Great changes to Shops pages

June 30, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

A subtle but rather good change to eBay Shops’ pages I noticed this morning: postage prices have now appeared alongside all items.

Shop postage

Anything that makes buyer’s lives easier has to be a good thing, though in a perfect world, I’d like to see a little icon alongside the postage price to indicate that postage discounts are available. Anything that increases multiple sales is an even better thing!

Updated to add:
Another excellent change that I’ve just noticed, with regard to how Shops’ search results are dealt with. It always used to be that if you were in a specific category in someone’s shop, and put something in the search box, the results you got were only from that category. Sometimes that was what you wanted: sometimes, however, it wasn’t, and the “nothing found” result was either an annoying reminder to click back to the Shop home page and search again, or (more likely for new users) a confusing “go away, there’s nothing for you here” kind of message.

Well, they fixed it. *Now* what you get is the results from the category you’re in, and *then* a list of matching items from other categories within the same Shop!

I spend a lot of time complaining that eBay’s developers don’t use the site enough, and I have to give them kudos for this one: it’s exactly what I, and I think most other eBayers, would have asked for. Well done :-D

eBay ask for patience after the flood

June 29, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

With many areas of the UK having been affected by flooding this week, this afternoon eBay have asked buyers to be patient “during what is a difficult time for many sellers, and allow a little longer than you normally would for delivery”. Sellers have also been asked to “take the initiative” and keep buyers informed of any problems of which they’re aware.

Ask Dan : bringing users to your auction site

June 28, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.
Ask Dan logo Dan Wilson, author of “Make Serious Money on eBay UK and Beyond“, online community expert and ex-Community Manager of eBay UK, hosts the first of his “Ask Dan” feature on eBay. If you have a question about buying or selling on eBay, post your question on the “Ask Dan” thread in the TameBay forum and he’ll offer his expert advice. Questions can be anything related to eBay, trading online and online communities. If you want to know, ask the expert.

Question from 0ctavia: Do you have any advice to offer non-eBay auction sites / niche markets which you think could make them more attractive to potential users?

Dan answers:
Building any online community is dependent on two things: people and the platform. Perhaps ironically, eBay has proved that people are in fact more important than the platform (the website). eBay has never been the whizziest, sexiest most beautiful site but it did attract people and the people attracted more people and the virtuous cycle of buyers attracting sellers attracting buyers was established.

With the new sites emerging it’s noticeable that they seem to focus on what they don’t like about eBay and that typically means fees. The sites crow about how they are cheaper but the simple fact is they’re only going to get traction if they concentrate on what people like about eBay.

It’s too easy to say “the fees are too high” but with circa 10 million live listings and hundreds of millions of pounds of sales a month it’s fairly obvious that they are tolerable. Lower fees might attract some sellers, but it’s irrelevant to buyers: one eBay-a-like site actually has their ‘low fees’ message in the most prominent placement on their homepage. If I was a seller on that site I’d be crying out that they change that to a message that spoke to buyers. (Could eBay fees be lower? Certainly, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

So my advice to sites that want a bit of the eBay action is to form a plan and understand what sellers AND buyers like about eBay and take it from there.

Buyers First!
When envisaging your site do it from a buyer’s perspective. There’s very little point building a site that’s suited perfectly to sellers or based around sellers’ grievances.

It’s about sales, stupid.
People care about sales and will pay for sales so how are you going to attract them? Very few of the ‘pretenders’ have managed to get cut through on a marketing front and it’s essential because eBay is a world-class marketing machine. PR and word of mouth are the most powerful levers.

What can you do better than eBay?
You can’t out-eBay eBay, so don’t try. But you might be able to do something better. Is it about going niche? (Etsy is a good example). Can you enhance the experience of buying?

Listen
eBay are actually very good at understanding their customers: from the community boards, using research such as focus groups and surveys and also by analysing site usage behaviour, they are pretty switched on. Make sure that you’re listening and most importantly be prepared to make changes.

Police tell me this isn’t happening!

June 28, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

A current court case has thrown up an eBay policy which clearly isn’t working. A depot manager was pulled over in his car by men posing as police officers, then his wife and children were also kidnapped by more “police officers”. £53m was then stolen from the Securitas depot in Kent where he worked.

The Kent Police uniforms however were purchased from eBay despite eBay policy clearly stating that police related items are barred from sale on the site.

Police Reflective JacketSo how hard is it to kit yourself out as a copper? I went browsing to find out. First up an “ex Police high visibility reflective jacket” can be yours with bidding opening at just £4.99. The auction states that all police insignia have been removed, but hey it’s a start. Then we’ll need some patches, well again not a problem, lets emblazon the word “Police” on the backPolice Badge with a “reflective police badge” with bids starting from just £1.00. This appears to be a popular item selling for over £20.00.

Traffic Police HatNext I went hunting for the all important hat, now if I’m going to stop cars a traffic police hat would be great, and yes I found an “obsolete Traffic officer’s hat” (minus a badge) for just £50.00. A few other easily obtainable items and if I stood in front of your car on a dark February evening would you be taken in by the uniform?

Sure some items such as the fluorescent jacket could be used by many people in the course of their work, but in that case why is it described as ex-police in the auction? Either eBay’s Police Related Items policy is being flagrantly broken, or the policy is allowing items too similar to Police uniforms to be sold.

How to catch a Romanian fraudster

June 27, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay have revealed some of the ways they targetted Romanian fraudsters who attempted to perpetrate fraud on eBay buyers. Matt Henley, a member of eBay’s US-based Fraud Investigations Team, spoke about the three year long campaign during a two-day conference on online fraud in Sydney, Australia: he said “a huge percentage of the fraud we were seeing was from Romania.”

Although scammers had many ways to separate unsuspecting eBayers from their money, the fake second chance offer was favourite. Fraudsters would attempt to contact losing bidders off-eBay by guessing their email addresses, adding their eBay user ID to a variety of popular email providers such as Hotmail or AOL. Simply by sending out a huge volume of email, the fraudsters would achieve some level of successful contact with buyers.

The scale of the fraud was so wide that eBay set up their own team to work with local law enforcement officials to try to trace the scammers. Local conditions made an instant trace difficult: police knowledge of the internet, and resources to get online, were often severely lacking, and in some cases, officers were using the same internet caf´s as the criminals! eBay staff worked both to educate Romanian police in how the scams could be worked, and in some cases provided the actual equipment to get them online. Henley estimated that “several hundred arrests” have been made in the last three years: “at least now there is the knowledge that there is a risk associated with being involved in this fraud.”

But it’s an ongoing problem: wherever technologically-able people have few chances to make money legitimately, there is the temptation to use the internet to commit fraud, and that is not something that will go away overnight, or even over the *next* three year campaign.

Friends Reunited by Paypal

June 27, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Friends Reunited has become the latest website to take payments by Paypal. Their 18 million members, signed up to trace old school and college friends, can now pay their subscriptions with Paypal as well as with credit card. Friends Reunited spokesman Jonathan Clark said, “We are focused on providing the safest online environment for our members, whether browsing the site, contacting their old friends, or making a payment.”

The perfect photo for eBay listings

June 27, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Original photo of trainer“You can close your mouth now, madam.” It’s a brave man who says that to Sue, but I was as amazed as she was during a demo at eBay Live in Boston: Fluid Mask from Vertus is one of the most stunning Photoshop plugins I’ve ever seen. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, and rightly, professional sellers on eBay are always looking to improve their images. Many sellers take fantastic quality images but how do you cut out the background to get studio quality pictures?
(Click images to embiggen)

Perfect photo of trainerProfessional studios would normally charge a fortune for cropping complicated shapes and using tools like the photoshop lasso tool are time consuming. Now Fluid Mask from Vertus can cut the time to crop complicated images down to the work of a few seconds.

We have a full step by step guide on how to produce the image of the shoe in the TameBay Forum.

It doesn’t just stop at irregular shaped objects though, any image can be cropped whether it’s a tree with leaves to a model’s hair. Fluid Mask can cut the image in seconds to leave the parts of the image you want kept and cropping out the background.

Model with hair

You can download a free trial of Fluid Mask from the Vertus website. Fluid Mask 3 runs as a stand-alone and as a plug-in for Adobe’s Photoshop (CS2/CS3) including Photoshop Elements. If you’re as impressed as us then TameBay readers get this special offer:

From now until 30th June you can purchase for just £99.00 which includes
  • FLUID MASK 2
  • FREE UPGRADE TO VERSION 3
  • FREE DAILY LIVE TRAINING
  • DESKTOP AND LAPTOP LICENSING.

That’s a saving of £50.00 for TameBay readers, just enter the coupon code EBASTAMEBAYJUNE when you make your purchase.

New item specifics in Collectables categories

June 27, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

We’re hearing from a number of collectables’ sellers that item specifics have suddenly appeared in their categories on eBay UK. There’s been no announcement about this: stamps’ and postcards’ categories are definitely affected. Some sellers appear to be largely in favour, while others are deeply unhappy about what they say are inappropriate categorisations. All, however, seem to be in agreement that an announcement would have been nice.

Item specifics are not just an extra way for buyers to search: they also affect the way sellers list, for example if you’re sending a SIF item to auction or BIN format, you have no choice but to add in item specifics, otherwise the listing is blocked. And of course, if you have to add item specifics to inventory of hundreds or thousands of items, that’s a change for which you really need decent warning.

If you’re in one of the affected categories, leave us a comment: let us know what’s going on, and what you think about it.

Good morning, Vietnam!

June 27, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Vietnam becomes the 38th country to have its own eBay site, as eBay.vn was launched in Hanoi this morning. According to Sam McDonagh, Director of eBay Southeast Asia, the first Vietnamese eBayers registered to use the global site in 1998. The Vietnamese Trade Ministry have already expressed their enthusiasm for the project, as Tran Huu Linh, deputy head of ecommerce said earlier this month that the new site showed there were good prospects for Vietnamese businesses online, prospects which the government is encouraging all businesses to embrace.

Testing Paypal’s new look

June 26, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay have been doing a fair amount of site redesign recently, and now it seems it’s Paypal’s turn for a fresh look, and they’re looking for your input. The Paypal site now sports a link at the top to take you to the beta version of the new site, from where you can provide feedback online.

Myself, I love the fresh, clean new look. Tabs for “personal” and “business” make it easier to find information relevent to your use of the site: perhaps unsurprisingly, the new pages are primarily aimed at selling the Paypal brand, but anything that starts to make their stodgy “help” pages easier to navigate is a good thing in my book. Take a look, and let them - and us - know what you think.

Royal Mail strike floods ParcelForce

June 26, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay have warned buyers and sellers alike that there may be delays in Royal Mail post for payments and deliveries of purchases due to Friday’s Industrial Action. They’re asking eBayers to be patient over the next few days.

There are already knock on effects, many companies have already made alternative arrangements and so many have switched to ParcelForce for the day they’re about to stop taking orders. There’s a notice on the ParcelForce website warning they’ll be unable to accept more collections requests after Wednesday this week.

This comes on top ParcelForce cancelling collections from Doncaster, Sheffield and parts of Yorkshire due to adverse weather conditions.

So what can eBayers do to minimise postal disruption? Well firstly of course post early wherever possible. Make use of services such as Special Delivery - although Thursday collections won’t be guaranteed for delivery on Friday any Special Delivery items posted Friday will be delivered by Monday. Post early in the day - There will be a single collection from street pillar boxes and some 14,000 post offices that will remain open, although this may be at an earlier time than normal. Unfortunately business collections will be cancelled on Friday so sellers who normally have mail collected will need to use a post office.

Finally if you want to keep up with the latest postal arrangements visit the special page on the Royal Mail Website.

Do you know my name?

June 26, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Tesco have just joined my list of companies never to do business with again. How? Well they sent me the email below. Not only did they address me as “Dear ,” which does nothing to endear them to me, but they had the temerity to send me an email stating that I’d now be receiving their fortnightly email spam.

Tesco email spam

How easy would it have been for them to reword their email to get me onside. How about a bonus free music download if I’d like to OPT IN to their email marketing list? Cost to them 69p which is what they currently charge to download one track! Instead they’ve managed to alienate me with their peremptory tone informing me that they’re going to send me emails whether I like it or not.

Seth Godin summed it up nicely at eBay Live! If you’re going to use email marketing it shouldn’t be email about your company - It should be “Me Mail” that I actually want to read. That goes whether it’s eBay email marketing or an email marketing list that you have for your off eBay business. Permission marketing is all about prospective (or existing) customers actually wanting to receive your email. If you upset a customer there are plenty of competitors out there waiting to take your business.

Mr Tesco I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong. :-(

eBay £1.7bn cash, eBay alternative worth $9.00

June 26, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Rosalinda Baldwin The Auction Guild values MightyBids.com as worth little more then the cost of registering it’s URL. That’s in comparison to eBay with almost unlimited cash reserves. That valuation jives with the current bid of $25,100.00 that’s been placed on the auction sale of MightyBids.com which is perversely selling itself on eBay - the site it was set up to compete with. So will the buyer be getting value for money? Well with 44 bids the reserve hasn’t been met so the seller obviously thinks the site is worth more (Although the reserve has been lowered it’s still not met).
Read more

Paris Hilton trashed on eBay!

June 26, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

As if the star didn’t have enough media attention as she steps out of jail straight into a Larry King interview on Wednesday it now turns out even her garbage isn’t safe. Although parking is temporarily suspended on several streets surrounding her Hollywood home it’s too late to prevent to trash hunters who stole her trash and are now auctioning it on eBay.

If you want an ID tag Paris wore to her own birthday party or an empty can of dog food stright from her garbage it’s on eBay. Maybe a souvenir of her time in jail with two envelopes addressed to Paris “C/O Century Regional Correctional Fac.” would be a suitable purchase?

So is it legal? The two guys styling themselves as Hollywood Star Trash certainly think so, they consulted a lawyer prior to snagging the junk. Hollywood Star Trash is the name of their eBay shop and their website.

Whether people are willing to pay for trash from the stars remains to be seen, currently there’s just one bid on the dog food can, but I suspect by the time the Paris Hiltion auctions end in five days time the prices soar.

PowerSellers’ Discussion Board to be split

June 24, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

There have often been calls on the PowerSeller Community Forum to split the board into different topics. The most common request on the UK PowerSeller Board has been for “Business” and “Chat” sections.

Now on the US PowerSeller Board it may become a reality with three different “sub-boards” being considered.

Whether this will become implemented is really down to the US PowerSellers themselves. PowerSellers can vote for “This board works for me as is”, “I would prefer additional boards for PowerSellers” or “I don’t care either way”.

eBay have often spun off new boards when exisiting boards reach a certain level of useage, it enables board contributors to find threads they’re interested in, and to post new threads on boards where they’re most likely to get the information or assistance they need. The US PowerSeller board is significantly busier than the UK PowerSeller board, but the move is still likely to renew calls for the UK board to be split.

(To log onto the eBay Community Boards linked in this post you must be a PowerSeller)

eBay ads back on Google - kind of

June 22, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay have announced today that they are to restore some paid advertising on Google. But eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said “I will tell you it will be in a much more limited way than it was before.” Adverts are apparently due to start later today, but as of this writing seem to be missing still.

Declining to give exact figures, Durzy said that adverts would be at a much reduced level compared to previous campaigns, and that the company will switch some advertising to Yahoo! “Overall the takeaway for us was that we weren’t as dependent on AdWords as some out there may have thought.”

The official eBay line has always been that the withdrawl from Google was part of a planned experiment in marketing strategy. In a lunch Q&A session at eBay Live! last week, John Donahoe, President of eBay Marketplaces, said, “There’s a lot more being made of this than is really the situation. We’re constantly testing, this is just simply something we’re doing as part of our regular work.”

The timing of the moves though, advertising withdrawn just after Google’s “Let Freedom Ring” party threatened to bring dissent to Live!, and restored only ten days later - hardly long enough for any decent trial - has to suggest that this is more about machismo than marketing.

SS2BM : Blue moon turns gold for independent sellers

June 22, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Running 21st to 30th June, Summer Solstice to Blue Moon is an unprecedented event, bringing together online merchants and alternative auction sites and market places, to show that there is plenty of life beyond eBay. Many online auction sites are offering special deals during this period, typically free listings or account credits to get you started on the sites, and many sellers too have listed special auctions, and are offering prizes. SS2BM is being organised by Pheebay.com, a community which began in protest at the Stores changes last August, but which has quickly become a hub for those trading on “St. Elsewheres” - non-eBay retail websites.

Using the power of Google, the organisers are asking supporters to search for SS2BM, which turns up a huge variety of auction and sale listings, and perhaps just as much comment: this is certainly something which has caught the imagination of jaded sellers.

But is this event something that could change the attitude of online sellers long-term, tempting them away from eBay to lesser-publicised sites? I asked event organiser 0ctavia about the campaign’s long-term aims: she told me, “this is the first time so many independent sales sites and sellers have come together to promote themselves positively and we hope it wont be the last. Our aim is to get people to consider using alternative sites to eBay. We aren’t expecting anyone to abandon eBay but hope healthier competition will raise everyone’s game.” And that would be a result for everyone.

Win €5000 (£3360) holiday with Skype

June 22, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

1st Prize €5000 Holiday VoucherSkype are offering a top prize of €5000 with two laptops and ten wifi phone packages as incentives to purchase Skype enabled telephones or headsets. Once you’ve made your purchase you can enter the competition…… or of course you can use the “No purchase necessary - Enter competition” link and save your money - after all you might be lucky enough to win one of the wifi phone packages anyway!

There are two elements to the competition, the first question is “If you could call anyone in the world, who would you choose to call and why?”. We can’t help you on that one, but as a hint they’ll be judging 80% on “Creativity and Originality” and 20% on “Clarity of Writing and ability to communicate”.

The second question is “How many months of free voicemail is offered with the WiFi phone package for Skype?” and the answer to that one is 12 months.

Good luck and if you win be sure to let us know :-)

Sorry I damaged your £42k purchase

June 22, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

What do you say to a buyer when they’ve won your auction on eBay and you then break their purchase? Well that’s the situation Lewis Hamilton the rising F1 star is in - having sold a kart for £42,100 for charity he’s taken it for a spin around a specially built track in London and pranged it. You can see the video on the BBC website!

Thankfully the event was organised to promote one of the McLaren-Mercedes sponsors - Vodafone, who are launching their new Mobile Internet service so the McLaren team are picking up the repair bill for a new rear axle. A good reminder that if you want one last play with your favourite possession do it before you list it on eBay, not after :-p

eBay going back to China

June 22, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay are to return to the Chinese online auction market, Meg Whitman has said. The new “Tom eBay”, a joint venture with local media company Tom Group, is within a few months of going live.

In order to strengthen buyer confidence, all transactions will use an escrow service, a third party which holds the buyer’s payment until the seller has delivered satisfactory goods. This is presumably the source of the story about Paypal pulling out of China: there are not yet any details of who the escrow provider would be, but a local company would seem the best bet. In addition, sellers will be more carefully vetted, and restrictions on the sale of luxury goods will be in place. “Whatever we do elsewhere to assure trust and safety, in China we have to do more,” said Whitman.

This is the second phase of eBay’s hokey cokey dance with China. The first venture, Eachnet, folded at the end of last year. On the flip side, Skype’s growth in China is their fastest of any country, and they now have more Chinese than American users.

QXL’s free listing fortnight

June 22, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

QXL, “the UK’s original online auction site”, are offering free insertion fees on all listings placed from Saturday, 23 June until midnight Saturday, 7 July. Success fees (QXL’s equivalent of FVFs) and listing upgrades are not included in the offer. No doubt there’ll be a lot more people around the site than normal while this event is going on, so it could be the time to try listing on QXL if you don’t already: with currently just over 6,000 items for sale on the site, at least you won’t be running into a lot of competition.

If you *do* list there, please leave us a comment and let us know how you get on.

BUY IT NOW will not disappear when the first bid is placed.

June 22, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

A common complaint from both buyers and sellers is that the BUY IT NOW option disappears from an auction as soon as the first bid is placed. Sellers have to pay for the additional BUY IT NOW option so only get value up until the first bid - on a highly sought after item this may be just hours or minutes.

The BUY IT NOW price also acts as a guide price for buyers indicating the value of the item encouraging higher bids. Buyers may well be interested in buying immediately but can’t, if someone has entered a low bid, even if the seller would rather get a quick sale. I for one have received messages from sellers asking if I’ll cancel bids and sell an item immediately, and of course under current eBay rules am unable to do so.

That may all change, eBay are about to start testing keeping the BIN option available on a listing longer even after the first bid has been placed. Options include keeping BUY IT NOW available until the bids reach 50% of the BIN option, waiting until a certain time has passed or a set number of bids have been placed.

For buyers it will kick in the windorphins knowing you’ve BIN’d an item against the bid of another buyer - it’s natural to want something others have (or might have). This could encourage more immediate purchases instead of bids, that should please sellers.

Testing will be carried out in Parts & Accessories category on eBay.com Motors over the next few months.

One-day postal strike announced

June 21, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

The CWU have announced a one-day postal strike for Friday 29th June. CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward said “We have also agreed further strike action within two weeks from 29 June that is designed to maximise the impact on Royal Mail but at minimum cost to the CWU members.” The strike will involve Post Office workers as well as RM delivery staff.

Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier said he was “disappointed”, but “ready to continue talking with the union about the need to modernise”.

Thinking about the future with eBay Ireland

June 21, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

John McElligott, MD of eBay Ireland eBay Ireland opened for business just two years ago, but has been an almost instant success. Earlier this year they achieved half a million registered users, not bad for a country with a population of just 4.3 million. TameBay spoke to John McElligott, eBay Ireland’s Managing Director, during our trip to eBay Live.

John was an experienced ecommerce consultant when he was head-hunted to run the new Irish site. Having worked in ten different countries, he thought eBay Ireland sounded an exciting and unusual place to work. Two years later, with the company having exceeded all expectations and targets, he says that he’s tremendously priviliged to have a job where “thinking about the future” is part of his brief.

The immediate future for eBay Ireland is about “figuring out how to grow local business”. We’re all used to hearing how big businesses are moving to Dublin, and how the Irish economy is booming, but ironically, the very strength of the economy could be holding back the growth of eBay Ireland: it may be that people simply can’t be bothered to sell off their unwanted items. But John believes that the next stage of Irish economic development will be entrepreneur led, and focussed on exports. eBay can allow rural communitites to engage with the global economy: wouldn’t it be great if the shoe shop in Dingle, County Kerry could sell shoes to the whole world?

But to achieve this, eBay need to achieve a critical mass of successful sellers. At the moment, one item is sold every minute by an Irish seller; in the same time, Irish buyers buy four items: clearly there’s room for a lot more sellers. John comments that certain areas of the site are very popular with local sellers - PCs and consumer electronics, high priced collectibles, and clothing - with many other categories definitely under-represented. He’s been working with County Enterprise Boards to encourage small established businesses to begin selling on eBay, and the feedback to those talks has been very good. Small businesses wanting to move onto eBay can email irishbusiness@ebay.com to arrange a consultation. It’s a move that can bring huge new markets to your business; with Ireland’s small population, it makes sense to target larger populations in the UK and Europe. John comments that many small businesses in Ireland think about exporting from day 1: what better way to do that than with the help of eBay’s established global brand?

John says that he loves interacting with the growing community around eBay Ireland. With two Universities last year and another in March this year, he says “watch this space” for education events later in the year. You might also like to keep an eye out for news from eBay as the football and hurling championships come down to the wire. ;-) Other recent initiatives run a huge range from the Irish Seller of the Year and Irish Internet Association events, to features in “You and Your Money” magazine, and a series in the Craft Council of Ireland’s magazine about making money through eBay.

In a company full of nice, enthusiastic, approachable people, John McElligott stands out as nice, enthusiastic and very approachable. This is eBay Ireland’s first visit to eBay Live, and the green shirts with shamrocks on the back have proved a desirable item with eBayers: so much so, says John, that his team will be auctioning shirts this week in aid of Barretstown camp for very sick children. We wish John and his team every possible success.

Another day closer to a postal strike

June 21, 2007

This post was written in June 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

The BBC report that talks yesterday between Royal Mail management and the CWU, aimed at averting a national postal strike, have ended in stalemate. RM have said they are unable to improve on their current 2.5% pay offer. Both sides are stating they’re willing to keep talking, but with no one bringing anything new to the table, that looks like so many empty words to businesses who, til now, have been reliant on Royal Mail.

As I’ve said before, I have no doubt that - in the event of a protracted strike - Royal Mail’s competitors would take full advantage and would start to offer many replacement services. Hellmail note DX Postal Services’ proactive approach: their website isn’t exactly subtle in its offering of strike coverage.

In the meantime, the CWU have still not announced anything definite. By law they must give Royal Mail a week’s notice of any stoppages, and currently the talk is of one day walkouts, so this is the time, not to panic, but to take a look at alternative delivery services.

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