griffith, head of trust and safety at eBay UK has been representing eBayers to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on Personal Internet Security. The committee aims to examine the emerging threats to personal security, and the ways society might counter them. He informed them that many crimes on eBay go unreported and don’t appear on government statistics because the Police simply aren’t interested. We often hear of both sellers losing their goods to scammers and buyers paying for goods which never arrive. When the police are contacted there is immediately an obstacle of should the local force, or the force where the scammer is located be the ones to investigate. Often the victim leaves with no police assistance at all.
Michael Barrett, chief information security officer at electronic payments firm PayPal, says this practice is resulting in unnecessary crimes being committed. ‘You could argue that this is causing the public real harm,’ he said. ‘You will often find there is a threshold before you can get a prosecutor interested in a case. What we do is slowly build a dossier on an individual [perpetrator] until they reach the threshold.’
It’s great that eBay have representation at the highest level, it’s a real pity the police routinely ignore fraud on eBay concentrating on crimes with higher monetary value. Way back in 2002 Tony Blair promised to wage war on crime, perhaps when the committee produces its report the war on crime will include eBay crime.
Checkout does not check out
February 28, 2007
eBay UK sellers should be aware - if they’re not already - that Checkout is not calculating postage for multiple purchases correctly. I first became aware of this around a week ago when a buyer demanded to know why I was charging her double my stated postage cost. Over the course of the next few complaints, it seemed that buyers of more than one item from the same BIN or SIF listing were charged the “first” postage price again, rather than the “additional item” charge.
Numerous threads on eBay boards revealed that I was not alone: it seems that a fair few of us have spent most of the week sending out revised invoices, refunding overpaid postage, and getting accused of postage profiteering. However annoying that might be, it could be worse; other sellers are finding their buyers are being *under*charged. Julianne from Toy Town Express had a customer charged just £2 instead of £9.50: she said “it doesn’t even cover first class, and they want a courier delivery!”
The latest word from eBay is not hopeful for a quick fix:
As you are probably aware, this is currently a site issue at the moment. Our technical engineers are still working hard to resolve this issue but at present there is no further updates available regarding this problem.
J K Rowling does not have an injunction against eBay
February 28, 2007
Two days ago news broke that J K Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series) had won an injunction against eBay India. Now it appears the initial reports were incorrect and eBay has released a statement.
Although it is uncertain that a legal ruling in India would have any validity in the US or Europe, it’s certainly good news for eBay. It appears Rowling’s lawyers may have been a little over enthusiastic in their comments to the press.
Win £2000 from PayPal & This is Money
February 27, 2007
The £2000 competition is themed around Mother’s Day, but it’s really a ruse to get you to sign up for the This is Money website. Still you can always unsubscribe later 
All you need to do is register on the site, answer one simple question and you’re in the draw! Closing date is Sunday 18th March, Mother’s Day! Once you’ve entered the competition This is Money will offer some useful tips on ways to save money. There’s only one small catch… the money will be deposited in your PayPal account so if you don’t have one you’d best open a PayPal account pronto!
6p on a stamp to save RM
February 27, 2007
The Royal Mail is seeking to raise the price of a first class stamp by 6p to ensure its survival. RM claim that they lose 6p on every stamped letter they deliver, and can no longer subsidise this service with revenue from business users, as they are coming under increasing competition from other mail providers for the lucrative end of the market.
Chief Executive Adam Crozier has said that this is not scaremongering, but questions must surely now be asked about the Universal Service Agreement, which guarantees that letter post is uniformly priced to every address in the UK, an agreement which is valid until 2010. Price rises for this year, which will see a first class stamp increase 2p to 34p, have already been announced.
The holy post
February 26, 2007
Many eBayers will be used to praying that Royal Mail deliver their parcels safely, but soon they might be posting them in church too. The Rt. Rev. Colin Bennetts, Bishop of Coventry has called for churches to be allowed to act as part time post offices, and to be given funding to adapt buildings to their new function. One church in Leicestershire is already offering such a service, as well as acting as the village shop and internet cafe.
We’re all adults here
February 26, 2007
So, the missing auctions are down to a typo. Like most conspiracy theories about eBay, the explanation turned out to be rather less fun than the fantasy, though I think it does show why peer to peer support works so well. Ask Griff why your listing isn’t showing up, and he has to go away and think about it; pose the same question on the Community Q&A board and you’ll have an answer within minutes.
The conspiracy theorists might have been disappointed, but this little saga does bring up another very important point: why the hell do eBay just hide auctions with ‘naughty words’ in them, rather than giving you a big red notice when you try to submit them saying ‘you can’t say expletive-deleted’? If they can manage to warn sellers of brand names that it’d better be authentic or else while they’re listing, surely they can manage to tell sellers of ornithology books that mentioning blue tits is likely to get their listing buried? (And yes, that one really did happen.)
It’s particularly bad for sellers in the music categories who are using Muze’s prefilled item information to populate their listings: import a song title with the word “fuck” in it, and eBay’s own system will both put the naughty word in, and exclude you from search results.
And frankly, I think it’s about time they published the naughty words list too. Every other policy on eBay has a list of examples of what you can and cannot say, so why not this one? After all, according to the user agreement which says you have to be over 18 to join eBay, we’re all adults here.
Harry Potter’s J K Rowling sues eBay
February 26, 2007
J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter book series, is to sue eBay India over sellers hawking unauthorised copies of her books on eBay. Copies of her work has been sold as e-books on eBay India and action has been filled at the High Court in Delhi, India. Akash Chittranshi is representing J K Rowling and points out that under Indian laws eBay are equally as liable as the sellers. There is no comment however on any legal action being taken against individuals who have listed the e-books.
Rowling’s lawyers have already won a unique victory against eBay, an injunction has been placed which prohibits eBay from listing illegal copies of her work. eBay are now in the invidious position of having to comply with the injunction which will doubtless encourage other companies to expect the same. If they fail to prevent illegal copies of Rowling’s work appearing on eBay then they will be in breach of the injunction which is in place until the next court hearing on 23rd May, 2007.
eBay have long claimed to be “just a venue” unable to verify the authenticity of sellers products. The VeRO program allows IP Rights owners to flag counterfeit items and other unauthorised material which eBay removes when notified. The Rowling injunction orders eBay to bypass this process and actively police the site themselves. Additionally eBay are currently under pressure from sellers to examine the VeRO program, due to misuse by companies illegally trying to control the marketplace.
Once eBay start to successfully police the marketplace there will be numerous other companies demanding the same for their goods, the ruling could also have an impact on court cases with Louis Vuitton & Christian Dior in Europe and Tiffany in the US.
e-books have always had a poor reputation on eBay, and this will do nothing to assist the cause of the very few genuine e-book sellers with their own original material. I for one wouldn’t shed a tear if eBay took the decision to ban e-books entirely as other similar sites such as Tazbar have.
[See update to story with eBay press release]
eBay competitions: Guardian Business Sense; You Trade; Seller of the Year
February 26, 2007
The 2007 Guardian eBay Business Sense competition has announced the five finalists who will use £1500 seed money to compete for a prize of £2500. The competition is to run over the next three months. In contrast You Trade organised by the North East Regional Portal will run until January 2008. You Trade have received over forty entrants and are due to announce the ten finalists in the next few weeks. At the same time eBay.ie is running a Seller of the Year Award, with judging to take place on 28th April.
There are some interesting business proposals from the entrants of Business Sense. The one that strikes a chord with me is Joe Williams who plans to buy broken laptops, strip them down, and sell the working components. He rightly points out that there’s a huge market for components, although the work involved in dis-assembling and testing is labour intensive. Joe already owns his own IT company so branching out into a new area shouldn’t be too difficult and this is one business that has every chance to succeed.
Other ideas include importing cotton school uniforms, apparently polyester rules the market and there is room for quality cotton products. Another entrant aims to import large sized shoes from the United States, with current fake trainers on eBay we hope he won’t fall foul of the “Building Trust by Reducing Counterfeits policy” listing limitations.
The final two ideas will need some clever marketing, Doodle Dolls or “worry dolls” where children can write concerns on a card for parents and carers can then see what is on their minds will need some clever marketing. Although when buyers stumble across them they may love the concept, it’s not the type of product people are searching for daily. Finally Mayan hammocks from Mexico are great for the summer months, but sustaining the business though the winter won’t be easy.
It will be interesting to see how they progress, sadly the finalists from last years competition haven’t made waves in the world of eBay trading, with most having closed their eBay shops. Hopefully lessons have been learnt to assist the new entrants and with support the competition will be less of a gimmick and help establish profitable sustainable businesses.
A final thought: It would be really cute if eBay could at last enable blogs in the UK so that everyone could follow their progress daily. Blogs are long overdue and this would be an excellent time to launch them.
People hearing without listening
February 25, 2007
The Observer’s letter page becomes the latest Sunday paper to feature eBay, and as usual, it’s not good news. “CC” was unable to use an eBay coupon, and has had no joy from eBay customer services. Neither has the reporter from The Observer: “When companies stop communicating with the press, we can only assume they have something to hide.”
Personally, I’d assume that the lack of comment is due to the fact that non-working coupons don’t cost eBay money, and that the coupon’s not working is down to eBay’s habitual site problems. eBay have made a decision about how their “customer service” is going to work: as Seth Godin puts it:
Three cheers for the organization that says, “In order to keep prices low and traffic moving, we’re unable to discuss our policies with you. We’re very sorry if this inconveniences you.” It’s far better than the charade that so many large companies go through.
And yes, I’d rather rely largely on peer to peer support, than have my fees multiplied by ten to pay for the support staff that eBay would need just to deal with those who are complaining about negative feedbacks. But when it comes to dealing with the press, especially for something like a promotional coupon which might be expected to bring new users on to the site, I’d expect a lot better than this.
Solution to “My listing never showed on eBay”
February 25, 2007
In the last few months there have been more and more sellers complaining that their listings are not showing up on eBay, even in the dying hours of a full seven day auction. The auctions always appear in their “My eBay” demonstrating that the items were actually on the site. Sellers are complaining that their items are receiving no bids, and can not be found in category search results although searching by the item number would find their auction.
This was raised at the recent eBay Town Hall by sellers Sam and Debbie who called in. At the Town Hall Griff requested affected sellers to email him and he would investigate some specific item numbers. This is a difficult one to track down after the event, you need to search the item while it’s still live in order to diagnose the issue correctly.
There has been much speculation as to the root cause of the issue, including questioning are the new longer item numbers are to blame? eBay blogger firemeg comes close to the solution when mentioning “eBay has been telling sellers for months that listings (especially for high ticket items) will be subject to security checks prior to being indexed (ie. prior to showing in searches)“. The suggestion that security checks are delaying items appearing in search for the full duration of the auction is not the problem, but we are indebted to firemeg for the following YouTube broadcast which reveals the answers.
It turns out that in this case (and we suspect in many others) it’s a very simple explanation, the “high ticket items” comment holds the clue. In categories with high ticket items a high proportion of sellers pay for the Featured Plus listing enhancement. When search and browse results are sorted by “ending soonest” the items at the top of the first page will be Featured Plus listings. This feature costs sellers between £3.95 and £29.95 extra on eBay.co.uk (US$19.95 on eBay.com).
Featured plus listings always appear at the top of the page they would naturally fall upon in search results with one important exception - in categories where many sellers select the featured plus option, items about to end can flood the category and take up several pages of search results. In fact in some categories the first non-featured plus listings can be many pages back in search results.
In the category in the YouTube broadcast above (Jewelry & Watches > Rings > Diamond Engagement/Anniversary > Diamond Solitaire Rings) Featured Plus listings currently occupy the first eleven pages of search results and the first non featured plus listing is halfway down page twelve, hardly surprising sellers think their item is not indexed by eBay!
There are two solutions. Firstly to pay to have featured plus on your item, and secondly scroll through the pages to the end of the featured plus items to find the listings without that listing enhancement and you’ll find your auction.
If your listing never shows on the first page of search results in the last minutes of your auctions there is nothing amiss. It’s just the way that eBay is designed to work!
Finally eBay provide a little known utility so that you can locate exactly where your item is located on the site 
T in the park boss naive
February 25, 2007
You are a seasoned event organiser. You have a limited number of tickets which you know will sell out in minutes. You open booking and sell some 40,000 tickets in well under an hour. You know that hundreds of people will miss out and be willing to pay whatever it takes to obtain entrance. So why are you surprised when tickets appear on eBay and buyers are willing to bid more than the face value?
That’s the situation the rather naive Geoff Ellis, chief executive of T in the Park promoters finds himself in. Well just what did he expect? It really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Ellis intends to instruct his lawyers to request eBay remove tickets that use the “T” logo, but accepts it’s likely tickets will be sold before eBay have time to respond. I for one am not going to suggest he reads up on VeRO and saves his legal fees :-p Regardless there are no grounds for removing auctions not displaying his logo.
Just why someone organising an incredibly popular and well attended festival don’t take similar steps to Glastonbury with photo tickets, to prevent resale of tickets is beyond me. Either they have no market awareness (in which case they deserve to be replaced), or they have no cause for complaint after the event when tickets are on the open market available to the highest bidder.
Wake up and smell the roses Mr. Ellis!
The back button is back
February 24, 2007
There’s a double helping of good news from eBay’s official blog The Chatter this morning. Firstly, the problem with the back button on auctions has been fixed. This annoying glitch meant that Internet Explorer users could not use the back button to return to their search results having looked at an auction, with the result, of course, that many of them abandoned the search altogether.
Better still is the fact that eBay have informed users of the fix. As I’ve said many times, eBay’s ability to comunicate with their users is appalling. The Announcements Board is, probably rightly, used only for major announcements and policy changes, but that’s meant that small changes to the site have gone unannounced. How many great features have been missed by buyers and sellers just because they haven’t happened to stumble upon them, I wonder? Lets hope that eBay have finally discovered that blogging such changes is the way to go. Now where’s the official blog for the UK?
Hacking, taunting and eBay security
February 23, 2007
It’s been a fairly hectic week for eBay with stories flying around re security on the site. A few of them are on auctionbytes (twice), The Register (twice) and pretty much every other eBay related news site going. So it’s time to look at the facts.
Vladuz
A Romanian Hacker known by the handle Vladuz has been the cause of much speculation and it has been acknowledged by eBay that he has had access to a small (single digit) number of eBay staff email accounts.
Vladuz posted screen shots of eBay’s back end system on the eBay community boards. The screen shots were not taken by Vladuz himself, but had been sent, as images, to the staff member in question. That is how Vladuz was able to post them on the internet. Despite what those seeing the screen shots assumed, Vladuz never had access to eBay’s data servers.
Further worries were caused by Vladuz posting on eBay community boards masquerading as an eBay “Pink”. This again was not due to accessing eBay’s main servers, but rather from hijacked staff accounts. eBay have confirmed to TameBay that staff accounts with eBay.com (or eBay.co.uk) email addresses automatically appear with the pink banner on the community boards. Simply by having access to a staff account with community board posting rights allowed Vladuz to post with the pink banner. eBayers were obviously concerned that the “pink line” meant that Vladuz was in a position of power and could access any part of eBay’s system, but in fact, this was not the case: he never got any further than the staff email system.
This is desperately embarrassing for eBay, if eBay employees email and passwords have been accessed just what hope is there for the average user?
Hijacked Accounts
Running in parallel with the Vladuz story is the large number of hijacked accounts with “For BUY IT NOW price contact me at: [a gmail email address]. eBay told us this afternoon that there is currently “No evidence to suggest that he [Vladuz] is the one doing the account takeovers at this stage”. There certainly is a large number of accounts compromised, and some have speculated that Vladuz is able to access them through eBay’s servers at will. In reality what appears to be happening is phishers and pharmers have harvested a large number of accounts which they are using in an alphabetical sequence (naturally it makes it easier to sort alphabetically any list you want to work through sequentially).
eBay work hard to freeze hijacked accounts and restore them to their legitimate owner. Some users have reported even changing their account password has not stopped further activity by hijackers. This may be explained quite simply, firstly if auctions have been scheduled unless they are cancelled they will launch at a later date. Secondly if you are logged into your eBay account on one computer and then change your password on a second eBay servers don’t appear to log you out on the first. This is a loophole which eBay need to address and may be why changing the password on hijacked accounts does not stop all unauthorised activity immediately.
If you are unfortunate to have your account hijacked we strongly recommend that you contact LiveHelp on the link for hijacked accounts. They will be able to fully restore your account to you and cancel any activity which has occurred in the meantime.
Summary
Two events appear to have taken place, ongoing and persistent abuse of hijacked accounts and taunting of eBay by a Romanian hacker. eBay are constantly working to prevent account hijacks and educate users on how to stay safe online but it is a never ending battle. Even the new PayPal security tokens don’t give a 100% guarantee of security although they will certainly slow hackers down. The key for all users is never click links in emails, and be suspicious of all links on websites. The much maligned eBay toolbar will show if you are about to enter your user name and password into a non-eBay site, and new EV SLL enabled browsers will assist also. (eBay and PayPal are amongst the first websites to be EV SLL ready).
eBay are working with both the American Secret Service and law enforcement in Romania to track down Vladuz and bring him to justice. It is rumoured that a FireFox addon “eBayCaptcha Populator” written by Vladuz may be the key to how he compromised accounts, but this far from being substantiated. We’d recommend that you don’t use tools to bypass security and especially don’t install this addon regardless.
The Future
So what of the future? Well firstly with My Messages on eBay it may be time to ban email addresses in auctions. Many sellers will object vociferously at this, but we’re due to see enhancements to messages in the near future anyway. The dreaded “UseTheYellowButton@ebay.co.uk” replyto: address is due to be replaced with smart messaging. This would allow sellers to reply to emails where the buyer withheld their email address with their email client and eBay would forward them through their servers. Once users are accustomed to using My Messages exclusively on eBay any email asking you to log in to the site would instantly stand out. Users would also regard any request to email direct with instant suspicion, although we’d hope eBay wouldn’t block the use of the “@” symbol entirely.
Another possibility is tying an eBay account permanently to a PayPal account. Currently sellers enter the email address they wish PayPal payments to be sent to individually in each auction. In theory every auction a seller lists could have a different PayPal email address for payment, although in practise you’re limited to the number of PayPal accounts and only a handful of addresses for each. Certainly removing the ability to edit the PayPal email address individually in each auction shouldn’t be irksome, in fact if users could send money to an eBay ID instead of an email address it would solve several problems, not least having to edit all your auctions if you change your email provider.
eBay have a long way to go in the fight to keep accounts secure, steps are being taken but the scammers are moving just as fast if not faster.
Six months for “lazy” postie
February 23, 2007
If you’ve had a parcel go missing in the Musselburgh area between December 2004 and March 2006, chances are it might be about to be delivered. An East Lothian postwoman kept 5,820 parcels in her home, because she was “too lazy” to deliver them. At Christmas, she opened twelve of the packages, but they have been recovered. The defending counsel said that she had been at a low ebb and had found her job overwhelming, but had always intended to deliver the parcels at some later date. The postwoman pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to six months in jail.
TurboLister 2 to become Windows Vista Compliant
February 23, 2007
With TurboLister 1 support finally ending this spring many users have already upgraded to TurboLister 2. Many users who have purchased a new PC with Windows Vista (or upgraded), have discovered that TurboLister 2 is not compatible with their new operating system.
In the eBay Townhall last night we were told with early releases of Windows Vista TurboLister 2 was fully tested and working. Unfortunately in the final release Microsoft changed the code and TurboLister 2 failed to operate. This is being worked on and by early March a new release will be ready which is fully Vista compliant. Good news for all those sellers unable to list in the meantime, but we’d always recommend keeping your old PC running and testing, on a separate machine, all the applications you need for work prior to any major upgrade like Vista or IE7.
Also in the Townhall users have reported issues running parts of the site such as the new Sell Your Item (SYI) form. The advice as ever is that you do need to keep your software updated with the latest browsers and versions of Java. eBay have taken the difficult decision not to support older versions in order to take advantage of new technologies.
For anyone still running TurboLister 1 you need to upgrade as soon as possible.
Vero to zero in one eBay step
February 22, 2007
Nici Smith has been trading on eBay for more than three years, running a successful shop selling gifts, gadgets and novelty items. Then, overnight, everything she had worked so hard to build was taken away from her - by an eBay program supposed to fight fraud and fakes.
On December 13th 2006 my eBay business gadgets-and-gifts-uk was shut down overnight by the VeRO department at eBay for a trademark infringement. The company who had challenged my business was based in America, and the infringement? Well, that would be an alleged breech of copyright over a light shaped like a part-melted ice cube.
After shaking, crying, ranting and raving, I eventually calmed down and took matters in hand. Thankfully I am a member of the Federation of Small Businesses so I was able to use their free legal advice line to assist.
The rights owner was, in all fairness, very helpful; he was horrified that his VeRO infringement notices had closed my business during the busiest trading week of the year . He had only wanted the offending listings to be removed. So he employed his UK lawyer to contact VeRO to try and sort the situation out. The lawyer wrote urgent e-mails to VeRO to no avail, and could not believe that a department of this nature had no publicly available contact numbers at all.
I was informed later that allegedly the rights owner had just lost an EU court battle to stop my supplier from selling the product I had bought. The UK patent office said that it would be impossible to claim a UK patent for a light up ice cube and virtually impossible to claim UK copyright for a partially melted ice cube as the design is too generic. This VeRO was nothing to do with trademark infringement; it was all about market share.
To cut a very long story short, the business sat out its suspension, and re-opened a week later. When my eBay account was reinstated, everything had gone. All my listings had simply vanished, my shop had been closed and everything had to be redone from scratch. A few days before Christmas, I wanted to be packing my last couple of parcels and putting my feet up, not trying to rescue my income from Hurricane VeRO.
This wasn’t my first run in with VeRO. I have had a few over the past 12 months. Unfortunately, the first you hear about the possibility that you are infringing a trademark, for an item you’ve bought from a UK supplier in good faith, is when it is removed from eBay. By this time, the black mark has already gone against your ID. I have never wilfully infringed any trademark, patent or copyright and have always complied and removed offending items. Not one VeRO has been for counterfeit or fake goods which is what the program was intended for. All have been for market manipulation. VeRO don’t get involved in the decision as to whether your item infringes a trademark; they simply remove the listing on the instruction of the person claiming to be the rights owner. And unfortunately I don’t have the finances to challenge eBay legally.
Pre-approved bidder/buyer de-approved
February 22, 2007
In December we spotted notices on the Bidder/Buyer Management page stating that the pre-approved bidder feature would be phased out. This was eventually officially confirmed in an announcement by Gareth Griffith (GG) in January. The feature will remain in place only for high-profile charity auctions which eBay will enable on a case by case basis.
The feature has now disappeared from the Bidder/Buyer Management page leaving just the Buyer Requirement Preferences (Which ALL sellers should take a look at), Blocked Bidder/Buyer list and Buyer Requirements Exemption list.
Scottish football club sold on eBay
February 22, 2007
A Dundee football fan trying to revive his long-bankrupt club, has turned to eBay for help. Ed Sweeney says that he was a fan of Third Lanark as a child. Despite winning the Scottish Cup in 1905 and reaching the final only to lose to Rangers in 1936, in 1967 the club declared bankruptcy and closed. They lost their final game 5-1.
Two years ago, Mr Sweeney registered the name Third Lanark Football Club Ltd. with Companies’ House. Now he’s selling it, in the hope that the club will be resurrected. Despite being missing for forty years, the club seem to have plenty of fans. Apparently in an interview last year, Billy Connelly mentioned buying the club himself, so bargain hunters might want to get their snipes poised for this one.
Police tell buyers to check the receipt
February 22, 2007
“If you are offered a sat nav for £50 and you buy it, you could get done for handling stolen goods.” That was the straight message from Berkshire police’s deputy commander Insp. Simon Bowden, concerned that a recent spate of car thefts in the Bracknell area will mean that stolen equipment is sold cheaply on eBay.
Despite winning the prize for hysterical headline of the week with ‘Sat navs on eBay could be hooking children on heroin’, Inspector Bowden makes a serious point: people tempted to buy seriously underpriced items should be careful. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is. So ask your seller about packaging and proof of their purchase.
The police will be spending more time investigating items sold on eBay, which they say can be used to fund other crime. In the meantime, after the report has sadly tarred all Berkshire’s GPS sellers with the same “dodgy” brush, genuine sellers should be expecting more questions than usual from potential buyers.
eBay denies “Unproductive Listing Removal” policy
February 22, 2007
An remark from a Citigroup analyst after a meeting with Bob Swan has caused such a stir that eBay have felt compelled to address sellers fears. Rather than reading the comment in context sellers have been mulling over the goal to “removing unproductive listings” from eBay.
With one of eBay’s stated goals for 2007 as “simplifying the site, improving finding, and accentuating the things that make eBay fun and unique.“, some sellers worried their listings would be cancelled under a “unproductive listing policy“. Whilst an “Unproductive Listing Policy” may have been said tongue in cheek, it was certainly worrying enough sellers for eBay to comment.
Laura (aka Daphne when posting on community boards as a “pink”) addressed sellers who’s biggest gripe was, as always, “It is not fair to us Sellers to intentionally do things behind our backs the things we need to know and understand so we can make our own adjustments as a Seller”. This is a real problem for eBay, so many seemingly minor changes occur on the site which to sellers can have a major impact on their business. What eBay may feel is a minor enhancement can have far reaching consequences for a sellers strategy to maximise sales on the site. Recent examples include unannounced experimenting with visibilty of UK listings on eBay.com, and the introduction of “Biddy’s Button“. (One change positive for sellers and one negative, just to be fair Both equally important for sellers to be aware of though.)
Back to the analyst’s comments and ensuing brouhaha, it stemmed from an AuctionBytes report of the CitiGroup comments. The comments were actually restating eBay’s goals dating back to early 2006 where eBay eventually took the decision to roll back Shop Inventory Items appearing in search results. In other words the analyst was largely talking about historical events, not future goals.
In a nutshell to reassure sellers eBay state “eBay is not taking any new actions to remove listings, and this is not what we told analysts”. Communication though is key, and with so many unannounced changes, it’s not surprising when news is reported off eBay it can be misinterpreted. eBay really do need to boost communications of events happening on the site so that sellers aren’t looking elsewhere to be informed of site changes and eBay news.
eBay push my button
February 21, 2007
The devil, they say, is in the detail. That’s certainly true on eBay. Particularly on eBay’s checkout:
See what’s missing? That “or continue shopping with this seller” - static, unclickable text, that ought to be a button or a link, to take you right back to the seller’s shop or other items.
I’ve been whinging about this since 14th September 2004 (apologies for the links to the UK Powerseller Board; if you don’t have a sign-in there, you’ll have to take my word for it). Other sellers agreed with me. eBay staff agreed with me. Nigel said he’s been complaining about the same thing even longer than I have. A signature campaign on the Powerseller Board happened. People from “Product” Skyped me. Doug McCallum even started a thread about it. At some point in the intervening two and a half years, the lovely Lynne from A Bit More Sparkle christened the idea “Biddy’s Button”.
And today, frabjeous day, it seems they’ve started testing it:
If I sound a bit over-happy, well frankly, I am. Two and a half years of badgering to get one link added to the site is, to be honest, about two years longer than it should have been. Not for nothing does John Donahoe say “you don’t do anything sudden on the eBay ecosystem”.
Now please, eBay, make it go live. Because I can’t be the only seller who is really, truly fed up of explaining how to purchase more than one item to a dozen buyers every day.
With most enormous thanks for the heads up and the screen shot to Cwmbedw, the world’s best purveyor of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and everything else card-shaped you could possibly want.
Gas man’s eBay spree with stolen card
February 21, 2007
Here’s a comforting thought for anyone worried about website security and phishing: your credit card number is a lot less safe out there in meat space. A New Jersey petrol station attendant apparently memorised a customer’s credit card number and used it to buy US$600 worth of merchandise off eBay. The police said that the accused man had admitted to ordering the items, but that he had not taken delivery of the goods, which he had had delivered to neighbours. The woman whose card was used is to be reimbursed via Paypal; there’s no word on whether the fraudulently purchased items will be returned to the sellers or not.
ASA ban eBay ad
February 21, 2007
We’ve all seen those eBay ads on their homepage that tell you you can buy a CD for 50p, jeans for a quid, a Ferrari for a fiver… I exaggerate, but you know the ones I mean. Probably, like me, you’ve thought “yeah right” and moved right on to paying realistic prices for your purchases. But one man didn’t.
Having seen a banner advertising “Coffee Machine Under £100″ and “Retro Chair Under £50″, a complainant to the Advertising Standards Authority challenged the ad, as the coffee machine was apparently not available at all, and the chair was only available for £250.
eBay in their defence said that the items and prices in the advert were generic examples only, and that the links from the ads led to pages of search results related to the examples shown. Brand names and model numbers were not shown, because there was no intention to create “an expectation that the exact identical items were available on the eBay site”. They did, however, provide examples of items matching those in the advert at the time the complainant said that they were not there: they speculated that with over 50 million items listed on the site, perhaps he could not find the items shown, even though they were available.
The complaint was upheld. The ASA acknowledged that the items shown had been available on the eBay site, but while the ad appeared from 30 October to 15 December, the evidence sent by eBay showed that the coffee machine concerned had been available only until 2 November and the chair from 28 November to 5 December. The ASA believed that “most consumers would click on the links in the ad and expect to be able to buy the specific product for the stated price. We considered, therefore, that all the items depicted in the ad should have been available for the whole time the ad appeared and, as soon as the items were no longer available, the ad should have been withdrawn.”
I notice that the redesigned front page has abandoned these kind of ads, though they are still around in eBay’s banners - there might be one on the bottom of this very page right now.
GG blogs into town with safety in mind
February 21, 2007
The all new Safety Centre has been live for a month on eBay.co.uk along with revelations about GG. GG is unmasked to be the moniker given to Garreth Griffith the Head of eBay Trust and Safety in the UK and Ireland and the first entry in the Trust & Safety Blog links to an interview with GG to introduce the work he and his team do.
It’s still a strange type of blog though, no RSS feed, no permalinks, no trackbacks, no comments and only one post…. perhaps it’s because eBay.co.uk have still yet to fully enable blogs in the UK.
We do hope they roll blogs and the other MyWorld features for the UK soon. Regardless we look forward to seeing some serious blogging going on in the UK to keep us informed of what’s going on - It’ll give us here at TameBay a rest!
Bang in the center of the Safety Center are six top tips for staying safe on eBay, along with more specific advise for buyers and sellers accessible from the sidebar. There is extra advice for sellers for when things go wrong, including the all important link to the Account Theft help for hijacked ebay accounts page, it’s strange that this link wasn’t also included on the information for buyers.
Finally if you want to know what makes GG get out of bed in the morning all is revealed. It’s not the same as most of us: the need for a trip to the bathroom. It’s the super-dedicated “Knowing that the work of my team protects thousands of innocent, good eBay traders every day and assists law enforcement in putting fraudsters behind bars.”
Recent Comments
- Whirly: #3 you don’t deserve one after having a 1p listing festival you jammy blighter.
- Chris Dawson: #1 I didn’t get a voucher either
If anyone has one and wants to spend it with me... - northumbrian: the only fault with that bling thing is if anything it makes the item look to good
- faculty-x: us techies are honoured at the mo from ebay or the ones that have dropped off ebay the most, us...
- faculty-x: bling looks excellent, must get a copy. been messing around with coral for years, should save ages. so...
- Whirly: No voucher for me which is a pain as I need some stuff I know a buyer who will get one, he likes...
- Whirly: #2 If you build the fee’s into your sale price I think it’s a justifiable expense, we regularly...
- Trish Connolly: I need to dissagree with part of your statement. You say, “I’ve met many buyers who are more...
- J R: if we sell something for £500 there is no way we would be willing to give ebay £50 plus Paypal fees, there...
- Whirly: lmao
